Business Economics Major

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
21

@JBStillFlying - as I said before, my thoughts on this are mixed. For the longest time (most of the College’s history?) taking classes at a professional school was verboten - I don’t think you even could, and it was looked down upon.

If this changes, so be it (and it already has, to some degree). It takes away from the idea of the College as a theoretical place. I have no doubt that Booth - amongst top b schools - is fairly academic/theoretical.

The baseline argument though, is that taking classes at a professional school cuts against the grain for the College. I believe relatively recently (10 years ago? 15 years ago?) undergrads could start to take b-school classes. Now, it looks like the College is poised to go even more in that direction.

Again, my reaction to this is mixed - but I just hope admins call it for what it is - a profound shift in the educational approach. (They should’ve done that whenever they allowed undergrads to take classes at the professional schools - whenever that happened.)

22

I remind myself that what we are talking about is a very sketchy (in both senses of the word) description by @FStratford of something that is not yet public. I don’t mean to impugn his or her motives, but it’s not really clear what this is.

The OP described it as a huge departure from the existing world of Chicago education (and, in a sense, as a new model for undergraduate business education compared to Wharton, etc.). However, without too many tweaks I could imagine something which is essentially a re-branding of a curriculum that is available today on an informal basis, and probably taken by a substantial number of students:

Students in the College can already take up to six courses at Booth. Only four can count towards the 42-course degree requirement, but in my experience most students wind up taking 45-48 courses anyway, so it doesn’t matter much if you take two courses that don’t count. There is already a special program, mentioned by @JBStillFlying , that involves formal recognition of coursework at Booth. At least four core classes at Booth (the foundation courses in accounting, finance, marketing, and entrepreneurship) have enough undergraduates in them to support separate sections for undergraduates, and there may be others.

The Economics Department BA requirements are not all that burdensome – there is a core that consists of 9 basic courses, plus what amounts to four math classes beyond basic calculus (some or all of which are required or suggested for most non-humanities majors), plus four electives (one of which can be outside of Economics, such as another math course, and some of which may be Booth courses). A student arriving at Chicago with no exemption from any aspect of the Core could do the Core, major in Economics (with, say, two Booth classes applied towards the major elective requirements, and two other business-related electives in the department), take the four foundational courses at Booth (only two of which could count towards the 42-course BA requirement), and still have room for 5-9 additional electives within a 3-4 class per quarter schedule.

That’s today. I might be a little grumpy about it, but I couldn’t really have a problem with the College branding that curriculum as “Economics Specializing in Business” (colloquially, Business Economics), and promoting it as a more intellectual, more academically rigorous approach to business education. And basically, that would be right. I would like it less if they compromised the Economics core, or if they turned more of the available electives into required business courses, but a little cosmetic fiddling here and there (replacing one or two Econ core courses with undergraduate sections of Booth alternatives) wouldn’t be the end of Western Civilization. And, voila!, I have something that could be described as the OP described it, and isn’t really a change in anything but marketing strategy.

23

Thanks for a stimulating discussion from all concerned. I don’t quite know what to think about this subject matter. I feel like a fish with non-functioning eyes hauled up from the watery depths to contemplate this new world in which Chicago kids not only think of majoring in Economics but even utter the word “business” in connection with their educations. In the sixties I knew literally no one who majored in economics or even took a course in it. We were all physics, mathematics, philosophy, history, English Literature, anthropology, Egyptology and the like. We were trying to figure out the meaning of things. It’s true that we once had Milton Friedman over to Chamberlin House to dine with us (and afterwards partake of cognac and cigars in the BJ Library), and were pretty impressed by him (even if he smiled too much as he made his points) but no one knew exactly where these grad students in Economics or the GSB actually came from - mostly from Notre Dame and Michigan, we suspected. Anyhow, they were hulking jocks who beat the tar out of us in intramural sports. The Law School was just as bad - in those days BJ was divided between Law and Undergrad, occupying houses in the two separate courts and dining in the partitioned halves of the cafeteria. We were “two solitudes”. We called the law students “law babies”, and they were our bitter enemies in frequent snowball fights and wrangles over the rights to washing machines. They figured we were snotty would-be intellectuals. We figured they had sold out.

It is therefore hard for me to quite conceptualize that a Chicago undergrad would want to share a classroom with any of those guys, much less conclude to take classes designed to make money after graduation. O tempora, O mores.

