[quote=jstoesz][quote=eavesdropper][quote=jstoesz]Engineers can easily go into business and sales (assuming they have the personality for it)…business majors can not go into engineering. Enough said. [/quote]
Do you also believe that business majors cannot manage the academic demands of science majors?
While it is true (as I mentioned in my earlier post) that the “business admin” curriculum has been expanded AND dumbed down in many cases, the fact remains that there are some seriously rigorous courses of study in many schools. And I know many intelligent, accomplished scientists who would have been forced to withdraw from some of the classes I was required to take back in the ’70s.[/quote]
I am not disparaging B-schools, I am sure you and many of your peers are way smarter than the majority of engineers I meet. Some of them are quite painful, and could never ever go into business. But at Cal Poly at least, there was a huge difference in the difficulty of curriculum. Maybe not at your B-school. At Cal Poly, students only moved one direction, from the Engineering F train to the business school station. And they all loved the move! It was a long standing joke. I think in life too, you can always move in a less technical direction. If you start out an engineering wizard, you can easily move into the sales route, or business admin route (too many engineers are limited in this regard by their lack of personality). But try to go back?
That is why I think it is smart to start as an engineer and move elsewhere as you go. Check back with me in 15 years to see if that was a good move.[/quote]
Like you say (and I mentioned also), there can be huge disparities between programs in terms of difficulty. And I’ll go so far as to speculate that Cal Poly may have kept a business program onsite in order to retain students (and their money) who had flunked out of science/engineering curricula.
But I do think that you have a very limited idea of what people who seek an education and degree in Business Administration are prepared to do. I do believe that there are people out there who opt to major in Business Admin because they perceive (and may have been told) that it’s a “gimme” degree, and there’s no question that business majors in a good many schools are able to design a course of study for themselves that is distinctly unchallenging. However, there are some extremely competitive undergrad business programs out there, and I can guarantee that if you are majoring in actuarial science or statistics or certain areas of econ or finance, you are going to be required to complete some extraordinarily difficult requisite and elective courses, many of which are not offered in mainstream undergrad programs.
Your observation that “too many engineers are limited in this regard by their lack of personality” tells me that you have the idea that business majors, while not required to have much in the way of basic intelligence, must make up for this flaw by possessing a friendly, outgoing nature, which will be invaluable in either of the two career choices for which a B-school education prepares you: “running a business” or sales. It appears that you consider business admin as some sort of vocational training for engineering and science washouts, or those not gifted enough to even apply for admission. It might prove enlightening to visit a high-quality business admin program, and check out the courses of study that are available, and the requirements that students are expected to complete for their degrees. Try the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania http://spike.wharton.upenn.edu/ugrprogram/advising/concentrations/overview.cfm
and be sure to read up on some of the actual course descriptions (http://fnce.wharton.upenn.edu/programs/undergrad_courses.cfm). Keep in mind that a good many of the students at Penn double-major: in business and engineering or science.
Of course, I realize that all students do not strive for this degree of academic excellence. But those business admin students who do are also subject to the freely-shared opinion that their lack of mathematics chops is the reason that they’re in b-school, instead of engineering or science programs. And personality, or lack thereof, is not what drives them there, either. In my day, the actuarial science student, or the economist, was the b-school equivalent of the “dour engineer” stereotype – and it was bullshit then, too. You know, they used to say that women didn’t have the brains or the “serious personality” needed to be an engineer or a scientist – and it wasn’t that long ago. What students do need is an impossible-to-ignore curiosity force pulling them toward a particular course of study or career. If that’s present, a student of reasonable competence and intelligence can get themselves through all of the assigned courses. But far too many choose a major for the wrong reason, or it’s chosen for them.
As for this theory, “I think in life too, you can always move in a less technical direction. If you start out an engineering wizard, you can easily move into the sales route, or business admin route (too many engineers are limited in this regard by their lack of personality). But try to go back?”: on what do you base that?
In reality, many of the limitations that people can’t move beyond are placed there by themselves. I chose a business major because I believed school “counselors” when they told me that I didn’t have the ability to fulfill the math demands of the science major to which I was overwhelmingly drawn. I had no prior compelling interest in business, and, although I did enjoy my academic experience, I never felt fulfilled in my subsequent business career. Many years later, I decided to go back to school to my first love, science. Was it difficult? Hell, yeah! Was it impossible? Not even close.
