Pursuing a business degree can help you advance your career, open new opportunities, add to your current skills, and help you improve your career overall. There’re different kinds of business degrees one can pursue, and the pros include increased salary, transferable skills, career flexibility, career progression, and building a network for your business. At the same time, one should be aware of the hurdles or cons of pursuing this degree to be well aware when making a decision that includes time-consuming, pricey degree, competition, and interest. To conclude, if a business degree is worth it depends on your aim and goals you wish to achieve and how this degree can help you with it.
Getting a business degree has always been in demand and is one of the most popular degrees pursued by students in colleges or universities. While this is true, a business degree is no child’s play and requires effort, time, and money to pursue it.
So, why would someone want to spend their time, energy, and money achieving something when they already have a stable career? People decide to get a business degree to advance their careers, open more opportunities, and add new skills.
But how does a business degree add to your skills, and what do you learn from it? How helpful is a business degree in achieving your goals? Is it really worth it? Let’s see what doors open for you if you get this degree.
What’s a business degree?
Before we jump right into learning how a business degree can prove to be helpful to you, a quick round-up about this degree is essential if you don’t know much about it.
In a nutshell, it’s a bachelor’s degree in any business area. Programs may be more in general, focusing on a broad range of business functions and how they interact with one another. They can even be specialized and explore a specific side of the business, making you a master in it, which is a master in business administration (MBA).
Generalist business degrees provide foundational knowledge across all business functions like business administration, business management, or management and leadership.
Then there are degrees like MBA, which focuses on the depth of knowledge in a single aspect of business like marketing, accounting, finance, and human resources.
All of these come under a business degree, and it depends on which degree you want to pursue.
6 pros of getting a business degree
Whether you should get a business degree can be challenging when you don’t know how it can change your life. For someone working in a stable job is everything, and they don’t want to spend their time, energy, and money on something which can’t prove to be too helpful for their career.
Most people choose to remain at one job and steadily work up. But why settle for long hard work when you can achieve a higher rank with a higher position, improved skills, and a higher salary by taking up a business degree.
1. Increased salary
One of the most important aspects of getting a business degree is seeing if you can get a salary increment from this degree.
According to payscale.com, an MBA in Strategy is the 5th highest paying graduate degree, while Business & Information Technology was placed at rank number 18 in the top-paying bachelor degrees.
For someone with a business degree, you’ll be placed in a much higher job title than someone with a high school diploma or other diplomas. With a high-paying job from the beginning, your salary will only increase with the years and experience gained.
If you have further doubts, then take a look at it from the potential ROI perspective. It’s essentially a comparison of your likely long-term gains against your short-term losses, and ROI typically deals with the financial aspects of value.
According to an analysis from The Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP), business degrees have a positive ROI 98 percent of the time.
This means that if you’ve got a business degree in your hand, you’ll end up making more money than spent earning it. FREOPP is a great tool to help you estimate your long-term earnings based on major and university.
2. Transferable skills
A business degree is not earned just to start your business. It’s a degree with very flexible skills, which comes in handy in many situations if the person using it knows where to apply it.
Business is present in every field when you look around, and there’re plenty of opportunities to grab for everyone. With a business degree in your hand, you can apply to any industry.
Skills such as communication, adaptability, teamwork, and leadership are needed in every industry, depending on where you would like to work and use these skills. It teaches you to be versatile and develop out-of-box thinking demanding skills in any industry.
Some other skills you’ll learn:
- Budgeting and finance
- Problem-solving and creative solutions
- Anticipating future trends through data analysis
- Communication and critical thinking
- Goal setting and planning
- Project management and supervision
If you want to prepare yourself for a fast-paced environment, this is what you seriously need to consider.
3. Career flexibility
Industries such as information technology, media, advertising, fast-moving consumer goods, or healthcare management require business graduates to fill specific positions.
For someone who doesn’t want to end up with one career path and wants to diversify their career by working for different industries until they’ve found what they’re looking for, this degree can help you achieve that.
4. Career progression
With all the skills gained from a business degree, it kicks your career into a fast-forward direction. It provides you with a better understanding of how a business works and your role in the company you’re working for.
Obviously, if you and your colleague are applying for the same upper-level position where you have a degree in business and the other person doesn’t, the possibility of you getting that position is higher. It depends on many factors, but if you’re good at what you do and tactfully apply your skills learned from a business degree, the chances would be favorable to you.
