Business Admin or Econ for Accounting?

[turtlerock]

<p>I'm looking at a couple different programs at the same school. One is a BS in Business Admin - Acct concentration and the other is a BA in Econ - Acct concentration.</p>

<p>Both end up giving me the same amount of units (50-55 quarter units) in Acct, but the BA in Econ is heavily laden with econ courses in lieu of all the Management, Finance, or Marketing courses offered within the BS BusAdmin program.</p>

<p>So my inquiry is, will those BusAdmin courses (management, intro finance and marketing) be beneficial to me, or will the Econ courses prove to be better in Acct? And what about the difference in one being a BS vs a BA? I'm leaning towards the Econ program because I find Econ a little more interesting than management or marketing, and for the jobs I'm applying to they only require a certain amount of Acct credits (or sometimes a closely related field like econ or business-related).</p>

<p>I'm not looking to do the B4 or take the CPA exams ASAP or anything - just want to work in the industry for a bit before making any more moves. Each program accounts for ~190 quarter units, so I will need to gain 30-35 more for CPA exam eligibility for either one.</p>

<p>Thanks for all the suggestions and insights.</p>

[a_mom]

<p>I don’t think you need to worry about BA vs BS. Whether a subject is considered a science or an art can vary between schools. I’ve heard even for physics/chemistry majors, Harvard college awards Bachelor of Arts, (correct me if I’m wrong). Maybe more liberal arts subjects are required in the core curriculum? I don’t know.</p>

[B0BTheBuilder]

<p>Is there any qualified people to give answers towards the main question of the post? I’m also in a similar dilemma and feedback would be awesome!</p>

[jaysorenson19]

<p>Most schools have an accounting major paired with BusAdmin courses. Econ and accounting really have very little in common in terms of the actual disciplines. If you want to be in line with the rest of the world, then go for the BS. If you want to go the unique and slightly less practical route, then go for the BA.</p>

[en3mes]

<p>

So my inquiry is, will those BusAdmin courses (management, intro finance and marketing) be beneficial to me, or will the Econ courses prove to be better in Acct?

</p>

<p>It depends on your interests. If you are leaning towards econ, go for econ. Either path (business administration or economics) will lead you to the right direction if you want to become a CPA eventually; both subjects count towards the business-related requirements. Just make sure you take the required number of accounting units, business-related units, accounting study units, and ethics units.</p>

<p>A friend of mine recently graduated from a UC as an economics major with a minor in accounting, and he says the accounting classes themselves are what really prepared him for his job (in the private sector). He’s glad he choose the econ route because that’s what he is passionate about.</p>

<p>This is all from a California perspective, by the way.</p>

[turtlerock]

<p>

@en3mes

This is all from a California perspective, by the way

No worries, I’m in California too. Thanks.</p>

<p>

@en3mes

It depends on your interests. If you are leaning towards econ, go for econ. Either path (business administration or economics) will lead you to the right direction if you want to become a CPA eventually; both subjects count towards the business-related requirements.

See that’s what I was thinking until I talked to a co-worker yesterday:

@turtlerock

I asked a co-worker about it yesterday and he explained, in summary, that for gov’t it doesn’t matter either way so long as you meet the eligibility requirements. The training you receive after hire is often adequate to fill you in on anything business related other than accounting that you hadn’t already picked up on. He mentioned the only thing that might be left out is management training (in the form of leadership training) and you often have to pick that up on your own.</p>

<p>He suggested that Econ (or any other science-like pairing with Acct) would be good if you were trying to get into a specific industry. For example, if you were a Biology+Accounting major you could apply to somewhere like Genentech and may stand out since you may have an advantage when leading a project since you’d know the business aspect of running a project, but you may also understand the subject matter that goes into that specific project. In contrast he explained that the B4 will not care that you have a Biology degree. They would say, “Great, you know biology. We don’t really care because we don’t do biology here.”</p>

<p>Overall, he said to go for the one that would play more on my strengths to obtain a higher GPA unless there was a specific skill I wanted to pursue to make me better suited for other things. He also suggested that taking the mix of finance, marketing, etc may show me an opportunity to do something else if I find enough interest in it as minds can change.</p>

<p>He warned about possible differences of the degrees coming from different schools within a college (i.e. School of Business vs School of Arts and Sciences), but I later double checked and both programs actually fall under a School of Business.</p>

<p>Anyway, this is making me lean more towards the Business Admin program now.

</p>