Is a degree from an undergrad business school worth it in this economy?

<p>d’s mom - I hope you’re right! D’s only “concern” about accounting has been the accountant stereotype (“Mom, accountants are boring!”) Luckily, she’s had some charismatic accounting professors who have shown her otherwise.</p>

<p>blossom–that’s simply not true. I wish every school had to report placement but few do and for good reason I believe. For most schools it will be marginal in good times and bad in bad times. I believe around half of Ivy grads graduated without jobs last May. If you factor out engineering, econ, and other job oriented majors I would bet the number was closer to 75%. </p>

<p>For the Big Ten state school business grads placement into real jobs averaged around 60% so yes you better be in the 60% of the class but if you are (and it’s not that tough to do) you had a very decent chance of a real business job with good pay and benefits.</p>

<p>PS-the 70 Wisconsin 5 year accting majors (MACC) had nearly 100% placement. About 2/3 went to the Big 4.</p>

<p>DD wants to double major in EECS (Computer Engineering) and Finance and the word of advice I’ve been giving to her is to concentrate on completing the EECS (Computer Engineering) and if possible first do a minor in finance.</p>

<p>In my view it makes more sense to do a core course in undergrad and then go for MBA then doing a BBA.</p>

<p>But still DD has her own ideas and will do what she would like to do. But I’ll advice OP to concentrate on math major first and do finance as minor or double major.</p>

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<p>I wholeheartedly agree. You can go anywhere with an accounting/finance degree. A lot of CEOs are CPAs. A business person needs a good understanding of finance. It’s a skill that is highly desirable and easily transferable between industries. I strongly recommend getting an accounting degree. I know tons of accountants who haven’t working in an ‘accounting department’ or in public accounting in years. It’s just a great place to start and opens a lot of doors.</p>

<p>And yes, I do have an accounting degree and a MBA. Started with the then ‘Big Eight’, worked in public accounting for all of year and have had a great career in health care in a number of positions making a high salary. A person who understands the numbers is a valuable commodity in any business field.</p>

<p>Momlive, My niece and some of her co-workers agree. Some want to stay in the field, some are looking ahead to one day using their skills in other areas. They see many leave to do a wide variety of things.
One thing with accounting though, you have to have a pretty good GPA to get into certain companies, although not all. My niece was lucky to have accounting come easy to her although she majored in finance and minored in accounting. Later, her employer, seeing her strengths, had her take the CPA exam on them. If she passed the first time (and she did) they would give her a nice bonus along with the raise. She is banking all she can for the future, some of her friends in other fields though had a harder time finding work.</p>

<p>My son is a senior at Penn and his job is in a very desirable city (not in the northeast) with a large, well-known corporation.</p>

<p>Biased opinion but undergrad business school is definitely worth it if you’re going to major in something specific and difficult such as accounting, finance. I wouldn’t recommend majoring in business administration or management, as some of those can be seen as joke majors, even at the very top schools. But finance/accounting teach you a specific discipline and require a good grasp of math and are treated with the same regard as subjects like physics. While liberal arts majors don’t like to admit it, when they go into a corporation into a department like finance, they need to learn subjects that their undergrad b-school counterparts already know; it certainly isn’t impossible, but they are still behind the curve for a while. If people want to study liberal arts that’s fine, but let’s not act like being an english major is what lands them a corporate job – generally it’s being smart, interview skills, right school, right connections etc.</p>

<p>Of course being an English major is not what lands you a job, but having good writing skills and actually being able to communicate goes a long way. Couple that with an economics minor… I can’t tell you how many people I have seen fail to advance in a company because they simply could not construct a sentence.</p>

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<p>I so fundamentally disagree with this, that I don’t even know where to start. I suggest a undergrad business degree makes sense if one wants to be an accountant, as its a specific career that only requires an undergraduate degree and can be learned readily without work experience. </p>

<p>As for finance and accounting being difficult and highly regarded like physics, and other majors being joke classes, I beg to differ strongly. Physics is wayyyyyyy more challenging. Moreover, there is equally as much rigor and difficulty in a major in operations and logistics, marketing, strategy and so forth (its just that the job opportunities may be less).</p>