5. Building a network for your business
Not everyone wants to work for other businesses, and with each new year, more and more people are jumping in on the wagon of a start-up where everyone wants to prove their business idea is worthy.
Going to a business school can set up a great foundation base for the dreams that you wish to achieve. Many undergraduate programs have career resource centers and extensive alumni networks that you can take advantage of while earning your degree.
You can learn from your internships while you contact the right people who would be helpful to you when you start your own business. These colleges and universities are great places to network, and they can help you connect with professors, mentors, and peers needed for your business.
The advantage here is that you’ll step into the field knowing where to start and what actions to take to achieve your goals. Insider knowledge can help build a strong foundation, mitigate losses, assess risks, and more. Business is all about the right timing of a decision.
6. Further studies
Not everyone is satisfied with a bachelor’s degree in business, and they want to specialize in a field of their choice and get better career opportunities later.
For someone with a long-term goal in their mind who has higher goals and objectives to achieve, getting into a business school at an undergraduate level is like a stepping stone to get to their MBA degree.
A bachelor’s in business isn’t a prerequisite, but it sure does help increase efficiency that sets you apart from someone who doesn’t have a background in business.
4 cons of getting a business degree
As beneficial as getting a business degree can be for your career, there’re some hurdles to look out for. Like anything, getting a business degree might have some cons that one should be aware of to make better decisions.
1. Time-consuming
Time is a luxury, and not everyone can afford to spend all their hours and energy to get a business degree. A business degree demands attention and energy from someone pursuing it.
The curriculum is challenging and needs utmost devotion to understand various concepts and learn skills. It’s not a course that can be useful if you pursue it half-heartedly or learn it as a distance course.
If you’re willing to put in the hours and work needed for this degree, then it’s right to consider pursuing this degree.
2. Pricey degree
While your return might be more than you’ve to spend on the tuition only if you’re good at what you’re doing and know how to smartly apply your skills and degree when needed. Not all those who get done with this degree will earn more than they spent earning it.
Therefore, interest is of the utmost matter when pursuing a business degree. The tuition fees may vary from college to college, but it’s still pricey. Although different colleges have affordable plans for paying tuition, there’re scholarship programs and tuition incentives students can benefit from.
3. Competition
Competition is a big part of this field, and if you aren’t ready to compete with others in the same area to stand out or make your own position in the world, then this degree might not be so beneficial to you.
Just because you might have the means, time, and energy to pursue this degree doesn’t mean you should go ahead with it. The competition in this field is fierce and demands a certain level of assertiveness and confidence from you. You should be willing to develop new ideas and be on a constant learning curve.
Although there’re plenty of jobs in the market in any industry you wish to enter, if you’ve no interest in improving yourself constantly, which will be demanded from you in this industry, you should re-consider going in this direction.
4. Interest
Last but not least, interest in a field is vital for anyone wishing to go in a particular direction. This factor is interrelated with competing with others in this field and how well you’ll be able to do so and still keep standing.
You shouldn’t pursue this degree if you’re doing it in the hopes of pleasing your parents or under peer pressure. You might get through it, get the degree, and even land yourself a decent job. But when you start working in any industry with a business degree, it will demand your constant involvement and reinvention, which you might not be able to give.
There’re many qualities a person with a business degree should consist of to achieve great things at their workplace. If your work is constant and you can’t contribute to the business in any way, you might see lesser opportunities coming your way.
Consider this factor more than anything else and see if you genuinely are interested in pursuing a business degree.
Is a business degree worth it?
Having compared the pros and cons of pursuing a business degree to see if it’s the right choice for you, there’s a lot for you to unpack here before arriving at any decision.
We can see many advantages come from getting a degree in business as it opens lots of doors for you in numerous industries. But that isn’t the only thing that could make you pursue this degree. After all, what use is a degree if one doesn’t have a genuine interest in this field?
Still, many people pursue a business degree by only looking at the pros. While some seek it with wishful thinking, others have something great in mind that can impact a particular industry.
In the end, the decision is yours to make of whether you’ve what it takes. The important thing is to look at your interests, goals, and priorities for your present self and the future self.
If you’re someone who wants to advance their career in business, a business degree can do that and much more for you. It can increase job prospects, create advancement opportunities, and increase your salary and lifetime income.
