Am I ready to graduate? Management majors’ perceived collegiate skill development

Abstract

We examine 15 skills of graduating management majors as measured by self-rated perceptions of change during their college tenure. The sample includes 520,052 students from 697 higher education institutions in the United States. The research questions are: (1) As judged by management majors themselves, how much have their skills changed as a result of higher education? (2) How do these self-perceptions compare to other students? (3) What is the estimated impact of a management degree on these changes? Notable findings include that at least 90% of students reporting stronger, if not much stronger, skills in the categories of general knowledge, critical thinking, analytics, problem solving, and knowledge of their chosen field (management). However, other skills such as leadership are reported by 16% of management students as experiencing no change. The ratings of communication skills categories of public speaking and writing reported 17% of each category as no change or weaker skills is these areas. Study findings are discussed along with recommendations for future research.

Keywords

Management management major management degree management education business degree business education skill change graduate employability

Introduction

Over the past several decades, the business world has experienced dramatic changes through the rapid development of technology, globalization, and business model innovation (Tseng et al., 2019). Employers have been unwaveringly vocal in their call for universities to produce graduates who are able and willing to make immediate contributions in the workplace (Clarke, 2018). A growing concern among employers is the level of competencies that undergraduate students possess as they graduate from business schools (Ahmad and Pesch, 2017; Davey et al., 2018). The literature suggests that clear gaps exist between students’ perceptions of skills acquired in their academic studies and employers’ expectations (Jackling and De Lange, 2009).

These identified gaps are useful to management educators when considering enhancements to management pedagogy in order to address areas of concern related to graduates’ skill level when entering the workforce. Management educators are especially interested in knowing what skills students believe they have gained during their academic experience compared to skills desired by employers. Furthermore, understanding these concerns will assist educators to provide better skill matching to align with employer expectations. These considerations are important to the field of management education and form the motivation for this study.

Literature review

Although management education has been criticized for its inability to provide undergraduate students with competencies necessary in practice, instructors have been developing didactical approaches to better align skill demanded from business graduates with what business schools typically teach (Perusso et al., 2021). The 21^st century has significantly altered the manager’s job, making demands for new personal skills such as team management, managerial intuition, and learnability (Brown and Rich, 2020). Some of the basic skills identified include business writing, business mathematics, business statistics, business computing, and critical thinking (Smith and Stone, 2020). Shuayto (2013) noted the sharp difference in importance attributed to soft versus hard skills between business school deans and employers. Tseng et al. (2019) found that business students who had managerial roles in their careers were more likely to have a higher level of soft skills in comparison to students who did not. Recent studies have posited that both soft skills and technical skills are important for business graduates’ employability (Hossain et al., 2020; Moore and Morton, 2017; Succi and Canovi, 2020).

In order to be both immediately and sustainably employable, graduates must not only maintain and develop knowledge and skills that are specific to their own occupation, but also possess generic skills that are transferable to many occupational situations and areas (Bridgstock, 2009). Generic graduate attributes have been referenced to describe a set of generic capabilities that go beyond the narrowly defined contextually relevant skills (Allen and Simpson, 2019). Bowden et al. (2000) (as cited in Barrie, 2007: 440) defined generic graduate attributes as “the qualities, skills and understandings a university community agrees its students should develop during their time with the institution.” The most frequent graduate attributes cited in frameworks within the literature refer to a range of skills related to critical thinking, global awareness, digital literacy, and employability, while being expressed in combination with a variety of personal, professional, and academic skills (Allen and Simpson, 2019). Previous research has found that management majors, compared to other business students, place a greater emphasis on how their specialization would help them run their own business (Kim et al., 2002). Ahmad and Pesch (2017) conducted a study examining student perceptions of skills that employers’ thought were most important for new graduates to possess and the skills employers thought were most in need of improvement. These researchers found that undergraduates differed significantly from employers for the following skills: professionalism/etiquette, honesty/integrity, analytical thinking, and organizational skills. The implication of the results was that undergraduates thought they needed to improve these skills more than what the employers felt (Ahmad and Pesch, 2017).

Measuring business skills among undergraduate students are based in part on the self-perceptions of skill improvements as identified by the students themselves. One possible factor that could contribute to the gap between students’ perceived skills compared to employers’ assessment of student skills may be influenced by students’ overconfidence and self-attribution bias. Many educators have observed that students tend to overestimate their own grades. Psychologists have known that people generally, and students particularly, tend to overestimate their own abilities (Sharma and Shakeel, 2015). As a result, biases could affect students’ self-perceptions of their own skill levels. Related to group identification, psychologists have documented a number of perceptual biases that can occur (Schlee et al., 2007). One such bias is the self-enhancement bias, which refers to individual tendencies to see themselves in a positive light (Chandran and Menon, 2004). In a study of undergraduate business students, Schlee et al. (2007) found that students rated other students within their major more positively than students in other majors rated them. Other students believed that management students are people-oriented, leaders as well as team players, and good communicators. This study also found that own-group positivity bias was present when assessing skills within own group.

