When I was in my final year in college, I graduated with a major in psychology and a minor in business management. As I look back, I sort of wished I never minored in business management. Virtually everything I learned in the school of business tends to differ and even contradicted from what I was learning in psychology. In the school of business, I learned that globalization is such a wonderful thing from my marketing professor. I learned that the gap between the rich and the poor is not widening from my business ethics professor. I learned that the ultimate goal in the organization is profit maximization. I learned that Warren Buffet was such an intelligent man who was rejected to Harvard University because he was too young. There was a lot of glory given to the study of Warren Buffet. Who would have known that a year later, I was watching the Keiser Report and Max Keiser was talking about the unethical practices of Warren Buffet. Perhaps the “almost” oxymoronic phrase of “business ethics” is not as cheesy as it appears to be. On the contrast, when I was sitting in my psychology courses, globalization did not really seem like a great thing. I learned about socioeconomic status, poverty, stratification, exploitation of one country upon another country, cheap labor, and poor little kids having to work in sweatshops. A human being did not seem like a human resource or a human asset in its denotative definition that you get from the textbook or encyclopedia. A human being was more like an expendable container or just a serial number to do repetitive boring tasks. A human being was a slave to labor because as the research suggested, a person born of low socioeconomic status will die as the same status. I learned that the gap between the rich and poor is widening and getting bigger as time passes by. I learned from my psychology professors that they went into this profession not for the money but to be educators and perhaps aid in fixing for the good of all people. I still remember the final farewell words from one of my developmental psychology professors near the end of the semester and she said, “I mean, I didn’t get rich.” It really did get my attention as I have always known long ago that life was much more than paying the bills and eating foods. We are here for a purpose and that is to better the conditions of the whole world to the benefit of everyone. She also added that “You will be shocked to find that the financial analyst and managers make a thousand times more money than you, but they really aren’t that smart.” The simple act of watching and observing my fellow classmates was very fascinating to me. I have been both with business students and psychology students and the differences are present. I found business students to be highly competitive not just within themselves but with each other. They are very keen at perceiving strength. They value strength and not weakness. I even had an intro to management business professor that said, “The chain is only as strong as its weakest link.” Perhaps that was just a fancy way of saying “align yourselves with the strong, cut off the weak, and do not associate yourself with those who have developmental disabilities for they may drag you down.” Even the women seemed heartless and cold. They are only nice to you if they think you are smart and so they can use you to help them partner study or group study. Some of the students already hold supervisorial positions in the real world and they just go to school part time. I was personally attracted to my fellow psychology students because they tend to be quite the opposite. I found psychology students to be a lot warmer and friendlier (not the fake friendliness you get from business students). They are very sharp at understanding human behavior. All of my professors and even the teaching assistants were very, very nice people. They were very compassionate beings. When I look back to my college experience, I can honestly say that I learned a lot about not just the study of psychology but life itself. I still remember the life lessons and stories from my professors and fellow classmates and I went home in awe just about every time. So going back to the fundamental reason why I studied business management in the first place was because I was interested in the accounting and finance aspect and not the deceptive tactics of how to use the foot-in-the-door technique or the door-in-the-face technique or even selling an item for $999.99 instead of $1,000.00. Now that I think about it, it was just a waste of time to brainwash me and turn me into a psychopathic entity. I could have spent that time doing graduate studies in experimental psychology or advance neuropsychology. The hell with it, spending time learning every area of Brodmann’s area would be worth much more value of my time even if it took me 1000 hours.
That wasn't a psychology class, it was a sociology class marketed as psychology. You should go back and demand a refund. My degree is in business administration (the American term, at least 40 years ago). I have found it very useful because it helps me understand how an Industrial Era civilization works and, later, a Post-Industrial Era civilization. (Or "Information Era" although I prefer to call it the "Electronic Era" since eras are named after their establishing technology.) But I have to agree that the students in my business classes appeared more competitive than in the other disciplines, at least by the only measure I noticed: The only instance of cheating I ever observed in six years of university classes (I abandoned science and started over in a new major so it took a long time) was in an accounting class. I remember chuckling to myself, "Some day I may want to hire that guy to prepare my income tax return."
Great to hear. Business administration particularly business management is almost identical to industrial and organizational psychology. I swear, it was almost exactly the same thing except that the I/O dealt with a more empirical-researched based. Management applied behavioral principles to the work setting. Thanks for sharing. I don't mean to offend business people but you can even see the competitive nature of candidates in The Apprentice with Donald Trump. Though there is a rumor that Donald Trump is actually a very nice guy outside of his work - don't know if it is true though.
That's awful. A business education is supposed to teach you the basic principles of accounting, finance, economics, taxes, marketing and business law, as well as the management of individuals, projects and organizations. And a bunch of other stuff that isn't popping into my head because it's been 43 years since I graduated and I went into IT instead of business anyway. If business majors are only learning psychology and not business, that sure explains a lot. Like why bankers wanted to sell mortgages to customers who would not be able to keep up with the payments. Apparently they actually believe that the value of one commodity (real estate) can continue to rise out of proportion to wages and the rest of the economy. They haven't taken any of the essential first-year business courses. I was always glad to see that business majors were taught something about what goes on inside a human. But as far as I'm concerned, behavioral psychology will only reinforce the attitude that people are "human resources," rather than flesh and blood with their own needs, wants, hopes, strengths, weaknesses and attitudes. I have a friend who is a Jungian psychologist and a practicing psychotherapist. He gets a lot of gigs speaking to management classes and corporate seminars... in other countries, never the USA. But "The Apprentice" is a competition by definition. The only people you're going to see on that show are the competitive ones. That's how they're selected. It's like "So You Think You Can Dance." These aren't just kids who are the best dancers of their generation and hope to make a career of it by hard work. They're competitive, they want to out-dance the other best dancers of their generation and win a prize. This, in a nutshell, is the problem with government in a vastly oversize country like the United States. There are so many levels of it that by the time a person rises very far above the beginner level (say, mayor of a small town), he's had to win a dozen increasingly more challenging elections. This means the process will inevitably select for skill at competing, rather than skill at actually doing the job that the winner of the competition will have to do. The only thing the people who run this country are any good at is winning elections!
Yes, I did learn all that but keep in mind that management was my minor so I didn't take all those courses that regular business students had to. Well, sales in general is a big one. People working in marketing firms are pressured to do sales. If they can't sell, they are told "maybe this isn't the right job for you" not to forget about performance appraisals. Because of this pressure, unethical behavior tends to occur - look at all the corporate scandals, etc. - some of those people even have MBAs - not psychology degrees. The attitude I get from bosses is that as long as you close a sale - that's all that matters. Yep. You can look up articles where college graduates and even law school graduates can't find jobs. It just seems there's too many people and not enough jobs on the planet.
Why are psychologists and councilors also the craziest people of all? Is it some secret wish to understand their own condition?
As the old proverb goes..."physician, heal thyself". But, then again..."The physician that treats himself, has a fool as a patient".
This is why I'm all for anarchy and a change of social order Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