24

Great discussion.

As to why I posted the info, I was just relaying some news I heard. I thought it would be fun to see how new alums and old alums (over) analyze the topic.

25

Tend to agree with @JHS at #21 that this is definitely one way to go about offering this major. Another way - perhaps not directly applicable but conceptually helpful (at least to me) might be to note the several courses that are cross-registered between Booth and Econ. These tend to be reserved for PhD students only, of course, but they do serve to point out an important reality: Booth is about more than just the MBA program. And its friendship with theory-heavy social science goes back several decades - to a time when that “simply wasn’t done” (now, of course, it’s the model for most if not all top universities). Nor are “theory” and “practice” independent things. If they were, then a) most of the South American economic reforms of the late 70’s would never have happened; b) business schools wouldn’t bother offering the PhD; and c) very likely one of the pair of Fama/Hanson would have been left out of the Nobel Prize in 2013.

26

Agree. Post #21 is a good way to go.

It’s what I would do - take an existing popular but informal arrangement that the current faculty already supports and the current organization can obviously handle, and package it with a big red bow.

27

@JHS - do you know when the college started to allow booth classes to count for credit? This to me seems to be the real tipping point to a new model of education.

25 years ago, I would’ve been dumbfounded if someone could take an accounting class or a marketing class, and this would count for college credit.

When did the change occur? Again not saying is a bad thing - just saying at one time, it would’ve been crazy to get credit for an accounting or marketing class.

28

No idea. It wouldn’t have occurred to either of my kids to explore that option (although one did take a course in development economics). Once, when I was visiting one of them, I met the director of undergraduate studies in his department. The professor was wearing a t-shirt that read “I Am Being Fisted By The Invisible Hand.” My kid asked where he could get one. That’s pretty much as close as my kids’ connection to Booth ever got.

I note that I, personally, was a pretty intellectual student when I was in college, and largely a literary-theory nerd. Yet, as a gesture of filial respect to my father, and based on local folklore about what an easy course it was, and also as a shared project with my entire suite, I took Introduction to Financial Accounting as a sophomore. There was nothing about the experience that wasn’t great; it could even be described as life-changing. One of the best, most thoughtful courses I ever took anywhere. Not at Chicago, though.

Further: Fernand Braudel and others of the Annales school of historical scholarship have written extensively about the development of double-book-entry accounting in Renaissance Italy, and the significant contribution that made to commerce and through it Western civilization. (To be honest, the accounting course I took was not burdened by a lot of historical perspective. But one of the teachers did mention it, and I followed up and learned it was true.)

29

@JHS - oh agreed, I think the connection between certain more professionally-based classes (like accounting, or marketing) intersect very nicely with more theoretical/academic areas (like history or anthropology). I think combining a marketing and anthropology class could be fascinating.

This being said, it strikes me as a little sneaky that the admin allowed for professional school classes to count for undergrad credit. I don’t know when this happened, but it was a fairly big shift. Again, not saying it’s good or bad - just that I don’t remember hearing about a referendum or town halls about this. This would’ve happened in the 90s when, say, the President wanted to reduce the core only modestly. (Forget town halls, protests followed that announcement.)

For better or worse, the idea of offering credit for a Chicago college student to sit in an accounting or marketing or advertising course with a bunch of MBA students would be an anathema to the College’s principles.

Again, not saying if it’s good or bad, just saying that years ago, this would’ve required a lot of discussion/debate. I don’t recall hearing any of this controversy, though, if it did even happen.

30

^^Undergrads don’t (or probably won’t) take the courses with grad students. This will help separate the two groups and help alleviate MBA concerns that their (expensive) education is being watered down by a bunch of undergrads.

31

Well, maybe this particular discussion and debate wasn’t tossed into the L stop trash can for someone to (very conveniently) find and release to the Maroon :))

Or maybe something like a college major isn’t as earthshaking as, say, scaling back the Core a few hundred credits or tripling the size of the College. Clearly there had to be discussion with Booth, unless the College footprint over there really won’t be expanding. How the College markets this opportunity is properly left to that division, unless it’s misrepresenting something.

