Business degrees popular among area college graduates

The ceremonies – scheduled to start at 11 a.m., 2 p.m. and 5 p.m., respectively – will be held at Hammons Student Center, with Jim Craig, Jim Anderson and Annie Busch as scheduled speakers.

Nearly 4,000 students have and will graduate this spring from the Springfield area’s four largest four-year schools. The most popular degrees are business, psychology, accounting and education, according to university officials.

At MSU, management topped the list of preferred degrees for scheduled graduates with 112, followed by marketing with 107 and psychology with 99. MSU’s College of Business Administration was scheduled to graduate the most students with 594, including master’s students. COBA is the largest business school in Missouri based on 4,386 declared majors in fall 2006, according to Associate Dean Phil Harsha.

Meanwhile, Drury University graduated 261 students on May 12; business was the most popular major with 35 students. Tim Posey, associate registrar for Drury, called business one of the “traditional heavy hitters” among college majors.

Data from local universities seem to mirror what’s happening nationally.

According to the most current U.S. Department of Education statistics, there were 1.4 million bachelor’s degrees conferred during the 2003-04 school year, with 307,000 business degrees leading the way, followed by 150,000 history and social science degrees and 106,000 education degrees.

See SBJ’s May 21 issue for more on local and national college degree trends.