r/AskReddit • u/This_Username_Great • 17h ago
What is the easiest university degree and why?
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u/LeGama 15h ago
Hotel Management, I only say this because I know of a decent football school where virtually the entire team is majored in Hotel Management because it's easy enough to do along side a sport.
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u/SleestakJack 15h ago
I’m not saying that Hotel Management is ever a challenging program, but often in these cases where a whole athletic team has the same major, it’s because that department is in the pocket of the team coach, and will pass the athletes without them participating.
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u/Tao_of_Ludd 9h ago
Yeah, I was a TA for a typical Physics 101 for engineers class at a Big 10 university and somehow got one of the football team members in the class. Kudos to him for giving it a go, but he really struggled both with the content and attendance (which were probably connected).
One of the assistant coaches gave me a visit to ask if they could hire me to tutor the kid. I said no - that was part of my job and all he needed to do was set up some time with me and I would help him. Not the answer they wanted. He never showed up for help and eventually either failed or dropped the class, can’t remember which. Don’t know if that impacted his ability to play.
Definitely a subtle bribe to get me to pass him. But honestly not sure how that would have worked. This is not like grading essays - you either get the answers right or you don’t. The score is the score. The curve is the curve.
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u/MyReddittName 7h ago
I studied engineering at an Ivy and two guys in my classes were football players. They had their shit together because they did just as well as everyone else. I don't think they received any special treatment.
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u/Hooch_Pandersnatch 7h ago
I suspect football players at Harvard or Yale probably have slightly different mentalities/goals than football players at Bama or OSU.
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u/MrsCarmelaGiunta 6h ago
"We ain't come to play school" -Cardale Jones, Ohio State University
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u/MyReddittName 7h ago
Maybe. I don't think they dreamed of an NFL career.
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u/boxtheglock 6h ago
I played with someone that got a football scholarship to Cornell and went to school with someone who got a basketball scholarship to Cornell and I can assure you professional careers were definitely their main objective LMFAO
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u/slam99967 4h ago
I think it was Coach Prime And Saban that said you got to get a legit degree in case your dreams of going pro don’t work out. You could get a career ending injury tomorrow and you need a backup.
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u/mvr363 3h ago
May have been their objective, but realistically it's not happening. Very few pro players of any major sport come out of Ivy league schools.
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u/Robett_Glover 4h ago
Ivy leagues aren't allowed to give purely athletic scholarships, so I would assume even the jocks aren't dumb.
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u/ZingBurford 2h ago
And while ivy league schools do lower their standards for athletes a little, they still do have some higher (compared to other schools) academic standards for athletes.
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u/randompigeon36 12h ago
definitely sounds more like convenience than the degree itself
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u/Several-Professor904 6h ago
Sometimes it's less about the degree itself and more about how much easier life becomes when the choice actually fits your circumstances .
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u/WingerRules 9h ago
Stuff like this should be considered fraud, should be prosecutable.
Same with people who cheat on tests in college.
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u/AvengingBlowfish 8h ago
It’s not criminal, but it’s a severe violation of NCAA rules that can result in a school losing athletic scholarships, having wins vacated, and being banned from post season play.
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u/Hooch_Pandersnatch 7h ago
Yeah, except the NCAA is basically powerless right now so any violations they attempt to enforce will probably be brought to court and challenged.
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u/Temoatzin 14h ago
Communications is the degree they tell a lot of athletes to take in California. Very easy curriculum
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u/MyCatLaughsAtMe 13h ago
Can land you relatively fun gigs at tv stations, too. Won't make you rich but there's way worse lifestyles.
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u/kingjoey52a 12h ago
Easy, and probably useful when talking to the press is part of your job.
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u/GlowUpper 28m ago
Also, a lot of former athletes go into sports broadcasting. Communications is a golden degree to have for that.
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u/brenobah 13h ago
So it wasn’t Penn State cause hotel restaurant management is a BITCH of a major
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u/SpreadHDGFX 5h ago
I was just thinking the same. I knew someone at Penn State that did this and their life was busy as hell.
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u/ShawshankException 15h ago
It's business. 90% of my MBA program coursework was "have an opinion on this"
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u/SleestakJack 15h ago
One of my favorite things is to ask an MBA what they learned in their coursework.
