Undergrad business majors are retards, news at 11

I'd agree for standard "business administration" type majors. I don't know how it is at most schools but where I went you could major in accounting, finance, economics, marketing, management, business administration and a couple other things. In all my general business classes that were required for all business majors you'd see the average IQ drop like 30 points from my major specific classes (finance) due to the majority of majors being management and biz admin. This is where you'd see the meathead athletes and Jersey Shore pretenders who were trying to maintain their 2.0. "Management" classes were a total joke and completely waste of time / money.

In my accounting and finance classes you'd see a lot of 1st generation college children of immigrants who weren't fucking around and generally a lot of highly motivated, fairly bright individuals. Most finance majors at my school did get jobs after graduating in the 40-70k range for entry level analyst positions. Accounting majors were getting more like 50-100k post grad. Hardly a throwaway degree.
 


papajohn56 said:
Harvard doesn't have an undergrad business major, but they sure have one of the top MBA programs.
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This is a great book chronicling three Harvard MBAs over the course of 10 years, and the businesses they started: military.com, theladders.com and the name of the 3rd is eluding me.

TheIntelligentEntrepreneur.jpg

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Entrepreneur-Graduates-Successful-Entrepreneurship/dp/0805091661/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1303226275&sr=1-1]Amazon.com: The Intelligent Entrepreneur: How Three Harvard Business School Graduates Learned the 10 Rules of Successful Entrepreneurship (9780805091663): Bill Murphy: Books[/ame]
 
I just finished my Bachelors in Marketing & Management. I had always assumed that the stupidity of my fellow classmates was due to their age and lack of real world experience, but I guess it's pretty common in that field. I worked in management in the auto-industry for 8 years and I've been doing full time Internet Marketing for 2 1/2 years and I could never get over how little the students and professors knew about the way shit really works in the real world. I only went back to finish the degree because I had started it years ago and didn't have many credits left, but I have to admit I was very disappointed in what passes for proficiency in those fields.

Even in my Marketing capstone course, the extent of Internet related marketing taught was "set up a Twitter and Facebook". Really? That's how you market online, huh - just set up Facebook and Twitter? And on the rare occasions that I tried to interject and share some of my experiences in real world marketing I was looked at like an alien. Fuck em - good luck in middle management, bitches.
 
This is hardly isolated to undergrad business majors. At least undergrad biz programs are among the best brand names within a college and hold more resume clout than average university degrees.

University is just investment in a brand name, unfortunately. Unless you're in school for an institutional degree (medicine, law, ...), you'll do more for yourself spending that money and those 4 years on just about anything else.

I'm a senior and I'd have rather invested my money experimenting with entrepreneurial efforts and my time furthering my knowledge in programming. I naively thought business school would cater more to my entrepreneurial interests and less to the corporate job funnel. Instead, I've spent my university years scavenging for free-time to start and maintain my online endeavors and learning how to program.

Didn't really have that a-ha moment until I was 51% done with my degree.
 
Mahzkrieg said:
This is hardly isolated to undergrad business majors. At least undergrad biz programs are among the best brand names within a college and hold more resume clout than average university degrees.

University is just investment in a brand name, unfortunately. Unless you're in school for an institutional degree (medicine, law, ...), you'll do more for yourself spending that money and those 4 years on just about anything else.

I'm a senior and I'd have rather invested my money experimenting with entrepreneurial efforts. I naively thought business school would cater more to my entrepreneurial interests and less to the corporate job funnel.

Didn't really have that a-ha moment until I was 51% done with my degree.
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Did you read the article though? Employers are saying the major doesn't matter (for non-technical jobs). With so many idiots in business BAs, you need to set yourself apart, especially East Asshole State University Business BA, ranked 500th out of 501 on the USNews list.
 
papajohn56 said:
Did you read the article though? Employers are saying the major doesn't matter (for non-technical jobs). With so many idiots in business BAs, you need to set yourself apart, especially East Asshole State University Business BA, ranked 500th out of 501 on the USNews list.
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Right. I agree with them and didn't mean my personal rant to suggest otherwise.

