Why Is Business the Top Major @ SSU?
By Rosemary Nabukeera
Salem, Mass., May 13, 2017–Four years ago, Leah Cafarell, by then a freshman, came to Salem State University (SSU) “undeclared.” In the fall semester of that year, she took a seminar designed to help undeclared students to find the right major. She explained in an interview that the course introduced “the general knowledge about the field” and she “was always interested in learning about entrepreneurship and starting small businesses.”
“I just figured that if I chose to be a business major, and an entrepreneurship major it seemed so interesting to me,” Cafarell said.
An SSU enrollment report shows that Business has dominated the №1 spot as the most popular major for the past six years, with over 1,300 students for most recent three years tallied (2013–2016). Nursing, with about 650 students, comes in second.
According to the Chair of Marketing and Decision Sciences Department Nisreen Bahnan, the Business major is popular because every sector requires business and the major is “productive” and it has “a lot of potential.”
In fact, the SSU website notes that the univeristy offers 11 different business concentrations: Entrepreneurship, Accounting, Finance, Accounting/finance, Management, Operations and Decision Sciences, International Business, Human Resource Management, Hospitality Management, Management Information Systems, and Marketing.
For instance, Marketing student Amari Heywood-Gonzalez chose business because he had taken a marketing class while in high school and from there he “wanted to continue to study marketing and its effects.” Heywood-Gonzalez hopes to start a marketing company somewhere in the next five to ten years and then “come back and teach part-time” at SSU.
“Yes, it’s the dream,” Heywood-Gonzalez said in an interview.
In contrast to Heywood-Gonzalez, Hospitality Management major Collin Wilson chose business because it is all he has done his whole life. During an interview, Wilson said he “started working at a restaurant” at sixteen and he “enjoyed it a lot,” to the point that he could not imagine doing anything else.
“Hopefully one day I will probably manage a resort or a restaurant or something and maybe go from there and do my own thing,” Wilson said.
Wilson explained that even though business “might not apply to certain careers fields, it’s still useful information” that can be incorporated into jobs like kitchen work.
“Even if you are a chef you still need to manage people,” Wilson said.
On the other hand, Management concentrator Kevin Sheehan chose Business because he has worked in the hospitality business since he was fourteen. Sheehan says his “career path” is “to be a restaurant consulting” and he “will go to grad school for that.”
“I want money,” Sheehan said in an interview.
When asked in an email interview why the major is popular at SSU, Dean of the Bertolon School of Business Linda Nowak noted that SSU has “dedicated faculty, excellent student support through tutoring labs and peer mentors, and our [SSU’s] connection with local businesses that supply internships and jobs for our students.”
For example, as Cafarell explained in her interview, her decision to major in Entrepreneurship, a Business concentration, was not just based on interest alone. She also used the advice she got from her guidance counselor, whom Dean Nowak would categorize among “dedicated faculty.” Cafarell was “worried about graduating with an Entrepreneurship major and not having a job” when she “got out of school,” thus she looked for help from experts.
“My advisor said that your concentration is what you are interested in and you’re actual major is like what your degree is going to be,” Cafarell said.
And in class, Cafarell said she “never felt overwhelmed or anything unless it was like accounting and finance classes; they are a lot harder.”
Wilson, who is also a peer mentor, said that “the teachers are really good and at helping” students to find reasons why they like the field.
Cafarell is now a graduating senior, with a major in Entrepreneurship and a minor in Public Relations.
According to the National Center of Education Statistics, in 2013 and 2014, “[o]f the 1,870,000 bachelor’s degrees conferred in 2013–14, the greatest numbers of degrees were conferred in the fields of business (358,000).” The same report points out that business is the most popular major in the United States.
Cafarell remembers the freshman business seminar as “general and comfortable,” adding that “it ended up being a good choice.” Since last semester, she has been focused on marketing, with a marketing internship and a marketing job. In addition, she has also used her knowledge and experience in the past two years to support fellow students as a peer mentor.