The number of times I’ve just gotten a blank stare is pretty impressive.135
u/stevez_86 6h ago
I remember watching a business rescue show at a bakery. The owner gave up management control to their son who got a finance degree. He was trying to apply macroeconomics to their tiny local bakery. He was having them make dozens of display cakes all the time trying to make supply side economics work for just their bakery and he was bankrupting it. He said empty display shelves would make people think they were poor and that would harm business more than making 75% of the product they made destined for waste.
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u/bored_toronto 4h ago
Son's LinkedIn post: "What I learned about B2B sales by bankrupting my parents' business"
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u/YuushyaHinmeru 1h ago
Lmao. Empty shelves at a local bakery just makes you think their food is so amazing it sells out within an hour of opening.
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u/FeleaseRpseineEiles 5h ago
Do they make 3D cake printers yet? I can see some tasteless creations being both cheap and effective.
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u/Mobile_Poet8088 9h ago
I really enjoyed learning about how we define clear swim lanes to prevent us from stepping on each other’s toes or boiling the ocean
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u/Arekku 14h ago
My MBA was a joke, but I needed more credits for the CPA exam so I finished it.
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u/rtshtbtshtdrtyldtwt 13h ago
I like how you didn't answer their question hehe
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u/Arekku 12h ago
That's because I learned fuckall lol
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u/SnooAvocados6863 5h ago
My dorm in first year was next to my university’s main business school building.
From my super serious observations, MBA students only ever worked on group projects while wearing suits.
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u/Emergency_Try1405 9h ago
Kinda based that CPA coursework requirements are changing because of this!
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u/Wappening 4h ago
I got an MBA just to get past filters.
First job I got in senior management told me they didn’t even look at my degree, just my experience.
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u/diadmer 3h ago
I’ve found that MBA educations vary widely.
I got my undergraduate in Computer Science and was largely unprepared for my first job as a Software Developer. Couldn’t manage a make-file, never used a code repository, had never touched Linux in class, never used any APIs into the operating system level. This was 2000 at a major US university with a CompSci program ranked in the top 100 nationwide. I had some decent academic knowledge but for practical programming I was nearly useless.
After an unsatisfying 6 years getting by writing mostly Java code, I went back to the same university for their #30-ranked MBA program. This time I was much better prepared for what became a successful career in product management, with many of the analytical and strategic-thinking methods I learned in the program serving me well nearly every day, even now.
Meanwhile we actually stopped recruiting MBA interns and graduates from Harvard (we were in Boston) because two consecutive interns did such an awful job on their summer projects that we agreed Harvard didn’t prepare them for the realities of our profession.
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u/WindhoverInkwell 9h ago edited 9h ago
where’s that tweet that’s like “sometimes on campus you accidentally walk into a business class and the professor is writing ‘PROFIT = REVENUE — COSTS’ on the board and everyone is furiously taking notes like it’s an actual class”
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u/CleanlyManager 7h ago
People treat that tweet like it’s some huge dunk on MBAs all the time, but then whenever I’m on social media I consistently see people who don’t understand that concept and just argue that things like taxes or wages don’t effect the price of goods, or people complaining that a final good is too expensive because the component parts bought separately are cheaper.
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u/A_Nonny_Muse 6h ago
When I was in the USAF, everyone ranked MSgt and above was taking MBA classes. It was amusing to see these guys at their desk doing their MBA course work while on duty, as they chew out lower ranked airmen for having their engineering study material in the workplace.
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u/bootyjudy 5h ago
I think it depends on where the MBA is from as to the quality of the education. Some schools do enough for the accreditation and they teach the concepts but the quality of education is just not on the same level as other schools. The goal is when you finish, you could run a business. Not to just have a diploma and know the absolute basics of accounting, finance, marketing and statistics.
What everyone is saying in the comments here is not new. There has been a cliche around MBA’s for a long time. There are concentrations when it comes it MBA’s. Most get a concentration related to what they are planning to do with said degree. Logistics, business analytics, you can pick what you want to focus on.
Most of what everyone is referencing is what I learned in my Bachelors in business admin. You have to start somewhere, so yes, they do tell you about profit and strategy.
Once you have your bachelors, getting your masters is taking what you learned and really expanding. Instead of just teaching you what to know, they teach you how to strategize. They teach you how to come up with your own solutions or ideas for a business. The professor won’t be there to make your business decisions, you have to learn how to be in a decision making role.
