Is a major in a 'business related area' worth it? In terms of job prospects and salary?

<p>At first, I thought a business major sounded great. But I keep running across articles and youtube advice videos telling me the opposite. They either claim that it's horrible, you wont get a job, you're better off without one, they just teach you common sense that a 5 year old should know, you have to be in an elite college and know a bunch of rich people or tough luck .</p>

<p>Is this true? What are your guys' opinions? If anyone is older, experienced the 'work force' or is a senior in college... can you provide some input on what job prospects are out there for business majors? Or if you have reliable resources you've learned/know of?</p>

<p>Well, accounting is a solid major. There is always a demand for competent accountants/CPAs.</p>

<p>Agreed. Your question is kind of vague. What kind of business major? From what school? </p>

<p>Major is really important. Accounting, quantitative finance, management information systems / IT are majors that do fairly well in terms of jobs. (I don’t have enough personal experience with management, marketing, etc. to say how those go).</p>

<p>School is also important. The best schools spend a lot of time and energy courting recruiters and on professional development – getting recruiters to come to campus and hire the students so that they can get job offers right out of college or soon after they graduate. You don’t technically need this but it’s nice to get your first job then when the deck is stacked in your favor.</p>

<p>For what it’s worth, I went to a state school for accounting (5 year track so I got out with an MSA) and didn’t know a bunch of rich people or anything and I did great for myself and I wasn’t lucky or unusually good. </p>

<p>You can’t lean too much on generalizations and stereotypes. I am sure that there are some business programs that just teach your common sense skills that five-year olds already know and treat recruiters like plague victims so none of their graduates get jobs. Just avoid that when doing your research.</p>

<p>The job prospects are wonderful for business majors with clear, definable skill sets.</p>

<p>Basically, that is why people say go for accounting - it’s a skill set. But most people don’t know all the various directions you can take really well. Do you know how to do pivot tables in Excel or how to produce and analyze business analytics or project management or six sigma?</p>

<p>A good business program in marketing or operations management or whatever will help you develop some of these in-demand skills. If it’s a completely conceptual program that doesn’t instruct on any of the critical business skills, forget it.</p>

<p>Also, business is very general. It’s better to think marketing, sales, finance, operations, HR, etc. international business sounds like fluff to me and I don’t think it will help a person to travel overseas on business any more than being really good and moving up the ladder in one of the major disciplines at a global company.</p>