I truly think that majoring in business is a really bad choice. I was discussing this topic with a friend and I presented a few arguments. However, I would like to listen to HN community. I think most of you will agree with my position. If so, which arguments would you use?
<i>I think most of you will agree with my position.</i><p>You might be surprised. I personally don't see any problem with majoring in business <i>depending on what your goals are</i>. I mean, if you want to analyze it simply in terms of "expected lifetime economic return", then majoring in business probably actually comes out ahead of majoring in computer science when you consider that most CEOs of large companies come from a "business" function within their enterprise, and not engineering. And CEOs tend to get paid a LOT more than engineers.<p>Of course, there possible exception is the "founder / CEO" who has a tech background and founds a startup and remains CEO. So there are clearly multiple paths to success, depending on how you define success.<p>All of that said, I think there's a lot to be said for having both engineering knowledge/skills AND business knowledge / skills. In my ideal world, I'd have liked to have gotten a B.S. with a triple major in like C.S., business (or marketing) and applied mathematics (or maybe statistics), or something like that.<p>Of course, one could always get an undergrad degree in a technical field (cs, ee, math, etc.) then go back and do a separate degree in business - perhaps an "executive MBA" for the time crunched.<p>Anyway, I'd put Business ahead of "women's studies", "medieval history" and any number of other majors in terms of economic value. BUT... again, for any given individual, economic value may not be the sole criteria they're evaluating things on. So it's really down to the individual.
Getting a technical/scientific undergraduate degree teaches you to think more logically and gives you the tools to understand the technical underpinnings of the modern world.<p>I have a friend with a BS and MS in Software Engineering and now his company pays his tuition as he pursues an MBA and he is managing a team of about 15 to 20 engineers and developers within a Fortune 500 company. It feels like that combination is really powerful.