The Self-Rated Writing Skills of Business Majors: Graduating Perceptions and Collegiate Improvement

Abstract

We analyze the self-rated writing skills of graduating business majors and perceptions on how much these skills changed during college. Subjective skill measures may be good proxies of objective skills, and affect outcomes such as career goals, job applications, and graduate school enrollment. The sample includes 436,370 students from 619 different institutions. On average and all else equal, business majors are estimated to be 17.6% less likely to report high writing skills at graduation when compared with other students and 11.5% less likely to report high gains in these skills during college. Average differences across disciplines are often large.

Keywords

writing skills writing education business communication business major business degree business education

There is broad agreement regarding the importance of business communication skills and the need for their inclusion in the business curriculum (Conrad & Newberry, 2012;Smith & Stone, 2020). The ability to use effective business communication is crucial for undergraduate students as they embark on their careers. Poor written communication skills can lead to adverse impressions by recruiters regarding the employability of applicants (Martin-Lacroux & Lacroux, 2019). Employers have identified the importance of written communication and the value of effective, concise, and correct writing skills (Coffelt et al., 2019). Nonetheless, it has been asserted that a gap still remains between the communication skills desired by business practitioners and those exhibited by new graduates (Conrad & Newberry, 2012).

Written communication is a high priority for both employers and employees in the information age (Kohn, 2015). In the workplace, a mastery of business writing is taken for granted by the employer and employees do not have the opportunity to fix errors under the guidance of a colleague that they may have experienced as a student (Vásquez, 2013). There is consensus in the literature across disciplines that there is difficulty associated with business writing and that more emphasis should be placed in training students these skills in preparation for career advancement (Badua, 2015). Employers and educators continue to voice concerns regarding the significant gaps between the expectations that exist regarding individuals’ writing skills and the actual skills they possess (Kowalewski & Halasz, 2019;Lentz, 2013). Employers’ views of the writing skills demonstrated by most graduates are not positive (Kellogg & Whiteford, 2009;Ortiz, 2012). Furthermore, significant gaps exist between the perceptions of writing skills among employers, instructors, and students (Bacon & Anderson, 2004;Kleckner & Marshall, 2014;Minton-Eversole, 2012).

Academics and practitioners agree that professional effectiveness is directly linked to competence in communication (Russ, 2009). TheAssociation to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (2018)lists written and oral communication as a core competency that should be emphasized in accredited programs. There are many contributing factors to the issue of undergraduate students often not possessing good writing skills. However, a lack of consistency regarding delivery of course content and measurement of outcomes across business disciplines can affect the development of communication skills. While previous studies have found that students in certain business disciplines have low self-efficacy pertaining to perceptions of writing skills, limited research exists that examines self-rated writing skills across business disciplines. As a result, the manner in which communication skills are assessed and evaluated in the classroom is an important area of interest for researchers and instructors.

Literature Review

The literature review for this study included previous quantitative and qualitative research studies related to self-assessment of student writing skills across multiple disciplines. Specifically, the focus was narrowed to undergraduate business students in order to examine the results of previous studies and identify potential gaps in the research. In addition, literature was reviewed to examine theoretical underpinning regarding self-efficacy and self-rated perceptions of student writing.

Various approaches are used to assess students’ writing skills. The traditional approach is for the reader to grade each paper and provide feedback to the student. However, this method can be subjective, time-consuming, and assumes that the grader possesses the appropriate skills to assess the writing quality and provide accurate assessments (Bacon & Anderson, 2004).Garner and Shank (2018)find that students perceive the most significant feedback occurs in English classes, but not necessarily in other disciplines. Beyond the traditional approaches of writing assessment, writing exercises provide flexibility to instructors to assign various types of activities to students including when, where, and how these are implemented.Ortiz (2012)describes these types of activities as the ability of the student to grade their own work under the guidance of the instructor. These types of exercises allow students to share in the process of evaluation by encouraging important skills in self-assessment of writing that will serve students well in their professional lives (Ortiz, 2012).

Across business disciplines, expectations vary on the types of written communication skills that students should acquire. Researchers have suggested that while more collaboration is needed between various disciplines, not every business course should be writing intensive (Parent et al., 2011). Some disciplines are more focused on technical content, while others on more general communication skills. For example, accounting students are often taught content that is relevant to preparing for the CPA exam. A predominance of the accounting literature suggests an awareness of weaknesses in student writing (e.g.,Riley & Simons, 2016;Sigmar & Hynes, 2012). There is a large gap that potentially exists between the writing skills students gain in college versus what professional accountants feel is needed (Berry & Routon, 2020).Berry and Routon (2020)found that when comparing writing skills across accounting graduates and other business majors, accounting students feel their writing skills were improved less than other business majors. However,Gerstein and Friedman (2016)argue that this does not absolve accounting from delivering other critical skills such as written communication. In economics, essay exams have been utilized to test students’ expository writing skills and the ability to articulate broader knowledge of theory (Jasso, 2009). In a study of cross-disciplinary business students, results suggest students’ writing skills varied across disciplines (Sigmar & Hynes, 2012).

