If there’s one thing the Great Recession taught us, it’s that some degrees count for more than others in the business world. If you’re dreaming of a career in business, chances are you’ve thought about your educational options more than once. After all, some degrees are worth more than others and some degrees can help you more than others when it comes to achieving business success. If you’d like to know more about the best and the worst degrees for a career in business, read on.
The Best Degrees for Business
Getting the MBA
Many people who dream of business success gravitate toward the MBA degree. The Master of Business Administration degree teaches students about making managerial decisions and about the principles of economics. It also provides a solid foundation in accounting and offers insights into customer buying behaviors. This type of degree offers useful skills like accounting and management training. According to the Payscale website, those who earn an MBA can earn as much as $126,000 per year. Some companies will even pay for employees in senior positions to obtain an MBA, especially if it’s pursued from an online university.
Other Business Degree Options
If you’re not quite up to committing to a full MBA-track degree, Investopedia recommends getting a Master of Finance degree. This degree teaches you about risk management, investments, and how to successfully manage your assets.
The benefit of this degree compared to other advanced degrees is that it only takes a year to earn. This means that you can work in the business field for a couple of years before getting the degree. Not only will you gain some practical experience in business, you’ll have the opportunity to save up some money to pay for the degree. Not having to take on student loan debt in the process of getting your degree will help you in the long run. The money you save by not having to pay back your student loans can be invested in a business of your own.
Other Useful Degrees
In the age of the Internet, the ability to write clearly and the ability to communicate has become more important than ever. That’s likely why an Entrepreneur article suggests that degrees in English and Communication can play a vital role in business.
Nowadays, business writing isn’t just about creating memos and writing emails to clients, though that’s part of it. SEO, or search engine optimization, and the specific writing skills that this marketing technique requires make up the foundation of many businesses’ marketing communication strategies. SEO writers ensure that a business’s website get organic visitors from the web. The advantage of these types of potential customers is that they very often come online with the intention to buy. The ability to use the right keywords to attract them to a company’s site plays a key role in that. That’s the job of an SEO expert. If you want to learn these skills, you’ll often find classes in them in your local college’s English, communication, and marketing departments.
The Worst Degrees for Business
Liberal Arts Degree
According to Forbes, the demand for the arts goes up in an “up” economy, but the arts are also the first thing to suffer in a recession. The same can be said for arts degrees, some humanities degrees, psychology, philosophy, history, etc. While there is an argument for a liberal arts education – namely that it gives you the look into human nature that you need to successfully understand your customers – it isn’t necessary to get a liberal arts degree to do that. Most degrees, even business degrees, require their students to take core classes in the liberal arts.
Psychology
Like the liberal arts degree, an education in psychology can be useful if it’s done right. After all, some careers like advertising and marketing rely on understanding psychology in order to understand customer behavior. However, taking some psychology classes as a part of an advertising or marketing degree makes more sense for the business person than going straight for the psychology degree.
Final Thoughts on Useful Business Degrees
Getting a useful education is one of the best things you can do for yourself in terms of earning an income. This is doubly true for those pursuing a career in business. The skills you learn by obtaining a business degree will provide you with the skills you need to run your business on a daily basis. That said, some degrees are more useful than others. While it can be argued that liberal arts or psychology are useful when it comes to dealing with people, they shouldn’t be the only classes that college students take. It’s better to take coursework in these subjects alongside other more business-related topics if you want to have success in business.