“The average American business student you are talking about would be the equivalent of our community college student, I would think. With all due respect, should they even be in university?”
That’s a bit much and more than a bit insulting. I’m not a huge fan of undergraduate business majors except for some very specific programs, but spare me the insults that these are just mouth-breathers.
A good number of accounting majors from nondescript schools have risen very high in the business world, however.
Ultimately, the individual matters more than the school and even the major.
Purple- yes. But don’t sleep through your micro/macro sequence (and get C’s) because you believe that it’s about you and not about your school.
As the parent of an accountant (you know, a kind of business major) - I have been grinding my teeth through most of this thread. I know this is hard to believe, but many business students are bright, engaging, and even well-read; they are neither mouth-breathers nor Neanderthals. Why is it assumed that an accountant is not (or can not be) an intellectual? So someone who is enthralled by physics or philosophy is “obviously” an intellectual, but someone who really loves accounting or business is not? At my undergrad, the English majors were all assumed to be the the mouth-breathers…and I was an English double-major, so I know of which I speak.
I’m not here to rebut all these arguments and change your minds about business majors - but honestly, suppose I wrote this: “Because classics majors are useless if they are not at a prestigious university.” Is that acceptable?
And don’t get me started on “should they even be in university?” :-w
But isn’t that a statement that has been widely made in the past?
I believe that the devil is in the details. While there are business majors that are competitive, the reality is that it is the "default: degree for many students (and especially male) who have no idea about what they should study. Perhaps along the lines of the elementary school kids who want to be a marine biologist to take care of Flipper.
Again, there are a good number of competitive schools that offer a business degree. Yet, there are plenty that offer th e “lite” version. Just as there are a number of competitive schools that offer a classic degree worth having, and some that are a nothing else than the verification that the student had a pulse and a wallet.
For full disclosure, I happen to have majored in … accounting… One does not need to attend a business school to earn such as degree.
@blossom, if you believe that it is all about you rather than your school, why would you sleep through your econ sequence?
That logic doesn’t follow.
From PurpleTitan
I recently discovered that Brown actually does have an interdisciplinary program that emulates some aspects of a business degree. The curriculum is rather interesting.
http://brown.edu/academics/business-entrepreneurship-organizations/
And it turns out that the tiny Princeton’s Masters Degree in Finance (apparently with only about 30 students per class) has a complementary undergraduate program that awards a Certificate.
http://www.princeton.edu/bcf/undergraduate/current/#jrsrrequirements
I wasn’t aware of these types of programs, and I would guess there are even more around than we know.
I think there is a lot of truth to this sentiment. I like many of the arguments in favor of liberal arts education, but if one can get to the same place in four years instead of six (with the MBA), it bears a serious consideration of the best path to follow. I’d also love to see more people with accounting backgrounds in places like Congress and the executive branch, but I’m not about to hold my breath waiting for that. 
^^ Accounting, which remains a scientific appraisal of the past, seem quite apt for an institution that Mark Twain dubbed as the opposite of progress. While we could use a new generation of bean counters to complement the financial gurus who are kicking the proverbial can to a questionable future, chances are that we surely could use more deep thinkers and people who understand the need for true international relations and a diplomacy different from our current Kumbaya. Not to mention the most basic problem of the US, namely its broken education system.
In a way, a call for “more” business degrees could be the poster child for our problem.
Blossom, that is NOT what I said but the market for top entry level jobs in business for liberal arts majors goes down quickly after a few Ivies (not all equally recruited), MIT, Stanford and literally a few LACs. And i prefer FACTS over your stories. The GTown study I linked surveyed all sorts of business majors from the best schools to the not very good (see note below). The C kid from Eastern KY–he can get hired in sales by some companies for one. Acting majors from any approved accting major at an AACSB school can get hired by top accting firms with a high enough GPA (3.5+). Lower GPA means local accting firm and local businesses. Car rental companies hire lots of directional school grads. I would love to see a survey of just the Top 20 or 50 UG business programs. I think the results would be significantly higher incomes than the overall averages.
Methodology
Data from the American Community Survey for the years 2009 and 2010 were pooled to provide a
larger sample size for the estimates. The unemployment rates were then computed for each of the three
groups by dividing the total unemployed with the total employed and unemployed. The earnings used
are median earnings in 2010 dollars rounded to the nearest $1,000. The three groups are: recent college
graduates (those between ages 22 and 26 with bachelor degrees), experienced college graduates (those
between ages 30 and 54), and graduate degree holders (those with master’s degrees or higher and are
between 30 and 54). Median earnings are based on those who worked more than 35 hours a week and
at least 50 weeks a year. All calculations use the survey weights provided by the Census Bureau.
