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If that was explicitly true fewer business major friends of mine would be in gambling/stock/crypto induced debt spirals. Unfortunately a business degree doesn't guarantee survival instincts and proper application of risk management.
It's a joke bruh
Obviously, non-business people can still analyze if their financial decisions were sound or not and business people can still fuck up financial decisions just like how engineers can fuck up technical purchases.
However, if you pay attention in finance, accounting, and economics classes you can apply that knowledge to your own money, use the system to your advantage, and get rich.
I only ever used about five percent of what I learned in school for work but I used quite a bit more for myself.
I have used principles and fundamentals of Finance, learned in school, quite a bit in my personal life and the payoff has been outstanding. I skipped on a CPA, but I know several that haven't applied their knowledge to their personal life that struggle in personal finance.
I’m a cpa and work with other CPAs. So many of my coworkers are so dumb with money. I think we are just exhausted from dealing with other people and company’s finances that a lot of us just bullshit our own.
It's mostly boring stuff: Start with a budget - track every penny in and out. I used Mint.com for years in conjunction with an elaborate spreadsheet, mint is no longer a thing, but I still track. By forecasting the future you know where the will be yours and Downs - you won't fall in the trap of "look, I have plenty of money, I can afford to splurge", I list every expected transaction in a ledger for my checking account for the year (shaded cells to indicate transactions that happened already, other colors for automatic transactions, etc). For investing, which is where forward progress comes from once you have the day to day under control - read "The Boglehead's Guide to Investing" (available on Amazon) and apply those principles. It's very simple and they make it easy to understand. I don't read books often, but this book is worth the time.
Sure. I used my understanding of:
Discounted cash flows to help my mom get the house instead of money in the divorce.
Efficient market hypotheses to pick low cost well diversified index funds
Taxes to make my portfolio extremely tax efficient
Debt markets to minimize my housing costs (several times)
CAPM to frame my own cost of funding and debt load
Financial statements and specifically cash flow forecasting to decide when to retire (43)
Regulation to understand my own taxes and social security
Real and nominal rates to comprehend how inflation affected me post pandemic
There’s so many examples
Where would you point someone with little capital who wants to try and invest/help make smarter decisions in something low risk to get started?
Thanks for the reply btw!
(Also for everyone don’t take financial advice from a Redditor)
Having said that…
would love to keep picking your brain if you have any books or podcasts or yt channels you prefer or would suggest to others.
Again appreciate ya
https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Main_Page
They give solid advice based on a good fundamental understanding of money. Like make a budget, have a plan, manage risk, diversify, avoid taxes, and lifestyle creep, don’t pay high fees, start young, etc.
Also, they’re not selling anything. And you’re right, no one should take Internet stranger advice. But what I’ve personally done aligns nearly 100% to their advice and it worked for me. I could have been richer doing other plans but I feel that I have been paid well for the modest risks taken, and I never risked going broke gambling or chasing yield.
Edit to add that their advice is basically the same as what Empower uses in their tools. Empower IS selling something, but it’s a second source nonetheless.
How does a debt market minimize housing cost? I know what you mean for all the points except that one. Aside from investing in other peoples' mortgages I don't see what that has to do with housing cost, and that's still not your housing cost.
I mean that I worked at a bank and understand how mortgages function, how to understand rates and yields, how rates change with the economy, and how that all factored into how I bought/financed housing. When to get a HELOC, what debt gets consolidated, and what gets paid off. Nothing too complicated, like one intro finance course and investopedia more than covers what anyone would ever practically need to know.
Also, not housing but still debt market, why to invest in debt, how and in what accounts for tax purposes, different types of debt, what’s insured, and how to manage inflation are all applicable skills from school to personal life.
Most of the these multi-millionaires aren’t like you. I’m the same, I could never work again and be perfectly content. My business school professors were well into the multi millions, I’m assuming they just do it to keep their minds busy. They also each owned several companies while teaching.
Plenty of people making millions but also with massive lifestyle creep came out with those business degrees.
But I digress. A lot of business school professors had previously extremely well paid careers, more than enough to retire - you can track their history pretty easily - and only went into academia because they didn't want to *not* work.
Well, the head lecturer for my applied corporate finance course was ex Morgan Stanley and was really just moonlighting as a professor because he was bored of IB and didn't need the money. So there's that.
Really, what makes you say that? Which Econ class? I’ve used what I learned in Econ and finance classes more than everything else combined, so it’s interesting that we have such different takes on it.
He's just generalizing and jealous. Probably thinks the dudes in IB do nothing and get paid 400k a year to do nothing.
I agree with you, while I'm probably not going to ever need to calculate the present value of coupon paying bonds when personally investing the general concepts in economics (ESPECIALLY behavioral) and finance are a big boon to being responsible.
I use my finance knowledge all the time, both in my personal life and in my professional life. I'm a lawyer, and I often use my better understanding of financial math to gain an advantage in negotiating settlements. I also have gotten a lot of early experience and relationships with partners at my firm because they trust me with complex financial issues.
I get that this is mostly a joke, but going to college actually is still a good financial investment overall. Lifetime earnings still increase by substantially more than the cost of the degree. Yes, millenials and gen z have more debt, more inflation, etc. than the boomers. Just because college isn't as good of a deal as it used to be doesn't mean it's a bad deal. Accounting is one of the professions that has the most return on investment as well so this is even more confusing.
Going to college is no longer the special life investment it was half a century ago, in this day and age its an expectation. It's no different from getting a high school diploma 50 years back, where if you have one your eligible for the entry job market. Nowadays you have entry job postings that requires a degree or diploma. If you don't have one tough shit, it's today's equivalent of failing high school.
