<p>Percy, the idea was not to undermine the importance of Wharton–those who know about the school, know that it is the best in it’s field at the undergraduate level. People tend to undermine the strengths of Penn’s other schools so I thought I would highlight some of them. Penn is at the top in business; but it is also at the top in Architecture, Anthro, Psych, Linguistics, Bioengineering, Nanotech, Medicine etc. and considering the fact these departments are competing directly their counterparts at Harvard, Yale, MIT etc. and have managed to rise to such prominence is no small feat especially considering Penn’s financial endowment relative to its peers and the rough patch it went through in the 70s and 80s.
I don’t know how comfortably Wharton would be nestled at the top if it were competing directly with undergraduate business depts at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton. And since you argue so much about the relative ‘prestige’ of an undergraduate business degree as opposed to a standard liberal arts degree, consider the fact that NO other undergraduate school ranked in the top 20 (with the exception of MIT, which is a tech school) thought it worthwile to start an undergrad business school. And the reasons being:
- you don’t need to ‘study’ business to ‘practise’ it. Many successful businessmen (Steven Wynn for eg. graduated from Wharton majoring in English and Cult. Anthro–at that time Wharton housed the social science components at Penn as well) do not have business degrees. The skills you learn from most liberal arts subjects will prepare you well to work in any field. Most liberal arts grads from the top 20 schools place very well into business fields upon graduation–you can look up any of their career placement werbsites.
- you can always get an MBA if you feel you need further specialized knowledge in business, and many liberal arts grads do this.
- It’s rare and often difficult, for business grads to enter other fields such as medicine, engineering etc. while the reverse track is very simple, and often done. </p>
<p>I’m not arguing against the value of a business degree, just that it’s not necessarily more valuable or in ‘higher demand’ than a liberal arts degree and that these factors depend upon the interests of the student.
Your argument is flawed because you are judging the value or worth of an English grad in a business field. Obviously someone who has majored in business is more likely to get a job, and be better paid in a business field (although this is not always the case either as the demand for Engineering kids in i-banking etc. has soared recently). If I were to use your argument in reverse I could say that that an English major is more likely (again not necessary, but more LIKELY) to get a better job in say journalism than is a Finance major; and therefore, English is more ‘prestigious’ and in ‘demand’ in the journalism field than is Finance. Clearly, we’re getting silly.</p>