Business instructors have traditionally evaluated writing assignments based on organization of the message, tone or consideration for receiver, and the correct use of English language mechanics (Lewis et al., 2002). However, perceptions of skill improvement can vary significantly between instructors and students. In a study of undergraduate students and instructors,Hiemstra (2001)finds that instructors may have a more realistic assessment of improvements in student writing, while students may have more difficulty in objectively assessing their own writing skills. Among several reasons cited in the study, this situation can occur because students enter courses with unrealistically high assessments of their own writing skills, seeing less need for improvement (Hiemstra, 2001). In a study of undergraduate students, findings demonstrated that most students are unaware of their own writing deficiencies (Simkin et al., 2012).

Bandura’s (1989, p. 1175) social cognitive theory suggests that beliefs about self-efficacy “affect thought patterns that may be self-aiding or self-hindering.” In the research on writing development, beliefs on self-efficacy have been found to be a key predictor of behavioral outcomes (Mascle, 2013). Students who have self-efficacy toward a behavior, get appropriate feedback, and receive environmental support are more likely to learn (Wilson et al., 2018). While instructors are tasked with pointing out the writing mistakes of students, it is also important to nurture the self-beliefs of students (Pajares, 2003). If students are going to develop proficient writing skills, they must believe they can evaluate what they have written (Likkel, 2012). These opportunities for self-assessment allow students to become more aware of their own communication skills. It has been posited that instructors should assist students in identifying their personal writing weaknesses and challenges in order to be aware of changes or improvements that should be made (Weldy, 2017). Self-assessment includes the experience of reflection and the goal is for students to accurately observe their personal performance (Grantz & Gruber, 2014). Through the lens of self-regulated learning, research has found that specific criteria to promote quality feedback is needed in order to provide opportunities for students to take responsibility for their learning (Ndoye, 2017). Previous research has found that students with high levels of expertise in certain domains tend to miscalibrate (i.e., negative illusions) when self-assessing their work and low achievers are overconfident (i.e., positive illusions) about their performance (Panadero et al., 2016).

Hartley et al. (2019)find that, when compared with all other college students, marketing majors have less confidence in their writing skills, on average. Similarly,Torres et al. (2019)show evidence that the same is true for international business majors. While limited research exists in the literature regarding self-assessment comparisons of writing skills between student groups, written communication has been identified by employers as a crucial skill for graduates across business disciplines (C. G. Jones, 2011;Kelley & Gaedeke, 1990;Riordan et al., 2000).

As such, we examine the following three hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1:Business majors will report different writing skill levels at graduation when compared with other students, on average, even after holding relevant factors constant.

Hypothesis 2:Business majors will report different writing skill gains during college tenure when compared with other students, on average, even after holding relevant factors constant.

Hypothesis 3:Among business majors, there will be noteworthy (average) differences across the disciplines in terms of both reported writing skill levels and improvements therein, even after holding relevant factors constant.

Methodology

Data used in this analysis come from theHigher Education Research Institute (HERI, n.d.-c), which runs the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) housed at the University of California-Los Angeles. HERI administers multiple college surveys. Used here are responses taken from The Freshman Survey (TFS;HERI, n.d.-a,1994-2006b) and the College Senior Survey (CSS;HERI, n.d.-b,1994-2006a). The TFS is administered very near matriculation into undergraduate programs and the CSS very near undergraduate graduation. These surveys were designed to capture a large amount of information on students’ collegiate experiences and background, and therefore collectively contained hundreds of questions. Specifically, the CSS captured college experiences such as self-perceived skill gains, while the TFS captured demographics such as gender and race. All publicly available data on students who completed both surveys and who answered at least one of two key writing skill questions were collected for this analysis. The working sample consists of 436,370 college students from 619 different institutions of higher education across the United States who graduated from their undergraduate program between 1994 and 2006. The major limitations of these data are that more recent survey rounds (2007-present) are not currently made publicly available by HERI and that students from private colleges and universities are oversampled, these institutions being more likely to belong to the CIRP. Specifically, 78.8% of students in our working sample attended a private institution. We advise readers to keep these data limitations in mind when interpreting our findings. Though large, the sample cannot be considered nationally representative in terms of institutional type due to the second limitation, but heterogeneity (including unobserved heterogeneity) across institutions is controlled for in the primary part of our analysis through the use of fixed effects regression.