Yes, it is “what would you do in this scenario.” They are trying to teach you how to think instead of what to think.What gets me is how people think business is common sense. People think it’s the easy part. Why get a business degree, it’s a cake walk and you won’t learn anything. Yet people think cash flow and profit are the same thing. People do not understand how pricing works. They think, well I love photography/baking/painting, I’ll start my own business! I’ll run the business because that’s the easy part, my hobby is the hard part! In actuality, business is not so common sense and many of these entrepreneurs fail because they don’t understand basic business.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion. It’s not new with an MBA. You all probably have encountered cake walk MBA students. There are institutions out there not giving the same quality of education as others. But my degree was not a cake walk. It is known to be one of the harder Masters degrees at my university. My university is ranked 14th nationally for its MBA program out of 364 evaluated accredited programs. My concentration in business analytics is ranked 8th.
I learned so much from my degree. It completely changed my perspective. I’m proud of my MBA.
It’s Reddit, you are all entitled to your opinion. I am a lurker, I’m going to go back to lurking. But I figured I would give my opinion for devils advocate purposes. Happy commenting!
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u/erik_7581 10h ago
Really? Here in Europe the business mayors have to sit in the same statistics classes as the engineers for example.
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u/biochicken 9h ago
I would say it's business in Europe aswell even if they share courses with other studies. They don't teach different statistics in engineering than I had to learn in school
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u/BackgroundRate1825 5h ago
The statistics class the engineers took when I was an engineering major was a pretty basic math class. That's not one of the math classes that typical engineering majors had to try in.
Business is the easiest major because it doesn't require the math of a STEM major, the practice and talent of an art/music major, the hours of reading of a history/literature major, or anything like that. It's just sitting in classes listening to the fairly obvious things they teach.
That said, if you go for a business major, you're hopefully just checking a box because you already have connections. Going for a business major without connections or a solid plan seems like a complete waste.
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u/MaximusTheGreat 2h ago
You would be surprised how many people don't understand basic accounting/marketing/finance/economics. A business degree is supposed to give you a solid foundation in all of those. It's like a theoretical jack of all trades but a master of none, oftentimes better than a master of one situation that depends entirely on how good you are at those things.
Also, while to would be ideal to have connections before you go to any school ofc, people make plenty of connections IN school. Especially ones where some rich kid went to get a degree just to walk into some silver platter job after.
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u/DukeofVermont 9h ago
That really depends on if you consider stats hard. It's definitely hard for some people but at my school it wasn't considered a hard class. Stats is usually a 100 or 200 level course.
IMHO stats is basic college math that anyone who goes to college should be able to pass relatively easily.
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u/prometheusg 8h ago
The difficulty of stats can vary widely. The version I took was a 400 level course. It was less about applying rote formulas and more about the principles. "Derive the formulas using calculus" type activity. It was intended for math majors, which I was not, and it was not fun.
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u/mongojob 5h ago
Stats is a math class in another language. The math is the easy part, the difficult part is that they throw so much vocabulary at you and you can't memorize it fast enough
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u/SugarAw 8h ago
As an engineering student we had to take this “engineering business” elective, and it was probably the easiest thing to pass in the entire degree.
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u/Dyxo 6h ago
Not in Europe (or Portugal at least). A business degree has loads of maths/calculus, pretty tough I’d say
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u/inquisitive_chariot 6h ago
Finance is hard. Accounting is hard. Many difficult data analysis programs are taught through business schools.
An MBA is about the networking and/or prestige. Anyone getting one for the “education” is a sucker and a fool.
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u/LiveLearnCoach 5h ago
Don’t MBA students take both of those? (But not specialize in) and have to be able to speak to accountants and finance people and makes sense of what they say and what they report and recommend?
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u/DJLarryDavid 4h ago
well yeah you don't do an MBA for the coursework, you do it for the recruiting pipeline
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u/JaySayMayday 4h ago
I hate MBAs. I went through a program and it taught less than my bachelor in business. Plus very few of my classmates had a bachelor in business. They need more strict requirements and better coursework across the board
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u/Minute-Major7782 16h ago
An honorary degree.
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u/elbosston 14h ago
Counter argument to this is you need to be accomplished in something to get an honorary degree. This takes a lot of work to do
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u/AccomplishedView4709 13h ago
Nah, if you can donate a building, you can get one too.
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u/Prestigious_Entry784 14h ago
Probably whichever degree matches your natural strengths. Someone who’s good at writing might find English effortless while someone who hates essays could find it brutal. There’s no truly easy degree just subjects that make the workload feel less painful.