<p>My objection to an undergraduate business degree, as a business school professor who teaches undergrads, MBAs and PhDs (as well as executives), is twofold:</p>

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<li><p>One is that it’s extremely difficult for young people without real work experience, to even begin to appreciate what they need to acquire in their coursework to use later on Hence, they often have odd ideas, such as finance seems technical so its important, but this stuff about managing people is a joke…not realizing that if they are any good at all at their technical job, someone is going to promote them to management, to make strategic decisions or direct other people (and most executives I know find that the hard part!). </p></li>
<li><p>This degree, at this level, given to kids without work experience, becomes technical and often too far over toward ‘vocational’ at the expense of a real education that involves depth, breadth, critical thinking, problem solving, seeing the big picture, being well read and so on (the kinds of skills one really needs as they move up the management food chain). You have a room full of students who have no idea where to hang the knowledge they are acquiring, no idea about what its like to work in a organization, so they end up focused on grades (as they believe its the key to their jobs), and acquiring practical tools (but at the expense of what I think should be an undergraduate education. </p></li>
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<p>I would much much much rather students get an undergrad in something else, get real work experience, and then go get an MBA to acquire what they will then know they need to know and learn and all that they acquire will make so much more sense to them. Not to mention, it will be a wayyyyy better learning environment. If you care about the intellectual quality of your classmates and class discussion, stay in a different major, and get an MBA.</p>

<p>‘To be an accountant you have to have a degree in accounting.’</p>

<p>I guess things have changed. I know many CPA’s, many of them partners in regional and national firms, and many of them do not have their undergrad degrees in accounting. True, they did have to pass the CPA exam but the path to the exam is varied. Some english majors got an MBA then were hired by accounting firms in their consulting department and eventually took the exam, some never did. Some math majors studied on their own, passed the test and wise employers knew they had the mind to do the work. Another was a music major! Other skills were acquired on the job as they either climbed the ladder or branched off into other professions . There are as many paths to a rich life as their are people. To bank everything on the statistically most probable path negates the individual. Smart people are required in all fields, people also evolve, where one starts is not where one finishes.</p>

<p>I am not a believer of UG business school. UG liberal arts education is more useful in the long run.</p>

<p>Starbright – I don’t think managing people is a joke – not at all. You’re right that technical knowledge only gets you so far. But from a hiring point of view, management and business administration are seen as joke MAJORS bc you are attempting to ‘book learn’ something that you can only get by being out in the work place and interacting with the world.</p>

<p>As for all those who say that business undergrad education doesn’t involve “depth, breadth, critical thinking, problem solving, seeing the big picture, being well read and so on” or “being able to construct a sentence.” Where exactly are you all acquiring/giving out these undergrad business degrees?? Let me just say that the vast majority of Wharton, Stern, Sloan etc undergrads have these skills to a remarkable degree considering that they are 18-22 yrs old; so they don’t sit around and talk about philosophy or Shakespeare but they can usually take a case study of a real company, analyze it to death and present it to hundreds of people without breaking a sweat. I’m sorry but those aren’t skills that I see in lots of liberal arts majors who may otherwise be well read. I’m sure we can just agree to disagree on these things.</p>

<p>just a thought…</p>

<p>you would still be taking a lot of classes in the liberal arts portion of your college so you still get that well-rounded education and learn how to write and think, etc…</p>

<p>and also, an MBA costs MONEY… a lot…</p>

<p>When those 22 yrs old start their first job, do we let them analyze a real company to death and present it to hundreds of people? No, I don’t think so.</p>

<p>There are a number of students at Wharton (and other parts of Penn) who are amazingly poor writers.<br>
You can be smart and talented out of any major. However, the idea that you can’t land a good corporate job without an undergrad business degree is simply not true. It’s similar to “pre-law” (of course there is no such thing)- many of the most successful lawyers were art or music majors. My doctor son-in-law was a music major in college.<br>
Whatever your major, it is wise to branch out and make sure you cover some other bases.</p>

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<p>Too funny…I taught for many years at one of these schools and another not on the list but could be. I taught both undergrad and oversaw the MBA core program. I sadly can’t provide my evidence…but lets just say there is gigantic variance. I’d say maybe 10% of the class has those skills, the rest just memorize really well. Forget about doing cases. Ah nevermind. There is no way you can understand where I’m coming from nor convince you (and no doubt I’m now unintentionally insulting someone). </p>