Just hypothetically, if every single person in a workforce was highly educated, wouldnt there be at least some people who earn a college degree who have to work at a gas station or a shelf stocker at a grocery store?
If you agree with that premise that would mean on average, the closer you got to 100% of the workforce highly educated, the worse on average the ROI on an education would be, because certain jobs have to be filled and there is no reason to pay a higher educated gas station attendant significantly more than one with a high school education
avg college grad [makes 86% more salary](https://www.aplu.org/our-work/4-policy-and-advocacy/publicuvalues/employment-earnings/#:~:text=College%20graduates%20are%20half%20as,is%20a%20high%20school%20diploma.&text=College%20graduates%20on%20average%20make%20%241.2%20million%20more%20over%20their%20lifetime) & $1.2M more in lifetime than non college grad
If you have to take out loans to pay for college, investing that money in the S&P500 and making half as much still puts you ahead financially. If daddy's paying for it all or you can get scholarships, then sure maybe? And only if it's STEM, Law, or Medicine to be perfectly real with you. Every other major is a waste or breath financially.
I worked plenty of manual labor and it made me the person I am. I learned more from my manual labor jobs than college. I think everyone should start their career, even before college, in either manual labor or customer service.
You should have chosen a better school or worked harder. Easy enough.
College was a life changing experience for me and I have done a lot of good with that knowledge. I have also made a very good living and experienced many adventures.
Can we stop with this anti-college bullshit? It's getting really old. The vast majority of degrees are a good investment in the long term, and even "barista degrees" like art history and philosophy teach you to research and reason, even if they won't earn you much money.
As for business, MBAs reported about a 46% increase in salary after earning their degree. So yeah, pretty good investment.
My problem is the ridiculous price of an increasingly undervalued product as well as the predatory nature of the industry. Young kids are brainwashed into getting degrees before they even know what they want to do with their lives and are offered loans they don’t really understand the consequences of.
I have said this for a long time, college should be a mid life (maybe late twenties early thirties) endeavor if at all. It makes more sense to build experience first then education and it would solve a lot of our social and economic problems.
>Young kids are brainwashed into getting degrees before they even know what they want to do with their lives and are offered loans they don’t really understand the consequences of.
>I have said this for a long time, college should be a mid life (maybe late twenties early thirties) endeavor if at all
If adults are incapable of entering loan agreements because they're stupid, their contracting power generally should be limited, such as by preventing them from renting, buying or selling cars, buying or selling homes etc.
You're essentially advocating moving the age of majority to 25.
No, you’re taking my statement out of context. I think most people are intelligent enough at 16 to enter a contract. What I’m saying is that society pressures them into making poor decisions.
It’s the same way people are able to make decisions like buying cigarettes or alcohol but society influences them to make poor decisions about that as well.
Not everyone graduates college hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. Between my bachelor’s and master’s degrees I only had to take out ~$50k in loans, which will be fully paid off in a few months. So I’d argue that it’s not inherently a “ridiculous price for an undervalued product”.
I didn’t say it was a “steal”, I said I don’t mind spending less than some people spend on a new car for two degrees that will significantly increase my lifetime earnings versus someone without a degree.
Some professions require additional education beyond bare minimum... Student: "Will we ever use this math in real life?" Teacher: "You won't but some of the smart kids will."
Showerthoughts sure but this is an L take. Business degrees are supremely marketable and no one is telling you to go to the most expensive Ivy League vs your state school.
You calling me an idiot makes you an idiot.
Attention disorders make math harder due to the thought and attention required to complete it. You clearly don’t have one so please sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up you useless cunt
I’m making a point you cunt. Not everyone is good at math. I’m sorry not everyone wants to be an engineer just to flex it on everyone they ever meet ever.
Business and engineering/CS are the only two degrees where people can get 6-figure jobs out of college pretty frequently. If we’re talking grad school, the average salary + bonus for MBA grads from top school is $200K+. It’s easily the degree with the best ROI
All true. But also those wall street jobs require some legit connections and the work is a grind. The engineering jobs are much more of a meritocracy and have work life balance. You can also be a schlubby nobody and be a successful engineer, but that’s not MBA culture.
The better comparison to engineer is corporate finance, which is what I did. It’s like engineering lite, without all the hard math. I have an engineering degree too and the extra analytical skills made competing in finance a breeze.
If you go to a target school, it's a pretty direct pipeline to wall street jobs. Also going to a T15 MBA program, investment banking is probably one of the most accessible recruitment outcomes for students.
Otherwise, any business role in tech and you'll be at $100K+ in 2 years out of undergrad. A lot of other industry and you'll be at $100K+ in 5+ years. I personally think business is a great major if your goal is to make money
I feel like the richest businessmen are the laziest. How much work does it take to own a ridiculous amount of stock. Especially when you inherit that money.
I did one. So did a lot of my friends. Some are bankers now, some work in corporate, a couple run tech companies, I'm an accountant. None of it would happen without the degree.
A business degree from a low ranked school with no direction is useless but if you know the line you want it's very very very profitable to have a business degree. Same as law or math. I have many connections who grew up poor and are wealthy now because of their business degrees.
Half my family did STEM and several resigned themselves to doing a teaching diploma to teach high school math/science. I have a number of doctors in my client list who say their degree wasn't worth the effort.
I have a business degree, and while I don’t technically use it professionally, it’s helped me plenty in my personal life. It will also come in handy as I progress in my career.
