My wife is a member of the union which includes the UConn faculty, consequently, our children can attend UConn tuition-free. I have a child who would like to study business as an undergraduate. We have always saved for our kids’ education and could likely manage private school tuition. The costs associated with attending as a resident student in Storrs, sans tuition, would be around $70,000 for 4 years. A private school would likely cost around $250,000.Are there many colleges whose business degrees are so valuable that they are worth the approx. $180,000 differential? If so, who? I would especially welcome hearing from business school alumni of any universities. Thank you.
Every business major should learn the most important finance lesson, the time value of money. Another important lesson is opportunity cost.
Are you going to pay for the full cost of your child’s college education or will your child have some skin in the game? If you are footing the bill, 100%, then the cost to your child is the same either way. From that perspective, your child has been financially incented to pick the best school for them, finances are irrelevant. And the opportunity cost of attending UConn might, or might not, present a significant opportunity cost to your child.
Are you going to have a say in the college choice? If so, maybe negotiate on a UConn undergrad B-school and then either foot the majority of the bill for grad school or maybe a $50k cash reward upon graduation. This would better align your financial incentives with your child and limit the potential opportunity cost s/he would be giving up by attending UConn.
There are surely many other considerations, I just shared a B-school analysis to your situation.
I know many CT companies (mainly insurance) recruit from UConn. If your kid wants to stay around CT then a business degree from Uconn may be sufficient.
As someone who is not a believer of UG business school (I like UG liberal arts, unless it’s engineering), I would say a business degree from top 10 may be worthwhile if your kid wants a job in investment banking or consulting outside of CT.
If your kid doesn’t want to pursue a graduate degree, then a degree from one of those top 10 schools may serve him well later in life.
FYI - an analyst at IB start with 100+k and can be at 500K+ in 5-7 years. The chance of your kid getting an IB job with an UG business degree from CT is very low.
I offered my kid more than 50K to go to a school for practically free instead of a top 20 full pay school. She turned it down. Instead she offered to chip in 10K a year so she could go to the top 20 school. I think it definitely paid off for her.
OP - I would have your kid apply to wide range of schools, including CT, and see where he gets in then make a decision.
What is your kid interested in studying besides “business”? Supply Chain management ? Finance? Accounting? Marketing? Human Resources? Investor Relations? Operations?
It’s hard to give generic advice about “business” because career paths are not generic. What is your kid interested in studying/doing professionally?
Kids like things to fit in neat boxes. For someone who wants a career in human resources, for example, you don’t need to study “business” to work in a large corporation. Psychology, history, literature… all good prep (I work in corporate recruiting and I was a Classics major, and then got an MBA after working for a few years). I’ve recruited for big banks and we did NOT look for undergrad business degrees (Wharton being the notable exception). We looked for top grades, evidence of analytical ability and strong writing/presentation skills. At the time we loved science majors who had written a senior thesis/project of some kind (Princeton) or had a double major in a humanities subject (MIT with a tech major and a liberal arts minor).
How much does your kid know about “business” that they want to study it as an undergrad??? And does your kid have the stats to be looking at Wharton or another top tier business program, or are you evaluating U Conn vs. Stonehill/Bentley?
“Are there many colleges whose business degrees are so valuable that they are worth the approx. $180,000 differential?”
I’d think about it this way: You’ll get more value from that $180,000 if you spend it on a good MBA someday.
Also: Living in Storrs, with books and fees, costs almost $20,000 a year?? That sounds like a lot to me. Are you including study abroad?
@Hanna here is the COA for UConn this year. Room and board on campus are $12,000 a year or so. So…$48,000 at this year’s cost…and that doesn’t include things like spending money and books.
https://admissions.uconn.edu/cost-aid/tuition
The OP is estimating $18,000 a year…seems a little high to me too.
Thumper, using the in state cost shown on that link less tuition, the cost is $15,756/year x 4 = $63,024, I rounded up to $70,000 to account for inflation.
Everyone, thank you very much for your extremely thoughtful and insightful comments. To respond to some of your questions, my kid doesn’t have the stats for any school in the Barron’s Most Selective Category (is that even used as a reference point much any more?) but would be competitive for UConn and like schools. In terms of a business specialty, my guess would be entrepreneurship, management or marketing…accounting or finance less likely. I would be very interested to hear from those of you who were involved in hiring why you did not recruit people with business undergraduate degrees.
The vast majority of business firms recruit people with business degrees. The better the B school the better the firms that recruit there.
Barrons- source?
Tens of thousands of employees of “business firms” do things like R&D, sales, communications and PR, human resources, technology management and IT, etc. None of those employees need a business degree.
