Program Design Implications from International Business Majors’ Goals Before and After Undergraduate Study

ABSTRACT

Understanding students’ post-graduation goals is important because it aids faculty and administrators in course and program design, mentoring, and generally serving students. Using a sample of almost 513,000 undergraduates from more than 600 colleges and universities, we examine goals and plans of international business majors. Students were surveyed near matriculation and graduation. First, responses of international business majors are presented. Then, goals of these students are compared to others, both other business majors and non-business majors. Finally, logistic regression analysis is used to estimate how different the typical goals of international business majors are from other students after controlling for demographics, background, and collegiate experiences. Nine different post-graduation goals are examined, including those pertaining to further education, future job characteristics, travel, personal wealth, and altruistic aspirations. Results indicate that IB students, on average, place a high level of importance on numerous goals, more so than other business students in most cases. The impacts of IB education on student goals are found to vary little across the type of institution attended. Misalignment between IB students’ goal prioritization and careers in the field motivates a discussion of areas with potential for improvement in IB programs.

KEYWORDS:

• International business major
• career goals
• business education
• post-graduation plans
• business major

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

P. Wesley Routon

Dr. P. Wesley Routon is an Associate Professor of Economics at Georgia Gwinnett College, where he teaches courses in economics, statistics, and research methodology. He also serves as a director at the college's Business, Economic, and Applied Research Center. His primary research interests lie within the fields of labor economics, education economics, and business pedagogy.

Phillip Hartley

Dr. Phillip Hartley is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Georgia Gwinnett College, where he teaches courses in marketing and international business. He also serves as director of the college’s Center for Emerging Business and Entrepreneurship. His research interests include branding, psychological ownership, entrepreneurship and business pedagogy.

Luis Torres

Luis Torres is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Georgia Gwinnett College, where he teaches marketing and international business courses. His areas of research include multicultural marketing and business higher education. He also serves as director at the college's Center for International Business and Exchange. Before academia, Dr. Torres engaged in IT, marketing and finance projects for various industries around the world.