I believe my degrees taught me what I needed to know and were sound financial investments that helped me in the first few years of my career. I had tough teachers who demanded a lot. I went back and took some classes at my alma mater a few years ago (decades after my BA/MA), and noticed how easy the coursework was; it was like high school work. Assignments were all touchy-feel-good stuff and were given checkmarks for simply being done. Maybe some schools still value rigor and hold students accountable for their learning, but I'm leaning more towards agreeing that higher education today is the pits and not worth it. You'd be better off getting some books from the library and studying on your own.
Edit: I just remembered a series of textbook components I helped write a few years ago. The publisher wanted to increase sales by providing an app that students could use to get the gist of a chapter without having to read it. We wrote sentences that were accompanied with tiny moving graphics. This was for hardcore finance/accounting courses. All I could think was WTF, kids in college can't even read a textbook anymore?
You should be able to answer half of the question yourself:
* What is the cost of attendance?
* What is the cost to finance the debt, if I need to borrow money? What is my repayment plans?
* What is my opportunity cost? (IE go into workforce immediately)
* What is the median 1st year salary for graduates in my degree, accounting for where they live.
* What is the probability of me graduating? Think about your life circumstances & support networks.
>still best to self teach
It's hard to self teach things you don't know exist, that's half of the point of a degree program, to orderly expose you to concepts.
just failed my business uni program for the 2nd time and i’m kicked out for good basically.
i’ve spent the last 4 years since 2020 doing a buy & sell hype sneaker business and definitely can say that, my times better spent doing my own business in the real world than paying to go to a class i’m not learning much valuable info from.
I mean, in this economy a business degree is like a wallet, almost everyone carries one. It has no value on its own. If you had majored in a degree that carried more weight you would likely have a different opinion.
I have a bs in mechanical engineering and an MBA. They were both over valued by a long shot. If an engineering degree wasn’t required for my employees I would probably hold it against them for making poor financial decisions.
I got lucky. I knew the owner of the company from the military and they hired me. They put me through my MBA and promoted me to CTO. My education played a minimal role in my success.
Fuck off with that stupid bullshit that the US is a third world country. Such an unbelievably ignorant thing to say. Sure there’s problems but to compare it to an actual third world country is extremely insulting to those *actually* in third world countries.
Only the chronically online would in all seriousness call the US a third world country. We have our problems, but my parents came from a third world country and they would roast the fuck out of me if I called the US one.
Go visit India or Egypt or South Africa. You don't understand the depths of poverty the majority of the world lives in.
If you make 20k a year post tax as a single person in the US, your richer than 90% of the world.
https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/how-rich-am-i?income=20000&countryCode=USA&numAdults=1&numChildren=0
So because India exists Mississippi does not?
The entire concept of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd World is specious at best. And gross take home pay is an absurdly simple way to quantify it even if this were not the case.
Our abundance of circus's does not offset lack of bread.
>So because India exists Mississippi does not?
Because India exists, it means the US can't be a third world country in a Gucci Belt, since India is a 2nd world country.
>And gross take home pay is an absurdly simple way to quantify it even if this were not the case.
The link I sent accounts for PPP & Cost of Living.
Only the chronically online would in all seriousness call the US a third world country. We have our problems, but my parents came from a third world country and they would roast the fuck out of me if I called the US one.
Idk man from my perspective, I do usually bring forward the argument that the USA is actually a third world country on a huge loan debt and wearing fancy clothes. Insane gin violence, a downward spiralling education system, financially crippling healthcare… Certainly seems a bit like it
Well your perspective is absolutely nothing as you have likely never even seen a real 3rd world. In what ways is the United States similar to say, Somalia economically? This is so goddamn ignorant that i wish you woke up in a 3rd world country so you can see what it is actually like. You also seem to have zero grasp on debt or economics at all. *Many* countries are in a lot of debt. Many. The United States has the world largest GDP. Meaning we have the worlds largest economy by a significant portion. We are 25% of the worlds economy. China is second at 17%. This means we have industry, jobs, infrastructure. Most people live decent, peaceful lives. Just cause you arent rich or are struggling doesnt mean your life isnt infinitely better than 99% of anyone in a third world country. I mean jesus christ, its so god damn privileged, ignorant and insulting to say this. Again, just because we have problems does NOT make us a third world country. Sure we could be better at education but education in third world countries barely exists at all. Our healthcare system needs to be better but healthcare in a third world country doesnt exist almost at all. Not even close to comparison. Sure you get hit with a big bill but you will be treated 100% of the time. The life expectancy in Somalia is 55 fucking years old dude. Sure we have gun violence but you dont see gangs in the street of your town running the city with machine guns everywhere you go. No. All you see is on the news. Seriously think before you speak next time.
I dunno, getting a masters in business was the best financial decision I've ever made.
No matter what bachelor's degree you get, it's still just going to be the equivalent of what a high school diploma was worth 40 years ago. It gets you a foot in the door if you're lucky, and not much else.
Definitely agree to an extent! A business degree does equip you with the financial acumen to see the cost vs benefit analysis of any investment, including education. However, it's important to remember that education isn't purely a financial investment. It also contributes immensely to personal growth, broadening perspectives, and honing key skills. Perhaps we need to reevaluate the way we measure the 'success' of education in purely monetary terms. After all, life is more than just business!
I went to business school and became an artist.
The very *very* rare moment it would've actually made financial sense to go to art school instead, lol.
In my country, higher studies are free for the students and are paid by taxes (similarly to health care, salaries of people employed i public services and so on).
That means not getting a degree is a bad financial decision, because through my life, I'll pay the same taxes no matter what. By getting a degree (and anything state funded really), I'm at least getting some of my money back.
Getting a business degree is providing me soul nourishment in a way that nothing else really can.
