@jym626 I couldn’t understand the reference to blossom in this thread, either. I did a search with blossom as the author and business as the key word and realized they were talking about the thread about parents who don’t let their kids major in literature. Interesting and sort of parallel discussion.
“what it takes to get a fashion merchandising degree” Here is an example- click on “Download Full Requirements”
36 credits from liberal education curriculum, 58 from Fashion Merchandising courses, 24 from Apparel, Housing and Resource Management core requirements. Those of you who seem to be questioning this degree-would you forbid your child from majoring in this if this is what they were interested in and wanted to study?
http://www.liberalarts.vt.edu/academics/majors-and-minors/fashion-merchandising-and-design.html
I’m just gonna be so psyched if my S graduates from a reasonably decent accredited university with a major in something…anything…before the 529 funds run out.
One issue which sometimes comes up with directing students to heritage speaker versions of language courses is the sometimes mistaken assumption that they have native-level fluency in the speaking areas based on appearance or surname.
While academic departments have gotten more sensitive to this, this still happens occasionally as shown in the case of a Chinese-American adoptee in a non-Mandarin speaking household who was initially directed to a heritage course a couple of years ago in her first year before the matter was cleared up.
Also, level of fluency could vary even within siblings. I’ve lost count of how many families had one sibling who was as proficient as a native…and not necessarily always the older one or the one who emigrated from an origin society where the language was used and another sibling(s) are completely non-fluent and thus, no different than a monolingual multi-generationed native-born American.
On the flipside, a non-heritage foreign language student/major who may not have had any exposure to a given language before undergrad can develop native-level fluency through undergrad coursework in a Foreign Language/Lit or Area Studies program.
Know several people who have done this with such proficiency that they’re serving as professional translators/working with native-speakers of the language in areas as varied as Law, Business, and the entertainment/publishing industries.
shocking news- companies have both verbal and reading/writing tests in foreign languages to verify a resume claim of either proficiency or fluency.
You guys really think a major corporation is going to hire someone who claims to be fluent in Mandarin or Dutch or Korean or whatnot without testing that fluency (if relevant and required for a particular job)?
I just think parents and their students need to be aware of the type and number of jobs available in various fields of study, where the jobs are, what the pay is, etc etc - so there are no surprises. Also parents and students need to be aware of the student taking every opportunity available to them during college to help them mature and prepare to be the type of employee someone wants to hire.
We made it clear to our kids that when they finish UG degree, they need to be able to get a decent paying job to support themself. One has an opportunity to complete a MBA in a short time, has enough $$ for it, and we hope she decides to do it. This kid likes to be in charge, and she will be better prepared to do so with the MBA after her engineering Bachelor’s (she already has two summer internships completed in her field too).
First one is out of school - pay range is good with open positions. Room-mate has a good degree but with less job openings, so starting at a lower paying job that was available, but seems to have opportunity in the company to be making more very soon. She is looking to doing some student tutoring for extra income - which i believe she will get. It seems rent is taking a big dent out of her meager earnings. She probably has her car payment, car insurance, plus other reasonable expenses. Welcome to real world 101.
There are more people housing their S/D/significant other in their basement or in the previously cleared out BR - hopefully a temporary measure. However, with student loans to pay back, some students are finding they have few ‘nice’ options and are leaning in on mom/dad.
I know there are many students in law school that are not great students, yet are taking out big loans. There is a supply/demand going on - lots of lawyers and much fewer jobs; plus some have family connections (even with not great skilled new lawyer). Many think they are ‘worth’ the big numbers, whereas the job market doesn’t say so.
concerning @blossom 's post on business majors, for whatever it’s worth, her take is 100% in line with mine and that of many people in my professional life, which includes one heck of a lot of collective corp fin and private equity experience.
the best corporate treasurer I’ve ever worked with has an applied math degree from Duke. yeah, she got her MBA at Columbia later, but if you ask, she’ll tell you that was mostly to punch her ticket up the ladder at Goldman.
ask her what she wants on her team, and she’ll say what I’d say: someone who’s smart, who can communicate well, who can think their way out of problems and, in her case, has good math skills. she is not looking for a business major and neither she nor any SMT person I’ve ever worked with cares what some 22 year old kid learned in an org. theory course.