While biases can influence students’ self-perceptions of their own skill levels, these will be present whenever analyzing self-reported data. However, the findings are useful to management educators who may be especially interested in addressing contributing factors that affect the gap between students’ self-perceptions and employers’ perceptions of those skills. In the current study, we focus not on the students’ overall ability levels, but rather on self-perceptions of skill changes while progressing through their academic studies compared to other majors. This analysis mitigates potential bias concerns typically found in self-reported data by measuring changes in skills with a large set of controlling variables that increase the reliability of the results.

Research questions

Our research questions are threefold. First, as judged by management majors themselves, how much have their various skills changed as a result of higher education? Our data allow for examination of 15 unique skills in this regard. These absolute changes are important, but their relativity may impart even more information. Therefore, our second question is: how do these skill changes compare to other students? Since business majors of any concentration take very similar core courses, we make comparisons to two groups of students, business majors who were not concentrating in management and non-business majors. Average student characteristics and collegiate experiences are thought, or in many cases have been shown in prior research, to vary across major of study, sometimes substantially. Thus, we make use of multivariate techniques which control for these relevant differences when answering our final research question: what is the estimated impact of a management degree on changes in each of the 15 skill categories? The following section begins with a description of our data source.

Methodology

Data used in this analysis come from the Higher Education Research Institute, which runs the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) housed at The University of California – Los Angles. Among others, the CIRP administers two surveys known as The Freshman Survey (TFS) and the College Senior Survey (CSS). The TFS is administered very near a student’s matriculation, most often as an entrance survey, while the CSS is administered very near graduation, most often as an exit survey as part of the student’s exit exams. We collect, merge, and make use of all freely available data at the time of writing on students who took both of these surveys. This merged data set includes a large number of American undergraduate students of higher education who earned their bachelor’s degree between 1994 and 2008.

Sample

Specifically, our final sample is comprised of 520,052 students from 697 different institutions of higher education in the United States. One hundred percent of these students are college (baccalaureate) graduates, otherwise they would not have been administered the CSS. While rich, these data are not without limitations. Notably, only 24% of the students in the sample attended a university (an institution which additionally grants graduate degrees), while the remainder attended a college (those which only grant bachelor’s [4-year] degrees). More importantly, 79% attended a private institution, as these colleges and universities more often participate in the CIRP than do public institutions. Regarding more specific institutional types, 62.6% of the sample attended a private college, 16.3% a private university, 14% a public college, and 7.2% a public university. Thus, while our sample is quite large, it cannot be thought nationally representative in these two regards. Lastly, we note that, by design, these surveys capture no post-graduation information, and as in most any archival data, there are undoubtedly additional variables which would have warranted examination had they been available.

Of primary interest here are responses to a set of questions asked of students on the CSS, that is, very near their graduation date: How do you feel your skills in [category] have changed during your college tenure? Students could respond to each of these questions with one of five options: Much weaker, Weaker, No change, Stronger, and Much stronger. In very select cases, the CIRP has inquired about other skill categories, but there are 15 which have been persistently captured throughout the lifespan of the CSS: getting along with dissimilar people; critical thinking; teamwork; analytical and problem solving skills; computer skills; foreign languages; general knowledge; interpersonal skills; knowledge of your field (e.g. for management majors, management); knowledge of other races and cultures; leadership ability; mathematical skills; public speaking; reading speed and comprehension; and writing skills. Of the 520,052 students surveyed, 12,394 majored in management. Table 1 presents the proportion of management majors who chose each response option for all the 15 categories. From a general pedagogical standpoint, the ideal student response to these questions is that the skill became Much Stronger. For easier reference, the 15 skill categories are ranked in Table 1 by the percent of students who gave this response.

Table 1.

Self-reported skill changes of management majors.

Rank	Category	Percent reporting this category has become…
Rank	Category	Much weaker	Weaker	No change	Stronger	Much stronger
1	Knowledge of your field	0.1	0.3	4.1	47.1	48.4
2	General knowledge	0.1	0.4	3.0	51.9	44.6
3	Computer skills	0.1	0.4	12.1	49.2	38.2
4	Interpersonal skills	0.1	0.7	11.4	53.3	34.5
5	Critical thinking	0.1	0.4	8.9	57.9	32.7
6	Leadership	0.2	0.8	15.6	51.5	31.8
7	Analytical and problem solving	0.1	0.5	8.3	59.6	31.6
8	Public speaking	0.2	1.1	15.4	52.4	30.8
9	Teamwork	0.1	0.3	16.9	55.3	27.3
10	Writing	0.2	1.8	14.9	57.2	26.0
11	Getting along with dissimilar people	0.2	1.1	35.9	41.7	21.1
12	Cultural and racial knowledge	0.4	2.1	31.6	48.0	17.9
13	Reading	0.2	1.2	31.3	52.8	14.5
14	Mathematics	0.7	4.8	35.9	47.3	11.4
15	Foreign languages	4.5	11.3	58.2	19.2	6.9

Notes: Number of management majors (n) = 12,394. Proportions in each category may not necessarily sum to 100 due to rounding. Categories are ranked in order of the percent reporting the category has become “much stronger,” the ideal response from a pedagogical perspective.