University is primarily a vessel for people who want to postpone the real world to spend four years drifting around the fratmosphere.

I don't know how my colleagues plan on setting themselves apart beyond GPA and the staple, vapid resume stuffers like leadership programs.

I'm lucky I've always had an intoxicated obsession with the web, so I have online projects and a Github account to point to when I approach potential employers. If it wasn't for that, I'd be like most of my colleagues—trying to market my technical skills from an intro level SQL course and making some 101-grade .NET applications.

Pretty pathetic when you realize you're paying over $1,000/class and still getting a bargain compared to many other large schools.
 
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Unarmed Gunman said:
Even in my Marketing capstone course, the extent of Internet related marketing taught was "set up a Twitter and Facebook". Really? That's how you market online, huh - just set up Facebook and Twitter? And on the rare occasions that I tried to interject and share some of my experiences in real world marketing I was looked at like an alien. Fuck em - good luck in middle management, bitches.
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Internet marketing moves way too fast for a university to ever catch up.
 
Mahzkrieg said:
This is hardly isolated to undergrad business majors. At least undergrad biz programs are among the best brand names within a college and hold more resume clout than average university degrees.

University is just investment in a brand name, unfortunately. Unless you're in school for an institutional degree (medicine, law, ...), you'll do more for yourself spending that money and those 4 years on just about anything else.

I'm a senior and I'd have rather invested my money experimenting with entrepreneurial efforts and my time furthering my knowledge in programming. I naively thought business school would cater more to my entrepreneurial interests and less to the corporate job funnel. Instead, I've spent my university years scavenging for free-time to start and maintain my online endeavors and learning how to program.

Didn't really have that a-ha moment until I was 51% done with my degree.
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Am in the Final Year of my Business Management Bachelors from an A+ grade college still, I think there's nothing to read. I hardly study the whole book for 2 hrs on the exam day and apply some common sense while writing the exam and I still manage to get a 1st Class. There's no real life education in the textbooks. As for a small portion where they teach about internet marketing is just ebay and general computer terms like, CPU, keyboard, Memory unit etc.. Lol. I feel like killing myself for what am studying.

When it comes to entrepreneurship, nobody cares and will laugh at you if you speak of it in the college. They are actually preparing us to get corporate jobs and be future managers in a 9-6 job. Force the shit out of us to wear formal dress (just like a waiter) in the college. I wonder, if there are any Univ. that would offer degree on affiliate marketing, Internet marketing, Handling ad campaigns, building an online market.. etc.. .. Ah.. May be in the 22nd century. :love-smiley-086:
 
jr_sci said:
When it comes to entrepreneurship, nobody cares and will laugh at you if you speak of it in the college. They are actually preparing us to get corporate jobs and be future managers in a 9-6 job. Force the shit out of us to wear formal dress (just like a waiter) in the college. I wonder, if there are any Univ. that would offer degree on affiliate marketing, Internet marketing, Handling ad campaigns, building an online market.. etc.. .. Ah.. May be in the 22nd century. :love-smiley-086:
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But that's the entire point: You don't need a university to learn that shit. You can't learn that shit in a conventional classroom. That's the School of Hard Knocks, the School of Personal Application, and the School of Being Productive On Your Own Time.

The university is a dying institution. The laughable disconnect between value and price alone is just a preview of what's to come.
 
Here in Sweden the most useful thing you get out of a business school is contacts in finance companies, and they only bother with the top school in Stockholm. Most other schools produces legions of cubicle-fillers.
 
seems to me that people in general have gotten more stupid over the past 10 years or so. anyone else noticing that?
 
Mahzkrieg said:
But that's the entire point: You don't need a university to learn that shit. You can't learn that shit in a conventional classroom. That's the School of Hard Knocks, the School of Personal Application, and the School of Being Productive On Your Own Time.

