Major in EE, but is Business Minor a waste of time?

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

<p>Here's the story, I'm majoring in EE and am doing fantastic. However, since I was ahead I decided that I could try and make it into a Business Minor.</p>

<p>I currently attend UML and their schedule is basically a 5 year program even if it looks like it's nicely shoved into 4 years. This Business minor could add another year given that it takes about 7 courses and I've yet to do the remaining five.</p>

<p>So on with my question, Is the business minor worth any merit to anyone after I graduate?</p>

2

<p>It is probably not worth the extra year of tuition. Take as many business courses as fit in your current degree plans and then, if you decide after working for some time, that a business degree will be a plus for your career, go for it.</p>

3

<p>To me, in my humble opinion…</p>

<p>A business minor matters only if you are taking the exact set of course that gives you the minimum for a MBA program…namely:</p>

<p>Microeconomics
Macroeconomics
Accounting I
Accounting II
Introductory Finance
Introductory Management
Introductory Marketing
Statistics</p>

<p>Now you can select you 2 Econ courses as your Social Science/General Ed requirements. I am pretty sure you would have to take Stats just for the EE major anyway. The key is being able to fit the Accounting, Finance, Management and Marketing courses (15 semester credits) without an extra year of school.</p>

4

<p>Assuming that UML = University of Massachusetts - Lowell, the business minor is described here:</p>

<p>[Undergraduate</a> Programs](<a href=“http://www.uml.edu/MSB/Program-of-study/Minor-in-Business-Administration.aspx]Undergraduate”>http://www.uml.edu/MSB/Program-of-study/Minor-in-Business-Administration.aspx)</p>

<p>Economics I
Financial Accounting
Marketing Principles
Business Finance
Management Information Systems
Organizational Behavior
plus one 300-Level College of Management Elective</p>

<p>The EE major described here does not appear to have any free electives:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.uml.edu/docs/BSEE_tcm18-50642.pdf[/url]”>http://www.uml.edu/docs/BSEE_tcm18-50642.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>It does have three social studies breadth courses, but it is likely that only economics counts toward these.</p>

<p>It is unlikely to be worthwhile to take any extra semesters to complete a business minor, although you can certainly choose to take relevant courses of interest. Some social studies courses may cover similar topics as some of the business courses, but may be more likely to be accepted for your breadth requirements (e.g. “Sociology of Work”, “Industrial/Organizational Psychology”, and various finance courses in the economics department).</p>

<p>At least one poster in the past has had negative comments from an employer’s standpoint about engineering/business combinations; in that poster’s experience, such people are less likely to be genuinely interested in working in engineering, as opposed to using it as a stepping stone into management, so that poster saw it as a negative in hiring.</p>