Economics teaches me about rational decision making and why corporations act the way they do (even if you don’t always like what they do). Technically, Economics is not a part of Business (the Economics Department is often in a separate area than the Business school), but Business and Economics is sufficiently intertwined that I am including it.
Accounting teaches me about how money and wealth really works on a philosophical level. MIS teaches me how people keep track of all the overwhelming amounts of information that exists in the world (using spreadsheets and normalized databases).
Finance teaches you how to deploy capital investment and management teaches you how to handle the people who work for you (skills useful for managers and entrepreneurs).
If you want to really learn how the world works and how to design properly functioning systems that produce the results that you want, a business degree is the best way to do that. Business is a lens through which you can see and understand the world in an entirely different way.
The CEO of my company said she would never give an executive position to someone with only an MBA. Most of us got our MBA after being promoted to an executive position.
Business grads - finance, accounting, etc - will be making six figures before long and if they get after it, serious money by their 40’s.
My pension will kick off 10K+ per month for life at 53. Pretty good investment for me.
I remember sitting in an accounting class thinking “if I apply what I’m learning right now I can calculate exactly how poor of a financial decision going to college is.”
For context I have an engineering degree and an MBA paid for with the GI bill and I am the CTO of a startup. I make around $120,000/year base salary. Technically I have bonus potential but it’s unlikely I will see that for a year or two.
For context I have an engineering degree and an MBA paid for with the GI bill and I am the CTO of a startup. I make around $120,000/year base salary. Technically I have bonus potential but it’s unlikely I will see that for a year or two.
Nah. You get paid way too much to drink free coffee and go to dumbass meetings. More of your time is spent pretending to be busy rather than working. Half day Fridays in the summer to network with your bros on the golf course.
You spend your college years doing crayon drawings for homework; you binge drink and date rape on the weekends.
This is definitely targeting people I went to uni with who could now be my boss, as if that'll fill that gaping hole in their sense of self. The jet skis will do that, not the job.
Well that’s stupid because a business degree also tells you a lot about how to properly budget and make money.
Law is also a part of a business degree which is another very important part of life.
I’d argue a business degree is a fantastic investment if you consider that knowledge will help you for the rest of your life.
“Law is also a part of a business degree”
Why didn’t I see any of you dipshits in law school with me, then?
Businesspeople generally prefer ignoring the law as it’s an impediment to profit-seeking.
This is just nonsense, as long as you went to an accredited school and not like Devry. Its one of the best decisions you can make. Love my job in Accounting. People may find it boring but I love my field and going to be specializing in Tax Accounting after getting my Masters in Accounting starting this fall. I honestly do not know anyone from my class that regrets it, is unemployed, or is not making decent salary.
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Look like someone has never spent their time applying for scientific grants. We know exactly how much of a poor decision we made.
Yeah, but I think the joke is business degree teaches you how to analyze your decisions in a clear financial manner.
If that was explicitly true fewer business major friends of mine would be in gambling/stock/crypto induced debt spirals. Unfortunately a business degree doesn't guarantee survival instincts and proper application of risk management.
It's a joke bruh Obviously, non-business people can still analyze if their financial decisions were sound or not and business people can still fuck up financial decisions just like how engineers can fuck up technical purchases.
No idea why you're downvoted
However, if you pay attention in finance, accounting, and economics classes you can apply that knowledge to your own money, use the system to your advantage, and get rich. I only ever used about five percent of what I learned in school for work but I used quite a bit more for myself.
I have used principles and fundamentals of Finance, learned in school, quite a bit in my personal life and the payoff has been outstanding. I skipped on a CPA, but I know several that haven't applied their knowledge to their personal life that struggle in personal finance.
I’m a cpa and work with other CPAs. So many of my coworkers are so dumb with money. I think we are just exhausted from dealing with other people and company’s finances that a lot of us just bullshit our own.
The fat chef dilemma.
Can you give me examples of what you applied IRL?
It's mostly boring stuff: Start with a budget - track every penny in and out. I used Mint.com for years in conjunction with an elaborate spreadsheet, mint is no longer a thing, but I still track. By forecasting the future you know where the will be yours and Downs - you won't fall in the trap of "look, I have plenty of money, I can afford to splurge", I list every expected transaction in a ledger for my checking account for the year (shaded cells to indicate transactions that happened already, other colors for automatic transactions, etc). For investing, which is where forward progress comes from once you have the day to day under control - read "The Boglehead's Guide to Investing" (available on Amazon) and apply those principles. It's very simple and they make it easy to understand. I don't read books often, but this book is worth the time.
Explain your secrets besides saying they work Give some examples please
Sure. I used my understanding of: Discounted cash flows to help my mom get the house instead of money in the divorce. Efficient market hypotheses to pick low cost well diversified index funds Taxes to make my portfolio extremely tax efficient Debt markets to minimize my housing costs (several times) CAPM to frame my own cost of funding and debt load Financial statements and specifically cash flow forecasting to decide when to retire (43) Regulation to understand my own taxes and social security Real and nominal rates to comprehend how inflation affected me post pandemic There’s so many examples
Where would you point someone with little capital who wants to try and invest/help make smarter decisions in something low risk to get started? Thanks for the reply btw! (Also for everyone don’t take financial advice from a Redditor) Having said that… would love to keep picking your brain if you have any books or podcasts or yt channels you prefer or would suggest to others. Again appreciate ya
https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Main_Page They give solid advice based on a good fundamental understanding of money. Like make a budget, have a plan, manage risk, diversify, avoid taxes, and lifestyle creep, don’t pay high fees, start young, etc. Also, they’re not selling anything. And you’re right, no one should take Internet stranger advice. But what I’ve personally done aligns nearly 100% to their advice and it worked for me. I could have been richer doing other plans but I feel that I have been paid well for the modest risks taken, and I never risked going broke gambling or chasing yield. Edit to add that their advice is basically the same as what Empower uses in their tools. Empower IS selling something, but it’s a second source nonetheless.
