<p>"Seems biz undergrads are always one step ahead of them. They have more experience, skills, and money long beforehand.</p>
<p>That may be true, but at the moment I’m just glad that my UG education in the liberal arts has taught me to write a complete and logical sentence.</p>
<p>I don’t think posting on a board requires long complex sentences. Shorter ones or even fragments are easier to follow and often more to the point. The meaning of the two sentences you quoted are quite clear to me.</p>
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Wow, that’s some idiotic reasoning. Just because a liberal arts major has as much success as a business major does NOT mean that a business degree is useless. It just means that a liberal arts education offers something just as good as a business education. If you consider a business education useless, then you can also consider a liberal arts education useless because they have equal footing. Now, I’m SURE you are not going to tell me that students at the top business schools cannot pursue PhD’s in Economics, Statistics, and Mathematics, or a JD. I’m also sure that you don’t need a liberal arts degree to publish written works or become more well-rounded, either. I would argue that a good business degree with a liberal arts foundation offers the MOST well-rounded education; a combination of many social and mathematical studies with a delicate balance between theory and application. I don’t see how you would argue that a business degree, which incorporates general knowledge from many theoretical and practical disciples, is less well-rounded than, say, a Literature degree, where all you “learn” is how to analyze texts and interpret the author’s point of view.</p>
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<p>This is the type of logic I come across a lot from liberal arts majors. Lets simplify it this way:</p>
<p>College C produced 2200 graduates in year '80.
200 of them were business grads and the rest were liberal arts grads.
In '08, 6 became CEOs (3 were business grads and 3 were liberal arts grads).
So, 3/200 business grads became CEOs, and 3/2000 liberal arts became CEOs.</p>
<p>Guess which faculty is more successful in producing CEOs?</p>
<p>In most cases, business is not a great major. At lesser schools, you have a lot of jocks who think a degree in some business buzz word will lead to easy A’s and a seat on the NYSE a few years out of college. It often does lead to easy A’s, but the seat on the exchange rarely comes.</p>
<p>In other situations, though, some of the pro liberal arts arguments break down. A kid with a 2400 on the SAT who is passionate about business should go to Wharton and pursue his interests. He honestly doesn’t need to spend any more time developing general thinking ability.</p>
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<p>If you replace “useless” with “unnecessary”, I think it gets more to the point of what pro-liberal arts proponents are saying. </p>
<p>While at some schools, the business majors may be smarter or have higher SATs (ie Penn or NYU), I wouldn’t think it’s universally true of all UG students and would doubt it’s the case at other schools like Cornell, Cal/Berkeley, MIT, Georgetown.</p>
<p>Canuckguy:
Again, your thinking is a bit off. So yes, there are less business majors than liberal arts majors graduating from a given university. From our example, 3/200 Business majors and 3/2000 LibArts majors would become CEOs. </p>
<p>So yes, the percentage of “successful” business majors (those becoming CEOs) at this university is higher than the percentage of “successful” libart majors, but what does this prove? Nothing. It does not prove that business majors are more “successful” in becoming CEOs. Our example states that there are the same number of LA major CEOs as there are Business major CEOs!!! If each is producing the same amount of CEOs, it means that they’re equally successful!</p>
<p>Also, you seem to ignore the breadth of the business grads’ job market in comparison to that of the liberal arts grad. The desired careers of the business grad fall into a much narrower job market than those of the liberal arts graduates. Your example assumes that most, if not all liberal arts grads want to go into business. If this were the case, your point would be proven that the business faculty is more successful in producing CEOs. However, LA majors tend to be interested in much more than business, and thus, your argument is not logical.</p>
<p>bdl108:
Your reasoning is giving liberal artists a bad rap. You should have accepted the statistics and argued that “success” is not measured by the prorated number of F500 CEOs.</p>
<p>Many business majors don’t stay in business. Some work in government and non-profits. Some go into teaching and many go into small business ownership and don’t show in the Fortune 500 data unless they get very big.</p>
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You’d be surprised. Berkeley’s Haas and Michigan’s Ross, while not being the most highly regarded program at their respective schools (engineering), house many intellectual powerhouses. MIT Sloan’s average is 1480, so I don’t really see your argument there. Gtown business isn’t that highly regarded, and Cornell AEM, the most selective and competitive major at Cornell, uses more holistic methods and are only hampered SAT-wise by the high amount of transfers.</p>
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<p>Yes, that would have been a much better line of play. </p>
