The specialist course getting students hedge fund quant jobs might be in peril

The masters in financial engineering in its many shapes and forms has long been an effective route into quantitative finance, with some affordable options, but it has found itself in some trouble, according to QuantNet founder and ex-Deutsche Bank quant Andy Nguyen. Nguyen says appetite for the courses is plummeting, and that some universities are discontinuing them.

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The problem seems to apply to MFE courses, broadly defined, including quant and financial mathematics masters. The most notable is discontinuation is Rutgers Business School's master of quantitative finance, which Nguyen said was "once the flagship program at Rutgers." It is being discontinued in fall of this year. In 2022, quant courses were also closed at the Illinois Institute of Technology, University of Dayton and Hofstra University.

The closures appear due to decreased demand, with some courses only having single digit student numbers. At Dayton, for example, just four students were enrolled in 2019, and earned an average of $32.7k after graduating. IIT students earned over $80k on average, but the course enrolled only six students in each of its last two years.

Rutgers' seems to have suffered a similar fall in student numbers. It enrolled 50+ students to its masters in quant finance from 2020 to 2022, but just 27 last year. Its most recent careers report says graduates earned $82.6k in 2021, with offers from JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank. Rutgers still has a masters in quantitative finance course (MQF), which ranked 17th on QuantNet's rankings this year. This enrolled 55 students, who earned an average salary of over $100k, but just 57% of them had job offers at graduation.

The closures risk becoming self-perpetuating. As fewer universities offer quant courses, more students may question their value. Nguyen notes that it "would be tough to associated with a program that no longer exists." At the same time, competition for remaining places is likely to increase. 

The biggest MFE courses may be immune to the rot, though. Big name universities like Berkeley, Cornell and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology each had over 100 students enrolled in MFE courses in 2023. They also charge more: fees for Cornell and MIT's MFE programs have been steadily climbing, costing $97.8k and $121k respectively in 2023. Resident tuition at Rutgers cost $40.6k that year, and Dayton's course cost $32.7k in 2019.

Only one of QuantNet's top 14 courses had tuition fees under $50k for out-of-state students: Baruch (which ironically topped the rankings). In its most recent careers report, it revealed average pay for graduates actually rose 17%, with offers coming from the likes of Goldman Sachs and hedge fund Millennium. Despite having the lowest acceptance rate of the top 20 courses in QuantNet's most recent rankings, Baruch's acceptance rate has fallen further, accepting just 5.6% of applicants this year.

Graduates seem to really value MFE courses still. One quant told us that the course was their key to a role in finance, despite also having a PhD. 

"My PhD was very theoretical." He said. "When I applied for jobs, I didn't know how to program; it wasn't easy to find one." Having a PhD can sometimes be a hindrance for jobs in finance because "because you don't have the experience to justify the seniority."

The quant went back to school to take an MFE. He said it "had good connections, so it was like a long recruitment process." His course had two dedicated staff who would look for appropriate jobs and send them to the students, which he said "were perhaps more important than the course itself for us." He said the course content was also useful, but its true strengths lied in "connecting you with the professional world."

Want a quant job, but are unsure of the MFE programs? Check out our student guide to get an understanding of what top firms are looking for in their quants, and learn what a day in the life of a quant researcher is like.

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