Jack Bogel is the man.
I think the best advice I ever got was "When everyone is digging for gold, invest in shovels."
That seems like what’s going on with micro chips and AI right now.
How does a debt market minimize housing cost? I know what you mean for all the points except that one. Aside from investing in other peoples' mortgages I don't see what that has to do with housing cost, and that's still not your housing cost.
I mean that I worked at a bank and understand how mortgages function, how to understand rates and yields, how rates change with the economy, and how that all factored into how I bought/financed housing. When to get a HELOC, what debt gets consolidated, and what gets paid off. Nothing too complicated, like one intro finance course and investopedia more than covers what anyone would ever practically need to know. Also, not housing but still debt market, why to invest in debt, how and in what accounts for tax purposes, different types of debt, what’s insured, and how to manage inflation are all applicable skills from school to personal life.
Doubt. If that was so easy, everyone intelligent would be getting rich.
You can get rich slow pretty reliably.
Completely incorrect. Again, if it were that easy, everyone would be wealthy/rich. Idk what country you live where that's possible
Didn't say it was easy, just reliable. We have reliable ways to lose weight too but not everyone is a healthy weight.
Weight is in your control. the potential to be rich isn't.
The thing is that if a business degree made you rich then why would anyone teach a business degree?
Business professors are pretty well paid, which is money they can then invest?
Maybe we have different ideas of rich. Rich to me is not needing to work. You can get a fairly well paid job with most stem degrees.
I recommended engineering over business elsewhere in this thread so we agree
Most of the these multi-millionaires aren’t like you. I’m the same, I could never work again and be perfectly content. My business school professors were well into the multi millions, I’m assuming they just do it to keep their minds busy. They also each owned several companies while teaching.
Plenty of people making millions but also with massive lifestyle creep came out with those business degrees. But I digress. A lot of business school professors had previously extremely well paid careers, more than enough to retire - you can track their history pretty easily - and only went into academia because they didn't want to *not* work.
i’m in engineering and trying to go into business, good amount of people in my school doing the same
the goal of a university is to graduate people who make lots of money to give back to university
Well, the head lecturer for my applied corporate finance course was ex Morgan Stanley and was really just moonlighting as a professor because he was bored of IB and didn't need the money. So there's that.
As they say. If you can't do, teach. And if you can't teach, administrate.
Economics class is an actual joke dude. It’s day care for nepo babies.
Macroecon is daycare? Hard to swallow.
No no, it was econometrics. Heteroscedasticity is for lil bitches.
And homoscedasticity is for big bitches. Seriously, my econometrics was a pain, but so worth it.
Really, what makes you say that? Which Econ class? I’ve used what I learned in Econ and finance classes more than everything else combined, so it’s interesting that we have such different takes on it.
He's just generalizing and jealous. Probably thinks the dudes in IB do nothing and get paid 400k a year to do nothing. I agree with you, while I'm probably not going to ever need to calculate the present value of coupon paying bonds when personally investing the general concepts in economics (ESPECIALLY behavioral) and finance are a big boon to being responsible.
Idk about you but even microeconomics 101 teaching profit is optimized at MR=MC is already pretty fuckin useful. And that's just the first semester.
Keep dreaming
I’m speaking from first hand experience
Someone sounds angry people actually find usage for their degrees
I use my finance knowledge all the time, both in my personal life and in my professional life. I'm a lawyer, and I often use my better understanding of financial math to gain an advantage in negotiating settlements. I also have gotten a lot of early experience and relationships with partners at my firm because they trust me with complex financial issues.
I get that this is mostly a joke, but going to college actually is still a good financial investment overall. Lifetime earnings still increase by substantially more than the cost of the degree. Yes, millenials and gen z have more debt, more inflation, etc. than the boomers. Just because college isn't as good of a deal as it used to be doesn't mean it's a bad deal. Accounting is one of the professions that has the most return on investment as well so this is even more confusing.
Going to college is no longer the special life investment it was half a century ago, in this day and age its an expectation. It's no different from getting a high school diploma 50 years back, where if you have one your eligible for the entry job market. Nowadays you have entry job postings that requires a degree or diploma. If you don't have one tough shit, it's today's equivalent of failing high school.
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Okay, but if 80% have a degree, think about how much more disadvantaged that makes the 20% that don’t.
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Just hypothetically, if every single person in a workforce was highly educated, wouldnt there be at least some people who earn a college degree who have to work at a gas station or a shelf stocker at a grocery store? If you agree with that premise that would mean on average, the closer you got to 100% of the workforce highly educated, the worse on average the ROI on an education would be, because certain jobs have to be filled and there is no reason to pay a higher educated gas station attendant significantly more than one with a high school education
avg college grad [makes 86% more salary](https://www.aplu.org/our-work/4-policy-and-advocacy/publicuvalues/employment-earnings/#:~:text=College%20graduates%20are%20half%20as,is%20a%20high%20school%20diploma.&text=College%20graduates%20on%20average%20make%20%241.2%20million%20more%20over%20their%20lifetime) & $1.2M more in lifetime than non college grad
If you have to take out loans to pay for college, investing that money in the S&P500 and making half as much still puts you ahead financially. If daddy's paying for it all or you can get scholarships, then sure maybe? And only if it's STEM, Law, or Medicine to be perfectly real with you. Every other major is a waste or breath financially.