The university is a dying institution. The laughable disconnect between value and price alone is just a preview of what's to come.
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I'll agree with part of this.

I don't think you have to go to a business school to learn how to do business well (though you do need to go to specialize in other industries like science and what not). I do, however, think it shapes your perception of the world.

For instance, I took a filler class in Channels of Distribution my final semester of my undergraduate (management of information systems). The course I thought was all about supply chain when I signed up but turned out to be about so much more.

The professor consulted heavily for major truck lines and other transportation industries and put out some amazing perspectives and stories about the industry that I never would have realized had I not taken the class. Just being able to see an industry through those perspectives has helped me in entering niches and talking with clients that are part of those industries.

Granted, the business school I was a part of has really strict teaching standards for professors and small class sizes that require a lot of debates, so it's not for people to slack off in. But you get the picture.
 
I got 100% on one of my Marketing 250 tests. guess how many 100s I got in Science or English?

Umm none.
 
Cliffs Notes:
- If you went to an unknown school in a flyover state and were shocked that the people around you are all idiots....maybe you belong there.
- If you went to a school that was actually worth the money (read: the general public would know the name of your school or educated people in your field know what school you went to if you mention it) the people in your business program probably aren't all retards.
- Disclaimer: I didn't get a biz degree. I did a Lib Arts degree (because Im a fucking dork and love to study obscure shit from the past with limited practical application to anything) and then took econ/biz classes because I had the time to do so before I graduated.

I think it is unfortunate that so many for profit schools out there offer useless degrees, either because they don't prep you for a field or the school itself is a joke and no one would hire you based on that reputation. The value of a degree is no longer solely the knowledge a person is supposed to gather along the way to earning that degree (it is in theory) but rather a combination of the knowledge/skills you allegedly have learned combined with the right of membership to a guild/club/community which confers status to the bearer. You can most certainly learn the exact same shit at some community college and on your own that you can at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, etc. But that sweet Santa Monica CC degree won't be opening any doors and it probably won't do a whole lot for your network, unless you're looking to befriend the burnout children of has-been C list stars.
I think we need to get rid of the idea that going to college means you will have a successful life or a better shot at a successful life. The educated and successful are already aware of this and would never foot the bill for their kids go so some third tier toilet of a school but the ignorant and uneducated think that if they go into debt to get a BA in Business Administration from Alabama State they will be set for life once they graduate.
What I am driving at here is that if you were too stupid or naive to figure this out before attending a given university, you just might belong there. :/
 
I read a book a few years back by a dude named phillip something something called "ahead of the curve" detailing his experience at HBS. Sounded pretty disappointing, imo.
 
Mahzkrieg said:
This is hardly isolated to undergrad business majors. At least undergrad biz programs are among the best brand names within a college and hold more resume clout than average university degrees.

University is just investment in a brand name, unfortunately. Unless you're in school for an institutional degree (medicine, law, ...), you'll do more for yourself spending that money and those 4 years on just about anything else.

I'm a senior and I'd have rather invested my money experimenting with entrepreneurial efforts and my time furthering my knowledge in programming. I naively thought business school would cater more to my entrepreneurial interests and less to the corporate job funnel. Instead, I've spent my university years scavenging for free-time to start and maintain my online endeavors and learning how to program.

Didn't really have that a-ha moment until I was 51% done with my degree.
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This. I assume you go to UT, too. I wonder if it's as bad here than at other universities. It seems like finding student's a corporate job is essentially the entire point of this business program. I know it's is pretty damn good at that — with OCR and the ability to apply for like 20 jobs/internships in 5 minutes.

I feel like I'm being shoved in this direction. Everything's just geared toward me getting a job at the big 4. Shit, do I really want that?


I'm accounting now and have to register in the morning. Maybe I should take some MIS classes or something. I guess I can always change when I get the word on my MPA application. Decisions, decisions...
 
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