Hello! Huge business nerd here. Ever since I was younger, I knew business was the path for me! Now that I am about to choose a major, I am struggling. I cannot decide between a major in Finance or Business Management. Between the two, I am definitely more interested in a Management degree, as I love all aspects of business and plan to get an MBA. However, I have heard that Business Management is a “useless” degree because so many people get it. Does anyone have any advice? Any tips or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Nothing is “useless”. Generally speaking, however, a finance degree will give you more quantitative skills that many employers look for. Most undergrad business schools will require a base of core classes which include accounting, finance, marketing, organizations & operations (management)and economics. Once you take them, see what you like.
–Have you started college yet? Unless you are a junior in college or unless you are applying to colleges that accept by major there is no need to choose a major yet. When you start a business program you will take a business core curriculum including introductory classes in subjects such as accounting, finance, IT, marketing etc. and then you can choose your major. If you have not started college yet and don’t need to apply with a specific major, I suggest you take the business core classes first and get a better idea of where your interests and aptitudes lie.
–That said, between Management and Finance I would expect that a person dong well with a Finance major would have more job opportunities available. Management, while not “useless”, is typically a pretty general course of study while Finance is more targeted.
–Be aware that the top MBA programs will expect an applicant to have a minimum of 2 - 5 years of meaningful work expereince with increasing responsibilities. Therefore your ability to get a good job after undergrad will be important.
Major in Finance–especially if planning to earn an MBA after college and a few years in the workforce.
Business Management / General Management programs are more valuable to both students & employers after a few years of post undergraduate work experience.
A general business/management major is useless.
^ Have to respectfully disagree with that comment. I guess it depends on how you define useful / useless. Doesn’t help you to much for med school, but you’re not likely going that route if you choose business in UG. At S’ school, many kids EVERY yr, land great jobs in consulting, corp fin, Corp Leadership Development Programs etc. out of a general management degree. This may be due to the overall business curriculum including a certain amount of accounting, finance, analytics (big thing today!), marketing, computer studies and management in addition to the specialization of the major. Some schools will even partner their management students with live companies to work on projects at the UG level.
Of course you can get these similar jobs (mentioned above) with other majors but management is certainly a path.
I think the general take on mgmt degrees as being less “useful” stems from the idea that it’s all soft skills and that employers will need to teach you their methods anyway. That last point is probably true with most majors (certainly the less technical ones).
1 Like
My management degree has been somewhat useless for me. The degree is fine if you have the connections and personal skills to land a good job, but the degree itself won’t be much help in getting a job.
@rickle1 For the few elite schools that only offer a general management degree, it’s not useless (and you clearly are referring to one), but for everyone else, it is. So I would qualify my statement to say, unless you attend a top business school that offers a general management degree, a general management degree is pretty useless. I see too many students pursuing this degree at a regional school or average flagship who find out the hard way at graduation that their options are very limited.
1 Like