Best university degrees to major in if you plan on starting your own business?

[preventingdiabetes]

(Titles have a character limit so I had to make it shorter)

What are the best university degrees to major in if you plan on starting your own business with what you learn from university?

I don't expect university to teach me everything I need to know when it comes to running a business online, so I'm going to be starting one while I am at university.

I am considering software engineering. But I might do a bachelor of business/commerce instead.

If I go with business, what should I choose? Marketing?

Any advice or tips would be great, thanks.

[Yarco]

I have a BComm (Accounting) and I run my own business. I don't think much of anything I learned in the classroom transferred over or was useful. Except maybe just a general business mindset and understanding of business culture and how to deal with people, not having to spend a couple hours learning how to invoice people.

Universities teach you how to work for someone else, they aren't great for teaching you how to start your own business.

I would question whatever beliefs you have that make you think a university degree is necessary to start a business. Is it to convince your parents? Do you feel like you need to have a qualification to be worthy of starting a business? Do you want it as a safety net to fall back on?

If you end up going, then marketing is a good choice. But be really careful and look through the courses offered in your program. You want most of it to be focused on digital marketing. Lots of universities are still stuck teaching outdated lessons on print or TV marketing, which is going to be pretty useless.

Some universities actually offer a major in entrepreneurship but I think that's more rare.

Make sure you calculate the cost of sitting in school for 4 years, both in terms of tuition you have to pay, and the time you'll spend. You say you'll start a business on the side, but when you have assignments due every week and exams every couple of months, are you really going to want to spend 20+ hours on your business?

Your university will also pack a bunch of useless electives in that you need to take for your degree, but don't relate to business at all. I think you can learn everything you need to start a business online, much much cheaper, much much faster, where you can study at your own pace, and learn as you actually build your business.

I also don't feel like university gives you any kind of big-picture view and understanding of how everything ties together. You're just doing little independent pieces of business just to get assignments done. You might get one big capstone course in strategic management at the end but that's it.

[Leo Gura]

University will not teach you biz at all, unless you go to business school.

Marketing & management would be the closest thing.

Edited November 25, 2022 by Leo Gura

[preventingdiabetes]

Thanks @Yarco for your detailed response.

8 hours ago, Yarco said:

I would question whatever beliefs you have that make you think a university degree is necessary to start a business.

I don’t think it is. I’ve learned more from my own curiosity, books, and courses, than all 13 years of my schooling combined. 
 

 

8 hours ago, Yarco said:

Is it to convince your parents?

Convince them of what?

Do my parents have a role in this? Yes. A large part of why I’m going because my parents want me to go. They can’t take not going as an option. 
 

8 hours ago, Yarco said:

Do you feel like you need to have a qualification to be worthy of starting a business?

No. People want results. I don’t think qualifications are absolutely necessary to provide results, (unless you’re doing medicine, law, etc).

What do you think?

8 hours ago, Yarco said:

Do you want it as a safety net to fall back on?

 Yes.
 

8 hours ago, Yarco said:

If you end up going, then marketing is a good choice. But be really careful and look through the courses offered in your program. You want most of it to be focused on digital marketing. Lots of universities are still stuck teaching outdated lessons on print or TV marketing, which is going to be pretty useless.

Okay. For some reason I have a belief that marketing is unethical. I can’t pinpoint where this belief came from.

What do you think?

8 hours ago, Yarco said:

You say you'll start a business on the side, but when you have assignments due every week and exams every couple of months, are you really going to want to spend 20+ hours on your business?

I can’t know that yet because I haven’t experienced it. I don’t know what it’s like.

8 hours ago, Yarco said:

I think you can learn everything you need to start a business online, much much cheaper, much much faster, where you can study at your own pace, and learn as you actually build your business.

Ideally, this is how I would’ve done it. I just don’t want to severe my relationship with my parents. In our (Asian) culture it’s kind of a huge thing to not go to university, and my parents have a social image to maintain.

I don’t care about that social image though, because frankly, I don’t want to enslave my life to what my parents, parents’ friends, and extended relatives want. 

I will be completely free at some point in my life, I am just not there yet. I’m working towards it.

 

[preventingdiabetes]

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

University will not teach you biz at all, unless you go to business school.

Marketing & management would be the closest thing.

@Leo Gura Business school? Is that the same as a degree in business? Like a Bachelors of Business/Commerce?

Like I said to Yarco, for some reason I have a belief that marketing is unethical. I can’t pinpoint where this belief came from.

Computer science is something I am considering, but I am not sure how much of it is actually coding and programming. 