This doesn’t seem much more of a new model of education than setting up the IME, hiring professors of chemical and biomedical engineering (as well as experts in physics, biology, etc.) and opening up a new course of study for both graduate and undergraduate students in molecular engineering. As long as it’s deemed a relevant focus of inquiry by academic mucky-mucks and the degree meets the standards for a liberal education, then offering the major doesn’t really violate any actual or philosophical boundaries at the university. If anything, a liberal education should actually include areas of reseach that are outside the way things have been done. If it draws more talent up to the table, so much the better. If it draws in more funding, that’s fantastic - though the business economics major seems far less a cynical play to bring in dollars than it does to allow undergraduates to pursue an angle of economic research that they could easily pursue further at the PhD level (after all, PhD graduates from schools of business also go on to populate economics departments, not just business schools or Wall St.).

32

Not trying to to toot my own horn but may I repeat my suggestion at #8 that if the new Business/Economics majors are confined to taking only Booth classes 33000’s (all economics classes) or other econometrics classes, a lot of these potential tension/disputes will likely be tolerated. IMHO most MBA students seem to consider economics classes as nuisance and I don’t think they will mind that much sharing those classes with undergrad. Sharing a class on say, 35214 Debt Distress and Re-structuring or 37015 Data Science for Marketing Decision Making is another story. Those are really for business professional and having undergrad in those classes really dilutes the brand.

I agree with many seasoned commentators above that it would be a betrayed to U of C intellectual tradition if college kids are taking accounting classes. But if the college kids are taking a Behavioral Economics class from Dick Thaler, I don’t see that as a violation of the U of C academic pursuit. In fact, I think the new course offerings will improve the intellectual atmosphere by allowing the world class economics faculty to enlighten the undergrads. And don’t forget U of C is the only institution in the world to have economists winning Nobel Prize not only from Department of Economics but also from business school(Miller, Fama, Thaler) and law school(Coase).

33

A course called “Debt Distress and Re-structuring” sounds really down in the weeds - like a course on “Stress and Fracture Relationships in Iron Girders”. Now I don’t deny that either or both those courses might in principle have their thrilling moments, their dazzling apercus, their testy disagreements and everything else marking intelligent consideration of any subject matter. However, in the latter case I have been told (by my brother, an engineer) that the nasty little secret is that the very top minds do not teach this stuff, they actually build the bridges. It’s the bottom of the class that opt for careers as professors of engineering. One could never say that about the traditional academic disciplines. There are probably a few philosophers working in industry and a few English Majors writing advertising copy, but they’re not doing those things for any other reason than a second best choice in order to make a living - the same reason some engineers are doing the opposite thing - professing rather than building. --My question, then, is whether the teachers of these technical business subjects at a university are the very best there are in the field and, if not, whether taking their classes is a good way to spend one’s precious undergraduate years.

34

@85bears46 - but chicago undergrads can take accounting or marketing classes at Booth. According to the Booth course listing, there are only a few classes that are NOT open to undergrads. So, an undergrad could take a class on marketing or “branding.” These aren’t classes led by Dick Thaler.

35

Why is it more of a violation of Chicago’s academic principles for undergraduates to take a course in financial accounting than it is for them to take an introductory language course in German or a course in coding computer programs? None of those is especially academic, and all can be learned just fine in the “real world.” What each does is to provide a set of tools that is useful/necessary for going deeper into a number of areas of valid academic inquiry (and also useful for gainful employment, as it happens).

36

@marlowe1 your brother sounds a lot like my dad who was an academic physician once upon a time. He maintained that the PhD’s in medicine were really cruddy doctors! I’m wondering if that distinction - the worst in the professional schools go on to get a PhD in the discipline - is actually true anymore, given the increasing emphasis on research and its contribution to further developments in the field. After all, how can progress in bridge-building even be achieved w/o some professor of engineering coming up with new materials or methods of measurement. There is a place for quality academic research in the professional fields. As an interesting aside, at the same time that my dad complained about PhD’s in medicine not understanding how to be good clinicians, he was also complaining about the lack of research skills and knowledge of the scientific method among his fellow academic MD’s! (this was awhile ago).

37

@JBStillFlying I take the point that in principle we need very bright people to do research in practical fields. I am, however, asking a different question - whether the very brightest in these fields do in point of fact teach in the universities as against practicing in the world - building the bridges or running the businesses. In contradistinction to this I ask whether the very brightest students of, say, political science are not far more likely to end up teaching that subject than actually practicing it - running for political office. If that is so, the chances seem much better to me of having a good classroom experience in a course in political science than in a course in accounting (pace @JHS), whatever of functional value one derives from the latter. As a prospective student looking for excellence in teaching and thinking I would want to play those odds - barring an overpowering urge to learn a particular practical subject matter. There are, however, exceptions to all rules.

