Is a business degree as worthless as everyone says it is?

College Majors Business Major
1

<p>Title says it all. I have a few friends with business degrees that all say it's worthless. Just curious.</p>

2

<p>Any degree is as useless as the person who holds the degree.</p>

3

<p>Your friends are worthless. They didn’t get strong GPAs so they found something else to blame for their failures.</p>

4

<p>I wouldn’t get a business degree unless it was from a top 10 program, but that’s just me. Some people aspire to be accoutants, bankers, and financial analysts (don’t ask me why, they just do) and for them the business degree is far from worthless. If you’re talking about a general “business administration” degree, then yes, it is worthless.</p>

5

<p>I think Tortfeasor sums it up pretty well. What he said is so true. Think about it; if you aren’t productive enough or just lazy, then your degree is as worthless as you are.</p>

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<p>nevermind…</p>

7

<p>I’m attending the Haas School of Business (UC Berkeley). It’s currently ranked #2 in the nation, and yes, it is a general degree. It has no emphasis on any one area, but you can certainly take more accounting/finance/marketing/etc. courses as you please if that’s what you are interested in. </p>

<p>Is this degree worthless? Well for Haas, the average salary is $56k. The quality of education here is topnotch and you will have all the skills necessary to enter the workforce after you graduate. With that said, not all business programs are the same. As some have already mentioned, I wouldn’t bother majoring in business unless you are going to a top 10 school. </p>

<p>If you already know you will get an MBA, then major in pure math, pure economics, or computer science for your undergraduate studies. Undergrad B schools is all about prestige and networking. Unless your school has a good career center, then don’t bother majoring in business. All the b schools in the top 10 have, or should have, good recruiting and networking.</p>

8

<p>Inmotion and nepalpride, thank you for an honest answer. That’s all I was looking for.</p>

9

<p>Mine was honest and straight forward. You just wanted an answer that would justify your choice of engineering over business. Engineering is a better choice if you want to be an engineer. You can later go and get your MBA and be a managing engineer or work in IB or whatever. You can also do something completely different.</p>

<p>There are more jobs for business grads out there than there are grads from top ten schools. You don’t even have to do the math to figure that out. Not everyone wants to work at a BB or PE or whatever. </p>

<p>I’m in a VC consulting firm I created. I graduated from Temple U. School of Business when it wasn’t even top 100. Last week in a conversation with one of my colleagues at a PE in Turkey, they floated the suggestion of making me a partner of their larger firm. Not analyst, not associate, not VP. Direct to partner because I’m a bad MF with a business degree from temple university and I getting my MBA from a No name local school. They won’t be a no name soon.</p>

<p>I don’t want to be an engineer. I never did. I’m an international business consultant and financier. That’s what I enjoy. I never did IB or anything like that. I did Temp Accountant, 8 years Army reserve (Concurrent with everything after the temp work), 1 year mortgage loan officer, 5 years (soon 6) as a Realtor, 1 year Law school (I’m a drop out). My business took 12 years total on and off with many more failures than successes until recently with my first “live deal” worth $6M in Mali, and 5 deals in negotiation worth over $50M. My deal flow is so hot I have to take time to do an HR plan because I need analysts. I also have plans to bring on a partner track associate in August. The associate is from my Army unit, not top 10 B-school. I plan to draw from Temple and my Grad School and some of my law school buddies who can’t find jobs.</p>

<p>I also have an attorney helping me to negotiate with some IBs and Development Banks to partner with my firm. I’ll be a full on PE or Hedge Fund before the year is out.</p>

<p>None of what I say on CC is notional or optimistic. If you’re competent and have balls any degree you get is worth while. or:

Temple University - BBA Finance and International Business Administration
Defense Language Institute - French Linguist
No Name B-School - MBA/Finance with a global perspective Candidate
Life - Filthy rich.</p>

10

<p>You graduated 30 years ago, the world is different now.</p>

11

<p>Well obviously you don’t know me or my friends for that matter. So the question was more geared towards all other things being equal, not whether or not I’m a sorry S.O.B. Also, unless you have one kick ass crystal ball, you don’t know what justification I was looking for, if any. In my first post I said “just curious.” And that’s it, I was just curious. After having a conversation with a couple of friends I wanted to get some other peoples point of view who also had a general business degree. And technically your answer was honest and straight foward. It just wasn’t pertinent to where I was going with this post.</p>

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<p>Got any jobs/internships for a Fox/School of Tourism student? :P</p>

13

<p>I’m probably going to screen people through some of my old professors and my classmates. You should ask your favorite professor if he/she has any leads. That’s the second best route to career services if you play your cards right… You don’t need an A to get help from a professor. I got a C in bank management in '96 and that professor gave me a letter of recommendation. You just need confidence. (aka. balls)</p>

<p>Sara, I shouldn’t have read too deeply into your inquiry, and I accept your apology for belittling my original response.</p>

<p>1998 Whistle, 12 years ago. Are you trying to tell me that this generation coming up is incompetent? 1998 was during the Tech bubble. We had high unemployment too. Then again, People do say Gen X is more independent. Maybe your right, things have changed.</p>

<p>Correction
Maybe we didn’t have high unemployment @ 4.5% . <a href=“http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qve2Ds-cMvk/SMYQOZQurMI/AAAAAAAAAdA/XSaoDTRtHTA/s1600-h/Unemployment+rate+1998-2008.jpg[/url]”>Unemployment+rate+1998-2008.jpg&lt (image);

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<p>You didn’t have high unemployment, you had like 2% unemployment!</p>

15

<p>It depends on what you plan to use your degree for. If you want to do something on Wall Street then yes it is worthless unless you go to a top school. If you plan on working for your average corporate company then no it isn’t worthless. My CEO graduated from Cal State Fullerton in Business Admin.</p>

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<p>LOL@complaining about 1998’s economic environment compared to now.</p>