On the CSS, students were asked to report the strength of their writing skills, relative to other persons their own age (college students or not), and could choose among the following response options: lowest 10% (of persons), below average, average, above average, and highest 10%.Figure 1presents the percent of respondents who chose each option for the full sample. At almost 42%, the most common response was above average. Over 16% felt their skills were in the top 10% of persons their age, meaning the majority (an estimated 58.12%) of students nearing undergraduate graduation believe their writing skills are above the average person. Less than 6% of students reported their writing skills were below average, and less than 1% reported they were in the lowest 10% of persons. Said simply, it appears less than 7% of soon-to-be college graduates feel their writing skills are poorer than average.

Turning to differences across major,Table 1shows subsample responses to this survey question. Comparing all business majors to nonbusiness majors, the former are 4.3 percentage points less likely to have reported they belong in the top 10% of writers their age, and similarly 4.2 percentage points more likely to report they are average writers. Differences for the remaining three response categories are all less than 1 percentage point. Said plainly, business majors report slightly lower writing skill levels at graduation, on average, when compared with the pool of all other college students. While small in magnitude, these response gaps are found to be statistically different using statistical hypothesis testing, in part due to the large sample sizes. See the notes inTable 1for more detail. Much larger differences are uncovered when comparing business disciplines. On HERI surveys, business students can report they belong to one of seven specific business disciplines (listed inTables 1,2, and4) and if they belonged to an unlisted discipline (e.g., management information systems or supply chain management), they were lumped into an aggregate business category we nameother concentration. Economics majors reported the highest self-perceived writing skills among business students, on average, and accounting majors the lowest. Economics majors were, in fact, 10 percentage points more likely to report they are among the top 10% of writers their age, for example, than accounting majors. However, as shown inTable 1, some majors like marketing and management are little different from one another in terms of self-perceived writing skill, not just overall but for most any specific response category.

Table 1.

Self-Rated Writing Skills at Undergraduate Graduation, Differences Across Major.

Major	Response					n	Rank
Major	Lowest 10%	Below average	Average	Above average	Highest 10%	n	Rank
Percent frequencies
Not business	0.7	5.5	34.7	42.1	17.0	358,667	1
Business	0.6	6.2	38.9	41.5	12.7	73,666	2
Economics	0.5	4.9	29.6	45.6	19.4	6,428	1
International business	0.6	5.1	35.6	43.9	14.8	2,586	2
Finance	0.6	6.5	37.7	41.8	13.4	10,195	3
Marketing	0.6	5.6	38.6	42.0	13.2	11,531	4
Management	0.6	5.7	39.7	41.1	12.9	10,810	5
General business	0.5	6.0	40.3	41.4	11.7	13,259	6
Other concentration	0.7	7.1	39.9	40.9	11.4	4,309	7
Accounting	0.7	7.7	42.7	39.1	9.8	14,548	8
Frequencies(number of students)
Not business	2,371	19,553	124,555	151,071	61,117	358,667	1
Business	451	4,590	28,691	30,550	9,384	73,666	2
General business	72	802	5,348	5,492	1,545	13,259	1
Marketing	66	642	4,454	4,843	1,526	11,531	2
Accounting	106	1,113	6,214	5,686	1,429	14,548	3
Management	65	619	4,289	4,443	1,394	10,810	4
Finance	62	666	3,843	4,257	1,367	10,195	5
Economics	35	312	1,903	2,931	1,247	6,428	6
Other concentration	9	304	1,720	1,764	492	4,309	7
International business	16	132	920	1,134	384	2,586	8

Note. Data come from the College Senior Survey (HERI, n.d.-b) that was conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) across 619 colleges and universities during graduating years 1994-2006 (HERI, 1994-2006a). The aggregate majors, and then business concentrations, are ranked by the relative proportions (top panel) or frequency (bottom panel) of students who reported “in the highest 10% of people” as their writing skill level. A statistical hypothesis test shows that the proportions in each response category are statistically different across business majors and nonbusiness majors at the 99% confidence level. Specifically, a 5-sample test for equality of proportions results in a chi-squared value of 1404.9 and apvalue <2.2e⁻¹⁶.

Table 2.

Self-Rated Writing Skill Change During College Tenure, Differences Across Major.

