<p>I have a daughter who is now a professional opera singer in Europe and did her undergrad and grad (at a large top U). She did magna for undergrad and summa for grad. She accomplished all that by pursuing both “academic” subjects and music. Though most people consider both art and music as academic subjects. Her non music subjects where both STEM and mostly languages. (You do consider language study academic?) In opera high fluency levels are required in French, Italian and German. But study outside of the arts is important since such a small amount of arts grads ever end up in the arts. For example after ten years out of school only 10% Juilliard grads are performing professionals. And just because of their “wiring” and attention to detail music students tend to skew in the higher especially in STEM classes. For example—my D’s junior and senior year she worked part time at an civil engineering firm writing proposals.Her undergrad music studentboyfriend is now studying neurosurgery at Columbia. Engineering firms and med schools LOVE music grads. So much for “hot housing”.
What you dont know about arts education or music/arts students is staggering.</p>
<p>^^My point is that if I am dead set on being a professional performing musician, I think my odds would be better if I attend Curtis or Juilliard rather than a multiversity.
Do I want to? No, I don’t like my chances.
I was thinking of some of the football “factories” when I wrote about what the university should be, but I can see now how the statement can be viewed as a slight against music and art, which was never my intention. My apologies.</p>
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<p>One firm I used to work for in the financial industry had hiring managers/HR who ended up having a similar hiring policy regarding Business majors except #2 wouldn’t have overridden #1. </p>
<p>From what my supervisors and HR colleagues related, they ended up getting burned so much by business majors from regional and lower-tiered institutions that they’d only hire business majors from elite undergrad B-schools like Wharton or NYU-Stern to ensure they had some assurance of basic written communication and mathematical skills. </p>
<p>On the flipside, they would hire Arts & Sciences students from the same institutions so long as they had reasonable GPAs and passed a multi-stage interview process. The same standard we all were expected to pass in order to be hired. </p>
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<p>One HS friend was literally recruited from out of the blue by a Big-4 accounting firm while studying literature at an Ivy. They said they’ll provide the training. Ended up working there for several years and obtaining a MS in accounting and a CPA on their dime. Still working as an accountant after 15+ years. </p>
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<p>Well, there is such a thing as a conservatory, although musicamusica has addressed the academic issue for musicians already. </p>
<p>I do, however, agree with your last sentence, which is why I think that there should be separate places for people who want to study marketing, management, business, accounting and so forth that do not pretend to be offering a “bachelor of arts” or 'bachelor of science" degree, both of which should be reserved for academic courses of study. There is no reason why a degree/certificate from such a school should not be as respected as a BA/BS from a more academic institution.</p>
<p>In France, for example, students wishing to study business aspire to HEC (Haute Ecole Commerciale), while students of the humanities aspire to the Ecole Normal Superieure in Lyons, and so forth. All are elite institutions.</p>
<p>On the other hand, there is much to be said for the US system in which kids can continue to change their minds and destinies beyond the age of 13 or 18.</p>
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<p>Britain used to have Polytechnics and the Germans had the Fachhochschule (Universities of Applied Sciences) which provided a more vocationally centered education as opposed to the more theoretical and intellectually oriented universities. </p>
<p>However, due to the Bologna process to enable easier evaluation of degrees throughout the EU and the general preference for university status*, they has been a movement to remake them into universities. </p>
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<li>A few Britcoms have made some references to the disdain towards Polytechnics compared with their university counterparts held among the highly educated or those who aspire to the highly educated upper-middle class strata.<br></li>
</ul>
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[quote]
“Yes, major employers like John Deere, Caterpillar, State Farm, Target, Cargill, 3M, Accenture, Cerner, etc value new people with business degrees from non top 20 schools. We place hundreds of students every year at those types of employers, and not just the tippy-top students.”
[quote]
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<p>Surely the point is that it does not need a tippy-top student from an elite school to sell tractors in Iowa or compile insurance data for hail damage in Missouri. A decent work ethic, a cheerful personality, an average intelligence, and a vague familiarity with business jargon should be good enough preparation.</p>
<p>**the formatting looks odd compared to previous system</p>
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<p>You mean the sentence that almost killed the thread? Thanks for neatly capturing the essence of what I was trying to say, albeit I must admit I was not doing a very good job of expressing it. </p>
<p>I think our best business schools are already operating as semi autonomous institutions within the university. They are richer too. In Schulich the students are awarded the BBA. In Queen’s, the “commies” get a B. Com. Ditto in Toronto and McGill. Western, I believe, offers an honours BA for graduates of the Ivey school. The students, however, are admitted into Arts and Science for the first two years, and if successful with their applications (highly competitive), will spend the last two years doing all cases, all the time a la Harvard.</p>
<p>My original point still stands. Nobody here would suggest these students and their education are somehow inferior to their counterparts in arts and science. Absolutely nobody.</p>
<p>Canuckguy: the situation is very different in Canada though.
