The Joseph L. Rotman School of Management (commonly known as the Rotman School of Management or simply Rotman) is the graduate business school of the University of Toronto, based on the St. George campus in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The university has offered undergraduate courses in commerce and management since 1901, however the business school was formally established in 1950. The school is named after Joseph L. Rotman, its principal benefactor.
The school offers undergraduate, graduate and doctoral programs in business administration, finance and commerce, including full-time, part-time and executive MBA programs along with a Master of Finance program, a Master of Management, a Master of Management Analytics, the Master of Financial Risk Management, a Graduate Diploma in Professional Accounting, and a doctoral program. Its PhD in management program is offered tri-campus, on the St. George, Mississauga, and Scarborough campuses.
Additionally, in collaboration with other divisions at the university and abroad, it offers combined or joint MBA degrees with the Henry N.R. Jackman Faculty of Law (JD/MBA), the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering (Skoll BASc/MBA), the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy (PharmD/MBA), the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy (MBA/MGA), the Temerty Faculty of Medicine (MD/MBA); and Collaborative Programs in Asia-Pacific Studies and Environmental Studies.
History
Predecessors and early history (1901–1972) The programs for which the Rotman School of Management is now responsible had their origins in 1901 when a diploma program in commerce was inaugurated in the Faculty of Arts. This was transformed into a Bachelor of Arts program in Commerce and Finance in 1909 and into a Bachelor of Commerce program in 1920. These programs had a strong liberal arts emphasis which the BCom program still tries to retain. A Master of Commerce program was started in the Faculty of Arts in 1938 to provide a more professional program.
In 1950 the MCom program was transferred into the newly created Institute of Business Administration with a Director as its head. The degree was changed to Master of Business Administration in 1960 and the institute was renamed the School of Business.
A Doctor of Philosophy program was begun in 1969 to develop its research orientation and to provide business school faculty for Canadian universities.
Faculty of Management Studies (1972–1995) The school in its current form was officially established as the Faculty of Management Studies in 1972, with John Crispo as its first dean.
In 1982 the School assumed responsibility for teaching the Commerce courses within the BCom program and in 1992 the BCom program became a joint program of the Faculty of Arts and Science and of the Rotman School. In 1983 the School began a privately financed Executive MBA program. It was renamed again, being shortened to the Faculty of Management in 1986. In 1989 a privately funded MBA in professional accounting was added. In 1996 it was moved to the University of Toronto's Mississauga campus and the degree changed to Master of Management & Professional Accounting, now offered by the Institute for Management and Innovation (IMI). The School also offers a variety of non-degree Executive Development Programs and operates a number of research centres which complement its teaching and research activities.
Present name (1995–present) In 1995, the Joseph L. Rotman Centre for Management, funded in part by a $3 million donation made by Joseph Rotman in 1993, was opened and the Faculty of Management shifted its base to its current building after previously moving locations multiple times. The centre was later expanded with additions to the upper floors along with a new South Building, with the original building now known as the North Building. The school was renamed as the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management in 1997, in honour of a $15 million donation of its principal benefactor, Joseph Rotman, to be paid out over a period of time ending in 2011.
Rotman's donation was particularly controversial, as examined in a 1997 cover story of The Varsity. The donor agreement included several clauses that could limit the university and faculty of management's academic freedom. The agreement required that "U of T [rank] the faculty of management as one of its 'highest priorities' for the allocation of university funding, ensuring to its 'best efforts' that business education receives continuing focus." Bill Graham, then-president of the University of Toronto Faculty Association, was among the most vocal opponents of the original agreement, noted "the unqualified support for the 'vision,' and it talked about non-qualified support for and commitment to the values and principles underlying the 'vision' by the members of the faculty of management, as well as the central administration". The donation agreement underwent some substantial revisions, but the Rotman Foundation retained the right to "bring in an outside expert from the Association of American Universities to recommend policy changes if it was felt that the school of management was failing to live up to the criteria set out in the agreement". The school, however, retains its status as a Faculty in the University of Toronto.
In 1998, former management consultant Roger Martin was appointed Dean of the School, and during his tenure he oversaw the changes mandated by the Rotman Foundation. Martin's high profile and outspokenness caused some conflict with the other University faculties, notwithstanding, he was credited with "[transforming] what was a small, rather inconsequential regional player in Canada into a world-class institution offering a more differentiated MBA program focused around integrative thinking, self-development and business design".