Results

Self-reported skill gains of management majors

In Table 1, the two most reported “much stronger” skills are those relating to acquiring knowledge, both general and in their field. It is understandable students in college would regard these skills higher, since their collegiate experience has centered on building these skill sets. U.S. higher education prioritizes developing skills and broadening content. It is also not surprising in the U.S. that 74% of students ranked their foreign languages skills as weaker or without change, since foreign language acquisition assumes a very small role in U.S. education. With English as a language spoken globally, foreign language educational programs assume a lower priority. What is also notable from the list in Table 1 is that nearly 16% of management students report “no change” to their leadership skills. If one assumes a traditionally aged student with fewer years of management experience, this statistic is alarming since leadership is a critical skill within management. Managers must inspire, motivate, and lead people with their leadership skills to build teams and achieve operational goals. With nearly 16% of students reporting no change, this is a large group of students who are not seeking to improve and incorporate new ideas with their leadership skills.

Other concerning self-reporting data are within the categories of teamwork, getting along with dissimilar people, and cultural and racial knowledge. As noted by Brown and Rich (2020), team management is critical in today’s working world. For management students, teamwork is central to goal attainment. Thus, with approximately one out of six students self-reporting no change or weaker teamwork skills, their career effectiveness would be hampered. Businesses highly regard employee productivity which includes meeting short- and long-range goals. Thus, effective teamwork is needed. If students are reporting no change or weaker team skills, this would be a concern to business and they might need to provide job training in this area. Aother potentially problematic category is that of mathematics with 41% of students reporting no change or weaker skills in this area. Since Smith and Stone (2020) identify mathematics and statistics as basic skills, management students would be well served in their careers to improve these skills. Data-based decision making permeates business operations, and mathematics and statistics skills are critical to this type of decision making. The ratings of communication skills categories of public speaking and writing are tepid with nearly 17% of each category reporting no change or weaker skills is these areas. Since management careers require communication (oral and written) with various internal and external business stakeholders, these two reported skill areas are concerning for a successful business.

Closely linked to communication skills are reading skills. Reading skills improve writing skills as one is exposed to various writing styles. One-third of management students reported their reading skills as much weaker, weaker, or with no change. Additionally, Brown and Rich (2020) highlight “learnability” as a critical career component. With industry and environments changing, managers and employees must stay current in their field. Reading is one avenue to stay current, and a key skill for improving one’s knowledge in the field. Lastly, basic skills of management students, as defined by Smith and Stone (2020), computer, interpersonal, critical thinking, and analytical/problem solving, seem to be faring well with 87–90% of students reporting stronger or much stronger changes in these skill levels.

As mentioned, it is not the absolute levels of skill change, but their relative levels, that may impart the most information. In Table 2, we again present the percent of management majors who report “much stronger” skills in each of the 15 categories, and now compare these percent frequencies to the two subsamples of all other business majors and all non-business majors. The skills categories are again ranked, here by the comparison of management majors to other business majors. We choose once again to make our primary comparisons around the response category of “much stronger” since, from an educational standpoint, it is the ideal answer. Other comparison methodologies are, of course, possible and impart additional information. Therefore, in an appendix, we present the results from an alternate comparison method, one based on the percent of students who report that their skill at all increased (the sum of those reporting “stronger” or “much stronger” skills).

Table 2.

Subsample comparisons of the percent reporting much stronger skills.

Rank	Category	Management majors	Management versus other business majors	Management versus non-business majors
1	Leadership	31.8	5.5	7.7
2	Writing	26.0	2.3	−3.3
3	Interpersonal skills	34.5	1.8	3.9
4	Teamwork	27.3	1.3	6.9
5	Public speaking	30.8	1.2	6.4
6	Getting along with dissimilar people	21.1	1.1	1.9
7	Cultural and racial knowledge	17.9	0.5	−2.2
8	Reading	14.5	0.2	−1.7
9	Critical thinking	32.7	−0.1	−6.0
10	General knowledge	44.6	−0.7	−3.5
11	Analytical and problem solving	31.6	−1.4	−2.7
12	Mathematics	11.4	−1.4	−1.0
13	Computer skills	38.2	−2.1	6.7
14	Foreign languages	6.9	−2.5	−4.2
15	Knowledge of your field	48.4	−8.6	−16.5
—	Observations	12,394	78,282	454,164

Notes: Positive (+) comparisons mean management majors more often report “much stronger” skills in that category by the designated number of percentage points. Negative (−) comparisons mean the opposite (less often). Categories are ranked by the comparisons with other business majors.

Tseng et al. (2019) found that business students with managerial roles were more likely to have higher level of soft skills. Thus, it is perhaps not surprising, regarding the comparisons in Table 2, that conventional soft skills (leadership, interpersonal, teamwork, public speaking, getting along with dissimilar people, etc.) are rated higher by management students. Management curriculum does emphasize these soft skills in both theory and practical discussions. Writing is an exception. Writing is often seen as a hard skill and nonbusiness majors are rating this skill set higher than management majors. Likewise, if one reviews Table 2 comparisons where other business and non-business majors rate themselves higher in the skill category, one will find the traditionally hard skills (mathematics, computer skills, foreign languages).

From a comparison perspective, one concerning statistic is what management majors rated their strongest skill, knowledge of your field. This skill category, which is negatively ranked with the business and nonbusiness majors, is higher for the other two groups, meaning that others have rated their change in their field knowledge higher than management students. It would be interesting to probe why other business and nonbusiness majors have rated their skill sets higher and what this could potential mean for student careers and pedagogical approaches in the classroom.

