Freshmen Abandon Business
January 21, 2010
The percentage of college freshmen planning to major in business is at its lowest level since the mid-1970s, according to a national survey of students who entered baccalaureate institutions in the fall.
Thursday, the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at the University of California at Los Angeles released the 2009 version of its “Freshman Survey,” which it has conducted annually since 1966. This latest report is based on the responses of nearly 220,000 first-time, full-time students at 297 four-year institutions. All data have been "statistically adjusted" to reflect the views of nearly 1.4 million freshmen who entered college in the fall.
From 2008 to 2009, the percentage of freshman who plan on majoring in business fell from 16.8 percent to 14.4 percent. The last time interest in the business major was lower was 1974, with 14 percent. Also, in one year, the percentage of freshmen who listed their "probable career" as one in business dropped from 14.1 percent to 12.1 percent. This is an all-time low for the survey; the previous low was in 2003, when 13.8 percent reported that their goal was a career in business.
“I think that a business career doesn’t look as appealing as it once did, nor does it come with a guarantee of being well-off financially as in the past,” said Linda DeAngelo, co-author of the accompanying report and assistant director of research for the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at HERI. “Some of that can definitely be attributed to the general sense that we spent a lot of time over the past year raking business executives and people in high finance over the coals. There’s certainly a trickle down, and I don’t think high school students are immune to that overall feeling about business.”