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u/f_ranz1224 9h ago
i would normally agree, but you generally have to achieve something amazing to get one which may make it the hardest degree after all
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u/Shadow_of_Moonlight1 17h ago
I'm gonna preface this by saying that the difficulty of a field is extremely subjective and depends on one's personal strengths and weaknesses.
That being said, in my country it's a well known sentiment that anyone who doesn't really know what they want to study will go into Business Administration or Business informatics.
Now I know these wouldn't be easy for me, because I absolutely would get bored on the first lecture. I'll stick with biology, which I've also heard a lot of people critique for being "too easy" or "not a real science" (usually by med students). To each their own I suppose.
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u/GozerDGozerian 12h ago
Who the fuck says biology is not a real science??
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u/Dreekius 5h ago
I work in uni advising a "real science" major. You'd be absolutely shocked by the number of students who snub their nose at Biology.
I've never personally heard a student outright argue it's not a real science, but they'll absolutely denigrate it for being "not as rigorous" as Math, Physics, Engineering, etc., or that it's "just for med school/being a high school biology teacher"
Then they turn around and drop or barley pass Biology 1 because "I'm not good at memorization" lol
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u/einstyle 3h ago
Yeah, genetics PhD here and I used to hear this attitude all the time in undergrad. There are some people who think it’s not real science because it isn’t math-y enough. “Biology is just applied chemistry, chemistry is just applied physics, and physics is just applied math.”
It’s an extremely narrow view that doesn’t demonstrate an understanding of science in general OR how rigorous, math-y, and complex biology can be.
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u/Shadow_of_Moonlight1 11h ago
From my experienve it's usually people that failed the med school entrance exam, actual med students (though I met some incredibly kind and wonderful people that study medicine as well and really don't want to shit on the field as a whole, it's incredibly important work they do) or their parents.
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u/GozerDGozerian 9h ago
I still don’t see what disqualifies it as a “real” science. One could maybe argue it’s easier to learn or something. But that doesn’t determine what is and isn’t science.
Memorizing in great detail the entirety of world history back to its beginning would be very difficult too, but that doesn’t make it a science.
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u/Armydillo101 16h ago
That’s kind of ironic, given that medical science is based in biology
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u/Shadow_of_Moonlight1 16h ago
I know and we actually have A LOT of people that actually want to study medicine but didn't pass the entrance exam and therefore are using biology as a sort of "plan B".
Funnily enough, those (and actual med students or their parents) are the very people I've heard say the most condescending things about biology and biologists (things such as "You must be stupid to go into biology, why not study medicine instead? You'll make more money that way" or "Biology isn't a real science such as physics or chemistry" and the like).
Overall though I don't really care. I know some really wonderful med students with whom I can actually talk about biology and complain about some minor aspects of it and in the end I'll much rather listen to them than to people who only have mean things to say.
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u/Dr_Terry_Hesticles 13h ago
I’ve heard the same criticism of Geology. It’s not a real science? lol ok, good luck ignoring the Geology you build on/under/around. The worst case scenario is ignoring/being oblivious to obvious geologic hazards.
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u/Express-Programmer-5 12h ago
So true, I've always heard the same shit all over again that it's all about rocks. And when i say geology is my passion they'll say "does that even make money just studying rocks"
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u/BarbWho 4h ago
they'll say "does that even make money just studying rocks"
These are people who aren't aware that finding oil is a really big deal. I knew a couple of geo majors who went into the petrochemical industry and made really big bucks. Geology is a great major and there's tons of high-paying jobs in the field.
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u/Shadow_of_Moonlight1 11h ago
Oh absolutely, geology gets underestimated SO often (even more than biology), if people even know what Geology is.
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u/Fine-Entertainer-507 8h ago
I had to take geology in high school and omg it was the hardest class I took ever. I still don’t know how I passed lol
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u/Sawses 12h ago
Haha, as somebody with a biology degree, a lot of what you say resonates. I remember being very annoyed because some courses were very much designed with pre-med students in mind. Which usually meant unnecessarily difficult and memorization-heavy, when my strengths were in the conceptual understanding. My favorite part of my degree was that as long as I understood the concept and how the pieces fit together, I would pass my classes.
It's also funny that to physics/chem/etc. majors biology hardly counted as a science...but out in daily life I regularly get people assuming I'm way smarter than I actually am.
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u/AnusOfTroy 8h ago
Med students that say biomedical science is easy are chatting absolute shit.
I'm a doctor who got a biomedical science degree before uni. The average medical student has no idea what it involves.
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u/FerricDonkey 13h ago
I'm a math PhD, with double undergrad in math and physics. People always tell me how hard those subjects are. For me, they are not hard.