Any college graduate can get hired into a quality sales training program. Why is your C kid from Eastern Kentucky the poster child here?
Sorry but your logic makes no sense. Study accounting because even if you aren’t very good at it you can always get a job at a car rental company? When some of those management training programs don’t even require a college degree at all?
And in my neck of the woods, the tax prep jobs (which often go to kids with weak backgrounds in accounting) do NOT require a degree from an AACSB school. Yes, even a dumb old Classics major like myself can get one of those jobs.
The facts you cite – a C student, directional school grad getting hired by a car rental company- don’t speak much to value of accounting as an actual academic discipline. How about some stats on how the accounting major has learned valuable analytical skills, deepened his/her appreciation for logic, structure, and mathematical precision?
Instead we’re looking at Tax prep franchises and the car rental programs…
The Classics are looking better and better.
Now I am really confused. On one hand I am told the average American business student is really bad-precal level in math, major by default, essentially open admission etc. On the other hand I am told they are not. Which is it?
All I know is that no university level business degree in my vicinity is available to students without senior year calculus. Students working at a precal level would be studying business in a community college instead. This is simply a statement of fact, and thus the question. No insult was intended.
@scout59 I am actually on your side of the issue, although a comment taken out of context may appear not to be so.
"Blossom, that is NOT what I said but the market for top entry level jobs in business for liberal arts majors goes down quickly after a few Ivies (not all equally recruited), MIT, Stanford and literally a few LACs. "
That’s because for some god-knows-why reason, you have predefined “top entry level jobs” as a handful of finance and accounting jobs, using the typical CC nonsense that those fields “define” business - because business isn’t actually about making, distributing or selling anything, it’s just counting the things that are sold.
@Canuckguy, some are bad, some are good. Like many aspects of the US higher educational system, you have a wide range by any dimension that you look at, so you can’t generalize. Given that context, does the average really matter? That’s why I (and others) repeatedly say that in the US, what each individual brings to the table is what matters most.
To get a job in: supply chain, industrial marketing, business-to-business sales, reputation management/external relations, human resources (which includes the quant functions of comp, benefits, planning AND the qualitative functions of employee relations, talent management, etc.), corporate facilities management, mobility/expat planning, social media/web design, knowledge management, market research, executive communications, etc.require minimal accounting skills.
How many accounting/finance people does the Fortune 500 need every year? And Barrons- you are aware that companies recruit at colleges other than Williams and Swarthmore, right?
Canuck- I have minimal knowledge of undergrad business programs in Canada so you can ignore my posts.
I still vote for stats if a humanities major is going to take a quant-heavy class with an eye towards employment in a corporation. First of all- it involves more math than the first year accounting class. Second- it’s actually useful in many corporate disciplines, not just accounting. Third- your stats professor isn’t going to be assuring you that even if you get a C you can still work at H&R Block or get a job at a car rental company. The professor is more likely to be encouraging you to see all the ways that big data and analytics have transformed the cellphone industry, the pharma industry, the banking business, the consumer products industry, etc. and to take those skills (even from just one stats course) and apply them to real life.
As their eyes glaze over. And people are needed to rent those cars at the airport. #1 hiring co. for college grads–Enterprise Car Rental
Canuckguy: I could say I know that stuff because I have to, but in reality, I just like it. Comparing educational systems is fun to me. (I know, I’m a nerd, but it makes my life more fun to actually enjoy that stuff.)
Note however that “ready for calculus” is the norm for even advanced high school students in the US. The requirement is Algebra2 (or 4 years of math, including lower-than-algebra2 math). Top students, such as the ones whose posts we read here on CC, take calculus, but no university except for the stem schools would require it. However, most good colleges would expect their future business majors to start with calculus, but can’t because they don’t have the quantitative skills/background. You can look at Baruch College in NYC; it’s highly respected for business, really famous companies recruit there, yet calculus is considered a sophomore-level class. (Obviously, more advanced students can take it earlier.) Saint Louis University, a Jesuit university reputed for its thorough general education requirements (to the point many find them too numerous and too in-depth), the basic sequence starts at precalculus. For “random” business majors -ie., lower ranked than Baruch - starting at precalculus would be normal. So, in the US, getting into a business school as an undergrad does not presuppose the high level of math required in Canada. An issue with business undergraduate programs is that part of the grade rests on group work/presentation: if you’ve ever put not-very-motivated teenagers together and expected something, you’ll clearly see why this does not yield maximum learning.
