On Feb­ru­ary 2, 2022, a dou­ble degree agree­ment, the BBA in Dig­i­tal Engi­neer­ing and Man­age­ment (BIDM), was signed between UTC-Com­pieg­ne and EDHEC on the Lille cam­pus of EDHEC Busi­ness School. This is a four-year course designed to devel­op dual skills in both engi­neer­ing and man­age­ment sci­ences. The pro­gramme meets two demands: that of com­pa­nies for high-lev­el hybrid pro­files and that of high school stu­dents, hes­i­tat­ing between seek­ing admis­sion to an engi­neer­ing school and busi­ness school.

EDHEC and UTC have joined forces to offer a dual degree pro­gramme to train out­stand­ing pro­fes­sion­als in the Hauts-de-France region. The BIDM pro­gramme ful­fils a strong ambi­tion of both schools: to train hybrid pro­files capa­ble of meet­ing the chal­lenges of a rapid­ly chang­ing world. The EDHEC-UTC part­ner­ship agree­ment is based on a four-year post-bac­calau­re­ate dual degree pro­gramme in which stu­dents can devel­op skills in the fields of engi­neer­ing and man­age­ment sci­ences. They can also spe­cialise in one of three majors: Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing & Data Ana­lyt­ics, Dig­i­tal Finance & Data Ana­lyt­ics or Dig­i­tal Engi­neer­ing. The pro­gramme is open to high school grad­u­ates who have stud­ied math­e­mat­ics in their first and final years of sec­ondary school, and who have also stud­ied eco­nom­ics and social sci­ences, polit­i­cal sci­ence, dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy and infor­ma­tion sci­ence (option­al but rec­om­mend­ed). “The first class is on track to grad­u­ate. Career oppor­tu­ni­ties are very diverse. Stu­dents are pre­pared for emerg­ing careers in finance, mar­ket­ing and indus­try. One of the major pro­fes­sion­al chal­lenges that led to the cre­ation of this dual degree is the accel­er­a­tion of dig­i­tal pro­fes­sions in order to bet­ter respond to soci­etal trans­for­ma­tions and the evo­lu­tion of cit­i­zen engage­ment,” explains Nathalie Darène, co-direc­tor of the BIDM. “It is cru­cial today to be pre­pared to respond to the many changes that require increas­ing­ly rich and diverse data man­age­ment skills, as well as the abil­i­ty to analyse this data in a reflec­tive man­ner. Hence the inter­est in com­bin­ing skills, respond­ing to the needs of busi­ness­es and inte­grat­ing new chal­lenges to dri­ve new practices. ”

Join the ranks of credit analysts, growth hackers, cloud computing engineers and other creative technologists

Kais Feigen­blum, 21, is spe­cial­is­ing in Dig­i­tal Finance and Data Ana­lyt­ics. He wants to work in mar­ket finance, ide­al­ly in trad­ing or struc­tur­ing. He was torn between the two paths when he fin­ished his bac­calau­re­ate. With the bac­calau­re­ate reform offer­ing more flex­i­bil­i­ty in terms of sub­jects, he felt it made sense not to decide and to take advan­tage of the com­ple­men­tary nature of these two schools. “My expe­ri­ence at UTC has been very pos­i­tive, both aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly and in terms of stu­dent life. Cam­pus life there is par­tic­u­lar­ly rich and enjoy­able. At EDHEC, I found that I had a close rela­tion­ship with the pro­fes­sors, which is extreme­ly ben­e­fi­cial for mak­ing rapid progress and delv­ing deep­er into cer­tain sub­jects. The skills I acquired are very com­ple­men­tary. For exam­ple, dur­ing my intern­ship, I need­ed to under­stand both the tech­ni­cal aspects (pro­gram­ming, data analy­sis) and the finan­cial aspects. This dual degree allows me to effec­tive­ly con­nect these two worlds.” His stay in Shang­hai was a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence in an extreme­ly dynam­ic city that offers a very enrich­ing cul­tur­al and aca­d­e­m­ic immer­sion. For his long-term intern­ship, he joined the Trad­ing Sup­port team of a major bank. “I was delight­ed to dis­cov­er the inner work­ings of a trad­ing room, and I was able to quick­ly become oper­a­tional because I already had knowl­edge in both areas (Finance and Engineering/Data), which is not the case for most interns. It also allowed me to take on many cross-func­tion­al assignments. ”

Being part of the very first class to graduate

Mean­while, 21-year-old Noémie Tur­lotte is in her fourth year of the BIDM pro­gramme, major­ing in Dig­i­tal Finance and Data Ana­lyt­ics. She chose the dual degree for the oppor­tu­ni­ty to gain dual skills in both dig­i­tal engi­neer­ing and man­age­ment, specif­i­cal­ly in finance. Com­ing from an engi­neer­ing school, it seemed obvi­ous to her to com­bine these two aspects in her stud­ies and lat­er in her pro­fes­sion­al life. “Being a mem­ber of two schools renowned in their respec­tive fields also played a part in my deci­sion. It’s a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to take so many tech­ni­cal and var­ied cours­es. There is a real pur­suit of excel­lence with­in this pro­gramme, which is demand­ing but com­pre­hen­sive and inter­est­ing. Beyond the rank­ings, hav­ing access to the net­work of these two pres­ti­gious schools was a plus,” says the stu­dent, for whom the BIDM pro­gramme is also a very rich expe­ri­ence, with more than 12 months of pro­fes­sion­al hands-on prac­tice, a semes­ter abroad in her sec­ond year and a very active stu­dent life in the first cycle. “It was par­tic­u­lar­ly excit­ing to imag­ine that we were indeed going to build the pro­gramme. In addi­tion, being a small class gave us the advan­tage of being very close to the teach­ing staff and the admin­is­tra­tion. I joined the first cohort. I want­ed to be part of this brand new and inno­v­a­tive pro­gramme, to take up the chal­lenge of being in the very first class to graduate”.

KD