Major	Response					n	Rank
Major	Much weaker	Weaker	No change	Stronger	Much stronger	n	Rank
Percent frequencies
Not business	0.3	2.2	14.6	53.1	29.7	359,988	1
Business	0.2	1.9	15.0	58.2	24.7	73,742	2
Economics	0.2	2.2	12.6	53.5	31.5	6,423	1
International business	0.2	1.5	14.1	57.7	26.5	2,596	2
Management	0.2	1.8	14.9	57.2	26.0	10,816	3
General business	0.2	1.5	13.1	59.5	25.8	13,276	4
Marketing	0.2	1.7	13.8	58.6	25.7	11,515	5
Other concentration	0.4	2.2	16.5	57.1	23.9	4,317	6
Finance	0.3	2.3	15.9	58.4	23.1	10,232	7
Accounting	0.2	2.3	17.9	59.8	19.8	14,567	8
Frequencies(number of students)
Not business	1,254	7,883	52,736	191,230	106,885	359,988	1
Business	165	1,423	11,056	42,917	18,181	73,742	2
General business	21	193	1,739	7,904	3,419	13,276	1
Marketing	21	194	1,589	6,749	2,962	11,515	2
Accounting	34	333	2,606	8,706	2,888	14,567	3
Management	22	191	1,610	6,185	2,808	10,816	4
Finance	32	239	1,626	5,972	2,363	10,232	5
Economics	13	141	809	3,438	2,022	6,423	6
Other concentration	17	93	711	2,466	1,030	4,317	7
International business	5	39	366	1,497	689	2,596	8

Note. Data come from the College Senior Survey (CSS;HERI, n.d.-b) that was conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) across 619 colleges and universities during graduating years 1994-2006 (HERI, 1994-2006a). The aggregate majors, and then business concentrations, are ranked by the relative proportions (top panel) or frequency (bottom panel) of students who reported “much stronger” as the change in their writing skill. A statistical hypothesis test shows that the proportions in each response category are statistically different across business majors and nonbusiness majors at the 99% confidence level. Specifically, a 5-sample test for equality of proportions results in a chi-squared value of 1,017.7 and ap-value < 2.2e^–16.

Also on the CSS, students were asked to report how much they thought their writing skills changed during undergraduate tenure, and could choose among the following responses: [my writing skills have become] much weaker, weaker, no change, stronger, or much stronger.Figure 2displays the percent of respondents who chose each option for the full sample. At approximately 54%, the most common response was stronger. The second most frequent response was much stronger, at almost 29%. Faculty and administrators alike may appreciate that an estimated 83% of college students feel their higher education increased their writing skills. Less than 3% of students felt their writing skills had become weaker or much weaker while in college.

Regarding differences across major,Table 2shows subsample responses to this survey question. Business majors were 5.1 percentage points more likely to report stronger skills and 5.0 points less likely to report much stronger skills, with the remaining categories being relatively similar. Thus, just as they were somewhat less likely to report high writing skill levels at graduation, business majors are shown to be somewhat less likely to report very high gains in skill during tenure. Again, differences across business disciplines are more noteworthy than comparisons across business major status. As with skill levels at graduation, economics majors were the most likely to report much stronger writing skills and accounting majors the least likely to do so. This difference was almost 12 percentage points. Some major pairs, such as management and international business, are quite comparable.

Controlling for Confounders

The descriptive analysis presented in the last section helped reveal the self-rated writing skills of business majors, how they differ across concentration, and how they compare with other college students. The analysis did not, however, control for other differences across students, their institutions, or time. To hold these potentially confounding factors constant, we turn to regression analysis. Specifically, we estimate fixed effects ordered logistic regression models of the form

{skill}_{i, s, t} = α + β m a j o r_{i, s, t} + γ X_{i, s, t} + S_{s} + T_{t} + ϵ_{i, s, t}

(1)

where ${skill}_{i, s, t}$ is the self-assessed writing skill level of studentiwho attended schoolsat time (graduating year)t; $α$ a constant term; $m a j o r_{i, s, t}$ a major of study indicator(s), with $β$ its corresponding parameter (or vector of parameters); $X_{i, s, t}$ a set of student characteristics and college experiences, with $γ$ its corresponding vector of parameters; $S_{s}$ school fixed effects; $T_{t}$ time fixed effects; and $ϵ_{i, s, t}$ the usual (in this case, well-behaved) error term. To compare business majors to other students generally, in some models, $m a j o r_{i, s, t}$ is an indicator for all business majors (regardless of discipline). To compare the different business degree disciplines, in other models, $m a j o r_{i, s, t}$ becomes a set of indicators, one for each business discipline.

