Bridging Academia and Industry in Business Analytics Education: Insights from the National University of Singapore

The Master of Science in Business Analytics (MSBA) program at the National University of Singapore (NUS), offered through the NUS Business Analytics Centre (BAC), was awarded the prestigious INFORMS UPS George D. Smith Prize in 2025. At the core of the program’s pedagogical philosophy are a structured industry collaboration framework and an “industry-ready pipeline” underpinned by the ACDIN training pedagogy. Together, these represent institutional innovations that effectively bridge the gap between academia and industry, systematically cultivating high-quality, practice-oriented analytics, operations research (OR), and artificial intelligence (AI) professionals. This paper details the program’s curriculum design, industry partnership ecosystem, and governance mechanisms, demonstrating how these elements collectively enable the consistent translation of classroom learning into meaningful, real-world impact.

History: This paper was refereed.

Funding: This work was partially supported by the INFORMS UPS George D. Smith Prize 2025.