Why Undergraduate Business School.

College Search & Selection
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<p>Your argument doesn’t make sense for two reasons.</p>

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<li><p>At most top undergrad business schools, we have a general education requirement - we need to complete a minimum of 9 credits in Social sciences, natural sciences, humanities and/or foreign language. So your point about an undergrad business education not being intellectually satisfying or inadequate is bogus. I don’t see how you can get more well rounded than combining a business education with a liberal arts emphasis as well. </p></li>
<li><p>If people WANT to learn how to do their jobs in the future and have a good idea of what it’s like to be in the world of business, why shouldn’t they choose undergrad business? I’d much rather learn something useful in the real world and gain some practical skills by paying 40-50K tuition at a top undergrad school than pay that amount to take pointless sociology, philosophy and east asian studies classes (pointless in the sense that they’re not going to help us in the real world, whereas as finance, accounting and business communication classes will). Unless you’re super duper mega rich and want to waste time taking liberal arts classes just for the purpose of broadening your horizons and developing the ability to engage in intellectual conversations (<em>cough cough</em>), it’s common sense to major in business (this is assuming the person is sure he/she wants to go into a business related field and is deciding between going to an undergrad business school vs liberal arts).</p></li>
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<p>Uh, perhaps because Yale doesn’t even offer an undergraduate business degree? </p>

<p>But that’s missing the point anyway. See below.</p>

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<p>Your point would hold if you wanted to become a business school professor. </p>

<p>But that’s not the point at hand. The point at hand is what you would learn at a business school, and specifically, who would be teaching you. Most B-school profs are not actual businessmen. They’re discipline-trained social scientists. Hence, B-schools provide a mix of education drawn from a wide range of disciplines. </p>

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<p>Which is my point exactly - that’s not what they’re learning. You guys seem utterly fixated on the blocking and tackling of accounting, yet that’s such a tiny piece of what an undergrad business education at a decent school is. </p>

<p>What you actually learn is a blend of social science. You learn economics as it relates to strategy and markets. You learn sociology as it related to organizational behavior and team performance. You learn psychology as it has to do with motivation and marketing. Frankly, that’s a more holistic and broader education than most other majors will provide. Even accounting, which seems to be the fixation du jour of this thread, is rife with theory. {Yes, there is such a thing as accounting theory.} </p>

<p>Now, again, I grant that most business undergrads probably don’t care about the broad education that their major provides. They just want to get a job. But the same is true of any other major. At least the opportunity is there.</p>

<p>Let me put it to you this way. Let’s compare business to econ, the major to which it is often compared. As an econ major, you will learn about market behavior. You’ll learn strategy. You’ll probably learn econometrics and other quant tools. But, other than the topical content available in a behavioral econ course, how much psychology will you learn? How much sociology will you learn? Probably none. Hence, which major is really the less holistic?</p>

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<p>But that’s my point: they’re not learning how to do their jobs. They are being educated with a broad toolkit drawn from multiple disciplines that will help them with whatever job they will end up taking, even if it has nothing to do with business. </p>

<p>After all, not every business undergrad is going to be a salesman or marketer. But it’s useful to learn business psychology anyway. Not every business undergrad is going to be a HR executive or team manager. But it is useful to understand sociology and organizational behavior anyway. not every business undergrad is going to be a supply chain or production manager. But it is useful to understand operations research theory anyway.</p>

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<p>Actually, that’s not quite true. What the bulk of the empirical evidence shows is that M&A, on average, does create significant value. The problem - if it is indeed a problem - is that usually that extra value, and often times that extra value and more besides- is captured by the seller. Therefore, M&A guys generate substantial value, when they’re working for the selling firm, for apparently they are able to negotiate a cracker-jack sale price for their client. The selling shareholders got rich, the top management of the selling firm usually gets rich through accelerated vesting triggered by change-of-control clauses, and the selling M&A team pocketed huge fees. Hence, for at least one side of the deal, everybody wins.</p>

