OPIM 101 needs a serious makeover

Call me old-fashioned, but I like to take classes that will teach me something that I either don't already know, or won't learn about in any other course. Otherwise, there's no point in my coming to class. Hence, when I think back to the fall of last year, I am not at all surprised that the usual attendance in my "Introduction to the Computer as an Analysis Tool" class was about 9 students -- out of 65.

Operations and Information Management 101 -- in its present state -- certainly deserves its reputation as the problem child of the Wharton core curriculum for the very reason that it fails to teach students anything that they won't gather from another Wharton class. Consequently, OPIM 101 should either undergo a hefty makeover or be scrapped altogether.

Virtually every topic covered in OPIM 101 is duplicated in other courses. Why should I listen to my OPIM 101 professor lecture about Bayes' rule, when I can just go to my Statistics 101 class, and hear my Statistics professor tell me about it? Probability theory and decision trees are covered in Administrative Information Statistics 101; data mining is discussed in Introductory Business Statistics 102; linear programming forms a full chapter of the Managerial Accounting 102 textbook. I could go on, but -- unlike my OPIM 101 professor -- I don't want to bore you.

However, proponents of OPIM 101's usefulness usually point to the fact that in OPIM 101 you learn to use Microsoft Excel -- certainly a useful skill to have if you're going to work on Wall Street. However, I cannot help but see this as a tremendous waste of class time. If you take any upper-level finance course, you will learn everything you need to know about Excel for the business world -- without the use of a giant, expensive Excel manual. Plenty of other Wharton courses in Marketing, Accounting and other departments will also give you the solid introduction you need in Excel in order to excel; hence, teaching Excel in a formal classroom environment simply duplicates what you'll learn elsewhere and wastes valuable instruction time.

Just about the only other topic covered in OPIM 101 that you won't formally learn in any other Wharton course is MS Visual Basic for Applications programming. Yet despite its uniqueness, teaching Wharton students VBA for one semester is patently useless. Learning a computer programming language is like learning a foreign language; you'll need to be immersed in it and study it for a heck of a lot longer than one semester before it becomes of any use to you.

This summer, for example, my boss at my internship asked me to automate a MS Word data file using a spreadsheet, since I had done such a great job of promoting my OPIM 101 experience during the interview. Yet I could not even begin to write the computer code, even with a former OPIM 101 teaching assistant at my side, as well as a VBA handbook. I remembered nothing about VBA programming. Clearly, it is best to let the pros from the School of Engineering and Applied Science handle computer programming and let us Whartonites handle the financial statements.

Obviously, all of this curriculum duplication or downright curriculum uselessness makes OPIM 101 an extremely boring and pointless class. So long as the OPIM Department insists on introducing students to topics that they will learn elsewhere or -- if they're seniors -- that they have already learned, they cannot expect to stir genuine student interest or even a decent attendance record.

Furthermore, I fear that OPIM 101 makes students averse to taking upper-level OPIM courses or concentrating in OPIM, because Whartonites -- rightfully so -- judge Wharton's academic departments by their core-level, introductory courses. Consequently, because so many Whartonites lack fond memories of OPIM 101, to put it mildly, they do not think highly of the department. However, talk to any Wharton juniors or seniors who have taken upper-level OPIM courses, and they'll be sure to tell you that the OPIM Department does offer some interesting and worthwhile courses.

Obviously, change is needed. I challenge the OPIM Department to reformulate OPIM 101 to better reflect the intricacies of decision modeling and logistical problems that businesses face -- topics that you won't learn about in any other courses. Scrap VBA programming (like you scrapped the equally pointless Python programming), stop teaching Excel and focus on your core capacities -- to put it in Wharton lingo. Then, and only then, will you generate some genuine student interest (and attendance!), as well as add value to my Wharton education.

Cezary Podkul is a junior Management and Philosophy major in Wharton and the College from Chicago, Ill. Cezary Salad appears on Mondays.

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