Economic realities, particularly high unemployment rates and skyrocketing college costs, are encouraging many students to consider studying business administration as undergraduates. Back in 1968, about 13% of Bachelor degrees awarded were in business. This made business the third most popular major at the time. By 2008, more than one out of every five Bachelor degrees awarded were in business, making it, by far, the most popular undergraduate major.
Popularity of this scope tends to attract ever larger audiences of students to it. A good place to gain a better sense of what a business degree entails, and which programs are the best is the Bloomberg/Business Week’s site on the Top Undergraduate Business Programs, http://www.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/bschools_undergraduate_10rankings.html. Just to defuse the suspense, this year’s top business program was Notre Dame’s Mendoza School of Business. Besides the ranking, you’ll also find a lot of information about the various programs including the program’s length, the recruiter survey of the school (these are the people that interview the school’s business candidates for possible employment), teaching quality, median starting salary of graduates…all told there are 18 criteria to consider and weigh.
What I like even more about this site is it also has in depth reviews on each of the programs, http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/rankings/?chan=magazine+channel_special+report . At this link you can find out detailed admissions requirements, academic requirements of the program, Alumni career information, and even graduate comments. There is a lot of information to compare and contrast. This is a good site to really delve into and learn from.
While Business Week’s listings might whet your appetite for starting to explore the world of undergraduate business schools, a recent book by Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, Higher Education? How Colleges are Wasting our Money and Failing our Kids, raises a number of concerns about such vocational training becoming ever more entrenched in our colleges and universities. One of their first concerns is who is actually teaching business courses to undergraduates? It appears that many schools, including Wharton, prefer faculty with PhDs over actual hands-on business men or women. Business, by its very nature, is practical and hands on; just how effective can an academic with little applied business experience be? Then there is the question about what these teachers will teach. Many business teachers use case studies involving corporate strategy, which leads to the next concern about undergraduate business coursework: how many students will be able to apply such material to their first jobs in business? A truly provocative argument arises from the fact that the chief executive of Costco majored in sociology; the head of Goldman Sachs, English; and the chairmen of IBM, Proctor & Gamble, Union Pacific and Wyeth all majored in history. Are the liberal arts really passé and antiquated, or merely misunderstood?
Despite that dose of reality, it still might be worth your while to preview one of the top business programs in the country at Babson College in Massachusetts, ranked number 17 on the Bloomberg Business Week 2010 listing. Babson, a school with only 1,800 undergraduates, all of whom graduate with a BA in business, mixes liberal arts and business coursework into what it calls a “practical business education.” During freshman year, all students take Foundations of Management and Entrepreneurship (FME). In this course students learn to start and run (and eventually) liquidate a business (with all profits destined to charity). Additionally, many of the classes are actually headed up by influential business leaders: CEOs, CFOs, and other executives, which directly, at least at Babson, contends with the Higher Education claim that business schools prefer academics to real business people.
Once again a lot of details and comparisons of Babson’s program can be discovered and made on the Bloomberg Business Week site. The key to this or any business program for that matter, is not necessarily the campus, the curriculum, or even the teachers, but the commitment, curiosity and dedication of the students to just get down to business. A lot of ideas, and even more sweat, might just be the place where your business acumen is sparked.