In the US, you have basically two situations: excellent programs where the students essentially take the same core as the liberal arts students PLUS a business major (these programs typically have extensive writing and quantitative requirements), and those are well-considered; and the great majority of business majors, in which the core requirements are different from the liberal arts students, the readings lighter, the research papers shorter or non-existent, the academic demands lower, with lots of group work which ends up with a B because it met basic expectations – those expectations are hard to formulate so they fluctuate wildly depending on the university and the student body. </p>
<p>Myos- and to add one more clause to your excellent (and well stated) post- business programs which take course content which in a rigorous MBA program might constitute three weeks and stretch it into an entire semester (buyer behavior, organizational leadership and strategy, etc.) </p>
<p>Canuck- there are actual business grads in the US who have not taken any econ beyond the intro micro/macro. I’m not suggesting that every business degree holder needs to be able to do currency hedging in their sleep, but I’m talking about the basic conceptual building blocks on how the planet’s monetary systems and commercial enterprises operate. So you get business grads who have taken a lot of the applied courses (which a smart person can basically teach themselves if they’ve got the right analytical tools) but none of the intellectual underpinnings.</p>
<p>Talk to them about China’s transition to a market economy and why that’s challenging after a generation of Communism and you get a vacant look. (relevant how?) Ask a question about why a country which depends on extraction industries for its wealth (oil, diamonds, coal, gas) will have different economic challenges than one with a strong manufacturing/service base and sophisticated infrastructure and the kid looks like they’re falling asleep. And these are kids with degrees in “International Business”. They are so eager to do “international business” but IMHO (and in the view of many big companies) to study any of the sub-disciplines without any understanding of history and economic development- just a waste of their parents dime.</p>
<p>YMMV.</p>
<p>Myos and blossom, if I understand you folks correctly, many US undergrad business programs are operating like trade schools and the students are functioning at what I would call grade eleven non academic level. This is quite an indictment. Why are universities graduating students like this, and why are they admitted in the first place?</p>
<p>The business programs I know are to economics as engineering is to STEM- less theoretical but with much heavier workload. Since 40% of the courses must be taken outside the school, economics tends to be the default minor, but math is also popular with the finance type. I even know two students using those courses to do a “premed” minor, one made it into med school and the other became a portfolio manager after a stint with Goldman.</p>
<p>How strong are these students? I would say they are at about the same level as the best of the economics major, but more driven of course. The strongest ones are attracted to finance, then accounting, with marketing bringing up the rear. They often find their minor bring up their GPA because they find the arts and science type “uncompetitive”. (I even joked with a family member that if she had reversed her major and minor, she would have been on the Dean’s List).</p>
<p>I think a poster mentioned that business grads are much more popular with campus recruiters. I find they are more popular with employers, period. They are certainly not paying any attention to us academic type, are they?</p>
<p>Well, rather than trade schools, rather like grade eleven and twelve “non academic” programs + college, in Canadian terms. While most students on College Confidential are extremely high-performing, the vast majority of American high school students aren’t. As many as 1/3 need remedial instruction (what in Canada would effectively be grade 10, 11, and 12 work) in English and Math. Those aren’t really interested in their studies but figure they need a college degree to get some kind of job, hence the idea of “business by default”.
In the US, “academic” (liberal arts) subjects are valued by employers too, provided the students have had internships.</p>
<p>Traditionally, undergrad business majors were indeed looked down upon, and were considered training that might get a job after graduation in the lower level of an organization without access to higher management positions over the long term.</p>
<p>Forty years ago, I think much of top management was filled from Ivies and other selective schools that were still aristocracies, rather than meritocracies: white males from certain backgrounds who operated on family and social connections. I think it is still true that those who majored in rigorous non-vocational subjects, whether art history or economics, have better long term job prospects in management, finance and many other fields too. Coming from an Ivy or other top school can still help, but access to higher echelons of industry and business may have opened up a bit over the decades for kids from other types of schools. (Still, the desperate desire to get into Ivies etc. demonstrates the persistence of an impression, anyway, that those from elite schools end up in higher echelons in work as well.)</p>
<p>With the much touted ethic of equal opportunity in the US, financial aid, greater social mobility in general, and intense pressure for all to “go to college,” many of the students who would not have gone to college 40 years ago are now going, but with a more practical bent than those who went to enrich their minds in the old days. Hence the influx into undergrad business majors at many non-elite schools. </p>
<p>Of course, those who entered Ivies through the boarding school pipeline in the 1950’s and 1960’s were raised with certain cultural expectations that they would know some literature, art, music and history. With the social changes of the later '60’s and 1970’s, there is no longer a canon and there is no longer an aristocracy to learn it either. Western literature and art are no just another course in the curriculum, not the core, because that would be ethnocentric.</p>
<p>I don’t mean to wander, but questions about undergrad business and art history raise questions of recent social history, and I hate to utter the word, class. And things are evolving. So for the most part (Penn excluded) Ivies don’t offer undergrad business (though at one point 40+% of Harvard grads were going into finance). Undergrad business is considered in some quarters to be vocational and thus lower “class.” In fact, a school like Northeastern, with its coop and vocational focus, used to be seen as lower class.</p>
