Many traditional degrees don’t teach practical skills relevant to the modern working world, even if they can still get you employed in many industries. This can leave some postgraduates feeling woefully unprepared for the business world – sometimes making extra booster courses necessary.
However, other degrees are very much geared to teaching practical business skills. These include the likes of accounting, marketing, economics, finance, management and business administration. This post delves more into how these degrees can build business acumen, and how they could be a good choice for those pursuing a modern corporate job.
Accounting
Accounting degrees teach students all about the management of money – including tax preparation, budgeting, forecasting and auditing. If you plan to get a job at an accountancy firm, then an accounting degree is obviously a great option. However, such a degree could also help you to land a more general admin role working in almost any industry – given that a certain amount of accounting is often done in-house and designated to general office workers. It could also teach you the skills to do your own accounting if you decide to start a business.
Marketing
Every business needs to do marketing in order to attract clients. This can include an array of different tactics including email marketing, PPC advertising, content marketing, telemarketing, SEO and social media marketing. A marketing degree can teach you a range of different marketing tactics – enabling you to work for a marketing agency or in the in-house marketing department of a company, or simply teaching you how to market your own business.
Economics
Economics teaches how markets function. This degree can be useful to budding business owners or those wanting to pursue business admin jobs, because it can provide knowledge of how to analyze market trends and how to price products. It can teach a lot of business terms and provide an overview of many different industries.
Finance
Finance is closely linked to economics, but focuses more on ways of using money: including banking, loans, investments and savings. A finance degree can teach many accounting skills, while also teaching how to seek out funding and how to grow money. It can be very useful for those that want to get into industries like banking, lending and investing – but also useful to many entrepreneurs and general admin workers in any industry by teaching money management skills.
Management
A management degree is centred around how to manage a business. It can teach a variety of skills including how to manage money, people, resources and marketing strategies. Further qualifications like a master of management online may enhance your employability in a range of sectors, while continuing to teach useful admin skills.
Administration
Business management and business administration are sometimes used interchangeably – such degrees can teach similar skills to management degrees, but may have less of a focus on leading people, instead focusing on tasks like accounting and appointment scheduling and stock control. You can find many business administration degrees online and they can be ideal for teaching general business skills relevant to any industry.
