Unlike traditional business schools that expect students to choose a specialization early on, the 2+2 program structure of the Ivey Honours of Business Administration (HBA) offers students the freedom to explore their academic interests before choosing their career options. In the first two years, students can study in any faculty or program. This opportunity to gain new life experiences ensures that HBA students and their classmates bring diverse and more seasoned perspectives to their business education. The combination of a deep knowledge of business and another academic or professional field makes for a strong career foundation. Students can apply their first two years of university study at Western to two degrees.

Students in this program will have the option to complete a four year Honours Bachelor of Business Administration (HBA) or to study for five years and combine the HBA with an Honours Bachelor of Economics. While in their first year at Ivey (HBA 1), students will apply for one of the combined degree programs. If admitted, they will spend their fourth and fifth years of university studying a combination of business courses and required courses in their second degree area. In five years, they will have completed two degrees.

Economics is a social science devoted to the study of scarcity, and how individuals, organizations, and governments make choices. The discipline’s guiding principle is found in the idea that all of these choices can most usefully be seen as decisions to allocate scarce resources across a range of competing uses. This single principle is always in play, and leads economists to study a wide array of social questions.

In the first year Economics courses students will be exposed to the use of this basic principle and the analytical tools that go with them in both the microeconomic and macroeconomic realm. The first of these (micro) refers to the study of choices made by individuals and/or individual firms, and how these decisions interact in markets. The macro segment then looks at how this principle allows us to better understand the behavior of the economy in the aggregate. This leads to the study of unemployment, inflation, government budgets and international trade balances. These courses then provide the basis for all of the more senior – and more specialized – courses offered by the Department.

NOTE: Please note the English scores listed are minimum requirements. Meeting the minimums does not guarantee admission. Students with low English scores may be admitted to the English BOOST Program, a 9 week training program for conditional admission to their chosen program.