<p>Fact of the matter is that things are changing in many ways, economically and culturally. Northeastern has risen dramatically in reputation in recent years, and many visits to admissions at many schools now emphasize internships and career. As years go by and the students in undergrad business and other career-focused majors do well in the work world (and are able to pay back their loans), perception will change still more.</p>
<p>At some point, with information sources also changing, it is possible that liberal arts majors will dwindle. How man students growing up in front of multiple screens with instant access to any information and an increasingly rapid fire attention span are going to want to study Chaucer or Giotto?</p>
<p>So I think it helps to see these questions as reflecting very broad social changes over decades and as part of an evolution that will continue. America doesn’t like to talk about class except in terms of mobility and success: the last 5 decades have been very interesting in this regard.</p>
<p>Not intending to give a plug to my alma mater, but using it as proxy for undergrad business schools. Jack Welch, legendary CEO of GE, famously said “some of the best executives I’ve worked with have attended places like Bryant University”.</p>
<p>My own circle of college friends are now:
VP of Tax at Fortune 500 company
VP of major Wall Street firm
VP of sales for major aircraft company
CEO of aircraft parts manufacturer
National VP of huge office furniture manufacturer
VP of cargo at major airline
Partner in large law firm
President of payroll admin company
GM of a large Hyatt hotel
Several others are highly successful professionals and small business owners. </p>
<p>All of us have undergrad business degrees, from a college that doesn’t even warrant its own page on CC.</p>
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<p>Probably a lot more than 1/3 need remedial course work (which would be high school level material in the US as well as in Canada).</p>
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<p>Yes, but remember that business gets more popular at less selective universities, while liberal arts gets more popular at more selective universities. The difference may be more due to the ability and motivation of the students choosing each type of major, rather than the inherent properties of the majors themselves.</p>
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<p>My extended family had a similar attitude regarding business majors at all colleges except those at the level of Wharton, Berkeley-HAAS, or NYU-Stern. </p>
<p>However, the main reason for it is perception gained from experience in working and evaluating job candidates who were undergrad b-school graduates that their average basic academic skill set/intellectual ability to learn quickly were noticeably lower than their liberal arts/engineering counterparts or those who attended the elite undergrad b-schools like the ones named above. </p>
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<p>I have a lot of friends from my time living in the Boston area who are alums from Northeastern from before and during its transition from being a regional commuter school to becoming a more geographically diverse institution with a far greater academic reputation than when most of them attended. </p>
<p>The older members of this group recalled admissions being relatively easy to get into, but at orientation…even into the early '90s hearing the “Look all around you. Only around half of you will make it to graduation.” speech…and had it confirmed later when they noticed many of their freshman year classmates flunked or transferred out. </p>
<p>Most of the flunkouts were due to being completely unprepared academically and/or prioritizing other things over academics to excess. This mostly occurred within the first year and 2/3s*. </p>
<p>The younger members who came in the late '90s/early '00s and after had a far different experience as admissions became much more selective within a short period and academic expectations across the board seemed to have increased compared with what their older fellow alums experienced. </p>
<p>When seeing them recount their college experiences, it was almost as if they attended two different colleges. </p>
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<li>Northeastern was on Quarters rather than semesters back then.<br></li>
</ul>
<p>I had to rush out earlier and just want to add that my own kids go to a wide variety of schools and some are intellectual and some very practical, so I don’t really have any value judgments to make.</p>
<p>The only thing I would add is that I think it is too bad that everyone feels they have to go to college to succeed. Some of the more practical majors might have been more on the job training in the past.</p>
<p>“Surely the point is that it does not need a tippy-top student from an elite school to sell tractors in Iowa or compile insurance data for hail damage in Missouri. A decent work ethic, a cheerful personality, an average intelligence, and a vague familiarity with business jargon should be good enough preparation.”</p>
<p>If that is what you think those firms hire most college recruits to do you are totally clueless. </p>
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<p>I was trying to get at the idea that even though the academic type does not think much of business schools, employers beg to differ. </p>
<p>I am beginning to think it is not just my writing style, but the very way I am “hardwired”. Interesting.</p>
<p>On another note. If I were born in America, grew up in Canada, went to Schulich, and then decided to return home to build my career, I could be caught in a nightmarish scenario … I would not have SAT or ACT scores because they are not required here; my grades would appear terribly low because of the differences in grading practice; the university would be unknown to almost all Americans; and my major would be treated with disdain.</p>
<p>What can I do? Anyone? Blossom?</p>
<p>"Forty years ago, I think much of top management was filled from Ivies and other selective schools that were still aristocracies, rather than meritocracies: white males from certain backgrounds who operated on family and social connections. I think it is still true that those who majored in rigorous non-vocational subjects, whether art history or economics, have better long term job prospects in management, finance and many other fields too. "</p>
<p>Top management IN WHAT INDUSTRIES? There are plenty of industries in which an Ivy / selective school background was never needed in the first place. Let’s not pretend that “business” is just made up of financial institutions that historically have been brand name sensitive. </p>
<p>I don’t disagree about the white male part.</p>