Ordered logistic regression was chosen since the writing skill variable is ordinal (a categorical variable where the categories can be naturally ranked) and this form of regression was specifically designed for such dependent variables (e.g.,Borooah, 2002;Long, 2003;Wooldridge, 2011). School fixed effects address unobserved heterogeneity across colleges and universities such as their mission, geography, culture, public/private status, and level of prestige. Time fixed effects address unobserved heterogeneity across time, such as any national trends in higher education, or business communication education specifically, during the sample period. For more information of fixed effects regression, or panel methods generally, we direct the interested reader toKennedy (2008),Angrist and Pischke (2008),Wooldridge (2011), or most any intermediate or advanced statistics textbook. The inclusion of $X_{i, s, t}$ allows us to hold constant many differences across students such as background, demographics, and heterogeneity in their academic experiences. Some of these control variables are particularly useful in an analysis of writing skills. These include the typical hours per week the student reads for pleasure, an indicator for students whose first language is not English, and an indicator for those whose postgraduation goals include writing original works (poems, novels, etc.). Also included as controls are separate indicator variables for students who were told at matriculation they would need a remedial course(s) in writing, reading, and/or any remedial English course(s) (reading, writing, or other). Other variables in the control set include collegiate grade point average (GPA); high school GPA; age at matriculation; self-rated overall academic ability at graduation; gender; race (four categories); and indicators for internship participants, first-generation college students, part-time students, those who failed one or more courses, those who took one or more remedial courses, those with part-time employment during college, and those with full-time employment. In the interest of data disclosure, summary statistics for the student-specific control variables are presented inTable 3.

Table 3.

Student-Specific Control Variable Summary Statistics.

Continuous variable	M	SD	Min.	Max.
Typical hours per week: Reading for pleasure	1.713	2.872	0	20
College grade point average (GPA)	3.241	0.465	2	4
High school GPA	3.371	0.267	2	4
Age at matriculation	18.210	1.038	16	55
Self-rating: Academic ability (at graduation)	3.962	0.712	1	5
Indicator variable	Percent frequency
Male	37.4
African American	6.3
Hispanic	3.2
Other non-White race	10.1
English is not their first language	8.4
Goal at graduation: Writing original works	7.2
Needed remedial writing course(s)	1.2
Needed need remedial reading course(s)	1.0
Needed remedial English course(s) (any)	3.3
Internship participation	35.5
First generation college student	9.5
Attended college part-time	6.1
Failed one or more college courses	9.3
Took one or more remedial college courses	7.1
Ever worked part-time during college	23.1
Ever worked full-time during college	43.1

Note. Data come from the College Senior Survey (HERI, n.d.-b) and The Freshman Survey (HERI, n.d.-a) that were conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) across 619 colleges and universities during graduating years 1994-2006 (HERI, 1994-2006a,1994-2006b).N= 436,370. Minimums and maximums rounded to the integer. Additional controls include school and time (graduating year) fixed effects.

Of key interest are the estimates of $β$ , the average difference between business majors and other students (or the average differences for the specific business disciplines) after other dissimilarities across students, institutions, and time of education are held constant. As before, we are also able to analyze the self-reported change in writing skills that took place during college tenure. Thus, a second set of models are estimated of the form

Δ {skill}_{i, s, t} = α + β m a j o r_{i, s, t} + γ X_{i, s, t} + S_{s} + T_{t} + ϵ_{i, s, t}

(2)

where ∆ ${skill}_{i, s, t}$ represents the reportedchange(delta) in a student’s writing skills during college tenure, and all other terms are the same as inEquation 1. This dependent variable is also ordinal in nature, and therefore (fixed effect) ordered logistic regression continues to be the chosen regression method. As withEquation 1, two models ofEquation 2are estimated, one to compare business majors to other students generally and another for business discipline comparisons.

The key results (the estimates of $β$ ) for all four regressions are presented inTable 4. Reported are odds ratios for business majors and then the business concentrations.For those unfamiliar with odds ratios, here, a value greater than (less than) 1.0 implies that the group is more likely (less likely) to report a higher skill level (or greater change in skill) compared with nonbusiness majors. The distance between the odds ratio and 1.0 discloses the average difference in odds. For example, the odds ratio of 0.824 in the first model implies that business majors are 17.6% (1 − 0.824 = 0.176) less likely to report a particular skill level, on average and across the levels, after holding a long list of observable and unobservable (since fixed effects were used) factors constant.

Table 4.

Estimated Impacts of Business Discipline on Writing Skills.

Major	Dependent variable
	Writing skills at graduation		Change in writing skills during tenure
	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)
Business (any)	0.824***(0.007)		0.885***(0.007)
Accounting		0.605***(0.010)		0.695***(0.011)
Economics		1.006 (0.024)		1.083***(0.026)
Finance		0.764***(0.015)		0.804***(0.015)
International business		1.002 (0.037)		0.926**(0.035)
Marketing		0.970*(0.017)		0.983 (0.018)
Management		0.963**(0.017)		1.002 (0.019)
General business		0.893***(0.015)		1.029*(0.017)
Other concentration		0.816***(0.024)		0.885***(0.025)
Observations	432,333	432,333	433,730	433,730

Note.Values are odds ratios from (fixed effect) ordered logit models, with standard errors in parentheses. Controls include all variables presented inTable 3plus school and time (graduating year) fixed effects. The comparison group is always nonbusiness majors (all other students). Models were also estimated where the sample was constrained to students who answered both writing skills questions, yielding highly similar results. For brevity, these additional models are not shown but are available from the authors upon request. Data come from the College Senior Survey (CSS;HERI, n.d.-b) and The Freshman Survey (TFS;HERI, n.d.-a) that were conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) across 619 colleges and universities during graduating years 1994-2006 (HERI, 1994-2006a,1994-2006b).

p< .10.^** p< .05.^*** p< .01.

