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People seem to forget that the MBA (originally Master of Science in Commerce) was meant for technical undergraduate majors (like Engineers) to learn business co
by tiffanyh 7y ago
People seem to forget that the MBA (originally Master of Science in Commerce) was meant for technical undergraduate majors (like Engineers) to learn business concepts (and not meant for individuals who have a business undergrad degree). That’s also why the graduate degree was called a Master of Science.
When you hear people claim that an “MBA is useless”, it’s typically spoken by people who took business as an undergraduate degree. And hence - yes, it is useless if you already have a degree in business ... and that was not the original intended audience to be attaining such a degree.
- tpurves 7y agoIndeed, perhaps the better claim would be that undergraduate in business degress are the ones that are fairly useless.
- jlj 7y agoI have an undergrad bachelor of arts with a double major in business and accounting. It has served me well in tech and I'm a data engineer now. The tech learnig was all on the job and self-paced. I did take two quarters of MBA classes but they were mostly redundant with my undergrad. I was bored and dropped out.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoBachelors degree are usually pretty good indicators of learning capacity in my opinion. The more rigorous a bachelors degree, the likelier the candidate will be able to learn whatever is thrown at them.
- dredmorbius 7y agoDo you have a reference on this? Google's Ngram Viewer has ... nil results for "master of science in commerce". There is a "master of commerce" degree, though that's both contemporary and specific to Commonwealth countries, generally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Commerce https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Commerce Hrm ... OK, so Dartmouth offered an MS Commerce in 1900, though it appears that: 1. Wharton had pioneered the concept in 19 years earlier in 18881. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23702737 https://www.jstor.org/stable/23702737 2. Harvard introduced an MBA, apparently under that name, in 1908. doi://10.1016/j.emj.2014.03.006 Seems it's more accurate to say that there was an offered programme as "MS Commerce", but that the degree was never widespread, nor was usage long-lived.
- tiffanyh 7y agoSource: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Business_Administration#History https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Business_Administr... Quote “... Master of Science in Commerce, the predecessor to the MBA.”
- dredmorbius 7y agoRight, I saw and referenced that. Seems little used and rapidly eclipsed.
- dredmorbius 7y agoAlso: UVA still have an MsC programme: https://www.commerce.virginia.edu/ms-commerce https://www.commerce.virginia.edu/ms-commerce