What's the importance of your undergrad major after you have a Master degree?

I have a question about the american perception of the undergrad degree.

As most of you must be aware the "major" system of undergrad education is pretty much a american thing - in most of the world you don't have a "major" you actually study 3 or 4 years the same subject.

The consequence of this is that in some countries (mine is one of them) the subject of your undergrad is REALLY important, even after you got a Master or a PHD. People sometimes won't take you serious if you don't have a undergrad in the same subject of your Master.
(even with years of work experience on the field - pretty silly, I know)

I know it's not the case here in the USA but as I'm living here right now (and intend to stay after graduating) I'd like to ask my american friends here:

Do the undergrad major has any weight on the resume of someone after he gets a Master degree? For example, if some one has a MBA but a BA in Psychology, would that person be considered less qualified than someone with a MBA and a BA in Business?

Likewise. how much weight your undergrad alma-mater has after you get a Master? Is your Master always more important than the undergrad?

I know this a very subjective question but I'm curious to hear what you people think.

 

In my opinion they are complimentary - at least in the sciences and engineering.
But in many fields work history experience counts for a lot in job seeking and job promotions.

 

Well, I would say it depends on your profession. For example, if you're an Real Estate broker or Agent, and your undergraduate major was in Electrical Engineering. That is completely off the track. Speaking of Business major is quite general, which can apply to any industries. Therefore, I think Business should be implemented into minor. Perhaps, most of Law School also put MBA a joint program with JD.

 

In my MBA program most people don't have a business degree as their undergrad - the MBA is designed to cover off all the necessary topics, so most students have an Engineering, Finance or Economics undergrad.

I'd imagine this is very subjective. In my case, my Indiana MBA easily trumps my Excelsior undergrad, so it's no surprise which I'd emphasize. However, if someone got a Harvard BA and a MA from a lesser school I would think they would leverage the Harvard name more than their MA's alma mater.

Short answer - it depends.

 

In my experience, you would be no less qualified.

Really, as already mentioned, it depends on your career path. Sciences and Engineering should show continuity throughout the academic path.

I know plenty of business people with undergraduate degrees in Liberal Studies. I know attorneys with their undergrads in Liberal Studies.

As for your specific example, I think a BA in Psych would work quite nicely with an MBA. Think about it

One thing that is special to the United States is our mobility. If I met an attorney who got her undergrad in Art History or Engineering or any other contrasting subject matter, I wouldn't bat an eye.

 

Great question.

Here in America, it almost doesn't matter what your undergraduate degree is, and once you obtain a graduate degree, it doesn't really matter at all, except in some cases.

On a resume, once you have a Master's, if you feel the need to hide your undergraduate major, you can simply choose not to list the degree (since a bachelor's is implied), or you can list it without listing the major.

The truth is, American Bachelor's degrees aren't very specialized. Lots of people double major. People with undergrad degrees in literature, philosophy, art, and social sciences often go on to buisness school, law school or medical school. In fact, psychology is one of those degrees that is considered rather general- a major in it doesn't imply specialization at all, as many people (including myself) major in it if they are simply looking into a human services field (which imply probably 70% of all existing jobs in a postindustrial economy).

In your case, I think that having a psychology degree would be considered an advantage. It shows that you took a good deal of time to understand PEOPLE and not just statistical models and theory.

In fact, here in America, many specialized graduate schools prefer that you do not take an undergraduate major in the same field you will have your graduate major in- the graduate school wants it to teach you that themselves.

 

Thanks everyone for the input - but just to clarify, the "Psy major + MBA" was just a example.

My undergrad is in History and my (current pursuing) MFA in Motion Pictures and Television.

One of the reasons that I created this Thread is that every now and then I keep thinking that I should get a Communications or Media degree (I could get one cheap at Excelsior or Cuny) just to go along better with my MFA.

Am I being silly?

I know that's basically my brazilian head thinking (because everyone in Brazil ask me "how can you get accepted in a Motion Picture program with a History degree???") and is not really a issue here in the USA.

But just I wanted to be sure

 

Yes, you're being silly . I don't know about the Motion Picture business, however, in general, Master's degrees outweigh and completely trump Bachelor's.

If it is THAT important to you, as you said, it shouldn't be too hard (especially for a graduate student) to get a related degree from Excelsior. Cuny a bit harder, as for their "Communications and Culture" major you would have to take a certain ammount of specific classes- but probably less expensive and maybe more enjoyable than going through the Excelsior "just get a degree" method.

History is, again, one of many undergraduate degrees that are considered general. Hardly any history major ever becomes a historian, a few become teachers, but most either go on to study something else (like you are), or, they enter the general job market, armed with a degree in SOMETHING.

 

Very interesting topic. Here in Canada I have seen professors only list their masters and doctorates in their main profile. For example, someone that holds an engineering undegraduate and an MBA and PhD in business adminidtration might only emphasise their MBA and PhD if they are business school professors. I have also seen people with foreign undergraduate degrees list only their Canadian graduate degrees on their profile.

I guess if someone has completed an MBA and DBA or PhD in business, then this is their area of expertise...the undergraduate education is so far removed it is worth mentioning as much as a high school diploma as far as relevance is concerned.

I guess it really depends. If you have a Harvard DBA and an MBA from a low-ranked school, mentioning Harvard and Harvard only might be the best bet. But, if your BA is from Harvard and the MBA is from NCU or Walden, the dynamics are strange...it might be best to do the opposite!!!

 

Hikaru,

I think your question would be best answered if you described your goal.

What is it you want to do in your career?