[Yarco]

18 minutes ago, preventingdiabetes said:

Okay. For some reason I have a belief that marketing is unethical. I can’t pinpoint where this belief came from. What do you think?

We all have to do unethical things to survive. It just depends where you want to set the bar for yourself. On the extreme low end you've got killing plants to eat for sustenance. On the extreme high end you've got ponzi schemes and widespread fraud. Most people are somewhere in the middle, telling white lies.

Just like people say "a gun is just a tool", marketing is also just a tool. You can use it for good or evil. You can sell people useless junk they don't need. Or stuff like cigarettes that are actively harmful for them. Or you can create win-win situations where you market positive products that would actually improve people's lives, they just need to be made aware that they exist. It's totally possible to make a good living and actually help people.

18 minutes ago, preventingdiabetes said:

I just don’t want to severe my relationship with my parents. In our (Asian) culture it’s kind of a huge thing to not go to university, and my parents have a social image to maintain.

I don’t care about that social image though, because frankly, I don’t want to enslave my life to what my parents, parents’ friends, and extended relatives want. 

I will be completely free at some point in my life, I am just not there yet. I’m working towards it.

Recognizing that you're enslaved by the expectations of others is a good first step. But just being aware of it doesn't mean you aren't enslaved any more.

If you don't break free now, then when?

Be careful with putting it off until some later point in life. Otherwise then it becomes that once you're done university, you'll just get a good job to make your parents happy. Then you tell yourself you'll work on your business in your spare time, but for most people who end up in that situation, it never manifests, and your dream dies. You're going to need to have an uncomfortable conversation with your parents at some point. 

My parents looked down on all the careers that I wanted to do when I was in high school, and told me to go into accounting instead because it would be a stable job with good pay, and companies always need accountants. But in the end, I still ended up following my life purpose which was unrelated. So all that going to university did was waste 4 years of my life and a lot of money, and delayed myself getting to where I wanted to be. Or I could have just skipped university and been in the same place 4 years earlier.

Now I know that I'll never stop my kid from following their dreams, no matter how dumb it might seem to me, because you'll just delay the inevitable by 5 - 10 years and waste a lot of time and money. Then there's a good chance they end up in the same spot anyway, or otherwise unhappy doing something inauthentic.

Edited November 25, 2022 by Yarco

[spiritual memes]

Hustlers University 

[preventingdiabetes]

13 hours ago, Yarco said:

Just like people say "a gun is just a tool", marketing is also just a tool. You can use it for good or evil. You can sell people useless junk they don't need. Or stuff like cigarettes that are actively harmful for them. Or you can create win-win situations where you market positive products that would actually improve people's lives, they just need to be made aware that they exist. It's totally possible to make a good living and actually help people.

@Yarco That makes sense. So it's not what the tool is, it's how you use the tool.

13 hours ago, Yarco said:

Recognizing that you're enslaved by the expectations of others is a good first step. But just being aware of it doesn't mean you aren't enslaved any more.

I know I'm enslaved.

14 hours ago, Yarco said:

If you don't break free now, then when?

As soon as possible.

14 hours ago, Yarco said:

Be careful with putting it off until some later point in life. Otherwise then it becomes that once you're done university, you'll just get a good job to make your parents happy. Then you tell yourself you'll work on your business in your spare time, but for most people who end up in that situation, it never manifests, and your dream dies. You're going to need to have an uncomfortable conversation with your parents at some point. 

This is the exact script that I want to avoid. Thanks for the heads-up.

14 hours ago, Yarco said:

My parents looked down on all the careers that I wanted to do when I was in high school, and told me to go into accounting instead because it would be a stable job with good pay, and companies always need accountants.

If you don't mind me asking, what were all of the careers that you wanted to do when you were in high school?

14 hours ago, Yarco said:

But in the end, I still ended up following my life purpose which was unrelated. So all that going to university did was waste 4 years of my life and a lot of money, and delayed myself getting to where I wanted to be. Or I could have just skipped university and been in the same place 4 years earlier.

That is unfortunate. Couldn't you have dropped out at one point while you were in university?

[preventingdiabetes]

4 hours ago, blueberries said:

Annoyingly I can't find it now, but I definitely remember reading that (if they went to college) entrepreneurs in the US are most likely to have a Bachelor's degree in Economics or Philosophy. As a freelancer that works with a lot of entrepreneurs, I've definitely found those two subjects appear on LinkedIn a lot among founders. My first-ever client was a Philosophy graduate, and so is Leo...

@blueberries I would consider Philosophy, because it is something I do anyway, but apparently the degree is useless. Is that true? 

What is Economics like?

