Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Who would want to major in Business?

I've been meaning to comment on the fact that so many of the youngin's I know going off to college these last few years have gone off to college to major in, of all things, "business." Many of these same people have shown lots of ability in actual fields of study, but then they seemingly abandon all reason and, I'm guessing here, go for the money and/or supposed job stability.

I'm pleased that Uncertain Principles echoes this disappointment:

I also can't help wondering how useful a generic degree in "Business" could really be, compared to, you know, actually knowing how to do some particular thing, and then learning management skills to complement the knowledge of an actual specific business.


I'll enter my curmudgeon mode here:
College is about getting an education, not a job. If you want training for a job, go to vocational school, or a vocational program at a community college, or perhaps an apprenticeship. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's great. Not everyone is meant to go to college. The fact that so many default to going to college appears to have diminished what a college degree is all about.

90 comments:

Anonymous said...

Who would want to major in business?
Probably the guys who control your budget.

Anonymous said...

A "Business" degree can mean different things. I don't think an undergraduate degree in business is all that helpful, but an MBA is. An MBA opens doors. I've met many MBAs who are very skilled people who learned useful things in their program.

Associate in business? Well, I know a guy who got ones of those who is washing dishes at an Italian restaurant. He'd make more money working for the mob.

What should people study? Physics?

Of the class of 1993 at a state school focused on mining, engineering and science, just about all the students I know of are doing something connected with computers -- no matter what their major.

A physics BA, particularly if combined with math, is good preparation for the kind of work that's available. CS/Math might be better, but Physics/Math will probably give you more hands-on experience with electronics.

Physics graduate education is a scam.

Market conditions are cyclical, but in 1998, the American Physical Society predicted that about 3% of physics PhD's would get a permanent job in physics.

The trouble is that all the senior people you'll meet are people who think the only thing worth doing in life is being a professor. You'll get no realistic career guidance. You'll get no useful connections. If you're lucky you'll go to the March meeting and get a pep talk from the same guys who motivate 50-somethings laid off from corporate jobs.

The professors you meet won't take any real interest in you, since they know you won't have a career that they'll care about. They'll minimize the investment of emotions and time they make on you, and may even approve your PhD work when it is far from done, just to get you out the door. The better ones don't take students at all.

You've only got a chance if you're female, black, or the child of a professor. People from the first two groups tend to leak out of the PhD pipeline because they find better alternatives elsewhere. Many of the minority students at a major PhD program took off one year to join a startup; they've taken venture capitalists for a ride worth $100 million plus...

After you get your PhD, you'll always be wondering if you should write about your education in your resume. The background might help you get interviews at some companies, where people understand the situation, but you'll face interview hell at places where people wonder if you're a permanently damaged nervous wreck because your academic ambitions where thwarted.

Although fish outnumber fishermen by a factor of 100 or more, job searches for physics professors go on for years, and search committees complain about the quality of the candidates. Maybe it's because the selection process selects for people who have a high tolerance for abuse and poor career prospects. The people who'd make the best physicists in a healthy field are the first people to recognize better opportunities elsewhere.

Douglas Natelson said...

I don't want to defend the academic grad school system in any way, per se. I agree very much with SM that traditional senior folks in physics have some bizarre and, in my opinion, harmful attitudes that the only acceptable career endpoint is tenured faculty at Hahvahd. However, the generalizations in SM's post don't reflect my experiences. I've actually had very good career guidance from my thesis advisor and postdoctoral mentor, and as someone who is neither female, a minority, or a "favorite son", I've done ok. Concerning academic job searches, it is definitely a strange game of small numbers, but the statistics you hear (150 applicants for a single position) can be misleading. I've been on several searches, and often we get a large number of applications from people who, it would appear, haven't even read the ad, and are basically spamming. For a typical search, out of, say, 100 applications, only about 25 usually really satisfy the wording in the advertisement. One area where connections do pay off are in finding out what an ad really means. Sometimes universities advertise just because they're trolling, not because they really have a position in mind.

Anonymous said...

it sounds like the graduate and undergraduate situations are vastly different. i can't find a web reference to the 3% statistic (please do post) but the NSF today says "two-thirds of workers whose highest degree was a bachelor’s in a science or engineering field reported that their job was related to their degree — even if they received the degree 25 years ago or more." according to "inside higher ed"

IHE: http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/08/02/nsf
NSF: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf06324/

Anonymous said...

"College is about getting an education, not a job."

That's absolute rot. I have both a bachelor's and Ph.D. in chemistry, and at no time did it leave my head that they were necessary for the job I wanted. Are you telling me that a potential future career as a physics professor was never on your mind when you were a student, and that you would have gone through years of undergrad and grad school if you had no prospect of working in your field when you were done?

The people who I knew who make similar statements, who chose their course of study without regard for their potential job prospects, ended up working at Starbucks (quite literally in one case) or going back to school for a degree that would make them employable.

Angry said...

SM: I've got no particular problem with people in the business world, nor am I advocating that everyone major in physics (heavens no!). As for your comments on physics grad school (a bit off topic...just to be clear, I'm talking just about undergrad), as "angry" as I may be, I'm with Doug...my experiences haven't been *that* bad.

Ghafla: I accept that many careers require a college education, but that doesn't mean that college is indeed about getting a job. And, yes, I would have gotten my bachelors in physics even with no job prospects (I certainly wouldn't have gone to physics grad school without some prospects, but, again, that's beyond the scope here). I had little hope of getting a job such as I have now. I majored in physics because I was so fascinated by it, above and beyond all else.

Finally, I'm also not advocating that one give no thought to career prospects. I would advocate someone follow some burning interest, but many don't have any such interest. However, despite considering future careers, college is still about becoming an educated citizen of the world, and that means one has some general knowledge along with an in depth exposure to some scholarly field (I'm sure a better written expression of this can be found at the website of some fancy liberal arts college).

Anonymous said...

"However, despite considering future careers, college is still about becoming an educated citizen of the world, and that means one has some general knowledge along with an in depth exposure to some scholarly field."

Now that is a sentiment I can get behind. I would hope that someone in any major would get a broad education in a wide variety of fields. This was an important reason that I chose chemistry rather than engineering as my undergrad major; both were interesting, but the engineering curricula I saw left very little time at all for anything but technical classes.

I guess if you had said, ""College is about getting an education, not JUST a job," I would have agreed with you.

Anonymous said...

College is about getting an education, not a job. If you want training for a job, go to vocational school, or a vocational program at a community college, or perhaps an apprenticeship. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's great. Not everyone is meant to go to college. The fact that so many default to going to college appears to have diminished what a college degree is all about.

I could not agree more. I got my degrees for the sake of knowing cool stuff. I've ended up in the end doing some stuff I enjoyed, and some stuff I didn't, but one thing I found to be nearly universal: people who were only focused on "training for a job" in college were generally people who had a very hard time solving problems they hadn't seen before.

And not everyone and their dog belongs in college. While I wholeheartedly believe that those who have the aptitude, motivation and desire to go to college should have the opportunity to go, I think the value of an education and the ability of professors to educate has been sorely devalued by the idea that "everyone can do everything" if they just try hard enough. Maybe we should go to a German model where people in technical professions are really trained and accorded respect and pay according to that training - that guy who really likes blowing glass or plumbing or carpentry might be better able to use his skills and not feel the need to try to get a CS/engineering/math degree he's not cut out for (or doesn't really want).

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