- #1
Rhine720
- 88
- 0
Hey just curious about the profitability of a business degree. I hear MBA's are very popular, what about the bachelors though? And how do these stand next to degrees related to money?
Rhine720 said:Hey just curious about the profitability of a business degree. I hear MBA's are very popular, what about the bachelors though?
Shaun_W said:Business degrees are for people that want to drink like fish and play poker who weren't clever enough for something involving lots of maths like economics.
Feldoh said:Wow that is an incredibly negative outlook. Perhaps people choose it because they LIKE doing it. Just because someone doesn't pick a particular field doesn't make them unintelligent.
Shaun_W said:No.
I have already explained that people choose business degrees because they are philistines who weren't good enough at maths to do economics. The low work-load is a huge bonus as it facilities more opportunities for heavy drinking, sleeping until 2pm, and getting laid with other people in the same predicament. A lot will never manage to secure a decent job in 'business' because a business degree screams out to employers that you're too thick to do economics, maths, a science or a respected humanity like history or politics. Some of the rich kids, like nice but dim Tim, did it because they are being groomed for a nepotistic job in the family business, or one of daddy's friend's businesses, and at least their degree means they can tell their elbow from their arse.
stewartcs said:That's a load a crap. There are certainly many intelligent people who studied Business Administration.
CS
Shaun_W said:A lot will never manage to secure a decent job in 'business' because a business degree screams out to employers that you're too thick to do economics, maths, a science or a respected humanity like history or politics.
Some of the rich kids, like nice but dim Tim, did it because they are being groomed for a nepotistic job in the family business, or one of daddy's friend's businesses, and at least their degree means they can tell their elbow from their arse.
Shaun_W said:Looking at the grades of people who studied it at university demonstrates that, aside from a few exceptions (I guess some clever people are quite lazy), that is not the case.
Shaun_W said:Business degrees are for people that want to drink like fish and play poker who weren't clever enough for something involving lots of maths like economics.
twofish-quant said:Just a quick question. Have you ever worked in business? I have.
Something you quickly find out is that in order to get a company working, you need some very good social skills. In your average large corporation, being super-smart is totally useless if people don't like working with you, and if you can't work with anyone else.
Ummmmm no...
What happens frequently is that people with engineering and science degrees go out into industry and find that the companies are run by MBA's, and they are run by MBA's because having good social and political skills is pretty much essential if you want to run a big corporation. So what then often happens is that rather than seeing "social skills" as something valuable and something you can learn, said engineering and science degree-holder gets really resentful that the world doesn't work in the way that they think it should work.
twofish-quant said:Grades are almost totally meaningless once you get out of academia and have worked a year in a company.
twofish-quant said:Drinking like a fish and playing poker are pretty much the skills that you need to run a business.
twofish-quant said:Drinking like a fish and playing poker are pretty much the skills that you need to run a business.
Shaun_W said:Looking at the grades of people who studied it at university demonstrates that, aside from a few exceptions (I guess some clever people are quite lazy), that is not the case.
stewartcs said:So you are privy to business student's grades then?
I see no correlation between being lazy and studying business - it's just a different field that appeals to different personalities.
CS
Shaun_W said:You do not require a business degree to acquire these social and communication skills.
They should be acquired as part of any other degree that involves lots of team and project work, and can also be acquired in part-time work, through socialising, etc.
I believe that a lot of these skills are also largely natural, too. And people that naturally possesses these skills sure as hell don't need a business degree.
Not all companies are run by MBAs, and aren't MBAs something mainly pursued by people who aren't from a business undergraduate background?
I know engineering firms are often really keen to put those engineers who have been earmarked for future leadership development through MBAs, fully funded. Probably something that I'll do one day, too.
All of the business leaders I know, albeit not that many, work extremely hard - so hard that the typical business student would have a stroke if they were to hear about the hours they put in.
PhDorBust said:Cmon guys, are you really saying the average business student is anywhere close to the average math/physics student?
PhDorBust said:Cmon guys, are you really saying the average business student is anywhere close to the average math/physics student?
Business degree is cake.
PhDorBust said:Cmon guys, are you really saying the average business student is anywhere close to the average math/physics student?
Business degree is cake.
stewartcs said:So you are privy to business student's grades then?
I see no correlation between being lazy and studying business - it's just a different field that appeals to different personalities.
CS
twofish-quant said:Just a question. Should I assume here that you've never actually worked inside a business?
My prediction is that in a few years, you will be complaining and resentful that the people that drink like a fish and know how to party are getting further in their careers than you are. You'll be talking about how it "isn't fair" that you got the grades, you did the work, you are smarter, and they are getting the money and the jobs.
This is how business works. If you want maximum money for minimum work then science and engineering is a horrible path to take. If you think that in the end you are going to get rewarded financially or in social status for spending the extra time and effort to do science and engineering, you are also deluding yourself.
