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Michael Milken Teaches Building Prosperity for the 21st Century

Michael Milken Teaches Building Prosperity for the 21st Century

The financier, philanthropist, and architect of modern capital markets joins Professor Tom Chang to teach the course he’s spent a lifetime preparing for.

04.20.26
Michael Milken

Michael Milken

[Photo courtesy of Milken]

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  • Tom Chang

    Tom Chang
    • Associate Professor of Finance and Business Economics
  • Geoffrey Garrett

    Geoffrey Garrett
    • Dean, USC Marshall School of Business
    • Chair, President's AI Strategy Committee
    • Robert R. Dockson Dean's Chair in Business Administration
    • Professor of Management and Organization

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What separates economies that expand opportunity from those that undermine it? That question sits at the heart of a bold new USC Marshall course launching this fall. Michael Milken, financier, philanthropist, and founder of the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream (MCAAD) and Tom Y. Chang, associate professor of finance and business economics, will co-teach “Building Prosperity: Human Capital, Institutions, and Finance,” a course designed to equip future leaders with the frameworks to shape — not just navigate — a complex global economy.

“Prosperity can be shaped, but it requires a deeper understanding of the forces behind it,” Milken said. “Over the course of my work in finance and philanthropy, I’ve seen how the interplay between human capital, finance, and institutional design can unlock opportunity. I’m grateful for the chance to bring these perspectives into the classroom at USC Marshall and work alongside students who will go on to shape the systems that determine whether more people can participate in — and benefit from — economic progress.”

Open to both undergraduate and graduate students (FBE 499/599), the course advances a simple premise: prosperity is not accidental. Rather than treating economic growth as a byproduct of market forces or government policy, Milken and Chang will ask students to examine prosperity as something that can — and must — be intentionally built. The curriculum blends economics, finance, public policy, and history to explore how the decisions made by leaders, investors, and institutions ripple outward across generations.

It is a scope that reflects the range of Milken's own career. Over more than five decades, his work has spanned finance, public health, medical research, education, and philanthropy, earning him recognition as “The Man Who Changed Medicine” from Fortuneand a spot among Forbes’“Visionaries Reimagining Our Children's Future.”

That breadth is very much by design in the classroom. Students will trace the evolution of financial markets from ancient forms of credit to Alexander Hamilton’s vision for American finance to the rapid expansion of fintech, while exploring how education, health, demographics, and technology interact to shape economic mobility and national growth. Central to the curriculum is Milken’s own “Financing Cube” framework, which examines why capital structure shapes incentives, behavior, and long-term outcomes — and why misaligned financing can undermine even the strongest fundamentals.

Co-instructor Tom Chang sees the course as something Marshall hasn’t quite attempted before:

“What makes this course special is that we’re not just teaching finance, we’re giving students a deeper understanding of the underlying systems that drive the economy,” Chang said. “Michael Milken is one of the most influential figures in shaping how modern finance works, so students won’t just be learning from someone who understands these systems, but from someone who helped create them. Bringing that perspective into a Marshall classroom, grounded in contemporary research, is a truly remarkable opportunity for our students (and one I’m excited to be a part of).”

I’m grateful for the chance to bring these perspectives into the classroom at USC Marshall and work alongside students who will go on to shape the systems that determine whether more people can participate in — and benefit from — economic progress.

— Michael Milken

Financier, Philanthropist, and Founder of the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream (MCAAD)

The course also ventures into territory not often covered in traditional business classes — from microfinance in developing economies to prize structures that accelerate medical breakthroughs — making the case that advances in public health and medical research account for more than half of all economic growth over the past two centuries. It concludes with a forward-looking examination of philanthropy and private markets not as charitable afterthoughts, but as strategic forms of capital allocation in their own right.

Dean Geoffrey Garrett has long emphasized Marshall's commitment to developing leaders who can operate across the boundaries of business, policy, and society. This new course embodies that vision directly.

“Mike Milken’s career is a wonderful case study in how finance, human capital, and institutional design can be leveraged to create wide-ranging and lasting impact,” Garrett said. “In partnering with Tom Chang to build this course, Mike is bringing a lifetime of insight to our students at exactly the moment when the world needs leaders who can think and act across and outside traditional boundaries.”

For students ready to engage seriously with the ideas that have shaped the modern economy, Building Prosperityoffers something rare: the chance to learn not just from a textbook, but from someone who helped write the history those textbooks describe. The course will push students to think beyond the transactional and the short-term — to ask not only how to create value, but for whom, and toward what end. It is, in the truest sense, leadership in action.

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