Subjective skill change effects of a management degree

To better estimate the impact of management education on skill change, one must hold constant other factors, namely differences across students, institutions, other collegiate experiences, and time. We therefore turn to multivariate techniques and estimate regression models of the form

{∆ y}_{i, s, t} = α + β {m a n a g e m e n t}_{i} + γ C_{i} + δ X_{i} + S_{s} + T_{t} + ϵ_{i, s, t}

where

{∆ y}_{i, s, t}

is student i’s change in one of the 15 skills captured through these surveys;

α

a constant term;

{m a n a g e m e n t}_{i}

an indicator for management majors, with

β

its corresponding parameter;

C_{i}

a vector of variables describing students’ other collegiate experiences, with

γ

its corresponding vector of parameters;

X_{i}

a vector of student characteristic control variables, with

δ

its corresponding vector of parameters;

S_{s}

school fixed effects;

T_{t}

time (graduating year) fixed effects; and

ϵ_{i, s, t}

the usual error term. Of key interest is

β

, the estimated average effect of a management degree on personal views of change in the skill in question.

Controlling for differences across students ( $X_{i}$ ) and their non-major collegiate experiences ( $C_{i}$ ) helps ensure the estimated impacts of management education are not being made bias by these confounding factors. The inclusion of time fixed effects ( $T_{t}$ ) allows us to control for time-specific heterogeneity, such as any national trends in higher education or specifically the field of management during the sample period. School fixed effects ( $S_{s}$ ) allow us to control for heterogeneity at the school (college or university) level, including all time-invariant institutional characteristics (e.g. culture, location, public/private status, and mission). For those unfamiliar and with interest in fixed effect methodology, we direct the reader to Wooldridge (2010), Kennedy (2008), and Angrist and Pischke (2008), or most any statistics textbook that covers longitudinal data methodologies.

The skill change variables may be thought of as increasing ordinal indices with five values, one for “much weaker” through five for “much stronger.” We therefore estimate models of the above equation using ordered logistic regression, the regression technique specifically designed for use with ordinal dependent variables. Post-regression statistical diagnostic tests show it would be inappropriate to use a linear regression technique (i.e. OLS) in any of these 15 cases. For those with further interest in ordered logistic regression, we direct them to Borooah (2002), Long (1997), and Wooldridge (2010), or most any statistics text dealing with categorical and ordinal data. We estimate 30 total models of the above equation, two versions for each of the 15 skills investigated. In the first version, we make use of our full sample. Estimates of $β$ from this version may therefore be interpreted as the average effect of management education, when these majors are compared to all other college graduates. In the second version, we sub-sample to business majors. Estimates of $β$ from the second version may be interpreted as the average effect of management education, when such majors are compared only to other business students. We feel both sets of estimates are needed for a solid understanding of the skill impacts of management education. In all 30 models, we cluster the standard errors at the school level for additional control.

In the interest of data disclosure, Table 3 presents the names and summary statistics for all control variables in

X_{i}

and

C_{i}

, that is, the full set of student-specific control variables. Importantly, there are several variables which allow us to hold students’ academic prowess constant: high school grade point average (GPA), college GPA, remedial course participation, the presence of one or more failing grades, and the student’s self-rated academic ability on a five-point scale. Also included are general demographics: gender, race (four categories, omitted category White), age, and whether English is a first language. This last variable is particularly important here, since reading and writing skill change are two of the outcomes analyzed. Household characteristic variables included are an indicator for a two-parent household, each parent’s education level, an indicator for first-generation college students, and combined parental (real) income. Since these surveys come from multiple years, incomes from each survey year were first adjusted for inflation by transforming them all into (Jan.) 2022 dollars (USD). The remaining variables in these two control variable sets, which are related to students collegiate experiences, are distance between the institution and the student’s prior home; the number of colleges applied to; typical hours per week devoted to student clubs and organizations; and indicators for students who became married during tenure, held a full-time job, held a part-time job, transferred colleges, attended part-time, are an international student, those wanting a graduate degree each at matriculation and graduation, those who joined a fraternity or sorority, intercollegiate athletes, intramural athletes, those reporting they frequently studied with others, student tutors, student office holders, those who took a leadership course(s) and/or training, and internship participants.

Table 3.

Summary statistics of individual-level control variables across major.