After holding many observable and unobservable factors constant, we estimate that business majors are 17.6% less likely than other students to report a high writing skill level at undergraduate graduation. They are also 11.5% less likely to report high writing skill gains from their higher education. Thus, regression analysis, which holds constant relevant factors, shows that differences across business major status are larger than raw data imply. Switching to the discipline-specific models, both economics and international business majors are statistically indistinguishable from nonbusiness majors in terms of self-perceived writing skill levels, with all other disciplines reporting lower skill. Accounting majors are the most different, being 39.5% less likely to report a high skill level compared with nonbusiness students. Marketing and management majors are statistically indistinguishable from nonbusiness majors in terms of skill gain, and economics and general business majors are, interestingly, more likely to report high gains than nonbusiness majors (8.3% and 2.9% more likely, respectively). All other business disciplines are less likely to report high gains than nonbusiness majors, with accounting majors again being the standout at a 30.5% lower probability.

Discussion

The goal of the study is to examine self-rated writing skills of business majors at undergraduate graduation and their perceptions of how much these skills changed during college tenure. These subjective measures may be decent proxies of objective skills and changes therein, but even if not, are important in their own right. For example, one’s perceptions of their own skills will affect their career goals and to what jobs they apply, ultimately shaping labor market outcomes. Also, a graduate’s beliefs on how much college improved their skills will affect their level of satisfaction with higher education and the degree to which they encourage and recommend it to others. Self-perceptions of skill additionally have effects on confidence and independence. A student’s actual writing skills will of course partially determine their labor market success, communication skills being important in a business environment. We now turn back to our hypotheses.

Hypothesis 1: Business majors will report different writing skill levels at graduation when compared with other students, on average, even after holding relevant factors constant. We see in self-rated writing skills at undergraduate graduation some basic differences between business and nonbusiness students. Nonbusiness students rated themselves 93.8% average or above, while business students rated themselves 93.2% average or above (Table 1). However, business students rated themselves as specifically average more often than nonbusiness students (38.9% vs. 34.7%), while nonbusiness students tended to rate themselves more in the highest 10% category (17% vs. 12.7%). Regarding the regression results, which control for potential confounders, business majors are estimated to be 17.6% less likely overall to report a high writing skill level than nonbusiness majors. Thus, Hypothesis 1 appears to be correct. As for the specific business disciplines, accounting students are shown to have the lowest probability of reporting a high skill level, 39.5% less likely compared with nonbusiness majors. They are followed by finance majors (23.6% lower probability), other business concentration students (18.4%), general business (10.7%), management (3.7%), and then marketing (3%). However, economics and international business majors are statistically indistinguishable from nonbusiness majors in this regard, that is, these students are equally as likely to report high writing skills at graduation as the typical nonbusiness major.

Said simply, business students have less self-efficacy in their writing. Self-efficacy leads to academic achievement and writing self-efficacy can lead to beliefs about writing (Ekholm et al., 2015). This affects success on writing tasks (Ekholm et al., 2015;E. Jones, 2008;Pajares, 2003;Schunk & Zimmerman, 1994,2007). Students with high writing self-efficacy participate in writing activities, work harder on writing assignments, set higher goals for their writing, and achieve higher levels of success with their writing than their less-efficacious peers (Ekholm et al., 2015;García-Sánchez& Fidalgo-Redondo, 2006;Schunk & Zimmerman, 2007). Based on the statistics inTable 1, it appears business students rate themselves poorer writers, on average, and in some disciplines (e.g., accounting), far less skilled. Thus, self-efficacy is linked to lower perceived scores in writing, specifically for business students.

Prior evidence indicates more objective scores in writing are also lower for business majors.Steedle and Bradley (2012)find that on the CLA exam (a performance exam completed by college seniors), which looks at analysis, problem solving, writing effectiveness, and writing mechanics, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, and Humanities and Languages topped the rankings, while Business and Education majors were ranked low. These perceptions lead to students’ performance on writing assignments, their need for writing, and their perceived immediate communicative value in a workplace environment at the time of graduation.