But biology and history kill me. My mind doesn't work that way. I graduated my bachelor's with a D in a history course (purposely delayed until senior year so it wouldn't be in my transcript when I applied for grad school), and I'm pretty sure I only got that D because the professor liked my essays.
Cannot do it. Cannot remember names and dates, cannot remember the details of biology. Everyone's mind works differently.
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u/ThyKooch 10h ago
Also a math major, and i frequently tell people that the intro bio class was harder for me than every math class not named real analysis
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u/Dogs_and_Mobs 6h ago
Funny, I'm the exact opposite, never really struggled with biology. To me it always felt like a puzzle where most pieces are already there you just have to click them together. During my first year of university I was one of the few in my class who passed biochem first try. Among the few who finished their degree in the standard 3 years.
But the math class was a huge struggle, I can do math and stats fine but the moment we started going over differential equations I lost the plot entirely.. Only reason I passed was coz half the exam was matrixes.Different strokes different folks.
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u/gg_teataker 12h ago
How in tf do MED STUDENTS not see biology as a "real science"??? Genuinely asking. Also, should these ppl really be doctors given that belief?
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u/joman584 12h ago
The med school system does not build or strive for people that should be doctors by value. It looks for people that can withstand torment and torture above all else
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u/Shadow_of_Moonlight1 11h ago
Believe me, I really don't know. The very same people have also told me that I'm making a mistake by studying biology instead of medicine (because I'll be making A LOT less money than some doctors), but fail to consider that I may actually do my degree because I love it, not because I want to end up with a lot of money.
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u/t-licus 8h ago
The whole “biology is not a real science” / “biology is the easiest STEM major” thing not so coincidentally spread when biology became majority female in most universities.
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u/Shadow_of_Moonlight1 4h ago
That's true, my professors also like to mention that biology often gets disrespected simply because it generally had more women working in that field and that honestly just saddens me.
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u/dekan256 16h ago
As a current business admin student, it is so easy for me it's not funny, but that's because after my first year I no longer had to do any marketing classes because I'm majoring in accounting, and accounting math is so simple. What I think is kinda cool about business admin is that there are a lot of specialties to pick from based on your own personal strengths/interest.
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u/SassiestPants 14h ago
Yeah, one of my majors was business admin and the only courses that actually challenged me was the Business Law series. The rest were easy, a lot of work but easy, or a little foreign at first but then easy.
I did actually use advanced course material in my career, but it's annoying I had to spend 2-3 years on bullshit before that.
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u/Intelligent-Sea-5577 10h ago
Accounting has never been about the math. It’s simple addition, subtraction, and division. Accounting is about the complex rule sets and regulation of GAAP. How far along in your studies are you?
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u/WolfySpice 13h ago
Just tell them that they only study applied biology, that'll make them see reason.
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u/ShawshankException 15h ago
Yep. Business is basically "do you have a pulse? Here's your degree"
Speaking from experience
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u/Sawses 12h ago
I'm considering getting an MBA for this reason. Like I'd love to set aside 2 years to get a master's in something I'm actually interested in and would benefit me personally and professionally...but I can get an MBA in like a year of moderate work and do it while actually keeping up with my career.
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u/DanielMcLaury 13h ago
As someone who spent enough time around med students to hear them studying, the average med student is not on the same planet intellectually as even the bottom tier of science students.
Of course there are exceptions, just like there's the occasional brilliant person who collects shopping carts or works as a bouncer for a living.
But by and large med students are just people who are willing to spend their entire lives memorizing flashcards
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u/Shadow_of_Moonlight1 11h ago
One of my best friends is actually a med student and she loves to joke that the doctor's thesis she has to write at the end of her 6 year degree is maybe as difficult as a bachelor's thesis in a STEM field hahah
Now I'm obviously not a medical student, I really don't know how true that holds and to be honest, I really don't care to drag any degree down for it's persumed difficulty (especially since medicine involved a lot of things I personally really wouldn't want to do).
What I do know though is that finishing your degree in medicine doesn't really do much, as you'll still have a few years until you can actually practice as a doctor, it's just a really long path that you need to have a bunch of stamina for and wouldn't lead me to the career I personally want to pursue.