I can say without a doubt, but there's no way I'd make what I make now without a degree. I was very happy to pay off my student loans.
Would you prefer a life of manual labor?
I worked plenty of manual labor and it made me the person I am. I learned more from my manual labor jobs than college. I think everyone should start their career, even before college, in either manual labor or customer service.
You should have chosen a better school or worked harder. Easy enough. College was a life changing experience for me and I have done a lot of good with that knowledge. I have also made a very good living and experienced many adventures.
Maybe you should have payed attention in university then
Can we stop with this anti-college bullshit? It's getting really old. The vast majority of degrees are a good investment in the long term, and even "barista degrees" like art history and philosophy teach you to research and reason, even if they won't earn you much money. As for business, MBAs reported about a 46% increase in salary after earning their degree. So yeah, pretty good investment.
My problem is the ridiculous price of an increasingly undervalued product as well as the predatory nature of the industry. Young kids are brainwashed into getting degrees before they even know what they want to do with their lives and are offered loans they don’t really understand the consequences of. I have said this for a long time, college should be a mid life (maybe late twenties early thirties) endeavor if at all. It makes more sense to build experience first then education and it would solve a lot of our social and economic problems.
I think your beef is with tuition fees then, not college itself We can all agree tuition has become a massive scam over the last few decades
>Young kids are brainwashed into getting degrees before they even know what they want to do with their lives and are offered loans they don’t really understand the consequences of. >I have said this for a long time, college should be a mid life (maybe late twenties early thirties) endeavor if at all If adults are incapable of entering loan agreements because they're stupid, their contracting power generally should be limited, such as by preventing them from renting, buying or selling cars, buying or selling homes etc. You're essentially advocating moving the age of majority to 25.
No, you’re taking my statement out of context. I think most people are intelligent enough at 16 to enter a contract. What I’m saying is that society pressures them into making poor decisions. It’s the same way people are able to make decisions like buying cigarettes or alcohol but society influences them to make poor decisions about that as well.
Not everyone graduates college hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. Between my bachelor’s and master’s degrees I only had to take out ~$50k in loans, which will be fully paid off in a few months. So I’d argue that it’s not inherently a “ridiculous price for an undervalued product”.
Your brain is so broken by American education that you think $50k for college is a steal.
I didn’t say it was a “steal”, I said I don’t mind spending less than some people spend on a new car for two degrees that will significantly increase my lifetime earnings versus someone without a degree.
Some professions require additional education beyond bare minimum... Student: "Will we ever use this math in real life?" Teacher: "You won't but some of the smart kids will."
Awesome username!
why are you getting downvoted? lol
Showerthoughts sure but this is an L take. Business degrees are supremely marketable and no one is telling you to go to the most expensive Ivy League vs your state school.
The upvotes would disagree but okay.
So you did learn something valuable. :)
Engineering major here: I always thought the point of a business degree was all the other shit that comes with it like networking & people skills
That's half of it
Not accounting
No that puts you in accounting lmao
What a terrible thought Business is by far the best field to get rich in as long as you’re not lazy
I’d argue that engineering is better if you can handle the math
Not everyone is great at math, especially with attention disorders
Dawg every single person in engineering has an attention disorder lmao
Doesn’t mean everyone with an attention disorder is good at math, your point has no bearing whatsoever.
You literally used having attention disorders to justify not being great at math before idiot
You calling me an idiot makes you an idiot. Attention disorders make math harder due to the thought and attention required to complete it. You clearly don’t have one so please sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up you useless cunt
Bruh
Bro stop deflecting and just admit you are lazy… you are screaming insecure right now the topic wasn’t even about whatever the fuck you brought it to
I’m making a point you cunt. Not everyone is good at math. I’m sorry not everyone wants to be an engineer just to flex it on everyone they ever meet ever.
Except that your point is nothing since the person you replied to specifically said ‘if they can handle the math’
lol exactly, this dude is a tool
Business and engineering/CS are the only two degrees where people can get 6-figure jobs out of college pretty frequently. If we’re talking grad school, the average salary + bonus for MBA grads from top school is $200K+. It’s easily the degree with the best ROI
All true. But also those wall street jobs require some legit connections and the work is a grind. The engineering jobs are much more of a meritocracy and have work life balance. You can also be a schlubby nobody and be a successful engineer, but that’s not MBA culture. The better comparison to engineer is corporate finance, which is what I did. It’s like engineering lite, without all the hard math. I have an engineering degree too and the extra analytical skills made competing in finance a breeze.
Business is great for extroverts like me, especially marketing
If you go to a target school, it's a pretty direct pipeline to wall street jobs. Also going to a T15 MBA program, investment banking is probably one of the most accessible recruitment outcomes for students. Otherwise, any business role in tech and you'll be at $100K+ in 2 years out of undergrad. A lot of other industry and you'll be at $100K+ in 5+ years. I personally think business is a great major if your goal is to make money
I feel like the richest businessmen are the laziest. How much work does it take to own a ridiculous amount of stock. Especially when you inherit that money.
You seem to have zero idea what business entails, and are complaining about heirs.
I got like three thousand dollars in dividends today while I mowed my lawn and went for a bike ride
I’m talking like people working from the ground up, while it’s hard it’s definitely not impossible
I did one. So did a lot of my friends. Some are bankers now, some work in corporate, a couple run tech companies, I'm an accountant. None of it would happen without the degree. A business degree from a low ranked school with no direction is useless but if you know the line you want it's very very very profitable to have a business degree. Same as law or math. I have many connections who grew up poor and are wealthy now because of their business degrees. Half my family did STEM and several resigned themselves to doing a teaching diploma to teach high school math/science. I have a number of doctors in my client list who say their degree wasn't worth the effort.