This is one of the things that is confusing. “she is not looking for a business major” . Lots of undergraduate business/ or commerce majors ARE being hired though. The top undergrad schools in particular are placing kids at places like Goldman Sachs (which you mention), Bain, McKinsey, etc. Are there some employers that won’t even look at an undergraduate business major? That seems shortsighted, if so. Undergraduate business schools seem pretty common and lots of kids are getting jobs. I can’t imagine that there are not a good number of them that may be “smart, who can communicate well,etc.” ?
You can see some placement results for UC Berkeley here:
https://career.berkeley.edu/Survey/2015Majors
Business Administration:
https://career.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/Survey/2015BusAd.pdf
Economics:
https://career.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/pdf/Survey/2015Econ.pdf
These compare very favorably with some of the liberal arts majors touted on this thread.
Funny turn to this thread. My oldest D was a double major in math/Russian. Not a single interview she had was even remotely interested in the Russian.
If she enters a math PhD program, she would probably not have trouble passing the reading test in Russian (French and German are also common options here).
When I say she’s not looking for a business major, I don’t mean she’s hostile to them. It means that, even though she’s in “business”, that educational focus is not a prerequisite.
Also, fwiw, there is no doubt that the employment stats for the business degree benefit greatly from accounting. The accounting firms generally don’t care where you attended school, and the vast majority of people doing accounting majored in it as undergrads.
In addition to accounting, business schools will have things like business information technology , finance, and marketing and those concentrations will have their fair share of jobs as well. Finance and consulting type jobs are certainly popular at the top undergraduate business/commerce schools in particular.
Every company will recruit differently , according to their needs and company culture. There are plenty of companies that seem to be finding undergraduate business majors attractive and worth recruiting. Same with engineering -lots of recruiting efforts in that area as well. Of course, there are also companies that feel their needs are best met by recruiting more liberal arts grads.
“In addition to accounting, business schools will have things like business information technology , finance, and marketing and those concentrations will have their fair share of jobs as well. Finance and consulting type jobs are certainly popular at the top undergraduate business/commerce schools in particular.”
Yes, I know that. My point is different. I’m saying that if we could peak under the tent where those stats are generated, I think you’d find that a lot of Bus. Adm. post-grad employment is comprised of accounting. Of course the other concentrations get jobs, but accounting is big. The big 4 are gargantuan organizations, and the next tier (Moss Adams, etc.) are big too. These firms hire A LOT of kids each cycle all over the country. There is no question in my mind that if immediate employment at a good salary is your aim right out of college, and you like business, accounting is a great choice. You’ll also be trained well. They don’t call accounting the “language of business” for nothing. It is a great way to start learning about how businesses run at a young age.
What’s confusing about this debate to me is that, somehow, when some of us decried how stupid and banal the tired “English BA = Starbucks” line really is, that got flipped around and now we’re defending the practical degrees.
No doubt I have my own opinions, shared by more than a few, about which is the “better” education (‘better’ defined in my book) as between the classical and the vocational, but, again, we don’t need to retread that bald tire.
Of course accounting is big but I think you may be underestimating the piece of the pie that other aspects of undergraduate business degrees “account” for.
There is little point to any debate about which is “better.” It only matters what is “better” for a particular kid.
@sevmom , you may be correct. I know for me, as someone who’s generally familiar with what’s taught in B school and who does a lot of hiring and referring, the only people I’m taking at all seriously from an undergrad business school are the accounting kids, because the curriculum is uniform and rigorous and forms a good basis for understanding business, and the finance kids from higher level schools. Without apology, the kid with a BA in marketing from Michigan State is not high on my firm’s priority list.
Yes, there is little to gain in that debate here at this point, but smart people discuss and argue it all the time, so it is a valid item of disagreement for some. That, and I myself don’t subscribe to the approach of employing relativism as a panacea for reconciling all differences of opinion. What’s “better” for a particular kid may be unclear at a given point in time, even if it seems clear … to someone. What appears to be “best” for that kid right out of school may not be as important to him/her later in life as it was to their stressed out parents at the time they made the decision to please.
One issue with MIS/IS programs offered in business schools is that they vary very widely in terms of practical technical skills and selecting students with a genuine interest/aptitude for working in the IT/IS/computer technology field even in non-technical centered corporate firms.
