New finance major and sports analytics minor pair rigorous academics with career-focused experience

Brandeis Stories

New finance major and sports analytics minor pair rigorous academics with career-focused experience

By Steve Foskett
August 18, 2026 • Business

Two new academic programs rolling out this fall at the Brandeis School of Business and Economics - a finance major and a minor in sports analytics - will equip graduates with practical, real-world knowledge and experience in sectors increasingly reliant on a complex mix of computer science, data, teamwork and decision-making.

Finance major

Finance, the branch of economics that studies decisions that involve uncertainty and that play out over time, has emerged as both an important academic discipline and also a popular career choice for Brandeis students.

Until now, Finance has only been available as a minor. But that's changing this fall, when SBE will begin offering the subject as a major course of study. Rooted in Brandeis' identity as a research university, the new major will be taught both as a quantitative science and a human discipline, said Daniel Bergstresser, associate professor of finance and chair of the Undergraduate Business Program.

"The mission of the program will be to train students in ways that are rooted in the liberal arts and have power in practice," Bergstresser said.

The program will have six core learning goals across several branches of the field:

• Corporate finance: how organizations finance their operations and align financial choices with long-term goals.
• Investment science: how individuals evaluate opportunities, trading off risk and return.
• The role, function, and regulation of financial markets and institutions.
• Risk management: a broad set of tools that focus on identifying, evaluating, and controlling threats and opportunities.
• Communication and modern methods of teamwork.
• The relationship between finance and the larger society that financial markets and institutions serve.

Students are also encouraged to combine finance with complementary disciplines to create double majors that build a unique professional profile. Whether it's majoring in finance and computer science to lead innovation in FinTech and blockchain, or finance and economics to predict market movements and develop high-level global investment strategies, the program can be designed to fit students' goals.

The major will also incorporate Brandeis' interdisciplinary approach. Through "Finance, Technology and Society" electives, finance majors will explore how financial markets and institutions intersect with fields such as law, government, computer science, engineering, environmental policy and the arts.

Students in the new major also have access to existing accelerated graduate programs, graduate-level courses, and global markets immersion through the Study Abroad program and industry partnerships with organizations that include the CFA Institute, the Global Association of Risk Professionals, and the Financial Modeling Institute.

Sports analytics minor

Students in this new minor will develop expertise in data science and business analytics. The sports component emphasizes knowledge of game rules, strategy, performance metrics and the rigorous application of analytical methods to real-world athletic contexts.

The skills students learn can be applied to a range of sports-related business and performance use cases, including player assessment, team composition, game strategy development, event management and marketing, and financial budgeting.

A combination of five courses and three prerequisites, the sports analytics minor builds on the success of a popular sports analytics class offered at the School of Business and Economics. The waiting list to get in has proven the demand for more offerings in this area, said Ahmad Namini, professor of the practice of business analytics.

At its core, sports analytics - which is offered as a concentration at the master's level at Brandeis - is not fundamentally different from business, healthcare or marketing analytics.

"It's mainly all computer science and applied mathematics applied to domain problems," Namini said. "The domain is the interesting part."

The global sports analytics market was valued at nearly $6 billion last year, and is projected to grow to $31.14 billion by 2034. That means that there's a lot more room for career exploration beyond a coveted position with a professional sports team. Namini said there's growth right now in an agency model that has individual athletes hiring their own sports analytics professionals, rather than relying on whatever team they are playing for. And the minor also includes an extensive focus on the business of sports analytics, from marketing and communications to event management.

"That's going to be interesting," Namini said. "You'll have analytics people looking at how people engage with sporting events. They'll be asking, 'are we managing their experience well?'"