4 hours ago, blueberries said:

I wouldn't recommend studying Business or Marketing - those subjects seem more designed to teach people to be Managers, Executives, etc. The most entrepreneurial Business student I met told me the degree was pretty much bs and very little of it was applicable to realistically starting a business. 

Even Marketing? I guess it's only digital marketing that could be applicable to starting a business?

[Leo Gura]

ALL marketing is applicable to starting a biz. All marketing is fundamentally the same in abstraction, regardless of implementation.

Edited November 27, 2022 by Leo Gura

[preventingdiabetes]

On 26/11/2022 at 11:56 AM, blueberries said:

Honestly, if you HAVE to go to college, I'd probably just recommend choosing the subject that gives you the most free time so you can spend the rest of your time networking and learning about entrepreneurship firsthand.  

@blueberries What subjects/degrees give you the most free time?

On 27/11/2022 at 9:01 AM, blueberries said:

But you'd spend a lot of time looking at marketing case studies, theories, writing essays analyzing those case studies and theories

This sounds like a waste of time if we are talking about starting a business.

How is writing essays analyzing case studies and theories going to help me start a business?

It sounds too theoretical.
 

On 27/11/2022 at 10:00 PM, Leo Gura said:

ALL marketing is applicable to starting a biz. All marketing is fundamentally the same in abstraction, regardless of implementation.

@Leo Gura

Even what @blueberries just talked about? It sounds so theoretical and barely applicable to starting a real business.

Edited November 29, 2022 by preventingdiabetes

[MarkKol]

On 11/27/2022 at 10:00 AM, Leo Gura said:

ALL marketing is applicable to starting a biz. All marketing is fundamentally the same in abstraction, regardless of implementation.

What fo you think Apple's marketing strategy is? At the end of the day, they are the most successful at it

To understand marketing I think it makes sense to look at the company that's most effective in that domain

Edited November 29, 2022 by MarkKol

[puporing]

You don't need a degree to design and start a business. What you need the most is capital and efficient processes/organization, and the other skills you can learn on your own these days. I guess it depends on your goals. After a business major you will still be faced with actually designing a business from scratch and the capital initially (along with loans usually).

In hindsight knowing what I know now, and if business is where you know you want to be or at least attempt it, it would've been more intelligent to work some job and save up a bunch of money for starting a business along with the money you save by not paying a post-secondary institution (or just take select courses which are targed for designing a successful business) which tend to be overpriced in comparison to what the market can actually sustain. 

The education system as is currently has an underlying "indentured servitude" built in that they do not inform you of, by getting people into debts in a specific narrow field and such that you can only find work in that field and forced to climb some ladder from the bottom with no guarantee whatsoever. If you change your mind about your profession you're left with debt and years of lost time which you could use for building a business and assets. I'm not saying there's no downside as well as risks to business where you could also lose time and money, but the risk may be equally or possibly lower than getting an education depending on what kind of business you're getting into and there's more you can tweak and be in control of than the alternative. As a tangent, just the fact that you cannot default on a student loan but can declare bankruptcy with other loans should tell you a lot about what the system favors currently. Needless to say I am not talking about the case where you had a more specific profession that you are quite convinced of getting into that definitely requires technical training then that's still the only option.

The main thing that skews this decision (from an economic standpoint starting out) for most people is their parents lack of support in them pursuing business and biased towards getting a degree. 

Other than the above there are jobs that pay quite well being an employee with no prior training (or very short training duration) and mostly in the skills labor, and you're not as exploited by the system.

It's just good to know the truth of things of what you're getting into with all your time/energy.

Edited November 29, 2022 by puporing

[Michael569]

What sort of business so you plan to start?

In general you either need to be a good marketer or have someone give you a leg up with an injection of capital and help you spread awareness

Everything else is secondary.

Edited December 1, 2022 by Michael569

[Display_Name]

Literally none lol. What a colossal waste of time and money instead of just starting right away if entrepeneurship is your desire.

[Display_Name]

University knowledge is so outdated its ridiculous

even my relatively modern design degree has nothing on the current meta that's needed for actual biz / the new wave

things like:

figma
notion
webflow

not to mention the new wave of:
AI
VR

not a chance. its all useless

[Rob06]

I would choose a university degree that teaches you something you're genuinely interested in, whether that be software engineering, sociology, or something artsier. Then on the side, you can start your business. There are many resources online that teach you how to do that.

[Alex_R]

Get a job in sales and start a cs degree wich focuses more on Product Management than coding software

[Alex_R]

Your goal is to land a job in Product management, Project Management or Fullstack Marketer, try to talk with people who do that work and ask them wich will be the best path

 

If you combine some formal experience with self-learned knowleadge + some good amount off savings then you are set to go to start a good biz