While there are a few excellent programs, there are also many which don’t adequately impart current practical skills needed to successfully work in the IT/IS field.
This is one reason why supervisors I’ve had and folks I know who do hiring in the field tend to prefer CS graduates* and/or candidates who may not necessarily have a computer degree or even college…but have a demonstrated aptitude/interest in computer technology.
For instance, this was one reason why a former firm I worked for hired a former IT/IS supervisor who was an English major from SWA rather than a slew of MIS/IS graduates or even CS graduates back in the mid-'90s and why he and another supervisor who was a CS graduate from MIT continue the same hiring practices to this day. .
- Ironic as most CS majors IME..especially those who excelled in the major/field as undergrads and strong job market conditions don't find IT/IS jobs nearly as desirable as programming or software engineering jobs....preferably with hardcore computer/technology firms.
Post 73 is another excellent one from @blossom. I totally agree with it. Unfortunately she is speaking from the perspective of a recruiter while I am looking at it from the perspective of a parent. My concern is not whether there are other jobs in business that does not require a business degree, but how to improve the odds of getting an interview and landing a job. @Data10 ’ post 29 tells me where best odds are.
I also don’t understand why it is not possible to earn a business degree and getting an education at the same time. Looking over Canuckgirls’ degree requirements tell me they entered the program with three required courses (senior English, calculus, and a second senior math) and three electives. In the first two years of the program, besides core business courses, they had to continue with statistics and economics. In addition, they also had to take electives outside business that worked out to be 34% of the total program, and pass a language proficiency test that was designed to really “get” them.
One of them chooses to take all her electives in English. That was 13 semester courses, one more than is required for an English major in the 3 year BA degree program.
Since it is a limited enrollment program, the quality of the student body is significantly higher than the average for the faculty of arts and sciences. I think it is an extremely balanced program that teaches them to think, quantitatively and qualitatively. I honestly fail to see the downside.
@Canuckguy My post here may be repetitive, but your post #97 said exactly what I was thinking as I was reading this thread and a few others that are similar. Why does it have to be one or the other? Why do people on CC feel the need or right to judge whether practical or classical liberal arts is the better education? I think that kids (with parental support) should just proudly pick which type of major/education best suits their personalities, interests, aptitudes, possible career goals, and pocketbooks.
Both of my STEM-oriented sons sought out engineering on their own, but I personally wanted to make sure they went to universities where they could concurrently take a variety of liberal arts and/or business courses, and maybe even get a second major or a minor in something outside of engineering (maybe latin? or music? or finance?) So, we sought out colleges that met my kids’ goals (and my goals for them).
I don’t see that one type of school (LAC vs university vs tech school) or course of study (practical vs. liberal arts) is superior to the other. It just depends on the kid and his/her family. Of course, ideally, I wanted my kids to have options to study anything wherever they ended up…And, I think we found flexible schools for them where this is possible.
“Why do people on CC feel the need or right to judge whether practical or classical liberal arts is the better education?”
Because it’s an internet forum on which people express ideas and, lo and behold, disagree with those expressions of ideas with ideas of their own.
As an aside, is there really anyone here or anywhere taking anyone to task for pursuing a STEM major?
I will post it again: these discussions almost always start with “what’s the most useless degree?” kindling. Nobody, N-O-B-O-D-Y, ever posits that a STEM degree is useless. It’s the kids majoring in English, History, Philosophy, Classics, etc. who need your help defending against ignorant comments like “English majors work at Starbucks”. I had a knucklehead on this forum once tell me that her kid was going to Ross so he could get a real job; and she didn’t want him to end up at some place like Amherst and become a barista who spends time at poetry readings.
The answer to your question is, no, it doesn’t have to be one or the other, if what you’re talking about is the career-focused major coupled with other elements of a solid and well-rounded education. However, in practice, most pre-career type undergrad programs make that difficult. If there are kids who make it all happen, and I’m sure there are plenty, then bully for them.
Finally, who could disagree with your view that students should just proudly pick the education that best matches or serves their “personalities, interests, aptitudes, possible career goals, and pocketbooks.” Certainly not me. But, please, share that same wisdom the next time some dolt gets on here and writes, for any future student to see, that majoring in English is going to lead to a life behind the coffee bar.