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I think calling "most business degrees excepting accounting and finance" a problem just seems wrong and frankly pretty arrogant. I do think too many people take

by kriro 6y ago

I think calling "most business degrees excepting accounting and finance" a problem just seems wrong and frankly pretty arrogant. I do think too many people take business degrees and think they'll just "become managers" (and there's a high number of "don't know what else to do" type of students) but there are many actually useful things taught in the typical degree programs. I mean thinking of a typical non specialized business BA here (Germany) the math and statistics classes are pretty useful, as is the basic economics primer. The required law courses and tax related courses are pretty useful. Accounting, finance and controlling are useful as well and so are marketing (mostly math/data analysis), strategy, project management and production management (usually operations research centric but also covers quality management). HR seems fairly meh unless you want to go into HR (as the most relevant stuff is already covered in law). The typical electives cover more in depth of the above and sometimes business information systems, psychology, programming and the like. And there's some other stuff that's pretty useful like negotiation classes or case studies (if they cover interesting topics).

netcan 6y ago
Well... criticising anyone's degree (even though I also have such a degree) is always arrogant. That's the point we're at though. It has become the most popular degree while simultaneously getting worse in quality... starting from a low base. As I said, I have one of these degrees, and have hired and worked with many people with such degrees. First, I agree that the math and (particularly) the statistics classes are useful. Finance and accounting too, in theory, though the vast majority do not seem to internalize much. Business pretty minimal though. A 3-4 years business degree comes with less math education than the first year of an engineering degree, chemistry, physics, etc. Also.. the majority of business degrees today allow students to avoid most math altogether... and most students do this. The whole thing is continuously moving downmarket. Most business degrees (graduate & undergraduate) are not recognised BAs anymore. "The market" wants easy degrees with no math. They also don't want accounting or finance. This leaves just the nonsense. IMO, at this point, most business degrees are less useful than history, philosophy, etc. Graduate salaries are about the same.
- fock 6y ago
  well, that might be the case with the US, but here in Germany state-schools are not really down that path yet, with most including a stats intro (quality varies), a math intro and accounting for everyone. The only place, where I've seen this super-useless business-degrees actually was a private uni, selling a "marketing" bachelors. Not sure, what the person (acquaintance of my sister) learned there, but apparently it didn't even know a lot about the internet as a marketplace, last time I talked...
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > Most business degrees (graduate & undergraduate) are not recognised BAs anymore. Why does it matter if they’re BA or something else? And recognised by who? And obviously a postgrad business degree is not going to be a BA... because that’s an undergrad degree. I think if you’re saying a MBA from a reputable school is useless I think you’re being really really silly. I see the opportunities these degrees give you and they are in a most literal sense extremely useful. They also seem academically valuable to me, with fascinating lectures by extremely well qualified people, and visiting amazing institutions.
  - solidasparagus 6y ago
    The practice of going through case studies and learning essentially a history of failures and successes in business was extremely valuable. The frameworks can be a little academic at times, but showing people how to think about business problems from multiple perspectives is very educational and useful when you actually have to solve your own business problem.
    - rayhendricks 6y ago
      I was a business major for a year and a half before switching to biology. It is worth it to go over case studies and learn accounting, IMO lots of the value gained is through instructer-led group discussion which doesn’t really work over zoom. This led me to actually making a startup and learning much more about how businesses is done than I would have.
- 6y ago

by kriro 6y ago

netcan 6y ago

Well... criticising anyone's degree (even though I also have such a degree) is always arrogant. That's the point we're at though. It has become the most popular degree while simultaneously getting worse in quality... starting from a low base. As I said, I have one of these degrees, and have hired and worked with many people with such degrees. First, I agree that the math and (particularly) the statistics classes are useful. Finance and accounting too, in theory, though the vast majority do not seem to internalize much. Business pretty minimal though. A 3-4 years business degree comes with less math education than the first year of an engineering degree, chemistry, physics, etc. Also.. the majority of business degrees today allow students to avoid most math altogether... and most students do this. The whole thing is continuously moving downmarket. Most business degrees (graduate & undergraduate) are not recognised BAs anymore. "The market" wants easy degrees with no math. They also don't want accounting or finance. This leaves just the nonsense. IMO, at this point, most business degrees are less useful than history, philosophy, etc. Graduate salaries are about the same.

fock 6y ago
well, that might be the case with the US, but here in Germany state-schools are not really down that path yet, with most including a stats intro (quality varies), a math intro and accounting for everyone. The only place, where I've seen this super-useless business-degrees actually was a private uni, selling a "marketing" bachelors. Not sure, what the person (acquaintance of my sister) learned there, but apparently it didn't even know a lot about the internet as a marketplace, last time I talked...
chrisseaton 6y ago
> Most business degrees (graduate & undergraduate) are not recognised BAs anymore. Why does it matter if they’re BA or something else? And recognised by who? And obviously a postgrad business degree is not going to be a BA... because that’s an undergrad degree. I think if you’re saying a MBA from a reputable school is useless I think you’re being really really silly. I see the opportunities these degrees give you and they are in a most literal sense extremely useful. They also seem academically valuable to me, with fascinating lectures by extremely well qualified people, and visiting amazing institutions.
- solidasparagus 6y ago
  The practice of going through case studies and learning essentially a history of failures and successes in business was extremely valuable. The frameworks can be a little academic at times, but showing people how to think about business problems from multiple perspectives is very educational and useful when you actually have to solve your own business problem.
  - rayhendricks 6y ago
    I was a business major for a year and a half before switching to biology. It is worth it to go over case studies and learn accounting, IMO lots of the value gained is through instructer-led group discussion which doesn’t really work over zoom. This led me to actually making a startup and learning much more about how businesses is done than I would have.
6y ago