 

I applied for a position that used an electronic grade out system. I had to answer "no" to the question of whether I had a bachelors in business (my BA is not in business) which immediately disqualified me despite having an MBA. I did get this issue resolved but it was not easy.

I don't know how jobs are applied for, or hired, in your industry but if there is the potential that you will have to use an automated hiring system be prepared to address the issue.

If the bachelors you are considering are the industry accepted then I would consider one but only if it was inexpensive.

In many instances the MFA is considered a terminal degree and should outweigh your exisiting bachelors.

 

It is in the United States that I live in.

It depends on what the person reading the resume is looking for, I guess.

Traditionally, higher education has progressed through the same three steps: a bachelors, (less often) a masters and (even more rarely) a doctorate.

Today, particularly in some of the professional subjects, we do see people routinely entering graduate programs without having an undergraduate background in the subject of the advanced degree. MBAs are moving in that direction.

I think that de-emphasis of the undergraduate degree is still highly unusual in the sciences, mathematics, engineering and in the more academic sorts of subjects.

I've heard of people getting into graduate programs in philosophy without an undergraduate degree in philosophy, but those people usually have bachelors degrees in related subjects and can demonstrate that they are familiar with the branch of philosophy that they propose to study at the graduate level. Art historians who become interested in aesthetics, for example. I suppose that it might be possible to slide from physics to to the philosophy of science, into applied mathematics, or into astronomy, depending on the particular undergraduate classes that were taken.

Could be. Business isn't my field of interest and I don't actually know this for a fact, but I'd guess that employers are becoming more aware of degree-inflation and they might want to look at a person's undergraduate major for precisely that reason. I'd also speculate that it might be more important in some business specialties than others.

Taxation, finance or accounting seem like a pretty technical specialties to me, and a masters degree that takes a strong undergraduate foundation and expands it into advanced applications is probably more impressive to employers than a masters that's mostly introductory material.

My opinion is that a person's education is the entire cake, not just the sweet frosting on top. All parts of it contribute something.

 

Thanks everyone for the great replies!

I would like to point out that my question has a more broad intention, is not really about my career, more about getting a better understanding of the American point of view about higher education.

Although I have a BA in History I've been working as a freelancer in the Animation/Video/TV field for some years and that's one of the rare cases where people really don't care about your degrees - what matters is your portfolio.

My main reason to get my MFA is to be able to get a work visa (for a H1B you need a degree in your field) and to be able to teach later on.

As I said, sometime I think about getting a Media/Communication degree to make my CV more coherent, but deep down I now it's a little bit silly in a American context (it's not silly in a Brazilian context).

 

When I was an undergrad at BYU, I noticed that quite a few top business, law and medical schools were recruiting students who were graduating in the humanities, languages and social sciences. When I asked the recruiters about this trend, they were unites in saying that too many business, pre-law and pre-med students were highly focused, but tended to lack "broadness" in their education and that they found higher success with more "liberal studies-type" degrees. My brother-in-law received his B.A. in humanities and he had several MBA programs trying to recruit him.

 

Sadly, the NYT ran a story last week about colleges closing philosophy and humanities programs because of the perception among students and parents that these degrees qualify one to say "can I start an espresso drink for you?"

On the topic, as a hiring manager, a BS in Psychology followed by MBA would seem favorable to me, especially if the candidate didn't have a lot of experience.

Phillip

 

UF cut their PhD in Philosophy. Why spend $20k a year on a grad student to prepare them for a career at Barnes and Noble?

 

Students with bachelors degrees in philosophy do extremely well on the LSAT and often enter law school. Law requires the identification of abstract legal issues that are instantiated in particular cases, something that philosophy undergraduates are trained to do instinctively. The rules of evidence in Anglo-American jurisprudence are developments of John Wilkins and Joseph Glanvill's 'reasonable doubt' epistemological theories, propounded in the 17'th century Royal Society in response to the Pyrrhonian skepticism that was then influential in France. (Descartes' philosophy was another kind of response to the same issues.)

Philosophy majors do very well on the GMAT and produce the highest GRE(Verbal) scores of any major, as I recall. (It's a very writing intensive subject.)

Medicine has traditionally recruited people with strong pre-med backgrounds. While that didn't necessarily require a complete biological-science bachelors degree, it did require serious chemistry prerequisites, as well as stuff like cell-biology, anatomy and physiology. I'm starting to sense that some medical schools are drifting away from that, which might not be a good thing in my opinion.

The thing is, both legal JDs and medical MDs are what people often call 'first professional degrees'. Degreeinfo has already argued at great length about whether or not these are 'real' doctorates. (I generally think that they are.) But I guess that everyone can agree that people enter legal and medical graduate programs without having earned bachelors degrees in law or medicine first.

My impression is that the MBA is in the process of changing from a more conventional graduate degree into being a first-professional degree in business. In the past, undergraduate business majors did a BS in business administration, then they went to graduate school. Now many students seem to be entering business graduate school without any undergraduate business background.

 

Question: Does my undergraduate major matter when I have a masters in another field?

Answer: You can't answer this solely as an academic question. Do you have work experience?

In my experience hiring at many different levels in corporate America (which is a different animal from academia, admittedly) and in IT where the issue is further complicated by professional certifications I'll say this:

If everything you do has a good reason for your doing it, and you can directly attribute actions, successes and results to each thing you've done, then everything is relevant regardless of how off-kilter or non related it may look from a simply academic basis. It's then your responsibility to show this synthesis on a CV or a resume to your employer of choice in order to convert that knowledge to cash.

What you learn is learned so you can do something with it. If you have a history of random certs, and a disjointed academic background with nothing that provides synthesis, you'll have a problem.

Two cents.