Continuous variable means:	Management majors	Other business	Non-business
High school GPA	3.33	3.36***	3.37***
College GPA	3.14	3.20***	3.25***
Self-rated academic ability (1-5 scale)	3.85	3.96***	3.97***
Age at college matriculation	18.19	18.20	18.21*
Father’s years of schooling	15.05	15.25***	15.42***
Mother’s years of schooling	14.80	14.86**	15.07***
Combined parental income (2022 USD)	128,848.71	131,025.22***	129,228.16
Distance college-to-home (miles)	105.77	131.79***	142.97***
Number of colleges applied to	3.94	4.13***	4.11***
Hours/week devoted to student clubs	1.38	1.50***	1.57***
Binary variable percent frequencies:	Management majors	Other business	Non-business
Took one or more remedial college courses	7.6	5.9***	7.2
Failed one or more college courses	13.9	8.9***	9.2***
Male	50.3	47.3***	35.6***
African-American	7.9	5.6***	6.4***
Hispanic	2.1	3.0***	3.5***
Other non-white race	9.1	11.2***	10.0***
Not a native English speaker	7.5	9.6***	7.3
Two-parent household	91.0	89.3***	88.3***
First generation college student	9.4	10.2***	9.3
Became married during college	4.2	3.4***	3.5***
Full-time job during college	30.3	36.7***	44.2***
Part-time job during college	25.4	27.7***	22.2***
Transferred colleges	26.4	19.8***	18.8***
Part-time college student	10.0	7.4***	5.8***
International student	1.0	1.3***	1.1
Wanted a graduate degree at matriculation	23.3	33.3***	36.3***
Wants a graduate degree at graduation	15.1	14.3**	23.6***
Joined Greek letter fraternity or sorority	18.0	19.6***	16.3***
Played intercollegiate sports	14.2	13.3**	10.9***
Played intramural sports	17.1	20.6***	15.8***
Frequently studied with other students	39.4	42.6***	40.3*
Tutored other students	1.5	2.5***	3.2***
Student office (club, student gov’t, etc.)	5.5	6.8***	7.5***
Leadership class (es) and/or training	18.9	16.3***	18.1**
College internship participant	2.1	3.3***	2.8***

Notes: Stars refer to p-values from hypothesis tests of equality across management majors and the designated group. *p < 0.10; **p < 0.05; ***p < 0.01. GPA = grade point average. See Table 2 for sample sizes.

We take the opportunity provided by this rich set of variables to investigate if and by how much management majors are different than other student groups across these dimensions. Thus, in Table 3, means (or percent frequencies, in the case of a binary variable) for each control variables are shown within each of our three key student subsamples. In each variable case, two statistical hypothesis tests were also performed, a test for equality across management majors and other business majors and a similar test for management majors and non-business majors.

Evaluating across the summary statistics of individual-level control variables in Table 3, we identify some interesting statistically significant trends and actions of management majors. First with the continuous variables, management majors had the lowest high school and college GPAs, parental years of schooling, and combined parental income compared to both other business majors and non-business majors. Additionally, they were more likely to attend college closest to home and applied to fewer colleges. Furthermore, the binary variable frequencies indicate that management majors tended to be male and come from two-parent households.

While in college, management majors devoted fewer hours per week with student clubs, participated less as a student officer, took more remedial courses, and failed more courses than the two comparison groups. These statistics provide a weaker pattern of collegiate life. Management majors were also more likely to become married during college, transfer to other schools, and attend college part-time. Management majors also had less interest in wanting a graduate degree at matriculation, participate in an internship, and studied less with other students. However, management majors tended to play more intercollegiate sports and take leadership classes than the other business and non-business majors. These characteristics of management majors provide a picture of who these students typically are in college. It illuminates the needs they have (for example, understanding the value of graduate degree at the beginning of the college experience) and ways to improve their career success (for example, encouraging participation in student clubs and holding student officer positions).

Key results from all 30 regressions are presented in Table 4. Values here are odds ratios calculated from

β

, alongside their standard errors, the most commonly used method of reporting average marginal effects from ordered logits. For those unfamiliar with odds ratios, values greater than (less than) one imply management education increases (decreases) a student’s probability of reporting a larger increase in the skill in question, on average. The distance from one discloses the odds, the magnitude of the average impact. For example, the odds ratio of 1.558 from the first regression implies, all else equal, a student majoring in management is 55.8% more likely (1.558 – 1 = 0.558 = 55.8%), to report higher skill gains in leadership when compared to all other college majors.

Table 4.

Estimated impacts of a management degree on self-reported skill gains.

Rank	Category	Compared to all other majors		Compared to other business majors
Rank	Category	Odds ratio	Standard error	Odds ratio	Standard error
1	Leadership	1.558***	0.029	1.353***	0.028
2	Public speaking	1.332***	0.025	1.081***	0.022
3	Teamwork	1.273***	0.029	1.092***	0.028
4	Interpersonal skills	1.254***	0.024	1.129***	0.024
5	Computer skills	1.233***	0.027	0.934***	0.023
6	Mathematics	1.200***	0.021	0.835***	0.017
7	Getting along with dissimilar people	1.079***	0.020	1.094***	0.022
8	Analytical and problem solving	0.973	0.019	0.965	0.021
9	Writing	0.972	0.018	1.093***	0.023
10	Cultural and racial knowledge	0.941***	0.017	1.095***	0.022
11	General knowledge	0.937***	0.018	1.013	0.022
12	Reading	0.920***	0.021	0.972	0.024
13	Critical thinking	0.878***	0.017	1.027	0.022
14	Foreign languages	0.799***	0.015	0.886***	0.019
15	Knowledge of your field	0.658***	0.013	0.800***	0.017
—	Observations	520,052		78,282

Notes: Categories are ranked by the odds ratios from the regressions comparing management majors to all other students. See the Methodology section for model description. *p < 0.10; **p < 0.05; ***p < 0.01.

Compared to other business majors and controlling for other factors, graduating management majors are more likely to report gains in leadership (55.8% more likely), public speaking (33.2%), teamwork (27.3%), interpersonal (25.4%), computer (23.3%), mathematics (20.0%), and skill at getting along with dissimilar people (7.9%). They are, statistically speaking, equally as likely to report gains in analytical/problem-solving and writing skills. However, they are less likely to report gains in cultural/racial knowledge (5.9% less likely), general knowledge (6.3%), reading (8.0%), critical thinking (12.2%), foreign language (20.1%), and field-specific knowledge (34.2%). Estimated differentials between management majors and non-business majors are also shown in Table 4, with the biggest positive and negative differentials continuing to be leadership and field-specific knowledge, respectively.