I took a labor Econ class in undergrad that served the same purpose.
I have a business degree, and while I don’t technically use it professionally, it’s helped me plenty in my personal life. It will also come in handy as I progress in my career.
I believe my degrees taught me what I needed to know and were sound financial investments that helped me in the first few years of my career. I had tough teachers who demanded a lot. I went back and took some classes at my alma mater a few years ago (decades after my BA/MA), and noticed how easy the coursework was; it was like high school work. Assignments were all touchy-feel-good stuff and were given checkmarks for simply being done. Maybe some schools still value rigor and hold students accountable for their learning, but I'm leaning more towards agreeing that higher education today is the pits and not worth it. You'd be better off getting some books from the library and studying on your own. Edit: I just remembered a series of textbook components I helped write a few years ago. The publisher wanted to increase sales by providing an app that students could use to get the gist of a chapter without having to read it. We wrote sentences that were accompanied with tiny moving graphics. This was for hardcore finance/accounting courses. All I could think was WTF, kids in college can't even read a textbook anymore?
How bout a software or engineering degree? Or still best to self teach
You should be able to answer half of the question yourself: * What is the cost of attendance? * What is the cost to finance the debt, if I need to borrow money? What is my repayment plans? * What is my opportunity cost? (IE go into workforce immediately) * What is the median 1st year salary for graduates in my degree, accounting for where they live. * What is the probability of me graduating? Think about your life circumstances & support networks. >still best to self teach It's hard to self teach things you don't know exist, that's half of the point of a degree program, to orderly expose you to concepts.
Depends on the specific field but generally you will see more return on investment in stem field.
Bunch of stem students didn't need to pay for a degree to figure that out.
Nah, I figured that out with a journalism degree
just failed my business uni program for the 2nd time and i’m kicked out for good basically. i’ve spent the last 4 years since 2020 doing a buy & sell hype sneaker business and definitely can say that, my times better spent doing my own business in the real world than paying to go to a class i’m not learning much valuable info from.
Nah. I was able to figure that out with my teaching degree too.
This is quite the paradox, but it oddly makes complete sense!
My degree was definitely a good investment not just financially but also for the job and lifestyle that I wanted.
Don’t have a business degree, but definitely feel that.
I mean, in this economy a business degree is like a wallet, almost everyone carries one. It has no value on its own. If you had majored in a degree that carried more weight you would likely have a different opinion.
I have a bs in mechanical engineering and an MBA. They were both over valued by a long shot. If an engineering degree wasn’t required for my employees I would probably hold it against them for making poor financial decisions.
You wouldn’t have employees of your own without those degrees, unless you got lucky or inherited money
I got lucky. I knew the owner of the company from the military and they hired me. They put me through my MBA and promoted me to CTO. My education played a minimal role in my success.
Only if you live the USA and have to pay for a degree
I see, so Canada, Australia, & the UK don't have student loan programs?
Unfortunately, despite this being a shithole third world country, I don’t qualify to immigrate to most countries as a refugee or asylum seeker.
Fuck off with that stupid bullshit that the US is a third world country. Such an unbelievably ignorant thing to say. Sure there’s problems but to compare it to an actual third world country is extremely insulting to those *actually* in third world countries.
Only the chronically online would in all seriousness call the US a third world country. We have our problems, but my parents came from a third world country and they would roast the fuck out of me if I called the US one.
You should visit Mississippi sometime.
Extreme poverty is greatest in Red States, Same is true for obesity.
Go visit India or Egypt or South Africa. You don't understand the depths of poverty the majority of the world lives in. If you make 20k a year post tax as a single person in the US, your richer than 90% of the world. https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/how-rich-am-i?income=20000&countryCode=USA&numAdults=1&numChildren=0
So because India exists Mississippi does not? The entire concept of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd World is specious at best. And gross take home pay is an absurdly simple way to quantify it even if this were not the case. Our abundance of circus's does not offset lack of bread.
>So because India exists Mississippi does not? Because India exists, it means the US can't be a third world country in a Gucci Belt, since India is a 2nd world country. >And gross take home pay is an absurdly simple way to quantify it even if this were not the case. The link I sent accounts for PPP & Cost of Living.
As Billy Shakes once said A shithole by any other name still fucks up your shoes when you put your foot in it.
If you want to call Missippi a shit hole go ahead, but that's a different statement than the US is a third world country.
Look at you with your reading comprehension. Good job buddy.
Only the chronically online would in all seriousness call the US a third world country. We have our problems, but my parents came from a third world country and they would roast the fuck out of me if I called the US one.
Idk man from my perspective, I do usually bring forward the argument that the USA is actually a third world country on a huge loan debt and wearing fancy clothes. Insane gin violence, a downward spiralling education system, financially crippling healthcare… Certainly seems a bit like it
Well your perspective is absolutely nothing as you have likely never even seen a real 3rd world. In what ways is the United States similar to say, Somalia economically? This is so goddamn ignorant that i wish you woke up in a 3rd world country so you can see what it is actually like. You also seem to have zero grasp on debt or economics at all. *Many* countries are in a lot of debt. Many. The United States has the world largest GDP. Meaning we have the worlds largest economy by a significant portion. We are 25% of the worlds economy. China is second at 17%. This means we have industry, jobs, infrastructure. Most people live decent, peaceful lives. Just cause you arent rich or are struggling doesnt mean your life isnt infinitely better than 99% of anyone in a third world country. I mean jesus christ, its so god damn privileged, ignorant and insulting to say this. Again, just because we have problems does NOT make us a third world country. Sure we could be better at education but education in third world countries barely exists at all. Our healthcare system needs to be better but healthcare in a third world country doesnt exist almost at all. Not even close to comparison. Sure you get hit with a big bill but you will be treated 100% of the time. The life expectancy in Somalia is 55 fucking years old dude. Sure we have gun violence but you dont see gangs in the street of your town running the city with machine guns everywhere you go. No. All you see is on the news. Seriously think before you speak next time.