Some effects of lower writing score perceptions are remediation and costly interventions in the work environment. Whether their beliefs are accurate or not, evidence here still strongly points to a reality where business students feel their writing skills at graduation are lower than nonbusiness majors, on average and after control is implemented. Thus, while their reported average skill level may be above their objective level, the subjectively viewed average difference across business major status may very well mirror the true average difference, at least in direction, but less likely in magnitude. We now turn to Hypothesis 2.

Hypothesis 2: Business majors will report different writing skill gains during college tenure when compared with other students, on average, even after holding relevant factors constant. An interesting observation from the statistics inTable 2is that business and nonbusiness students do not perceive the likelihood they gained writing skills differently, only the magnitude of those gains. Nonbusiness students see their writing as much stronger 29.7% of the time, as opposed to business students who see their writing as much stronger at a rate of 24.7%. Conversely, business students rate themselves as stronger 58.2% of the time, as opposed to nonbusiness students who are at 53.1%. After controlling for other variables in the context of regression analysis, economics and general business majors are more likely to report strong gains in writing skills during college tenure than the average nonbusiness student, at an 8.3% and 2.9% increased probability, respectively. Marketing and management majors are statistically indistinguishable from nonbusiness majors this time, and all other business disciplines are less likely to report gains. In order of magnitude, these are accounting (30.5% less likely), finance (19.6%), other business concentration (11.5%), and international business (7.4%).

Business majors do report somewhat different writing skill gains during college tenure as opposed to nonbusiness majors. A slightly larger percent of business majors (15%) state that they made no change in their writing skills than nonbusiness majors (14.6%;Table 2).Simkin et al. (2012)argue that students tend to overestimate their writing skills and underperform on assessments. The data analyzed here point toward the possibility that business students may be less likely to overestimate their writing skills than other students, on average.

Business students are more likely to judge their change in writing skills during college tenure to be stronger than much stronger, relative to nonbusiness majors. Specifically, business students (58.2%) state that they are stronger writers (as opposed to just 53.1% among nonbusiness students). Looking at finance and accounting students specifically, they both make the case that their writing is stronger (58.4% and 59.8%, respectively), but only account for a 23.1% and 19.8% belief that their writing is much stronger, compared with 29.7% for nonbusiness students and 24.7% for the population of business students generally. A component to the differences in self-reported writing scores is the general content taught in business programs. In many business courses, such as most finance and accounting courses, quantitative content is of much higher focus. The courses required of business majors with high writing content, such as English Composition and Business Communications, are more often taken closer to matriculation than graduation. Thus, by graduation, business students may not perceive writing as having been integral to their education or important for career success. There is empirical evidence of this, at least for accounting majors (Rebele, 1985). Since so much time is (perhaps necessarily) dedicated to the teaching of discipline-related content, and away from general skills like writing, writing instruction goes by the wayside. Some would undoubtedly argue that this is a practical outcome in content-rich business courses. Of course, this outcome differs by both course and discipline.

What, if any, interventions can make college writing more effective for students?Rieber (2006)discusses the effectiveness of peer review in business classes generally, which can be applied to writing assignments.Smith (2011)argues that the impact practices of business teachers should include subscribing to listservs on writing, partnering with English composition teachers on assigning writing and reading, and conducting research in relevant composition.Penner (2013)conducted an analysis of freshman writing and discovered that students indeed gain skills when taking writing relevant courses.Penner (2013, p. 453) writes that statistical analyses confirmed a commonly held assumption about freshmen college students, that most students should show improvement (Hillocks, 1995, p. 207). Nonbusiness students, especially those majoring in a language, often take many more composition courses than their business peers. It is therefore not surprising that nonbusiness students report more gains in writing skill due to their higher education. We turn now to our last hypothesis.

Hypothesis 3: Among business majors, there will be noteworthy average differences across the disciplines in terms of reported writing skill levels and improvements therein, even after holding relevant factors constant. Differences across business discipline are indeed apparent, and often large. We begin our focus on the extremes. Throughout this analysis, economics was the leader in terms of both subjectively reported writing skill and subjectively perceived skill improvement.

There is little research on economics students’ perceptions of their own writing, although there is a great deal on the types of writing assignments that economics professors can and do give their students.Schmeiser (2017), for example, discusses how to integrate writing into economics courses, providing numerous strategies for teachers such as policy briefs, peer review, blogs, process writing, and brainstorming. These suggestions largely replicate similar techniques used in the typical English course. Similar suggestions have been made by others, includingNeugeboren and Jacobson (2005)andIrwin (2019). There also exist full books devoted to economics writing, such asMcCloskey’s (2019) Economical Writing. Otherwise said, unlike in many other business disciplines, there is a research base and an established set of materials for the inclusion of writing in the economics classroom. The nature of economics very often involves explaining relationships, phenomenon, and theoretical and empirical results to others, similar to research writing. The practice of learning economics often involves storytelling, which begets opportunities to integrate writing into the economics curriculum that are not as readily available in other business classrooms. If it can be shown that economics majors are objectively gaining the most writing skill, then modeling what is done in economics courses may be an effective way to improve student skills in the other business disciplines.