You don't, but it helps. Also, business degrees give you some basic skills like reading a balance sheet and basic organizational theory. There are other ways of getting those skills, but if you go for a technical degree, you do have to realize that you will be deficient in some of those skills and actively look for ways of improving.
They can. But I'm not sure about should. If you really like physics, then study physics. If you really don't care about physics and math (and most people don't care about physics and math) and you just want a degree that gets you some basic skills that gets you a job so that you don't starve to death, then a business degree is a reasonable thing to get.
Actually they may. Something that you'll find out is that sometimes you just need the piece of paper to get past the gatekeeper. You may find yourself in a situation in which HR just tosses the resume of anyone that doesn't have an MBA, and being good at social and politics, you get the MBA.
Any large company has a ton of MBA's in middle management. MBA's are terrible training for people that want to start their company, but if you have a 200,000 person company, you are going to need a ton of corporate bureaucrats, which is where an MBA comes in.
Sure. If you like engineering then do engineering. If you hate engineering, don't like math, and want to make the maximum money for the minimum effort (i.e. most people) then a business degree is a good way to go.
I'm a geek. Most people aren't. I like to think. Most people don't. I like to ask questions. Asking questions can get you in trouble in a big bureaucracy.
One thing that I have to do to get anywhere in business is to convince my bosses, that in the end, I will follow orders. If you have someone that is less intelligent, they are more likely to follow orders without thinking about them, and more likely to get hired to be a corporate bureaucrat.
Personally, I think that people talk too much about leadership. The problem with leaders is that you don't need that many of them, and you are more likely to be a follower than a leader.
Also, the job of a business leader is to get other people to do work so that he or she can take credit for it, and then make the people that did the work feel good about that situation. It's not a coincidence that more political leaders have been actors than engineers since acting probably gives you more useful skills to be a leader than engineering school.
Sure. But the MBA is not intended to train business leaders. One important fact is that you really don't need that many leaders in a company. If you have a company with 200,000 people, you only have one CEO, and maybe 100 senior managers. You also have about 50,000 mid-level and junior level corporate bureaucrats, and those are the spots that you want people with business degrees in.
If you want to spend years of your life fighting to get to the top then that's great, but most people aren't like that, and maybe that's a good thing. If you have a company with 50,000 people each thinking that they should be CEO, then you'll find that those places tend to be extremely unpleasant places to work.
You don't need Albert Einstein to be a regional divisional manager, and probably you don't *want* Albert Einstein to be a regional divisional manager. Einstein is going to get bored and annoyed, and maybe it's better for society if he think about relativity than about getting the fonts on the powerpoint right. But most people aren't Einstein, and most people really don't want to be Einstein.
Shaun_W said:Okay guys this is why I think that an undergrad business degree (just to clarify that I'm not talking about an MBA) is a waste of time, and for people who are either lazy or not that bright.
May I add that there are a huge amount of STEM graduates working in banking, finance and business consultancy. These industries highly value the skills taught on these STEM degrees, and it's really not surprising that more electrical and electronics engineers work in finance than in engineering.
So what you study is pretty much irrelevant, as long as you're good at it. Well, not really, because there are certain degrees that employers know do not produce graduates of the highest calibre. And this is where business studies comes in.
twofish-quant said:What you will find that people with technical degrees in finance tend to have lower status than people with business and sales background. The people with engineering background run the machines, but they get orders from people with people and social skills. If you think that you are God's gift to business because you are smarter than the people around you, then you will go nowhere, even if you are smarter.
If you are an electrical engineer that gets hired by a bank and you just rely on the skills that you learn in your degree, you will go nowhere. You'll just stay where you are until your job gets sent over to India to be done by someone that can do it five times as cheap as you can, and its the business people that will be making the decisions about whether you get fired or not.
What you will *need* if you want to advance in your career are business, social, and political skills, and that often means learning those skills from a business major who is just better at that sort of thing that you are. Personally, I think this is cool, since I like learning new stuff. But there are a lot of engineers that look down on business majors and then get extremely resentful when they find out that it's those business majors that are making the decisions, because those majors have skills that the engineer just doesn't have.
Something that I've had to learn is when not to look like a Ph.D. Sometimes it's a good thing to look like a technical person. Sometimes it's not. Personally, I think it's sort of fun to act like someone else, so I do enjoy putting on the three piece suit, getting the powerpoints ready, and then pretending that I'm an MBA. But I'm really not that good at it.
Every hear of the term "overqualified"?
Something that you have to understand is that often employers are not looking for graduate of the highest calibre. Being "too smart" can get your application passed over, and it gets you passed over for good reason. A lot of jobs in business just amount to pushing papers, and people who are too smart often quickly get bored with these jobs.
