<p>I still fail to see how you believe a business degree is “worthless”. Yes, it may offer slightly narrower career options than a liberal arts degree(this is arguable depending on what LA degree). A math/econ degree definitely gives one more career options but how can a degree in African American Studies(just an example) give more career options that a business degree.</p>
<p>"Have fun pursuing your worthless degrees and finding a job in our defunct financial market. "</p>
<p>I guess I might as well not go to college for a business degree because it’s not like a defunct economy ever gets better. You do realize that the economy has its highs/lows and will eventually get better.</p>
First off, I would argue that sociology majors want to become sociologists, biology majors want to become biologists/doctors, political science majors want to become politicians, and history majors want to become historians. So your argument fails there.
Wow, you criticize us for being biased with our arguments, then blatantly mock business majors for pursuing “worthless degrees”. What hypocrisy did you learn that from? Certainly not from a business degree, that’s for sure.
You do realize that the business market will never deteriorate completely, right? The market WILL get better (history says so) and even at its low point, is still better than many other markets.</p>
<p>Yes, even though this recession is abnormally deep in terms of the typical business cycle, I know the market’s going to get better; it’s already started to improve. I’m not an idiot. However, the financial sector’s going to be quite different in the future. The irresponsibility and relentless greed that drove us into the crisis will, through proper regulation, hopefully end.</p>
<p>Vinnyli: Your assertion about majors is not necessarily true. My father was a psychology major. He was never a psychologist. He was in publishing for 25 years and is now a lawyer. My mother was a public policy major. She worked in advertising. My uncle was a geology major. He’s in business. My grandfather was a physics major. He was an architect. My grandmother majored in Urban Studies. She was a school librarian. Most political science and history majors want to become lawyers, not politicians or historians, respectively. See what I’m getting at here? Most kids are so worked up about what they major in because they think it is what they MUST do for the rest of their lives. But in reality, the Bachelors degree, no matter what it’s in, is a powerful tool. So even though there might not be a typical job market for an African American Studies major, it really doesn’t matter too much. Arguing over which Bachelors degrees are better than others is pure absurdity, even though I admit I’ve done quite a bit of it in this thread.</p>
<p>And as I’ve said before here, I don’t believe business degrees are worthless. Just those at the undergraduate level.</p>
Even a Bachelor’s in business? Lol…
I still don’t see your point. If you eliminate graduate/professional schools, business majors have as many options as liberal arts majors, even more so. If you count graduate school, business majors can become almost anything. I personally know many business majors who became lawyers, and even a few doctors.</p>
<p>I don’t want to pile on, and have no intention of doing so. Since I started this “incident”, I should at least clarify what my position is.</p>
<p>Arguing in terms of liberal arts vs. business is too fuzzy to be helpful. It would help a great deal to specify what major we are comparing. Do not group physical sciences, biological sciences, social sciences and humanities together and talk about them as one single entity. There is a world of difference, qualitatively speaking, between a physics major and a sociology major. Just check the GRE scores of the students in the various disciplines which I posted earlier and you would know exactly where I am going. (The same, of course, goes for business. There is a big difference between those going into human resources vs. those in high finance). When I heard people talk about liberal arts as a single entity, I know they are trying to “obscure”.</p>
<p>Next question has to do with the specific programme, and thus the college where the student studied. Since CC is obsessed with rankings, I don’t think I need to say more about it.</p>
<p>All my degrees are in what are called interdisciplinary areas. (I was attracted to Dr. Johnson’s notion of someone who “knows something about everything, and everything about something”). My first was in Chinese politics with a minor in symbolic logic and quantitative methods. I was not impressed by the liberal arts majors in my classes, to say the least. They did not want to study Chinese nor research design. The excuses given does not fly with me, I know they find them too challenging. So, when I hear this thing about critical thinking and liberal arts…well, I am from Missouri on this one.</p>
<p>Vinnyli: Fine. But what you’re saying is kind of my point to begin with. College students fret about their majors because they think it will define what they do for the rest of their lives; but the truth is that no one in the real world actually cares what you majored in. People care even less about what individual program you were in, whether it be business or LA. Employers don’t care whether or not you attended Wharton, Ross, Haas, or Stern as opposed to each school’s CAS. They only care that you earned your degree and excelled in something you’re interested in. So if you’re interested in business, wonderful! Major in business. If you’re interested in Asian studies, major in Asian studies! Arguing which major is superior based on a calculated standard of success is absurd and does no one any good. Success is different for everyone and it should be left at that. </p>
<p>Again, it may sound stupid, but my belief is that the point of college is to learn for the sake of learning and to establish a self-identity that will carry us through the rest of our lives. Our careers will find a way to work themselves out.</p>
<p>Canuckguy: No one’s trying to “obscure”. Yes, every major is very different. It’s just easier to group them all the majors together for the sake of this discussion. And GRE scores don’t prove anything. Like the SAT, it’s a stupid f***ing test. Some people are better test takers than others. Many people (especially on CC), look at someone with a 2200 as superior to someone with a 1900. But you know what? I know people with 2200s who are at community college. And there is certainly a fair share of students with “mediocre” SAT marks attending top universities. There’s much more to a person than their mark on a four-hour examination.</p>
<p>While it is difficult to show what people may actually truly want, for that is an inherently cognitive attribute that nobody will know but themselves, what is undeniable is that the vast majority of social science majors will not actually pursue their field professionally. </p>
