Why students should study marketing

Marketing News, 29 (July 17, 1995), p. 8

Why students should study marketing

by Herbert Rotfeld

scurity.

This would mean that market-

Herbert Rotfeld is an associate

ing professors could he training

marketing professor at Auburn Uni-

officers, not scholars. Doctorates

versity, Alabama.

would be irrelevant; only success-

lieve that a career in business re- fid business practitioners need

quires studying business in college. apply for academic jobs.

Oh my God, marketing professors And from there, they choose ma-

But there is a danger in this

are acting like professors.

jors and courses they think will

strategy. Since no university would

They give lectures and study

help them get jobs.

tolerate the football model, eco-

business activities instead of prac-

Rumors of job placement might nomic problems might limit the

ticing them. When not in the

play a role. If students hear that

ability of the marketing-training

classroom, they read books and

most graduates get jobs in sales,

schools to Und jobs for any gradu-

papers and spend time writing.

the personal selling courses quick- ates. It has not happened to any

They call it research, but we know ly become popular. Other students marketing program yet, hut some

what it really is. They are think- relate that they choose their aca- schools' professional programs

ing.

demic majors because they sound have been cut or eliminated be-

To some marketing professionals, these professors are wasting the students' time with teaching that gets in the way of training for that first marketing job. Posted on an Internet bulletin board for professionals and educators was the

like interesting johs.

Then why have some business schools been losing students? Why are the numbers of marketing majors in decline? If anything, the search for job certification is stronger than ever.

cause or poor placement rates. At one univcrsitj\ since the degree program claimed to train future journalists hut could only place one-quarter of graduates in journalism jobs, the program was deleted.

complaint, "I ain't got no idea why The answer is simple. Across

More important, supplanting

they require English and spelling every campus, other departments education with job training could

in [marketing classes] since some and colleges also now claim to

hurt businesses in the long run.

jobs don't require people to do any provide job training.

Marketing is not a mechanized

writing."

Sociology departments "train? job, with cookbooks being used to

Sarcasm aside, marketing is an criminologists. English faculty run plug in daily tasks. Employees

area of study for a four-year col- degree programs in business and need creativity, innovation, and

lege education. And for the mar- technical writing or hook editing. insight. In journalism, where edu-

keting business, a facile and edu- Other nonbusiness faculty train

cation has long been seen as re-

cated mind is more important than students in hotel management,

porter training, many modern re-

a head full of business terms that restaurant service, fashion mer-

porters know the mechanics of

might be archaic by graduation

chandising, and commercial de- writing a story but arc ignorant of

time.

sign, to name a few. They also

what they write. They see journal-

Marketing was an extremely

offer business minors so liberal

ism as a mechanism, a form. If this

popular area of study, but it seems arts majors feel they are preparing happened in marketing research,

e to be losing its following. At many for jobs.

graduates would see work as gen-

universities during the 1980s, student requests for undergraduate marketing courses grossly exceeded class space. But as university enrollments drop, many marketing

Of course, like marketing, most of these new "professional education" areas are not closed-shop guilds where people lacking certain degrees are barred from jobs.

erating data piles without understanding the need for interpretation. Sales management would degenerate into writing the perfect sales script.

departments report a dispropor- Graduates of marketing, English,

Faculty tell new law students,

tionate loss of students.

economics, public relations, or his- "We are not here to teach the law.

For most students, the choice of tory who lack experience in those We teach you how to analyze

- courses or an academic major is a areas are qualified for the same

problems as lawyers." The best

process of elimination. The pro- jobs. While university' placement law professors might have been

cess might not be conscious, and it records are rarely, if ever, dis-

successful as lawyers, but they are

is rarely overt, hut it exists. Since cussed, many faculty members

respected on campus as scholars

students believe that their job op- know that over half of all college and in the legal profession for

tions are dictated hy their tran-

graduates enter careers unrelated their insight and analysis of legal

scripts, most liberal arts are not

to their majors.

issues.

considered unless the student's plans include post-graduate study. - Science is eliminated unless a strong interest was engendered in high school. Engineering programs require extensive math and calculus, another high school proficiency which U.S. schools do so poorly to encourage.

Marketing departments could structure a relationship with businesses akin to that enjoyed by college football and the NFL. Students would enter college with hopes of high-paying jobs and spend four years forsaking all other facets of educational value as they maximize job training.

So instead of job training, marketing departments should do more to join the greater academic community. When marketing enrollments soared, courses were closed to nonmajors. Colleges of business bave stood as islands, outside the rest of the university community. And that has been our

Granted, these are generaliza- Then the husinesses could run a loss.

tions, not universals, but most stu- draft and choose to hire one or

So many people know so little

dents see their future careers as "in two students from the major, al- about what marketing Is (and is

business," and they fervently be- lowing the rest to decline into ob- not). Marketing courses can be an

integral part of any student's edu-

cation. No matter what the major,

no matter what the hitxire job, un-

derstanding marketing pr;ictices

and their role in a modern econo-

my can be useful for any educated

person.

Marketing scholars, scholarship,

and a variety of courses could be-

come parts of all types of universi-

ty programs, both those claiming a

professional education and those

with more aciulemic goals. As an

academic discipline, marketing can

be respected as an integral part of

any campus, possibly even tied to a

predominantly liberal arts core

curriculum.

But first, marketing educators

must acknowledge that they are

professors. The courses are credit

toward an education degree. Let

business run the short-run job

training as baseball runs its own

farm leagues. Let universities con-

centrate on turning out people

wbo can think. ?

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