Most companies don't try to get the "smartest" people. They establish a minimum requirement, and then they look at people past that threshold. Often they don't want to hire people that are too much over their minimum requirements because if you get someone super-smart for a job that you don't need to be super-smart then you are overpaying.
twofish-quant said:Also you need to look at numbers. There are a *LOT* more business graduates than engineering graduates, so looking at the fraction of STEM graduates that end up in finance is not that useful. One other way of looking at the stats is that STEM graduates end up in finance because there aren't enough jobs in traditional engineering. Finance was certainly not my first choice of careers. I think it's a blast, but one person's heaven is another person's hell, and I know no small number of physics graduates in finance that *HATE* their jobs. One reason I like my job is that I like learning new stuff, and learning how to wear a suit and talk business-speak is fun. It's like playing dress up.
Also, I feel like I need to push-back a little on this effort to "sell" math and science jobs. Personally, if your goal is to make as much money as possible for as little effort as possible, then math and sciences is a stupid thing to study. You shouldn't study math, science, or engineering for career reasons. There are a lot easier ways of making more money, and it's likely that some of the business majors you are looking at are going to make more money and find it easier to get a job than you are.
Physics is not my job. Physics is my life. It so happens that I can avoid starvation by using some skills I learn in physics. But that's a poor reason to study it.
Shaun_W said:These top business and financial institutions only select the top graduates form the perceived hardest degrees, such as STEM and the traditional arts degrees. These graduates all go onto the same graduate schemes and do the same work based training. The degree they have is/was irrelevant, as long as it is one of the perceived hardest ones from a top rate institution. They simply don't want business graduates, and other perceived easy degrees. Having one of those is a good way to get your CV binned immediately, and that's what I always hear time and time again from those who do work for these top London business and finance institutions.
The top firms all want the brightest and most innovative candidates. That is why they have so many assessment centres and interviews, and that is why they only select from the brightest undergraduates doing the hardest degrees.
Ben Espen said:You keep bringing up the top business and financial institutions, but these are by definition atyptical. Most of us don't work at top businesses. I lack direct experience with the London business scene, so I will grant you your assertions quoted above. This is contrary to my experience in the US, but there are enough differences between the US and UK that I actually find what you say plausible, if unproven.
The truth is that even businesses at the top will have a large fraction of grunts with less remarkable degrees and grades, and that those with the right skills for business will rise up in the organization. Something that would answer this question conclusively are the CVs or bios of the leadership of these organizations you mention. What proportion of them studied STEM and what proportion business?
I suspect that the proportion of those who did study business is higher than you think, because even if the average business student is far less capable than a STEM student, there are many more of them, so the number of exceptional business students could actually exceed the number of STEM students with the same level of ability.
Shaun_W said:These top business and financial institutions only select the top graduates form the perceived hardest degrees, such as STEM and the traditional arts degrees.
These graduates all go onto the same graduate schemes and do the same work based training. The degree they have is/was irrelevant, as long as it is one of the perceived hardest ones from a top rate institution.
They simply don't want business graduates, and other perceived easy degrees. Having one of those is a good way to get your CV binned immediately, and that's what I always hear time and time again from those who do work for these top London business and finance institutions.
It is the business people that make the decisions, but these people will have studied STEM or something traditional at undergrad.
If firms believed that business graduates had these skills and that engineers don't, then they'd actually employ business graduates. As it stands here, they don't.
The top firms all want the brightest and most innovative candidates.
That is why they have so many assessment centres and interviews, and that is why they only select from the brightest undergraduates doing the hardest degrees.
This totally contradicts everything I've heard from both the graduates that have been hired by these firms and what the recruitment pamphlets advise.
I'm not trying to sell STEM degrees; I am pointing out that in my country business degrees are useless.
Your whole argument is based around business degrees being the best degree for a career in business and management
Here, people are not hired based on their degree type, but the university they attended, that their degree is a "respected one", and to a lesser extent their social class. It may seem a little odd that history and physics graduates are much preferred in the top London firms to business graduates, and it may seem odd that law firms are taking in chemistry and economics graduates. But that's the reality of graduate recruitment here, and I can easily show this from the recruitment leaflets I have.
All employers here are looking for the highest calibre of graduates, even for paper pushing work, because of the status it brings.
But that's the reality of graduate recruitment here, and I can easily show this from the recruitment leaflets I have.
Shaun_W said:I think a more important question is: what proportion of them studied business vs those who studied STEM or other traditional degrees. I'll try and see what I can find out, though, once I dig out the recruitment booklets and do the appropriate searches.
Edit: It's becoming more and more apparent that many of these business leaders studied at institutions that do not offer undergraduate business degrees.
Possibly. I also think that a lot will not have attended university either, as they were lucky enough to get into the workforce before a time when a degree was needed to staple papers.