Overall, these findings may be thought good news for the field of management education. At least the top four positive differentials (leadership, public speaking, teamwork, and interpersonal skills) are all of relatively high value for future managers. Given that “other business majors” include international business students, the negative differentials for cultural/racial knowledge and foreign language skill are not overly surprising or necessarily cause for alarm. The same might be said for the largest negative differential, field-specific knowledge (34.2%), since management is, usually by design, a relatively broad/general business discipline compared to accounting, finance, economics, marketing, and others. However, that estimated differential is quite large, bigger than all the positive differentials save leadership.

Still, as Smith and Stone (2020) found, the 21^st century requires new basic skill sets for business graduates, specifically business writing, business mathematics (and statistics), business computing and critical thinking. Only the last category among their list, critical thinking, is one where management majors are less likely to feel they have improved their skills during college when compared to other business majors. If students are correct in their self-assessments, management majors will be well prepared for the work-related realities they’ll face post-graduation, except perhaps in the area of critical thinking.

Table 5 presents an analysis of how management students report skill gains by institutional and student types. These types are public and private, college and university, and transfer and non-transfer students. These estimates compare management major skill gain to all other student groups. Significant statistical differences at the 99% level exist for many of the categories across the various institutional and student types. Overall, seven of the 15 skill categories are reporting statistically significant skill gains with leadership being the largest skill gain overall all of the subgroup types. One exception to this is the Universities subgroup with mathematics. This particular institutional type is showing a decreased likelihood of management students reporting gains compared to the other institutional types and student groups. However, since this is not a statistically significant finding, this group of institutions may infer that management majors are no different than other students in terms of improved math skills.

Table 5.

Results across additional subsamples.

Category	Private institutions	Public institutions	Colleges	Universities	Transfer students	Non-transfer students
Leadership	1.513***	1.680***	1.528***	1.634***	1.639***	1.511***
Public speaking	1.297***	1.429***	1.269***	1.593***	1.272***	1.340***
Teamwork	1.280***	1.257***	1.243***	1.377***	1.258***	1.267***
Interpersonal skills	1.206***	1.386***	1.237***	1.288***	1.295***	1.230***
Computer skills	1.190***	1.320***	1.182***	1.469***	1.163***	1.251***
Mathematics	1.210***	1.160***	1.249***	0.995	1.259***	1.174***
Getting along w/dissimilar people	1.057***	1.144***	1.056***	1.158***	1.082**	1.073***
Analytical and problem solving	0.943***	1.092**	0.965	0.969	1.004	0.955**
Writing	0.954**	1.055	0.969	0.960	1.063*	0.938***
Cultural and racial knowledge	0.930***	0.981	0.922***	1.023	0.903***	0.952**
General knowledge	0.920***	1.010	0.919***	0.972	0.952	0.924***
Reading	0.905***	0.995	0.898***	1.004	0.969	0.900***
Critical thinking	0.851***	0.991	0.845***	0.999	0.879***	0.873***
Foreign languages	0.777***	0.916**	0.796***	0.800***	0.778***	0.806***
Knowledge of your field	0.624***	0.784***	0.636***	0.750***	0.599***	0.677***
Observations	410,841	109,211	395,240	124,812	99,371	420,681

Notes: Values are odds ratios comparing management majors to all other college students. *p < 0.10; **p < 0.05; ***p < 0.01.

Most institutional and student subgroups are consistent where management students are less likely to report gains (when odds ratios are smaller than one). However, several exceptions are (1) public institutions and transfer students with analytical and problem solving, (2) public institutions and transfer students with writing (3) public institutions with general knowledge, and (4) universities with reading and cultural knowledge. Within these finding, however, only two are statistically significant, which are public institutions with analytical problem solving and transfer students with writing. Thus, management educators may conclude that these specific skill categories with these particular institutional and student groups are doing better or at least no different than other students within the same category skill.

Tables 6 and 7 present additional insight into management majors. Table 6 highlights the self-reported abilities at matriculation, and management students are reporting their public speaking skills as either below average or in the lowest 10% of their peers. Leadership abilities are rated the highest with 94.2% of students reporting these abilities as average, above average or in the highest 10 percent.

Table 6.

Management majors' self-reported abilities at matriculation.

Category	Percent frequency
Category	Lowest 10%	Below average	Average	Above average	Highest 10%
Leadership	0.4	5.4	30.6	40.0	23.6
Public speaking	4.2	23.5	38.7	24.5	9.0
Computer skills	1.3	11.7	50.3	31.8	4.8
Writing	1.3	12.4	47.4	31.9	7.0
Mathematics	1.7	12.1	38.5	36.5	11.3
Cooperativeness	0.1	1.2	23.0	51.1	24.6

Notes: n = 12,397. At college matriculation, students were asked to rate their skill levels in [category] with one of the five response options above. Lowest/highest 10% are cases where students report their skill level is among the lowest/highest 10% of their peers.