Accounting majors were the other extreme, reporting the weakest skills and smallest gains in both our descriptive and multivariate analyses. There is much evidence that suggests writing outcomes are not what they should be in the accounting realm (e.g.,Phillips & Davis, 1991).Faris et al. (1999)studied accounting students and their perceived anxiety in writing, finding these majors have bigger average WAT (Writing anxiety test) scores than other majors, 71.15 versus 67.07. ResearchersStanga and Ladd’s (1990)findings indicated that accounting majors had higher levels of oral speaking anxiety than other business majors. One possibility is that accounting students are more comfortable in the computational field than the oral communication field as it represents one of their key strengths (Ekholm et al., 2015;Faris et al., 1999).

After accounting, finance majors reported the lowest skills and improvement, followed by students majoring in a business concentration not captured in these surveys. Not knowing their exact concentration, the latter group is difficult to discuss. However, if one reasons these subjective reports coincide with reality and/or feels self-confidence is important, results here suggest finance faculty should follow accounting faculty in their attempts to improve the writing skills of their students. The results here also suggest positives for marketing and management majors. These students are fewer than 4 percentage points away from the nonbusiness norm in terms of self-reported skills at graduation, on average, and statistically indistinguishable from nonbusiness majors in terms of skill gain. A similar, but slightly weaker, case could be made for international business students. General business majors are unique in having mixed results. On average, they are slightly more likely to report strong gains than nonbusiness majors, noticeably more likely to report gains than all other business majors excluding economics students, but are still near the bottom of the rankings in terms of self-reported skill level at graduation. These mixed results imply general business majors are more often matriculating with poor writing skills, compared with specific business disciplines.

Returning to our set of hypotheses as a whole, evidence for all three being true was uncovered as part of this analysis. Business majors, as a group, report somewhat weaker writing skills as they are nearing their undergraduate graduation date. They also report somewhat smaller gains in these skills because of college, on average. Finally, differences across business discipline are often huge. We remind the reader that the measures analyzed here were subjective, which may or may not mirror objective measures. Given the subjective nature of the outcomes and our discussion of the Dunning-Kruger effect (Dunning, 2011) in this context, it is possible, for example, that accounting students are relatively adequate writers who are the most realistic or honest when making self-judgements. We end by offering some brief advice for improvement, reminders of this study’s major limitations, and suggestions for future research.

One reason that business majors generally report inferior writing skills is likely that writing is not often a major consideration when business faculty and administrators work to advance their programs, instead favoring other content. A better goal may be to find a happy medium with regard to material and time allocation. Accurate assessment is also significant because, for example, students who feel they are already successful at writing will probably not work as hard to improve this skill. Rich assessments that capture more skill development, as well as encouraging students to work on their writing, are critical. Faculty must remain cognizant of how vital writing is in the workplace. Programs that improve teachers’ comfort and confidence in assessing and assigning writing activities have promise. Perhaps outside consultants and Writing-Across-the-Curriculum initiatives could aid as well.

Limitations

One limitation of the present study is the age of the data, 1994-2006. However, to the authors’ knowledge, there exists no publicly available, multi-institution study that captured either students’ self-assessed writing abilities or changes therein that is more current. In addition, most of the students in this sample attended private institutions. As a result, the sample is not nationally representative in terms of institution type. A study of public colleges and universities alone may prove enlightening. There is also room for research on highly related topics, such as the self-rated reading skills and the self-rated public-speaking skills of business majors, as these talents are significant in the world of business communication. We leave these tasks for future research.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Steven Brown for his input and review.

Authors’ Note

This study was not required to be submitted for approval by the Institutional Review Board of Georgia Gwinnett College. Information from TFS and CSS used in this study was anonymized and publicly available through HERI Data Archive at

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

Author Biographies

P. Wesley Routonis an associate professor of economics and quantitative analysis at Georgia Gwinnett College. He teaches courses in economic theory, statistics, and research methodology. His primary research interests include the economics of education, business pedagogy, and applied microeconomics.

John Marinanis an assistant professor of business communications at Georgia Gwinnett College. His interests are in communication in work settings, servant leadership, and psychological empowerment. His future research plans entail looking at the self-rated speaking and reading skills among college students.

Marvin Bontrageris an assistant professor of management in the School of Business at Georgia Gwinnett College. He teaches courses in management, organizational behavior, and communication. His research interests include organizational behavior, work design, and work-family conflict.

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