Bsc Business Management v Marketing

[Shimy]

Very early days but DS has asked me to pop this question. In terms of job opportunities which course do people think is more regarded by employers. He is really keen on Marketing but worried it might too narrow a course to study at university and perhaps Business Management would give more bandwidth.

Doing a quick online job search I’m seeing lots of Marketing jobs but not quite sure what happens to graduates of Business Management.

I was going to mention Cranfield (my local!) but it is only postgrad., mind.

The MBAs which have most value build upon your experience, allowing you to tailor the modules to focus on something which interests you within your career. One is my colleagues, a sales director, is looking at ethics & strategic CSR in hers. The worst tend to be taken by overseas students in a bid to top up their maths degrees straight after graduation from none of the unis mentioned above.

I've worked in marketing for 10+ years with an unrelated degree, and definitely wouldn't look for a marketing degree when recruiting - more attitude, curiosity about customers and relevant work experience. The most recent person I recruited had no degree and was part way through a CIM diploma (she'd started with the certificate). Is he set on university? If not I'd definitely look at marketing apprenticeship options - it's a great way to get straight in to the industry and I know that I'd hire a 21 year old who'd done an apprenticeship and had 3 years practical experience over one with 3 years theoretical university study.

Your experience isn’t borne out by recruitment to prestigious companies though. They actually prefer the Management degrees and put DC on high calibre grad training programmes. They don’t expect the finished article at 21 or 22. Most DC then specialise afterwards. Management opens so many more doors.

Also the best Management courses ask for higher grade A levels. Employers know these tend to be a good pool for employment and have a wide variety of skills that can be honed. Wouldn’t Marketing for 3 years be very one dimensional? And a tad boring? It is one aspect of running a business but only one. It’s a bit like doing HR at university when you can easily do it post grad if that’s what you want.

Quite a lot of people who do marketing degrees actually want to work n advertising. So, it's not all about wanting to go into business. A Marketing degree can be narrow but needn't be . It's an ideal degree when combined with a language , or with business, for example.

Many Marketing degrees offer very varied modules.

But tend to have lower entry requirements and less breadth than Management or they would be called Management and require higher A level grades.

Thank you all for your comments which I’m just getting back into reading after a short spell away. There are valid points in all of them and varied routes towards what DS wants. He is now looking seriously at the Management courses as well as Business Management happy in the knowledge he hasn’t closed the door to Marketing. I think this will benefit him more as he ultimately wants to have his own business one day.

I have to admit I’d always thought degrees in Management studies (as they were called in my day) were just about People & Organisations, a bit boring. looking at the content at Bath & Lancaster has got both of
us really excited. This thread has been really beneficial.