Is a General Business Degree a Better Value than One that Focuses on a Particular Field of Study?

Key Takeaways:

• A general business degree offers career flexibility, making it easier to adapt across various business roles if market conditions change​.
• Specialized degrees provide a clear career path with in-depth expertise in a particular field, potentially accelerating career progression in that specialty​.
• Both degree types are valuable and roughly equal in terms of career prospects and earnings potential, so the choice should align with personal career goals​.

In this ranking, we examine the general business degree value compared to the advantages of a specialized business degree to help you decide the best business degree for career growth. Is a general business degree worth it? Or is focusing on a particular field a better path?

A specialized business degree offers a clear career trajectory. Whether you specialize in finance, marketing, accounting, or supply chain management, you’ll gain focused expertise to secure roles in your chosen field. Career advancement often depends on experience and, in some cases, additional degrees.

On the other hand, a general business degree provides flexibility. With knowledge across multiple business areas, generalists can adapt to various roles and pivot when industries shift. Generalists also excel as managers, leveraging their broad understanding to lead teams of specialists effectively. In the sections below, we’ll explore the pros and cons of both paths to help you choose the degree that aligns with your goals.

The Generalist

Companies like flexible employees, especially those who have developed soft skills. It might be tempting to have your cake and eat it too. Get a generalist degree with a minor or concentration in a specialty. The best of both worlds, right? In reality, though, doing this usually means you’ve spent less time training the technical skills than the specialist who devoted their whole degree to learning them, which means you still aren’t as competitive for the specialist positions. However, a generalist degree allows you to use your electives, concentration, or minor to develop soft skills. Soft skills include time management, networking, teamwork, creative thinking, critical thinking, communication, problem-solving, and conflict resolution. They aren’t technical and are more challenging to master than technical skills in many ways. These skills can be developed in a number of ways. 

Teamwork and leadership, for instance, can be developed through extracurricular activities rather than classes. Playing a team sport is a great way to build teamwork, motivational, and time management skills. Now, maybe you aren’t interested in playing sports at a college level, and that’s fine. You can play intramural or club sports in college, and they will still provide experiences that will help you develop these skills. Joining student government or working on campus as a student manager is a great way to build your leadership skills.

Taking a minor in something like philosophy can develop problem-solving, critical thinking, communication, and creative thinking. Joining social clubs and student government can also develop networking. Conflict resolution and communication are taught in many college courses.

By getting involved in your community, you can develop mentorship, coaching, and motivation skills. Coach a youth sport during the summer or in your free time. Get involved with a mentorship program like Big Brothers Big Sisters. Organize an after-school program for a local school.

If you think you might want to work in international business, you can devote your electives to learning the language of the countries in which you would like to work.

The generalist degree gives you ample opportunity to develop some or all of these skills in addition to your business acumen. They look great on a resume, showing you have interests outside of business that will help make you an effective leader. Generalist degrees also have the advantage of giving you options when considering your advanced degree. If you work in marketing or finance, you can get your master’s in marketing instead of an MBA. If project management is your thing, you can specialize further in that with your advanced degree. Check out this article for a more in-depth breakdown of business administration and management.

The Specialist

As we’ve seen, a general business degree has many advantages, especially if you supplement it by developing soft skills. But that doesn’t mean a specialist degree isn’t worthwhile. The business world needs specialists – professionals focused on doing a few things incredibly well. Such professionals are often rewarded for their efforts. As a specialist, there is always time to earn your advanced degree and acquire the skills necessary to become a manager. This is especially good if you work in a larger company that needs managers with specialist skills to oversee various departments.

Soft skills are not the sole domain of the generalist. While some specialist degrees don’t have as much wiggle room as far as electives are concerned, everything said above can also benefit the specialist—especially those looking to advance into jobs with a broader set of skill requirements in the future. So don’t miss out on the opportunity to develop some of these skills while you are in college.

As a specialist, you won’t have to deal with as much uncertainty about your career as the generalist does. You might not have as many options. But the options you have will be good. In the end, more limited options can work in your favor because you can spend less time and energy agonizing over what to do and just get going. The abundance of choice can cause people to constantly second guess themselves, wondering if they made the right choice, or cause them to spend more time than necessary making the choice. 

For example. When choosing a job, generalists have to decide between many different career options in addition to location, starting pay, and other factors. For specialists, the choices will often be easier, because you’ve already chosen your career, so that element of choosing is eliminated and you are left with the other deciding factors. Of course, the specialist degree doesn’t mean your career options are limited to your major. Plenty of specialists end up working in a variety of contexts not directly related to their major. But if you want that kind of flexibility, then the general business degree is probably a better choice.

Specialists in business fields have just as much career growth potential as generalists in the long term. There are plenty of executive positions available to both specialists and generalists. In fact, specialists tend to benefit from a more direct path to high-level positions compared to generalists.

Conclusions

In the end, whether or not a specialist business degree or a general business degree is better comes down to you and what you want. Both have strengths and weaknesses, and both are just about equal when it comes to career prospects and earning potential. So don’t worry too much about whether or not you are making an optimal decision. If you want to go for that CEO job as a specialist, just pick up an MBA for your master’s degree, and you will have what you need to compete with the best of the generalists. At the same time, the flexibility of being a generalist is undoubtedly nice. It’s also essential to work on developing yourself throughout your career. If you change hats too often, it can have a detrimental effect on your career, slowing down your advancement – not that there’s anything wrong with that if what appeals to you about the generalist degree is the ability to have many different experiences throughout your career. 

In the end, there’s no massive benefit or massive drawback to either the general business degree or a specialist business degree, so long as you’re pursuing a meaningful goal. I’ll end with a list of management positions and their salaries so you can get a good idea of what general business degree jobs and specialist options will be open to you. Both generalists and specialists can land these jobs if they work long enough in a given role and acquire the practical experience necessary to do the job. None of these require a master’s degree.

The source for these numbers is the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

• Compensation and Benefits Manager: $122,270
• Human Resources Manager: $115,720
• Advertising Manager: $135,900
• Financial Manager: $129,890
• Sales Manager: $126,640
• Top Executives: $104,690

You might find it interesting that top executives earn a lower median salary than most of the other manager positions. This is largely because every small and mid-sized company has executives. So not every CEO out there is making millions of dollars per year. However, the top 10% of top executives make over $208,000 per year, which is a higher earning potential than the top 10% of just about every other management position.

So, no matter what decision you end up making, rest assured that with hard work and excellent performance, you can score a great job with an incredible salary, whether you’re a specialist or a jack of all trades.

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