Scout59: accounting is not a “default” major. No one decides on accounting because they don’t know what to do, they don’t like anything in particular but don’t like to read/write much, and they’ve heard there’s a job if you major in accounting. It’s hard, you can’t “wing it”. You can always “wing it” in general business or marketing or management or international business, because between group work and presentations, you can manage to do a decent job (B/B+) and the C/C+'s you may get on written work are offset, turning your semester grade into a respectable B-. You may not have written very much or read a full book but you’re okay. Accounting doesn’t take to “winging it” and as such isn’t picked as a “default major” the way some other business majors are.
Here’s something that might be relevant: http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-the-average-sat-score-for-every-college-major-2014-10. They look at the SAT scores for various college majors.
To the extent that the SATs measure something useful, what one can see is that undergraduate business majors are, on average, not among the strong students. This is probably one reason why I stay away from undergraduate business majors. It also doesn’t say what would happen if one took a student with great academic potential (as measured by SATs) and put them through an undergraduate business curriculum. My guess is that you would get students who would do well but wouldn’t get the same quality of education as they could get from pursuing a number of liberal arts areas. But, per @barrons, they’d be employable.
@scout59, I think what this says is that most kids who go into undergraduate business majors in the US are probably not the most intellectually proficient students. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t some who are – of course there are. There are also lots of psych and econ and communications and recreation studies majors who aren’t very smart. [But, per @Canuckguy, I doubt there are very few physics majors who aren’t smart – if they weren’t, they would have switched over to econ or accounting]. And there may well be accountants who are intellectually curious; I know some accountant who are quite bright (though none who I’d say are broad gauge thinkers). But actual accounting is really following/interpreting a set of relatively arbitrary rules that have been made up to try to summarize complex information. Sometimes the rules of thumb made up by the accounting community are pretty sensible, other times, they are very silly and cause some of my clients to do things that make no economic sense (other than the effect upon the earnings they will report). The study/practice of those rules is not likely what intellectually oriented people would find intellectually stimulating.
Someone mentioned accounting PhD programs. I’m no expert on these, but when I used to see business school job applicants in this area, the research seemed to be 2nd tier finance or third tier economics. How does the market respond to an earnings surprise? Looking at incentives for audit firms, etc. Very little was actually about how to develop accounting to better reflect underlying economic realities. A lot of what I saw was second rate folks applying tools from economics, finance, and behavioral economics to problems that were related to accounting but were not really accounting. That may have changed. But, based upon what I saw, I wouldn’t use accounting PhD programs to sell the intellectual value of accounting per se.
Those class working group projects are all to real at future jobs too. You still have the free-riders, the worriers, the bossy, etc etc. Agree on accting. Many start fewer finish.
Given some of the discussion it should be obvious that business majors are over-represented at lower ranked schools and tend not to exist at many ultra highly ranked schools (read high SAT) . Voila–lower but not terrible SAT scores. Just the number of them is higher than any other major grouping. Some here seem to lack decent analysis skills.
And if you think figuring ways to save your company millions in taxes or other costs doe snot take higher level creative reasoning ability–well you just dont know very much. It’s nowhere near as simple as you seem to think–just look up a rule and apply–yeah,no.
Now here’s a good example of recent recruiting at a lower Top 30 UG B school. Not many at Enterprise.
http://bus.wisc.edu/~/media/bus/bba/employers/yir-2013-2014.ashx
Admission Reqs
http://bus.wisc.edu/bba/admissions/wisconsin-bba-direct-admit-program
OR about a 3.5 year 1 gpa plus ECs.
I just had dinner over the weekend with my college roommate. He was an accounting major at a school so nondescript that it doesn’t even have its own thread on CC. He is now VP of tax for a Fortune 500 company, eventual CFO. Our suitemates and friends are all highly successful business people. I’m talking high level corporate execs and successful business owners. All of us. And we were not the exception. Almost everyone at our undergrad business school went on to great things, despite few regular folks ever hearing of the school. Businesses know all about it, though, and love recruiting their grads. We can run companies, and still have intellectual conversations with our ivy league neighbors.