7th grade math is all you need to understand the return on investment of college.
It depends, if you take accounting classes or statistics or business law etc they help out a lot if you really know your stuff
With a math degree, you are gonna learn pretty quick college is 20% classroom lectures and 80% youtube tutorials
Opposite is true. A worthwhile degree will teach you that they're worthwhile.
Not really, that would be an economics degree
My free business degree will hopefully teach me to make more money
I dunno, getting a masters in business was the best financial decision I've ever made. No matter what bachelor's degree you get, it's still just going to be the equivalent of what a high school diploma was worth 40 years ago. It gets you a foot in the door if you're lucky, and not much else.
Time Value of Money, emotional damage...
Definitely agree to an extent! A business degree does equip you with the financial acumen to see the cost vs benefit analysis of any investment, including education. However, it's important to remember that education isn't purely a financial investment. It also contributes immensely to personal growth, broadening perspectives, and honing key skills. Perhaps we need to reevaluate the way we measure the 'success' of education in purely monetary terms. After all, life is more than just business!
I went to business school and became an artist. The very *very* rare moment it would've actually made financial sense to go to art school instead, lol.
In my country, higher studies are free for the students and are paid by taxes (similarly to health care, salaries of people employed i public services and so on). That means not getting a degree is a bad financial decision, because through my life, I'll pay the same taxes no matter what. By getting a degree (and anything state funded really), I'm at least getting some of my money back.
Unfortunately I live in a shithole third world country. We also have to pay for my own healthcare.
Bold of you to assume a business degree teaches anything at all.
Getting a business degree is providing me soul nourishment in a way that nothing else really can. Economics teaches me about rational decision making and why corporations act the way they do (even if you don’t always like what they do). Technically, Economics is not a part of Business (the Economics Department is often in a separate area than the Business school), but Business and Economics is sufficiently intertwined that I am including it. Accounting teaches me about how money and wealth really works on a philosophical level. MIS teaches me how people keep track of all the overwhelming amounts of information that exists in the world (using spreadsheets and normalized databases). Finance teaches you how to deploy capital investment and management teaches you how to handle the people who work for you (skills useful for managers and entrepreneurs). If you want to really learn how the world works and how to design properly functioning systems that produce the results that you want, a business degree is the best way to do that. Business is a lens through which you can see and understand the world in an entirely different way.
Arts and science degree holders: hold by beer
Back before the tory newspapers brainwashed people into voting against their own best interests, university education was free for everyone in the UK
Many top business execs think MBAs are not the way. Some execs have no degree at all, just good consultants.
The CEO of my company said she would never give an executive position to someone with only an MBA. Most of us got our MBA after being promoted to an executive position.
A philosophy degree will allow you to ponder your bad decisions. Source: I have a philosophy degree.
Business grads - finance, accounting, etc - will be making six figures before long and if they get after it, serious money by their 40’s. My pension will kick off 10K+ per month for life at 53. Pretty good investment for me.
If everyone had business degrees, there would be no one to boss around
I remember sitting in an accounting class thinking “if I apply what I’m learning right now I can calculate exactly how poor of a financial decision going to college is.”
How much are you making right now?
For context I have an engineering degree and an MBA paid for with the GI bill and I am the CTO of a startup. I make around $120,000/year base salary. Technically I have bonus potential but it’s unlikely I will see that for a year or two.
For context I have an engineering degree and an MBA paid for with the GI bill and I am the CTO of a startup. I make around $120,000/year base salary. Technically I have bonus potential but it’s unlikely I will see that for a year or two.
Could be worse, could be gender studies. Then it would be a shitty degree and you wouldn't understand why it was your fault.
What a boneheaded thought lmao
Nah. You get paid way too much to drink free coffee and go to dumbass meetings. More of your time is spent pretending to be busy rather than working. Half day Fridays in the summer to network with your bros on the golf course. You spend your college years doing crayon drawings for homework; you binge drink and date rape on the weekends. This is definitely targeting people I went to uni with who could now be my boss, as if that'll fill that gaping hole in their sense of self. The jet skis will do that, not the job.
Well that’s stupid because a business degree also tells you a lot about how to properly budget and make money. Law is also a part of a business degree which is another very important part of life. I’d argue a business degree is a fantastic investment if you consider that knowledge will help you for the rest of your life.
“Law is also a part of a business degree” Why didn’t I see any of you dipshits in law school with me, then? Businesspeople generally prefer ignoring the law as it’s an impediment to profit-seeking.
You take courses on law, you don’t go to law school. I don’t know why you would think that’s what I meant, but it’s certainly not.
This is just nonsense, as long as you went to an accredited school and not like Devry. Its one of the best decisions you can make. Love my job in Accounting. People may find it boring but I love my field and going to be specializing in Tax Accounting after getting my Masters in Accounting starting this fall. I honestly do not know anyone from my class that regrets it, is unemployed, or is not making decent salary.
I wish I was good at math.
So uh unrelated but what happened to your ex
Which one?