<p>Consider what sorts of jobs and grad schools the sociology, poli-sci, and history majors coming out of Berkeley take. This is not some average school here - this is Berkeley, which is one of the top ranked social science schools in the world. Nevertheless, the data evidently shows that relatively few social science majors actually pursued their major professionally upon graduation. On the other hand, I see a sociology grad who became a realtor and one who became a risk analyst at Bank of America. I see a history grad who became a nanny, and another who became a library page. I see a poli-sci grad who became an investment banker at Bear Stearns (oops) and another at Lehman Brothers (again, oops). </p>
<p>But what about the breadth of undesired careers? Let’s be perfectly honest - not every liberal arts grad will get a good job, even if they graduate from well-regarded universities. Many of them will get bad jobs. </p>
<p>Consider some of the reported jobs taken by English majors from Berkeley. We have such vaunted positions as the head cashier at Barnes & Nobles. (Hey, at least it was head cashier, right?), Starbucks barista, front desk agent at the Hyatt, filing clerk, bar staff, and lumber puller. Let’s be perfectly honest - these are jobs that they probably could have obtained right out of high school. </p>
<p>I suspect that the guy who ended up at Starbucks probably would have preferred to have gone to Haas instead. Keep in mind, this is Berkeley we’re talking about - one of the most prestigious schools in the world. If Berkeley English majors end up with jobs like that, imagine what may happen to the English majors at lower ranked schools.</p>
<p>Depending on what job you want after graduation. If you are going into highly competitive job (as in many people want those jobs) then your employer is going to want to see you have taken the most rigorous course load, no different than when you were applying to colleges. Once you have your first few jobs, then no one really cares what your majored in college.</p>
<p>I know math and science majors within A&S and engineering or CS majors are harder than business major. The reason why we hire undergrads with no experience is to “mold” them to the way we do things. One firm’s culture is very different than another. One of my summer intern said to me, “The way you do accounting here is very different than what I learned in school.” We usually plan on teaching new hires everything from scratch. There are very few things undergrads could learn in college that would be applicable to work. What we look for is applicant’s aptitude for learning, and the right fit.</p>
<p>The reason graduates of Wharton, or other first tier business schools, are highly sought after by employers is not so much for the courses they have taken, but for their intelligence (those schools have done a very good job of weeding out people). The same could be said for highly ranked LACs or any schools (target schools).</p>
<p>My advice is go to business school if that’s what you want to do, but compliment it by taking as many humanities courses (language included) as possible, take some hard math/CS courses to prove you have aptitude for it. As you go up the corproate ladder, it is also important for you to be well versed in art, music, history, politics… If you prefer A&S or engineering, take some business courses to also prove you have mind for finance. My daughter is double major in math/econ, with a few finance courses in AEM. This is the advice a few of my friends (in IB) have given her. They feel many business graduates do no have enough higher level math knowledge for their jobs.</p>
<p>The numbers I had seen I Sloan UG at ~ 1440; considerably below MIT UG as a whole. Georgetown business would still be at least a top 15 UG business school and is still a highly regarded school overall, which was my point. I’m quoting incoming freshman stats for Cornell, so it would have nothing to do with the high number of transfers.</p>
<p>Here you go again. Do you know what you are saying? The GRE is written by future scholars in various disciplines, trying to get into the most elite program they possibly can. It is a high stake affair. You don’t think it means something? Do you have empirical evidence for such statements? </p>
<p>For this discussion, folks may find the following paper interesting. (If you don’t want to read through the whole paper, just look at the graph on page 38).</p>
<p>I would very much like to see this figure, considering that Sloan does not run a separate admissions process. To major in management at Sloan, you have to be admitted to MIT as a whole, and any MIT undergrad is free to switch to Sloan.</p>
<p>Canuckguy: I’ll say it again. The GRE is a test. I couldn’t care less about who wrote it or how “high stakes” it is. It is a test. A test. It tests one’s ability to take a standardized exam, not one’s knowledge. It doesn’t mean that stronger test takers are smarter people. Some people are just better than these things than others.</p>
<p>And to your link - I still hold by my belief that mean salary is a very shallow way to measure success.</p>
<p>Since a LA education is not supposed to provide you a high level of business knowledge, I fail to see how a lack of business knowledge would make an LA education is useless. If you come out of English lit and not end up with any more English knowledge than a Sociology major, then obviously English lit is not very useful.</p>
<p>See, here’s what you’re not getting. If you have to test a drug, you test it against a placebo. If the two are equally effective, then the drug is essentially useless, it’s no better than an illusion. If undergrad business degrees land you with no more business success than a liberal arts degree, clearly it holds no use, as majors with absolutely no connection to the field you’re studying can do as well as the you. </p>
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<p>Cannot? Not really. But please, tell me how many top Sociologists do not have an undergrad background in Sociology.</p>
I NEVER said that an LA degree was useless. In fact, throughout this thread, I have advocated for a strong liberal arts foundation within a business curriculum.
Here’s what you’re not getting. First off, business majors have higher starting salaries than non-business majors in the same field, so the degree does get you a heads up over non-business majors in the short run. In the long run, not really.
Second, if you reason it that way, then I guess many other majors ARE moot. The majority of politicians don’t hold political science degrees (some hold business degrees). Many professional writers/journalists do not hold English/Literature degrees (some hold business degrees). Some economists (gasp) had undergraduate business degrees. I know some anthropologists who majored in other degrees (a few in sociology, psychology, and even one business guy).
And, as a matter of fact, many PhD’s in sociology have economics, psychology, and gender studies undergraduate degrees.</p>