The administration of the Warrington College of Business Administration recently announced its plans to do away with managerial economics, a long-required course for many majors in the business college. The deans have decided to replace this course with international business, on the claim that a new global economy demands business students learn how to compete worldwide. However, the real reasons motivating their decision show little regard for the business college students and the value of their degrees.
Managerial economics is one of the few courses in the business college with a high level of mathematical rigor. For example, students must determine profit maximizing price with the aid of partial derivatives. Though one could make the argument that few people actually see this in the business world, the course develops analytical thinking skills that are the real determination of value in the corporate world.
At the risk of offending business majors, many of the classes taken in the business college lack rigor and can easily be passed with the aid of a few Tutoring Zone sessions. There are major exceptions to this generalization, such as finance and managerial economics.
College should be a time of challenging intellectual bounds, searching for new ideas and seeking to add knowledge to the world. Critical thinking and analytical tools are more valuable today than at any other point in history. Replacing managerial economics with international business will create more of a punch-card culture in the college.
Essentially, substituting international business for managerial economics amounts to dumbing down the business school curriculum. It makes a business degree from UF less valuable, and it puts more money in the pockets of the business school even as tuition fees go up that, in theory, is supposed to go totally toward undergraduate education. Trying to pass the curriculum change off as anything else is a joke, and the sad part is that the joke’s on students.