<p>This is not the first time I have encounter this type of reasoning, if you can call it that. My concern is that if folks do not grasp the concept of %tages, how are they to understand the concept of limits? If we do not understand basic calculus, how can we understand the physical world around us?</p>
<p>I have often heard on CC that liberal arts teaches critical thinking. Seen no evidence of that. Instead, it seems to teach you how to defend your position, however irrational it may be.</p>
<p>As I see it anyway.</p>
<p>@bdl108: 1.5% of business majors became CEOs. 0.2% of liberal arts majors became CEOs. How do you come to the conclusion that both groups are equally successful?</p>
<p>Speaking of math,</p>
<p>Math is the best liberal arts degree by far because you can become:</p>
<p>an actuary
a lawyer (law schools love math majors, plus high LSAT scores due to your logical reasoning)
an economist
a physicist
and more that I can’t think of, math majors are hard and look hella impressive, it’s also the best major for grad school (which you need to do the above)</p>
<p>Sunfish: That’s not what I’m trying to say. I don’t believe being a CEO is the sole definition of success. My point is that being an LA major does not hinder one from becoming a CEO, as people here have previously attested to. If you look at the statistics, you’ll see that the percentage of Business major CEOs versus the percentage LA + Econ CEOs are equal to one another.</p>
<p>LogicWarrior: Your logic doesn’t make sense. Yes, when the number of CEOs produced is equal amongst the two groups, the larger group is going to have a lower percentage of CEOs produced. It’s basic math. But as the # of LA majors is larger, keep in mind that their preferred job markets are much much wider than those of a Business major.</p>
<p>@bdl108 <a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAOxY_nHdew&feature=related[/url]”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAOxY_nHdew&feature=related</a></p>
<p>“they teach you how to learn.”</p>
<p>Lol, they belong in special education</p>
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Who says? Besides the usual analyst/accountant/manager positions (which divides into private and public) and entrepreneurship, business majors can work as lobbyists, as researchers, as writers/journalists, as teachers/professors (if they pursue a PhD), and as lawyers (if they pursue business law). Do keep in mind that many business majors have an AS minor or an AS double-major, so that widens their markets. I don’t see how any other majors have a “much” wider market over business besides chemistry/biology majors. And plus, why would business majors need a wide market for their degree? Remember, business majors are going into business anyways, so that argument is moot.</p>
<p>AEM within Cornell is not the most competitive major. I don’t know about other business schools, but it is very hard to imagine business major could be that difficult relative to many A&S majors or engineering majors. I do take it with a grain of salt when I see a resume with business major. I would want to see what other difficult courses the candidate has taken outside of business school.</p>
<p>Oldfort: For AEM, I meant the most competitive to get into, not the most rigorous. An 11% freshmen acceptance rate is pretty low. I don’t disagree that business courses are easier than engineering or science courses, but do disagree about the easiness of business courses when compared to political science, anthropology, psychology, and English courses. To each his own.
A business degree is only useful if there is a solid/strong liberal arts foundation to back it up. There’s no worry, though, because most top business programs offer that.</p>
<p>I do take it with a grain of salt when I see a resume with business major. I would want to see what other difficult courses the candidate has taken outside of business school.</p>
<p>Why is that? Are undergraduate business courses not difficult? Are you suggesting that the classes at Wharton, Ross, Haas, McDonough, AEM, etc. are not as challenging as the classes in each school’s own arts and sciences school? Are you also suggesting that an undergraduate business degree is not valuable? Or not as valuable as a let’s say, a psychology, engineering, or political science major? please explain</p>
<p>Vinnyli: As far as I’m concerned, people in business school are pursuing careers business. Why else would they go to business school? Wanting to pursue a career in business, rather than some other field, narrows their job market. There is no denying that the breadth of desired careers is much greater amongst a CAS graduating class than a Business School graduating class.</p>
<p>CanuckGuy: “This is not the first time I have encounter this type of reasoning, if you can call it that. My concern is that if folks do not grasp the concept of %tages, how are they to understand the concept of limits? If we do not understand basic calculus, how can we understand the physical world around us?”</p>
<p>I think you meant “encountered”. There are ways to understand the world other than calculus. I understand percentages. I’m insulted if you think I don’t. So yes, by your logic, Business majors are more successful in making CEOs, but as I have said before, there’s more to the equation than this. There is more to thinking than numbers.</p>
<p>Anyways, I think I’m wasting my time posting in this thread. Everyone here is obviously a business major who thinks he or she will land a Wall Street job upon graduating. Have fun pursuing your worthless degrees and finding a job in our defunct financial market.</p>