<p>That is, if by accounting, you mean "anything but accounting"</p>
<p>Nice job with the skewed statistic. I like how it groups an entire college worth of majors for engineering and breaks accounting out from business admin (which would otherwise be tied for first) and economics out from liberal arts (which would also otherwise be tied for first).</p>
<p>As I’ve said before, it’s irrelevant either way because accounting is still a very good background to have as a CEO and many of these large companies are industrial or technological in nature, so it makes sense that their CEOs would have engineering backgrounds.</p>
<p>You seem to always say things that suggest anyone interested in business should instead do engineering. Have you considered that some people actually want to study finance, accounting, marketing or similar and that, at the vast majority of universities, the best route to a career in each of those fields is to major in it?</p>
<p>Dear god, can a mod please IP ban this moron already? We get it, you don’t like business majors and are a grammar Nazi. Please go play in traffic kid.</p>
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<p>I don’t hate business majors, and am not a grammar nazi. You need to take a chill pill, buddy, this thread is a legit offshoot of an ongoing argument with a misguided individual in taxguy’s legendary thread.</p>
<p>[Why</a> you mad tho image by gtdcan08 on Photobucket](<a href=“Photo Storage”>Photo Storage)</p>
<p>I agree with openedskittles that the information is pretty skewed (or at least appears that way).</p>
<p>We really don’t need a new thread to mock everyone who makes a mistake…particularly when everyone with any sense recognized how obviously wrong the comment was immediately…</p>
<p>BTW, the statistics are presented fairly. IMO it is valuable to pull Economics and Accounting out of “Liberal Arts” and “Business”. It is useful to the reader. If economics was included in the Liberal Arts category then the average idiot doing Oppressed People Studies might think he had a shot similar to the average engineer or business major.</p>
<p>Yeah, here is the study linked in that article. He did a whole study, it’s not just some figures that he pulled out of thin air.</p>
<p><a href=“http://content.spencerstuart.com/sswebsite/pdf/lib/2008_RTTT_Final_summary.pdf[/url]”>http://content.spencerstuart.com/sswebsite/pdf/lib/2008_RTTT_Final_summary.pdf</a></p>
<p>Well, I guess a “misguided individual” is me right? 
Even if this is true, this study was based on the undegraduate level degrees. Yet, it states that 39% of CEOs have an MBA degree, and 28% other advanced degrees: believe it or not, the majority of them have either MBA in Accounting/Finance/General. Even if 22% of engineers are CEOs, they suppose to have some background in Accounting, otherwise they would not be able to manage moneythat is what I meant by saying that 90% of CEOs have a background in Accounting. We do not know for sure whether they are studied Accounting somewhere, or simply hired accountants, who do their job for them. I just do not know how an Electrical engineer/Petroleum engineer can do the financial work, whithout studying Accounting at college (not having Accounting background).</p>
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<p>That is not what you meant at all. As you can see, you are capitalizing accounting, which almost guarantees that you’re subconsciously biased. Furthermore, the context in which we were discussing it strongly suggests that you were talking about accounting as a major field of study, not just the fact that CEOs can understand financial statements. When you say someone has a “background” in something, you’re almost always talking about specific experience in their careers, or that it was their major in school.</p>
<p>My comment about the percentages was merely that engineering doesn’t have such a huge lead like it suggests. I agree that it is useful to break accounting out from the rest of the business majors and economics out from the rest of liberal arts, but unless you’re also breaking mechanical out from the rest of engineering (because I would assume that is the most common one out of these CEOs) then you can’t compare them like that.</p>
<p>The other arguments are still completely solid on this, though, and there’s no way you can say anyone who majored in business to pursue a career in a business field made a mistake by not choosing engineering.</p>
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<p>Again, out of left field with comments like this. I can’t even guess what you’re thinking saying something like that. Why would you ever have to differentiate between engineering disciplines like that? It’s completely irrelevant.</p>
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<p>lol hogwash. You are a ■■■■■ through and through. If you don’t hate business majors, why do you spend god knows how many hours making ■■■■■ threads and telling people to major in engineering. My grammar Nazi point was to illustrate how you always talk about capitalizing words and try and sell that as a valid argument (which btw, you did in this thread). And thanks, but we don’t need trash offshoot threads from you. Either keep it within that thread or leave it alone. </p>
<p>Since you seem to like internet memes (credability = gone) here’s one for you: Ralph, pls go.</p>
<p>Whistleblower, I see you are quick to attack my intelligence but very slow to comprehend the English language. I said that comment to demonstrate that it is basically what happened to business and liberal arts in that data. For it’s intended purpose, it makes plenty of sense since you are not using it to look at which CEO’s have which degrees but rather as some kind of false evidence for your half-baked ideas about how every business major should have done engineering. I know it’s irrelevant otherwise, but you have to be a complete moron to use those numbers as real reasons to suggest someone should major in engineering.</p>
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<p>This isn’t about my ideas, this is about a reputable study putting to rest some severe and widespread misconceptions on this board. I’m not saying anything about business majors by posting such a study, I’m just putting the facts out there. </p>
<p>Also, I’m not trying to be a d-bag, but the above post says nothing about why you think the study should have differentiated between engineering disciplines.</p>
<p>Accountants usually become CFO’s and Financial Controllers. </p>
<p>I’m really happy to see Operations as the main focus of most future CEO’s because that’s the field I’m interested in.</p>