Table 7.

Comparisons of self-reported skills at matriculation.

Category	Management majors	Management versus other business majors	Management versus non-business majors
Leadership	63.6	2.3	2.5
Public speaking	33.5	0.1	−5.0
Computer skills	36.6	0.6	7.1
Writing	38.9	−2.5	−14.0
Mathematics	47.8	−11.4	−0.3
Cooperativeness	75.7	−0.1	−0.6
Observations	12,394	78,282	454,164

Notes: Values in the management majors column is the percent of those students who rate their skill in [category] as “above average” or “highest 10%.” Positive (negative) comparisons mean management majors more (less) often rate that category as “above average” or “highest 10%” by the presented number of percentage points.

Compared to other business majors, management students feel they matriculate with noticeable lower math skills, while the other five differentials are quite small as evidenced in Table 7. Interestingly this includes the skill of leadership, where management majors are only 2.3% more likely than other business majors to report they enter college with this skill level being above average or high. Compared to non-business students, management majors are reporting less ability with writing at the time of matriculation.

Discussion

The 15 skills categories presented in this research are skills that any graduate would be well served in improving in their collegiate education. In business, all these skills are critical, needed to compete in the current global, business environment. This research which delves into skills of management majors provides insights for career preparation for businesses, management educators, and management students.

Research question #1: As judged by management majors themselves, how much have their various skills changed as a result of higher education?

The majority of management majors rated themselves as improving (stronger or much stronger) in 14 of the 15 skill categories available for analysis. These statistics answer our first research question. This finding is a positive one as the belief in one’s skills can often prove to enhance performance on the job, as lack of job or skills training can be demotivating and inhibit productivity Furthermore, if graduates believe that their skill sets have improved, they may also be more likely to assume additional roles and responsibilities for their careers.

One skill, foreign languages, was the only skill that a majority of management majors did not rate themselves as improving in college. Since foreign language acquisition is not a feature in most U.S. business core curriculum or a priority in general education, this is not a surprising finding. This skill set may need to be reexamined by management educators and management students as remote working and global industries increase in the business environment.

Figure 1 portrays the findings of two skill sets, leadership and knowledge of your field. As referenced in the Notes area, these leadership abilities were chosen due to being either the largest positive or largest negative impact, respectively. As one can interpret from this graphic, both skills have changed little over the timeframe, 1994 to 2008, with knowledge of one’s field possessing less variation during these years. In fact, we re-estimated all 15 of our primary regressions (those capturing the impacts of management education when compared to all other students) and noticed largely flat trends across all 15 categories. These analyses enhance our understanding of how little skill acquisitions gaps between management majors and other students have changed over time.

Research question #2: How do these skill changes compare to other students?

When comparing responses to other business majors and non-business majors, those skills which dominate management curriculum (leadership, interpersonal skills, teamwork, and public speaking), were more often rated in the “much stronger” category, which is not surprising since the curriculum emphasizes these skills. Students in business classes often have case analysis assignments (whether simulated or real-world) which require these four skill sets. This finding is positive for management education and coincides with the findings of Tseng et al. (2019), who show that business students with managerial roles were more likely to have a higher level of soft skills. Thus, management majors feel to be setting their careers up well by gaining these soft skills.

However, soft skills cannot entirely carry a management major into career success. These students need general knowledge and knowledge of their field to navigate the business environment. Although they rated field and general knowledge as the top two categories in which they have improved during their undergraduate education, these gains are not as great as other business and non-business majors. Why might this be? Could it be because management majors have a more limited vision of how to implement the knowledge that they have gained during college? If true, educators should incorporate more applied situations, service and experiential learning, and/or case studies to broaden management majors’ experiences and tie concepts to real-world situations. Relatedly, statistics revelated that management majors are less inclined to participate in internships, a quality option for learning how to apply one’s field knowledge to the business environment.

It is apparent management majors are not as often reporting “much stronger” development of hard skills, compared to others. This is concerning in today’s business environment with data analytics providing the background to which business decisions need to be make. Management educators may benefit from reviewing curriculum to ensure management majors develop both hard and soft skills, and management majors may benefit from taking additional coursework in mathematics and statistics to increase their business decision making competency.

Research question #3: What is the estimated causal impact of a management degree on changes in each of the 15 skill categories?

After controlling for a long list of confounding variables, it is interesting to note which skills are more, or less, often reported as improved by management majors. Compared to other business majors, they more often report gains in leadership, public speaking, teamwork, interpersonal, computer, math, and skill at getting along with dissimilar people, while less often reporting gains in cultural/racial knowledge, general knowledge, reading, critical thinking, foreign language, and field-specific knowledge. Statistically, they are equally likely to report gains in analytical and problem-solving skills, as well as writing skills.

Leadership shows the highest positive differential, and this is good news for management educators and perhaps unsurprising given the high importance of that soft skill for managers. Field-specific knowledge shows the largest negative differential and highlights the idea that management majors receive a more general/broad business education than those within other business concentrations (e.g. accounting or economics) where there is a relatively higher focus on field-specific material. However, if specific skills and critical thinking are indeed in increasing demand in the workplace, particularly for new hires, the negative differentials estimated here may be cause for some concern regarding the competitiveness of management majors.