If you feel confident in a leadership position, enjoy critical thinking, and work with others to create innovative business solutions, this degree can prove beneficial.
It’s a demanding degree and needs your time, effort, and energy. There’s a lot to cover, and you would be required to evolve constantly keep on learning new things and skills around you even after getting a job.
If you’re willing to do this and have the capacity to achieve it with determination, then it’s worth getting a business degree.
Do you need a business degree to start a business?
Do you really need a business degree to start your own business? Not really.
You don’t actually need a business degree to start your business. Still, the importance of getting this degree has many aspects which you should definitely look into before starting something of your own.
Your idea might be brilliant, and you may even know your industry by either researching it in detail or working in it for several years. But it’s only fitting to look into what difference a business degree can make in your life and your business if you decide to get one.
This is why you need a business degree:
- When pursuing a business degree, the college teaches you traditional topics and instills many soft skills in you as a student, which helps you long-term.
- Having basic knowledge about different aspects of a business and not just innovation helps you understand everything about your business. It prevents someone in your business from committing fraud, too, as you’re aware of marketing, sales, tax, accounting, and overall business management.
- For industries that are technical and complex in nature, a college degree can be beneficial to your success.
- Some crucial skills you learn while getting a business degree include budgeting and finance, problem-solving and creative solutions, anticipating future trends through data analysis, communication and critical thinking, goal setting and planning, project management, and supervision.
- Entrepreneurship is entirely different from being someone’s employee and requires constant involvement in the business. Stepping into starting your own business not only requires thorough knowledge of the industry and skills needed to accomplish a task. You need a strong determination and willingness to accomplish things and constantly work towards your goals despite the hardships and hurdles.
- Business requires money, and that fact shouldn’t be lost on you. People pursue a degree in business not just to learn the means of running a business but to work somewhere and have enough financial support before starting something of their own.
Having enough passion for starting your own business is a crucial factor. Many young people don’t bother completing their college because they’re determined and confident enough to start their business.
It helps if you’ve any real-world experience in the industry and those who’ve worked as an employer in a similar industry have much more knowledge.
The last two factors to consider before jumping into starting your business include your current financial standing and a strong support system.
FAQs
What business jobs are in high demand?
When it comes to focusing on specific business-related jobs which are in high demand and can provide you an opportunity to make money, the list includes:
- Management analyst
- Financial analyst
- Marketing manager
- Human resources manager
- Sales manager
- Purchasing manager
The highest paying jobs include financial, human resources, and sales managers. The median salary for these roles exceeds $120,000 per year, according to May 2020 BLS data.
What kind of degree is a business degree?
A bachelor’s degree in business teaches students to analyze data, supervise teams, and make business strategy decisions. Undergraduates can specialize in their degrees by choosing a bachelor’s in business management, which emphasizes management skills, or a bachelor’s in entrepreneurship to become a business founder.
Some of the best majors include:
- Marketing
- International business
- Accounting
- Logistics
- Finance
- Investments and securities
- Human resource management
- E-commerce
Which degree is best for online business?
The best degree to get for online business degrees is a bachelor’s in business administration (BBA) degree for those who wish to work in management and finance. A bachelor’s degree qualifies you to get entry-level jobs in any industry.
Suppose you wish to grab a higher title, such as an executive position. In that case, you might want to look into specializing in one field of business such as marketing, finance, human resources, accounting, and so on. MBA is what you should pursue.
Online programs allow their students to complete their degree in about 18 months through fast-track programs.
Do companies care if your MBA is online?
While online degrees should be treated equally as getting them by studying on campus, it wasn’t the case before the current situation of the pandemic, with conditions changing as converting things to online, whether work or school, people are forced to consider online degrees the same.
What matters now is the reputation of the institution and its accreditation.
To summarize
A business degree is worth it if it helps you advance your career, opens up new opportunities for you, adds to your current skills, and mainly helps you achieve your goals for your career.
There’re several pros and cons when it comes to seeing if it’s really worth your time, energy, and money. But the final decision should also be made if you’re interested in this field. If you’re, there’re plenty of opportunities to be grabbed.
If you’re interested and believe a business degree can advance your career in any way, you’ll find ways to pay the tuition with the help of scholarship programs and other options to save money on this degree.
I hope you found some relevant information and if a business degree is suited to your current needs or not. If yes, then march forward with the determination to make a change to better your future and pursue this degree!
