Do you think Business Studies is a Mickey Mouse degree or not? Whatever your opinion, give reasons and justify

Question

I think it IS a Mickey Mouse degree becuase many of the skills learnt in it can be learnt outside the course (e.g. on a job and during training).

Also, it's REALLY not necessary to give a DEGREE course over to learning how to dress the part for a business and how to give presentations!

I TOOK International Business Studies and French at Uni this year!

The term 'Mickey Mouse degree' is a UK term for a degree not worth the paper its certificate is printed on.

I've taken:-
*Microeconomics (Interesting and wouldn't learn about it elsewhere... I don't think)
*Organisational Behaviour (A mix of the exasperatingly obvious and complicated psychobabble with nothing in between)
*Data Interpretation (Business statistics, which I freely agree IS rather brutal!)
*Skills for Business (WHY? WHY? WHY? It's the one given over to how to dress and give presentations, although we did learn a bit about Excel too)
*Data Management (About working with Access. At Liverpool John Moores, it nicks the Excel coursework from Skills for Business as well, what a cheek!)
*Financial Accounting for Business (Perhaps not learned elsewhere.... but there's no way anybody humane could keep up with Dave Shoesmith!)

I'm doing French and Japanese next year, whoo!

I only took up the French and Business because the language courses were cancelled last minute and I thought it'd be vaguely useful to learn about the business world....)

Answer 1

YOU may think it is a mickey mouse degree, but look at the top management of every large company in the world. I would bet that at least 80% of them have a business degree of some type.

Also, you may think that some skills can be learned either on-the-job or during training, but maybe the business wants to hire a business graduate specifically because they don't have to teach the employee the basics of management or finance or marketing or accounting or any of a dozen other business majors.

Don't even get me started about the necessity of a course on how to dress. I wouldn't have thought that type of course was necessary 20 years ago when I was in college. But, I see young people and some older ones, apply for a job where I work and they are wearing jeans and tennis shoes. I'm sorry, but if someone wants a job making more than minimum wage, they had better at least dress appropriately.

Answer 2

Yet Mickey Mouse became a huge business empire. So, how many business majors helped and continue to help build this empire?

Can you build a business without having a business degree? Yes! Many have and many will. Can you know how and what to dress for what occasion without going to school? Yes again. But, here is my question. Do you want to build a business by means of trail by fire or do you want to go into it with, perhaps, an edge you may have acquired because you found a way to absorb X years of business knowledge and wisdom in 4/5 short years?

Ultimately, if it is so irrelevant, why are you considering it in the first place?

Answer 3

People feel the same way about my Philosophy degrees. They tend to have a very base attitude towards things and are interested only in how much money a qualification can get you or how practical it is. Things like religion are fundamental - the rest is just window-dressing. Scientific degrees also have more kudos. From my perspective as a herbalist, i have, and people are incredulous when i say this but it is true, the equivalent qualification to a doctor´s. I also have a Masters and a BA in Philosophy, and the hardest of those by far was the Masters. It was also not analytical, so there was no formal logic or mathematics involved. I think people get hung up on the idea of mathematics being a touchstone for difficulty.

Answer 4

At the top Business Schools, students usually leave the program making 50%-100% more than they made when they started. If Mickey Mouse gave you those kind of results -- then you would be right.

I found MBA classes in marketing, organizational behavior and macroeconomics to be on the light side -- but I only took the introductory classes. I found the accounting classes, the finance classes and the operations research classes to have real content that is incredibly useful in the real world.

Answer 5

Um it is NOT a Mickey Mouse degree...I was a triple major (marketing, comm, English).

Business statistics are brutal as is the calculus required for management classes. You learn to think, to analyze, predict, and anticipate trends as well as learn to deal with the human side of issues. Dressing well reflects someone who has a lot of self-esteem and a good self-image...has NOTHING to do with the degree one has earned.

Answer 6

I have some sympathy with your position. To some extent it is business trying to pretend to an intellectual substance it does not have and to some extent it is part of business's takeover of the academy. But there are a lot of technicalities and terminology you can learn. Myself I'd recommend a degree in economics.