I don’t know about the study of coding, but I would hardly characterize the study of language, at least at a university like Chicago, as something at all comparable in respect of mere technical functionality. The study of languages has been fundamental to the humanities at least from the time of the Italian Renaissance, which came about largely as a rediscovery of classical culture through the study of Greek and Latin. Of course all subject matters have elements of rote learning, but learning a new language is much more than that. It leads one into the culture imbedded in the language, indeed often directs one to readings from the very finest authors in those languages. That was my experience of taking the basic German course at the U of C many years ago. The readings included Goethe, Mann, Schnitzler, Kafka and von Humboldt. The Germans think differently from you and me. A student begins to discover a new way of looking and expressing as he or she struggles with the vocabulary, syntax and sound of the German language itself. I was never a very good student of that or any other language (vide my embarrassing faux pas - je ne c’est qua?) and have made precious little use of what little of German I was able to learn. Yet I still sometimes mutter phrases and lines to myself. “Die Blatter fallen, Sie fallen wie von weih./ Sie fallen mit Verneinde Gebarde.” You can translate those words but you can’t quite catch the meaning of them, much less their pure beauty, outside the German language. My life as a would-be understander of the world would be poorer without them. Throw away coding, but keep German!

38

@marlowe1 - Well, it may be more a matter of preferences (are you a designer or researcher, for instance). Not sure if whether the “brightest” are in academics or in the field and it’s hard to categorize that attribute anyway, esp. in a very math’y field as engineering. Perhaps the PhD’s love the theory and the builders love the practice.

If you go off the standard measures tossed around on CC, such as avg. GPA and test scores, the PhD admits at Chicago Booth are a tad brighter than, though likely very comparable to, the MBA’s: 738 (97th%) vs. 730 (96th) for GMAT, 3.77 vs. 3.6 for GPA. Tried to find the quantitative scores for the MBA’s but it wasn’t published. The PhD GMAT quant score was 50. (Mine as an MBA was a tad lower although it’s possible they have revised the test since my day). The PhD admits are about four years younger than the MBA’s (not surprisingly).

While I totally agree that poly sci profs - hell, poly sci instructors! - are likely more intelligent than most politicians, I take issue with your view on accounting. The accounting profs at Booth were always about the importance of using the discipline to describe the economic picture as realistically as possible and loved to discuss the controversies and theoretical debates about such. They were like closet economists. In fairness, however, I was taking grad level courses which is where the fun in accounting really lies :slight_smile: Not sure what happens at the undergrad. level. My D17 loved her Classics in Social/Political Thought seminar and signed up with the same instructor for winter quarter - he’s a political scientist. But then they DID discuss Machiavelli - one of her favorites :slight_smile: She’d rather die than take an accounting class.

39

It’s perfectly possible to bring the “fun” stuff in accounting into an introductory class, and that’s really a challenge of teaching accounting at an institution like Chicago. The last thing you should be doing is saying, “Here’s a bunch of mechanical rules. Go memorize them and you’ll be tested on them later.” It’s more like “What are we trying to achieve with an accounting system? Whose needs are being served, and how? How do the different needs get reconciled? What are the tough issues? How do they get resolved? How have the resolutions changed over time? What have the failures been?” And, at the same time, you want to be teaching kids how the principles get applied in building financial statements, and what the structure – the grammar – of financial accounting is.

Financial accounting is, not unlike German, a language that attempts to describe the world and to make it comprehensible. Not unlike Esperanto, it’s a designed language that aspires both to be rational and to develop over time.

40

We had this class on forensic accounting at Booth and the professor was really into all the “detective work” (as he called it). Unravelling the numbers to get at what’s going on - also very fun. Because of course, if financial accounting can be used to EXPLAIN the economic status and prospects of the business, it can also be used to conceal those or misrepresent (even while following standard accounting principles) This was pretty high level and very technical - wouldn’t recommend something like that for undergrads necessarily. But they can easily be made aware of the wide® universe and applicability. It’s not just for CPAs or financial interns.