Limitations

This study is not without limitations. First, self-perception data were used in this research. Students’ perceptions of their collegiate gains are valuable and worthy of study (they have effects of their own such to which jobs students apply; many soft skill gains are not objectively measured in college; students may be thought the “customers” of higher education, making these variables akin to measures of customer satisfaction; etc.), but should not be confused with objective measures of student progress such as course grades. The complexity of learning with perception data may make it difficult to tease out research findings. Also, self-perceptions may include biases from the students impacting the reliability of the data. However, this data set has a large sample size which does improve the reliability of the findings. Nearly 700 institutions were included in this research data. Another limitation is the age of the sample, graduates from 1994 through 2008. Using older data does provide a historical baseline which can be used to make comparisons in future research studies. Despite these limitations, insights can be found here which need additional research and testing.

Future research

Several future research avenues exist. As mentioned, data from 1994 through 2008 are all that are publicly available at present for these surveys. As more recent data become available, estimates here may be updated and changes explored. With the business changes in 2020 due to the pandemic, this event will allow researchers to compare management education and skill needs in a new business climate. Additionally, as increased utilization in the U.S. of online modalities occur, it will be interesting to separate out online learning, if the data sets includes this variable.

Another area of future research to explore would be the skill sets which are perceived by employers as essential and currently are not as strong for management majors. This gap of knowledge and skills would be important information to enhance management education and careers for future management students. These ideas provide some additional research areas which would add to the literature on management education.

Footnotes

Author’s note

IRB approval was not required as all data used are publicly available and both the students and institutions were anonymized.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Marvin Bontrager

Appendix

References

Ahmad

Pesch

(2017) Essential work skills and readiness: perceptions of employers, MBA students, and undergraduates. Global Journal of Business Pedagogy 1(3): 1–12.

Allen

Simpson

(2019) Inquiry into graduate attributes: reviewing the formal and informal management curricula. Journal of Management Education 43(4): 330–358.

Angrist

Jörn-Steffen Pischke (2008) Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Companion, Empiricist’s Companion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Barrie

(2007) A conceptual framework for the teaching and learning of generic graduate attributes. Studies in Higher Education 32(4): 439–458.

Borooah

(2002) Logit and Probit: Ordered and Multinomial Models. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Bowden

Hart

King

, et al. (2000) Generic capabilities of ATN university graduates. . Canberra: Australian Government Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs. Available at: http://www.clt.uts.edu.au/atn.grad.cap.project.index.html

Bridgstock

(2009) The graduate attributes we’ve overlooked: enhancing graduate employability through career management skills. Higher Education Research and Development 28: 31–44.

Brown

Rich

(2020) Pedagogy and evaluation: the challenge for business and management degree courses in the 21^st century. Electronic Journal of Business Research Methods 18(2): 84–99.

Chandran

Menon

(2004) When a day means more than a year: effects of temporal framing on judgments of health risk. Journal of Consumer Research 31: 375–389.

10.

Clarke

(2018) Rethinking graduate employability: The role of capital, individual attributes and context. Studies in Higher Education 43(11): 1923–1937.

11.

Davey

Meerman

Orazbayeva

et al. (2018) The Future of Universities Thoughtbook. Amsterdam: University-Industry Innovation Network.

12.

Hossain

Alam

Alamgir

, et al. (2020) Factors affecting business graduates’ employability-empirical evidence using partial least squares (PLS). Education + Training 62(3): 292–310.

13.

Jackling

De Lange

(2009) Do accounting graduates’ skills meet the expectations of employers? A matter of convergence or divergence. Accounting Education Journal 18(4–5): 369–385.

14.

Kennedy

(2008) A Guide to Econometrics. 6th edition. Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishers.

15.

Kim

Markham

Cangelosi

(2002) Why students pursue the business degree: a comparison of business majors across universities. Journal of Education for Business 78: 28–32.

16.

Long

(1997) Regression Models for Categorical and Limited Dependent Variables. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

17.

Moore

Morton

(2017) The myth of job readiness? Written communication, employability, and the ‘skills gap’ in higher education. Studies in Higher Education 42(3): 591–609.

18.

Perusso

van der Sijde

Leal

, et al. (2021) The effectiveness and impact of action learning on business graduates’ professional practice. Journal of Management Education 45: 177–205.

19.

Sharma

Shakeel

(2015) Illusion versus reality: an empirical study of overconfidence and self attribution bias in business management students. Journal of Education for Business 90(4): 199–207.

20.

Schlee

Curren

Harich

, et al. (2007) Perception bias among undergraduate business students by major. Journal of Education for Business 82(3): 169–177.

21.

Shuayto

(2013) Management skills desired by business school deans and employers: an empirical investigation. Business Education and Accreditation 5(2): 93–105.

22.

Smith

Stone

(2020) Improving students’ sentence-level writing skills in a large undergraduate business management course. Business Education Innovation Journal 12: 38–48.

23.

Succi

Canovi

(2020) Soft skills to enhance graduate employability: comparing students and employers’ perceptions. Studies in Higher Education 45(9): 1834–1847.

24.

Tseng

Yeh

(2019) Learning-related soft skills among online business students in higher education: Grade level and managerial role differences in self-regulation, motivation, and social skill. Computers in Human Behavior 95: 179–186.

25.

Wooldridge

(2010) Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data. 2nd edition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.