Why no business major at (most of) the Ivies

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because the Ivies are not trade schools.

lol how dumb is this statement.

NP. It isn't dumb. It is exactly right. You don't have to agree with the tenets of a liberal arts education but you have to ackowledge that ivies and many other colleges do. Rather than training a student for one specific trade, a liberal arts education is by definition interdisciplinary and meant to provide the foundation for students to enter any profession.

[Anonymous]

Back in the 70s when I was applying to colleges, Wharton was considered a backdoor into Penn. People looked down on business degrees in general- they were for kids with lower grades and scores. We definitely thought of business as more like trade school certificate than a college degree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because the Ivies are not trade schools.

lol how dumb is this statement.

NP. It isn't dumb. It is exactly right. You don't have to agree with the tenets of a liberal arts education but you have to ackowledge that ivies and many other colleges do. Rather than training a student for one specific trade, a liberal arts education is by definition interdisciplinary and meant to provide the foundation for students to enter any profession.

People seem to have a very la-di-dah view of an "Ivy League education," like it's still the 19th Century and an Ivy school is where a gentleman goes to be educated in history and Latin before undertaking a European tour. The majority of Ivy students at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton go into finance, consulting, and tech. They are business schools in all but name.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because the Ivies are not trade schools.

lol how dumb is this statement.

The idea of "trade schools" as less than, not very academic, and only for people who actually have to work for a living is very outdated.

Currently, the Ivies are trade schools that mostly produce consultants. When old school WASP rich people elevated the intellectual nature of Ivies, they were not thinking about vast quantities of graduates entering a rent-a-brain profession like consulting where the graduates would only stay in the industry for a few years. They were thinking of intellectual vocations like being a minister, lawyer, doctor, PhD professor, etc. Or being hereditarily wealthy and joining the family business after receiving a traditional liberal arts education befitting a gentleman (women did not have direct access at some of these schools until fairly recently).

America has always had less stigma about rich people being self-made or being from industries that are connected to the trades.

When you look at the mythology around Wall Street and IB/PE, Silicon Valley and the dropout tech bro billionaires, and other culturally relevant businesses where smart people aspire to work, it's hard to say that people value Ivy League style academic intensity much anymore. What they still value is being smart, rich, and connected. None of those three qualities require an academic/intellectual outlook on life.

[Anonymous]

My SLAC didn't/doesn't offer it, either . . . I don't think that many do. It's not part of a classic curriculum that focuses on theory and critical thinking skills, versus practical and technical skills (that most graduates from elite schools will pick up on the job).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because the Ivies are not trade schools.

lol how dumb is this statement.

NP. It isn't dumb. It is exactly right. You don't have to agree with the tenets of a liberal arts education but you have to ackowledge that ivies and many other colleges do. Rather than training a student for one specific trade, a liberal arts education is by definition interdisciplinary and meant to provide the foundation for students to enter any profession.

It's called a profession my friend. Have you heard of it? Yes, that major in english, art and poly sci is really gonna prepare you to take on new world challenges that face us. Darn the students that major in Engineering lol. Safe water, safe fuel sources. On and on.. all things we need. Darn the STEM kids. lol

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When my dad was in college in the 1960s, HBS was considered the destination of failsons.

Today's kids don't care. They want big money jobs. Everyone knows that economics is the business major if the school doesn't have it.

Rich people are more encouraged and rewarded for tacky behavior now. Making arguments about an economics major being more academic and less pre-professional than a business major is kind of laughable.

True. College used to be about education. Now it’s just white collar job prep.

Colleges also used to be only for white and well off. How dare the coloreds and poor people attempt to better themselves with a college education to get a good paying job.

The marketplace determines what is desirable in a college graduate, and it has spoken.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because the Ivies are not trade schools.

Yet, most have an MBA program. Those graduate schools like Harvard Business School must be trade schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No business major offered at Harvard, Yale, Princeton or Columbia. Cornell the "land grant Ivy" is an exception, and even Penn's Wharton School grants the BS in economics presumably because they don't want to embarrass their graduates with a lowly business degree. Why don't most of the Ivies offer a business major?

Business is vocational. Like a trade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's the reason Ivies are getting outpaced and outranked for integral STEM subjects like Engineering and Tech. They also know now they can't compete with these other schools so to them what's the point at this stage.

+1 ivies are still only really great because they are leaning on their historical elitism and white/wealthy legacies. It's also still better for liberal arts than anything practical like business or STEM fields.

Schools like MIT are much better for STEM. Even for undergrad in business, schools like NYU and USC are better; there are no real ivies in the top undergrad business schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No business major offered at Harvard, Yale, Princeton or Columbia. Cornell the "land grant Ivy" is an exception, and even Penn's Wharton School grants the BS in economics presumably because they don't want to embarrass their graduates with a lowly business degree. Why don't most of the Ivies offer a business major?

Business is vocational. Like a trade.

Then I guess Harvard and the like graduate school of BUSINESS must be trade schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My SLAC didn't/doesn't offer it, either . . . I don't think that many do. It's not part of a classic curriculum that focuses on theory and critical thinking skills, versus practical and technical skills (that most graduates from elite schools will pick up on the job).

Companies now a days want people who can hit the ground running, and that often means already having the practical/technical skills on the job. That's why internships are so important.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No business major offered at Harvard, Yale, Princeton or Columbia. Cornell the "land grant Ivy" is an exception, and even Penn's Wharton School grants the BS in economics presumably because they don't want to embarrass their graduates with a lowly business degree. Why don't most of the Ivies offer a business major?

Business is vocational. Like a trade.

Then I guess Harvard and the like graduate school of BUSINESS must be trade schools.

You can't really liken an MBA from any institution to an undergraduate degree in business . . . they have different end goals. And an MBA from Harvard and other elite institutions are so much about networking that it's arguably the whole point.

[Anonymous]

These schools offer broad educations, not narrow vocational training.

If your kid wants to use their four years of college to learn a focused business curriculum, there are other schools for that.

Kids who go to the schools you listed do so with the understanding that they will learn much more broadly, including how to apply what they learn in many different contexts. And they do so knowing that there are tons and tons of employers out there who value that education and will hire them (another way woof explaining why the “name” of those schools carries so much weight.)

One path is not better than the other. It all depends on your kid and the education they’re seeking before hitting the workforce.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yet, Wharton, Stern, Dyson are among the best pipelines to Wall Street.

Stern is at NYU—not an Ivy.