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<p>Ha! So does that mean that you’re philosophically opposed to the structure of MIT? After all, the vast majority of MIT students are either Sloanies or engineers, both of which are ‘vocational’ disciplines. </p>

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<p>Well, these objections seem to have to do with personal dislike of the students in business majors, rather than of the business major itself. Yet the truth is, those business students who are obsessed with money and who are ‘far up their own asses’ would be the same way whether the business major existed or not. For example, there are lots of students at HYPS who are obsessed with money. Since those schools don’t have business majors, they usually just end up majoring in econ. But they’re still obsessed with money. The lack of a business major doesn’t seem to make any difference.</p>

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<p>I have spent the last year working with my son trying to help him decide what might be his major so he it would help him could choose a school. Like many kids, he is good in math and math was a definate possiblity for a major. But he has hated High school since it seems so irrelevent to real life, and he didn’t work hard. The business classes in HS have been ok subect wise, but boring because they were so easy. He will be entering as a freshman in Sept and has settled on business (finance) at a LAC because he is hoping it will be interesting to him. He also has paid attention to starting salaries.</p>

<p>His dad and I are hoping he will find his passion.</p>

<p>On a separate note: As someone who is involved in hiring at a major corporation, I see how kids who have relevant coursework/experience get preferential treatment in hiring. This means business school grads get prefered hiring immediately. It takes a while for Liberal arts grads to find their niche and get experience that is worth paying for.</p>

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<p>I am a Social Sciences guy. I enrolled at The Eli Broad College of Business at Michigan State University to see how it would go. After 3 semesters as a business student, even though I had good grades, I changed to economics in the College of Social Sciences.</p>

<p>I consider that business at the college level needs to be supported by strong liberal arts to be successful.</p>

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Ross and Stern are total jokes. You clearly have no idea how competitive the truly elite universities in the country are. The majority of kids in Ross were Ivy League rejects and the level of competition in a Ross class can in no way compare to the competition in a Harvard, Stanford, Duke, Cornell or MIT economics class.</p>

<p>Learning liberal arts provides you with invaluable analytical, writing and research skills that a “business-lite” curriculum cannot come close to giving you. The stuff that one learns in a business classroom can be taught overnight to an adept Ivy League grad who majored in Economics or Mathematics.</p>

<p>If those Ross kids grew a pair and majored in Econ or Math, they would get their butts handed to them by the real academic superstars at the University of Michigan. Not to say that even this kids are special at all.</p>

<p>Wharton, of course, is the one true exception. It is the ONLY exception.</p>

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<p>Why is Wharton the one exception?</p>

<p>I know its the best b-school but I’m sure its not the only business school that requires liberal arts classes. I know that most business curricula are supplemented by some liberal arts courses.</p>

<p>I also think ring<em>of</em>fire sounds like a giant prick.</p>

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<p>ring<em>of</em>fire: So you think MIT Sloan is a joke too, then, since it’s not Wharton?</p>

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<p>Or an MIT Sloan management class? </p>

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<p>I would argue that, if anything, the MIT Sloan kids may actually be more academically qualified than the Wharton kids are. After all, if nothing else, at least the Sloanies have to pass the same science and math General Institute Requirements that every other MIT undergrad has to pass. Frankly, I suspect that many Ivy Econ undergrads would not be able to complete the MIT GIR’s (although, granted, the Ivy math undergrads probably would). </p>

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<p>And what about the unadept Ivy students who didn’t major in Econ or Math? Such as George Bush and John Kerry, both of whom have freely admitted to being shockingly unmotivated students while at Yale? I think it’s safe to say that neither of them would have been able to graduate from MIT Sloan, as they would never have been able to pass the GIR’s. </p>

<p>[Yale</a> grades portray Kerry as a lackluster student - The Boston Globe](<a href=“http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/06/07/yale_grades_portray_kerry_as_a_lackluster_student/]Yale”>http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/06/07/yale_grades_portray_kerry_as_a_lackluster_student/)</p>

<p>On the other hand, one became President and the other almost did. So that means that you don’t really need to be a talented student to enjoy a successful political career.</p>