I have hired hundreds of marketing people in my career. At the entry level, we look for numeracy (solid grounding in statistics and analysis), evidence of creativity, an understanding of human behavior and socialization (psych, sociology, anthropology are all good for that) and the ability to “connect the dots”-- look at evidence and come up with a hypothesis of “what’s going on here”- history is great for that.
The people who figured out that casinos shouldn’t have clocks or that a package of cookies which is 100 calories (prominently marked) will sell for a huge premium (per cookie) vs. a package of cookies which contains 1500 calories or that a cruise which offers “all you can eat” vs. pay as you go is going to be a LOT MORE PROFITABLE because people routinely overestimate the value of what they are going to consume- these were not people with a degree in business. They had degrees in psychology and applied math and economics and literature.
To the OP’s question- in many cases (not all) the courses in an undergrad business program are light on analytics and heavy on content. And content becomes obsolete very quickly. Many of the techniques which were the “gold standard” in market research 10 years ago are no longer used- big data, geospatial capabilities, i-phone/email, the migration of purchasing from brick and mortar to the internet- the tools are much more sophisticated, much cheaper, and much more powerful in terms of their predictability of behavior.
So a company can hire a young person with a degree in applied math- who knows nothing about “market research” and within 6 months, can become a highly productive member of the marketing team because the core analytical skills don’t change. But someone with a content heavy degree in “marketing” is not likely to have deep chops in stats, programming, etc. So when the winds change- as they do- the math heavy hire is the better long term prospect.
My company can teach a physics major how to do a discounted cash flow analysis and all the other tools of a finance degree in two or three weeks. We can teach an English major how to write a press release-- they don’t need a degree in “business communications”.
U Conn has a respected business program, so if you are looking at lower ranked colleges I’d be tempted to save my money. But if your kid has an itch to study urban planning or econ or whatnot- those are fine disciplines from which to launch a career that is entreprenuerial in nature.
Bill Gates was known to love Anthropology majors when developing the “then radical” business software packages. How do humans react to change? How do people handle feelings of being threatened? How can you take someone who fears technology (fire, the steam engine, the printing press) and enlist them in becoming part of the change?
Lots of disciplines besides “business” are involved in a modern corporation.
Go Huskies.
Save the money for grad school!
My niece was an anthropology major at a top U. She was hired into a big 4 to do strategy.
I think MIT/Wharton/ and Cal’s undergrad business degrees would all be worth the money. But you have to get into them, and they are all uber competitive.
OP, I’d save the money. (Gotta love how certain posters always assume IB or consulting, as if that’s the end all, be all of business and every student’s dream). And if your kid wants to major in business, that’s totally fine. Companies hire business majors in droves. Just look at UConn’s career placement stats. The anti-business bias on this site is tiresome.
I really like what @blossom says in post #9. I have also been a hiring manager in corporations and consulting. I see both sides to the money vs higher ranking school discussion. Some companies I have worked for cared about the prestige of the undergrad institution, some didn’t. Regardless of where a person went to school, starting salary was the same. I have hired great staff members from a wide variety of schools - Big 10s, small LACs and T20s. Flip side, things haven’t worked out with people from all of those schools too. I do think schools that are lower on prestige scale play best in their respective regions, so something to think about if your kids don’t want to live in Connecticut or near environs long term. But, once they have experience, where ug degree is from becomes less and less important.
If your kids pursue some type of business major, I would lean towards something quant based. Economics is a good non-business school major to enter the business world (depending on type of situation desired), but has a liberal arts bent, requires development of abstract thinking skills, and is quantitative. Perhaps an alternative for your kids to consider. I would discourage accounting, which seems to make every list of professions most at risk as AI continues to make inroads in our lives.
Any placement data for non elite school you can find. Numerous studies of income by major. WSJ study/.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704554104575435563989873060
https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/valueofcollegemajors/
A top MBA program can definitely be worth the money, but I am not sure what kind of a boost you will get paying an extra $180K for an expensive UG business program. I know a CEO who actually prefers liberal arts majors over UG business majors for his $11B company. That doesn’t mean he won’t hire business majors, but he is definitely not wed to them. I’d take the free tuition.
I wouldn’t bother to pay extra 180K to get a similar education like UConn. Why pay more if you don’t have to.
indeed. Wall Street, particularly IB, is prestige conscious. If that is your goal, the higher ranked b-school the better. OTOH, if Accounting, then any state flagship will be fine. The Big Four accounting firms hire from everywhere.
Personally, instead of a general undergrad business degree, I’d recommend Econ instead (in the liberal arts college of the Uni). Then get an MBA in a few years.