Do Business Administration Studies Offer Better Preparation for Supervisory Positions than Traditional Economics Studies?

Hans Heijke (), Ger Ramaekers and Catherine Ris ()

Education Economics, 2005, vol. 13, issue 3, 315-329

Abstract: The central theme of the paper is the question of whether graduates of business administration (BA) are better prepared for supervisory positions than non-BA economics graduates and consequently have a greater chance of acquiring supervisory positions and, when they have such positions, earn more. In order to answer this question, we use a data-set that relates to the labour market position of graduates from Dutch universities at the early stages of their careers. We find that BA graduates, despite their multidisciplinary education and the fact that they perceive fewer deficiencies in their education with respect to the ability for teamwork than non-BA graduates, do not have a greater chance of acquiring supervisory positions than graduates from non-BA economics courses. We also find that earnings in supervisory positions do not differ significantly between BA graduates and non-BA graduates. The finding that most of the skills required for supervisory positions are acquired through work and not in education suggests that a combination of working and learning may be more effective for developing supervisory skills than a purely educational setting.

Keywords: Business administration; graduates; supervisory positions; required competences; job chances; earnings (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/09645290500073829 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:edecon:v:13:y:2005:i:3:p:315-329

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CEDE20

DOI: 10.1080/09645290500073829

Access Statistics for this article

Education Economics is currently edited by Caren Wareing and Steve Bradley

More articles in Education Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().