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<p>I think the GRE is a better test of general critical thinking than specialty tests like the LSAT or the MCAT. The resulting pecking order is more in line with my observations (just scroll a little down):</p>

<p>[econphd.net</a> Admission Guide](<a href=“http://www.econphd.net/guide.htm]econphd.net”>Loading...)</p>

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<p>In Europe people attend bussiness school, law schools, medical schools, etc right after high school. However, in Europe high school is a serious deal, people have nightmares of the final examinations for the rest of their lives.</p>

<p>In the US, high school is a total joke: football, drugs, sex, parties, dances, and bull***** classes. Most American high school graduates need to go to college to do the work that Europeans do in high school. That’s the reason why Liberal Arts in undergraduate are seen as fundamental.</p>

<p>Top business schools in Europe like Bocconi don’t even have liberal arts requirements in their undergrad curriculum cause the students have already done all that in high school.</p>

<p>I have attended high school in Europe and one year of high school in the US.</p>

<p>Finally, if I may add, the best combination of studies is Engineering and later MBA.</p>

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<p>Ahhhhhhhh… Duke is #19 (10.2), below UCLA and a peer of what, Illinois (10.1)…</p>

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That’s correct!</p>

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<p>ring<em>of</em>fire, your a dumbass mother f()cker!</p>

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<p>Penelope, this isn’t the first time he’s proven that.</p>

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<p>^ lol .</p>

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<p>No, I’m being totally serious. If these kids were so smart, why don’t they major in Econ/Math/Stats instead of the “business” curriculum? They would get weeded out faster than you can snap your fingers. It’s a fact that quantitative/Engineering majors do the best in Econ classes and b-school kids do the worst.</p>

<p>Prove me wrong.</p>

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<p>I don’t know how to prove that but to get into the UW SOB last semester you needed a GPA over 3.5 (3.7 avg) in many core classes including two econ classes and two calc classes. Under 25% of apps were accepted from sophs applying.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.bus.wisc.edu/undergrad/requirements/current/prb_check.pdf[/url]”>http://www.bus.wisc.edu/undergrad/requirements/current/prb_check.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Semester Admitted #
Applied # Admits % Adm. Pre-Bus GPA* Bus/Econ GPA* </p>

<p>Spring 2009 536 158 29.5% 3.70 3.71</p>

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<p>Penelope01: "Go to a business school before you start trash talking. "</p>

<p>No. I won’t go to a business school before I start “trash talking”. I don’t attend a business school, but do go to a school with a top 5 ug business program and can speak of my experience with friends and other peers who are in the business school. As I mentioned before, I personally see it as a waste of time and money AT THE UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL. If some point down the road I want to go into business, I think my BA in Economics will suffice. And after that, I would probably get a law degree, b/c I think in the long run, law degrees are much more valuable than business degrees. But that’s another story.Or who knows, if I’m bored with myself I might even get an MBA. </p>

<p>The vast majority of employers don’t care where you went to undergrad, let alone what your major is, or whether you were in business school or Arts and Sciences. Sure a top tier institution looks better than a community college, but amongst the top schools it really does not matter what you studied, as long as you maintained a strong GPA.</p>

<p>And I don’t recall saying that LA students are smarter than Business students. At Penn, NYU, and Michigan, where the business schools are known as the flagship schools of their respective institutions, it is often assumed that the Business students are “smarter” than the LA students, since their b-programs are relatively more prestigious. Their SATs or whatever may be higher, but I don’t think they’re necessarily smarter. They’re just interested in going into business. I have no doubt in my mind that the average NYU CAS student is just as smart as the average Stern student. The difference is that the CASer is not interested in business.</p>

<p>To sum up my argument:
I don’t fault kids for going to undergrad business school, nor do I fault the programs (as long as there is some liberal arts base). I understand how a business education can be “holistic”. That being said, in the job market, I don’t think UG business degrees have any significant priority over liberal arts degrees. The exception might be ibanking, but even here, an MBA is much preferred to an BS in Finance or whatever.</p>