<p>It's the most popular major in the United States, but...</p>
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... get much below BusinessWeek’s top 50, and you’ll hear pervasive anxiety about student apathy, especially in “soft” fields like management and marketing, which account for the majority of business majors. </p>
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<p>Get below the Top 50 in history and it’s not much different. Any school with a majority mgt and marketing majors is not a serious business school at all. It’s a place where the guys party and the women look for mates. I’d like to see much more stratification in the study. At most Top B schools getting in requires test scores and grades above the school’s average and people work harder and do well on the grad school tests. Not 70 hours/week but 25% above the average at the same school.</p>
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<p>22-year-olds who can write coherently, think creatively and analyze quantitative data? </p>
<p>Considering the state of our K-16 education in 2011, that is easier said than done. Just read the various forums that debate NCAA sports and you’ll see for yourself!</p>
<p>Of course you end up like this with all those Ivy English majors desperate to make money and keep their jobs.</p>
<p>[Goldman</a> Sachs Accused By Senate Panel Of Misleading Clients, Manipulating Markets](<a href=“HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost”>Goldman Sachs Accused By Senate Panel Of Misleading Clients, Manipulating Markets | HuffPost Impact)</p>
<p>xiggi wrote:
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<p>sounds like another version of “Yale or jail”, or the proposition that the only way a kid from a lower middle class background can attain any degree of social mobility in America is to gain admission to a selective private LAC or university.</p>
<p>Nothing new. As a moonlighting academic tutor after college(Fun and extra pocket money), I’ve noticed this for years. The worst tutoring clients in terms of laziness, lack of receptivity to common-sense suggestions (i.e. Carefully read the syllabus, plan ahead, take advantage of Prof. office hours, attend class, etc), and lack of basic academic/study skills were business majors(Mostly management and marketing). </p>
<p>Sometimes, I wondered if Green Day was really singing about them when I listened to the title track of their 2004 album. </p>
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<p>I’m not so sure about that for 2 reasons.</p>
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<li><p>There are plenty of less selective public & private college grads from middle/working-class backgrounds who are able to operate at or above their elite/Ivy counterparts. Also, not all of them are necessarily the honors students or graduated with top 5-10% GPAs. </p></li>
<li><p>Considering the abysmal level of basic writing and math skills I’ve seen among a surprisingly high number of selective private uni/LAC grads…including Harvard, I’m not sure an Ivy or peer institution should be used as a benchmark.</p></li>
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<p>“Get below the Top 50 in history and it’s not much different.”</p>
<p>but folks are always going on and on about the “uselessness” of Lib arts, and I think many LA majors know by now that its advisable, in approaching the job market, to have internships, network, have a more marketable minor, etc, etc. </p>
<p>I am not sure people realize that a soft business major isn’t necessarily in a better position than that.</p>
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<p>You do realize that the Ibanks, including AFAIK goldman, DO hire non ivy types, esp for their trading desks?</p>
<p>… and of course as the parent of an accounting major, I have a knee-jerk reaction to post that not “all business majors are created equal”! </p>
<p>At her school, the majority of business majors are in accounting.</p>
<p>Trading desks do not set the firm tone nor do they make the policies–both written and unwritten.</p>
<p>Cobrat wrote
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<p>Anecdotally, that would not be surprising. </p>
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<p>I’m open to suggestions. Where would a kid from Detroit or Cincinatti most likely encounter kids putting in 70 hours of course work outside of class?</p>
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<p>The only institutions I can think of which come close are MIT, Reed, UChicago, CMU(STEM), Caltech, and other “hard schools” of their ilk. </p>
<p>Even then, none of the kids I knew who went to those schools ever put in 60-70 hrs/week for coursework outside of class. </p>
<p>If anything, most would regard someone putting in 70+ hours of effort on coursework outside of class as one who doesn’t know his/her overload limits(Knew a few who loaded up on 6-8 classes per semester), has inefficient study/academic work skills, or is academically overwhelmed.</p>
<p>Those taking real money portfolio investment management classes put in around 40-80 hours per week. Only ones I knew about.</p>
<p>“Trading desks do not set the firm tone nor do they make the policies–both written and unwritten”</p>
<p>my impression is that really varies from firm to firm, and that it has varied over time. In particular that the more aggressive policies toward risk that resulted in the recent financial crisis were not insignificantly driven by Ibank leaderships with trading backgrounds.</p>
<p>anyway, this is quite off topic.</p>
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<p>How do the words straw and man sound to you?</p>
<p>Your comment does not relate in any form or shape to what I wrote, or to the quoted article.</p>
<p>^^fine. it’s my comment. [shrugs.]</p>
<p>The Chronicle of Higher Ed (4/14/11) had brief interviews with the business deans at Radford, Virginia, Ohio State, and Babson. The link is here: [Assessing</a> Undergraduate Business Education: Interviews With 4 Leaders - Faculty - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/article/Assessing-Undergraduate/127110/]Assessing”>http://chronicle.com/article/Assessing-Undergraduate/127110/)</p>
<p>Among the reader comments is this from a person, who apparently teaches or taught at U Chicago graduate Business School:</p>
<p>"My best students at the University of Chicago Grad School of Business (now renamed the Booth School) were always—literature or philosophy majors in undergrad schools. ALWAYS (with a few French Literature and Anthropology of Religion majors dotted around).</p>
<p>Why?</p>
<p>Because studying business is a stupid person’s idea of how to become good at business. I can understand why people fall for that—duh----I want to do business so I study business—duh—but I cannot sympathize with that in reality.</p>
<p>My main problem has been—my BEST students never studied business but were SUPERB at, instead, LANGUAGE."</p>
<p>All my friends got good jobs right out of business school and now are generally doing quite well and don’t feel so dumb at all. Most make well into six figures without killing themselves and have made substantial donations to the school. Some in the seven and eight figures. There’s a reason the school of business gets more in donations than the entire liberal arts school with one-quarter the alumni base.
Zapfino’s comment is very offensive. Does majoring in history make everyone a great historian?</p>
<p>PS. Radford is a generally 3rd Tier school and I doubt the Radford students majoring in education or psychology are burning up many study hours either. I’d like to see comparisons among better schools between business and non-business majors. At mine B kids put in 2+ more hours a week on average than the overall university average.</p>
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<p>Yep. That’s what the ad agency in which I worked discovered, after comparing the expression of those of us with English backgrounds vs. those with business school degrees. Why? Because the task in business is a high level of reading comprehension, an ability to analyze [extremely important in business], a knack for synthesizing, a developed, precise vocabulary, and an ability to summarize & express that summary in a readable way. </p>
<p>And what do English majors do? Precisely that. </p>
<p>And if you have all that, you can decipher and “translate” marketing data into usable reports for staff and supervisors, without a business degree.</p>