<p>I don’t mean to insult the students. You can blame the education here. It’s not that they inherently lack these skills, it’s the education that lets them down! We have extremely similar curricula at AACSB accredited schools,same courses, texts, cases, methods, but its been way too focused (and getting more so) on practical skills training and very very little on critical thinking for example. </p>

<p>About your first question, no faculty I know got their undergrad in business. I’m sure some did, but few business students go onto academic lives. Faculty tend to come from primary disciplines, gravitating over to Masters and PhD (e.g. math to finance and oplog; psych and econ to marketing, strategy, etc.).</p>

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<p>It entirely depends upon the school. And too many students are now doing ‘double majors’ within b-schools, cutting out wonderful opportunities for breadth, and too often they take easy electives to get their GPA up. Taking electives outside of business is not a replacement for a full degree outside of business.</p>

<p>I think if your primary goal is to get a job or say the best income per college return, b-school may be your best bet (and a heck of a lot easier than engineering). But if you want a university education, I feel differently.</p>

<p>Sorry I sound so down and cynical. I actually am one of the few professors I know that LOVE teaching undergrads! Its generally a hot potato…with the newest or least powerful faculty into into the undergrad program.</p>

<p>Just a side note, although there is truth in everything said, cost sometimes factors into a student’s decision. Not everyone is prepared to pay for a MBA or further education when they graduate.</p>

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I agree; I think employers are unimpressed with a bachelor’s degree in business administration or, say, marketing management as a credential.</p>

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<p>And I am one of those people. My degree is in Biology, but after working in labs for a few years I took accounting and business law at the local cc , got an entry level accounting job and took the CPA exam. This was in Virginia in the late 1980’s and I am not sure if the VA State CPA Society still allows this ( I was grandfathered in). </p>

<p>To anyone who gets an accounting degree, I highly recommend that you get your CPA even if you never practice in public accounting. It will open many doors career wise.</p>

<p>My company has a preference so strong for “anything but business” undergrads that it pains me to watch thousands of resumes of kids who majored in what they think we want to see go right into the reject pile.</p>

<p>We don’t want Organizational Behavior, Marketing, Human Resources Management, Finance, Accounting majors even though we hire new grads who will do all or most of these things within their first two years. We like to see evidence of strong quantitative skills (i.e. if you are math phobic, get over it or don’t bother applying.) We like strong writers- concise, grammatical, analytical. We love foreign languages, since we have operations all over the world and cannot predict where the great opportunities might be down the road. We love people who are interested in history, geography, political theory, agronomy, literature. Engineers who have taken classes in some of those disciplines and done well and can write really do well here. We strongly prefer Econ majors to Finance majors, and if you really love numbers, get a lot of econometrics courses plus a lot of philosophy and you are golden. If you love math, do math-- but make sure your resume has evidence that you can read and write (i.e. do well in a class on “History of the Supreme Court” or “Anarchy and Revolution in Modern Europe”.)</p>

<p>Our CFO/CEO/COO/General Counsel’s over the last 15 years have majored in Renaissance Studies, Classics, Electrical Engineering, French Literature, and Astrophysics. All of them have advanced degrees. One of them had a Master’s in Accounting but not an undergrad accounting major. (he picked up the MS as an “add-on” while getting a Master’s in Economics.)</p>

<p>The unifying thread in my 25+ years hiring people in big companies in several geographies in the US appears to be that kids who do well end up doing well. Don’t be a B- accounting major when you could have been an A+ history major. Don’t be a C+ Petroleum engineer to make mom and dad think you’re employable when you graduate when you could have been an A- Econ major. Do well, challenge yourself, stretch yourself. Don’t pad your transcript with “Sports Marketing” and “Organizational Behavior in Technology Companies” in order to boost your GPA.</p>

<p>Are there guarantees in life? heck no. But majoring in something perceived as overly vocational is the fallback position of those who want guarantees in life, and you will never get those four years of undergrad back- and you may mis-read the job market, or end up in something you hate, or are fundamentally lousy at, so why not study something you love???</p>