In the year 2000, Marcel Desautels, founder, president and CEO of the Canadian Credit Management Foundation helped in creating Marcel Desautels Centre for Integrative Thinking with a $10-million gift. Rotman developed a new model of business education based on integrative thinking in the same year. The Michael Lee-Chin Family Institute for Corporate Citizenship (originally the AIC Institute for Corporate Citizenship) was established at Rotman in 2004 with a $10-million gift from Michael Lee-Chin. The same year, Rotman completed an expansion of its campus. In recent years, the school has received significant funding from private and public quarters.
In 2011, Rotman's academic expenditures were $71 million for 1,500 students (the Faculty of Architecture spent $7 million for 400 students), comparable to that of the University of Toronto Scarborough campus. Part of those costs were attributed to the high salaries paid to faculty, as six of the top 10 salaries paid to University of Toronto employees for 2012 went to Rotman professors and administrators, according to the Ontario Ministry of Finance Public Sector Salary Disclosure ("sunshine list"). Roger Martin, the longtime dean of the school, argued that "It's extremely expensive to have a good business school. So the salaries are higher; in order to get world-class faculty you have to pay those salaries. Student services are greater". The Financial Times showed that Rotman graduates saw an average salary increase of slightly over 100 percent after finishing their degrees.
Under Roger Martin's leadership, Rotman saw dramatic growth in the size of its programs, faculty, facilities and international reputation. New programs launched included the Morning MBA program, Master of Finance program and a Global Executive MBA program. In September 2012, a new building expansion was opened, more than doubling the amount of teaching, research, study, presentation and special event space.
Becoming the Dean of the Rotman School in 2014, Tiff Macklem launched of a number of specialized graduate management programs at the School, in financial risk management, professional accounting, management analytics and healthcare. He championed diversity and inclusion, experiential learning and entrepreneurship initiatives, such as the Creative Destruction Lab. A prominent expert on sustainable finance, risk management and public policy, he left Rotman to become governor of the Bank of Canada in June 2020.
Susan Christoffersen began a five-year term as Dean on July 1, 2021. A finance professor at Rotman since 2010, she has also served as Vice-Dean, Undergraduate and Specialized Programs from 2015- 2020 and was known as a curriculum innovator. In 2022, she launched Purpose into Action: Academic Plan 2022-2027 followed by an ambitious new fundraising goal of $250 million as part the University of Toronto's Defy Gravity campaign. In 2025, she led the School in launching two new degree programs, a One-Year Advanced MBA and a Master of Management.
Academics
All units for management education at the University of Toronto, including Rotman, are accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB).
Graduate programs The Rotman School delivers the MBA program in six formats; full-time Two-Year MBA, part-time three-year Morning MBA, part-time three-year Evening MBA, one year Executive MBA that is designed for senior managers, the Rotman-SDA Bocconi Global Executive MBA, which is delivered in eight key centres of international business in six countries, and a Global Executive MBA for Healthcare and the Life Sciences. The school also offers a Master of Finance program, a Master of Financial Risk Management, a Master of Management Analytics and a Graduate Diploma in Professional Accounting.
Rotman Full-Time MBA The full-time MBA program is a two-year program. The school offers optional pre-courses in accounting, finance and quantitative methods, and professional skills workshops on topics such as academic writing and presentation skills. The first year begins in the second week of September and is divided into four quarters, covering the program's core curriculum and lasting seven weeks each. The first year curriculum consists of a 4-weeks foundation term, followed by two 9-weeks core term, and finishing with a 6-weeks capstone term. In the second year, the students are required to complete, over the time of three terms, 10 elective courses out of 90 courses.
The school offers the MBA degree with emphases in brand management, consulting, funds management, global management, health sector management, human resources management, Innovation and entrepreneurship, Investment banking, and risk management and financial engineering. The student can major with one or more specialization depending on the elective courses taken in the second year.
The students can spend an entire term in second year on an international exchange program. Study tours to various parts of the world are also conducted for second year students. Students can also participate in the flexible internship program at any time after the first year during the summer, fall, or winter terms.
The full-time MBA program annual class expanded in size in recent years, to 278 students in the graduating class of 2023. International students constitute 58% of the Full-Time MBA class and 45% of the class are female. The students of the 2023 class represented 39 countries though the majority of students were from North America and Asia. The average age of the full-time MBA students at the start of the program is 28 years and the students have 5 years of work experience on average.
The Rotman Full-Time MBA tuition fees, for the class of 2023 have been increased to $92,540 for Canadian citizens and Permanent Residents, and to $133,740 for international students, making it the most expensive MBA program in Canada.
Rotman One-Year MBA