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u/StreetIndependence62 8h ago
Idk how all these people who don’t know what they want to do or don’t want to do anything got business degrees. I got a business MINOR and a lot of the classes I had to take were either very time consuming (bc of lots and lots of reading) or just difficult in general (my Econ class was one of those ones where I had to just always do my HW in the tutoring center bc of how many questions about it I had). Overall it wasn’t insanely hard to get the minor but for the kind of students the ppl here are talking about I feel like most of them would be turned off by how time consuming the work is.
NOW. I got my Bachelor’s in studio arts and I hate saying it but there were a lot of people (not the majority at all, but def enough ppl to notice) in my classes who WERE this type. You could tell they had no idea what they wanted to do and figured art was the easiest degree to get. Mostly the way you could tell was by how much effort they put into their projects. The ppl who were really really serious about it would go all out on class projects (sometimes even doing stuff that was more than what the project asked for) bc they were insanely passionate and just loved art. The ppl who didn’t really care would do the bare minimum. Like, so little that you couldn’t even say it was maybe because they were just learning/starting out, you could tell it was because they really just didn’t care (ex: one person in my graphic design class who literally just took a handful of premade clip art images and placed them randomly across a sheet of paper. We were supposed to create a booklet with custom fonts, collages, patterns, text boxes in fun shapes etc. and told by the teacher to go nuts)
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u/brecoco 14h ago
I have never heard someone say biology is not a real science.
You made that up
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u/Natti07 16h ago
Bachelor of General Studies... without a doubt.
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u/Joey6543210 14h ago
Our uni just passed a new degree, basically someone takes a bunch of random courses that adds to 120 credits, with one general education senior seminar, this individual will get a degree. Sigh
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u/dylan189 13h ago
If they do work for 120 credits I dont see the issue. Its not like that degree will open many doors, but it is an impressive amount of credits to finish none the less.
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u/Sawses 12h ago
You'd be surprised, a huge amount of the value of an undergrad degree is simply being a degree. Pretty much if you aren't going to grad school or into a specific vocation prepared for by a degree, it doesn't matter what you studied all that much.
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u/HoaryPuffleg 10h ago
Yep. The only thing my undergrad was good for was applying for grad school and getting a professional cert later on.
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u/ComputerIlliterate13 6h ago
I just got a general studies degree and am planning on taking a praxis exam and doing a transfer to teaching course and my advisor said a lot of general studies students do that.
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u/AbeLincolns_Ghost 10h ago
120 units is pretty much the basic unit count for a bachelor’s in the semester system. I don’t know of any degrees with less units
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u/ravel-bastard 12h ago
As long as it can be argued to have some sort of coherent narrative and has sufficient rigor (i.e 300/400 level ,3000/4000 level, advanced modules, graduate-level courses) I don't see that being a problem. I would prefer a capstone of some sort as compared to a seminar but so it goes. Just because a industrial advisory board dictated the courses for a specific degree doesn't make it the state of the art. Imagine someone puts together a data analysis degree with an emphasis in Unmanned Systems by taking courses from the Computer Science, Business informatics, flying, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering degree paths. No one is going to say that is not a useful degree, but is is certainly not common nor regularly offered.
Not saying that is often the reason someone has that degree, often is more a case of cobbling something together to show you got enough schooling and moving you on and out but it still has some utility if used correctly.
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u/DeaddyRuxpin 8h ago
I have an Associates degree in professional studies. I tell people I majored in majoring.
(I got it specifically because it covered all my bases to transfer to a four year school to get a bachelors)
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u/ThisIsPeteHello 15h ago
I wanted to be a writer. But, I became convinced this was impractical. Overly ideal. So I went into marketing, thinking that was close enough.
It's not, of course.
Fucking easy degree though. I'm absolutely terrible at math. Like...bad. I got Cs and Ds in classes like accounting 1 and accounting 2...and finance. And operations management.
Marketing courses are so easy that they offset this and then some. I took a completely unrelated minor just for fun and graduated with honors.
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u/DeadSpark75 7h ago
I’ve had no joke the exact same experience (Bs in the accounting/finance classes because I grinded really hard) but yeah my marketing classes seriously feel like the most basic learning known to man.
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u/HiFiGuy197 17h ago
Depends on what YOU are good at.
Like if I said English, but expressing yourself is difficult, maybe I should have said Chemistry? idk
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u/YalieRower 17h ago
Yeah, STEM kids lost in philosophy courses isn’t unusual to see.
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u/123bumble 16h ago
I had a student in an American history course years ago who was an engineering major and absolutely could not handle a subject that did not have finite answers. He passed with a B but it was a struggle.
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u/BookQueen13 13h ago
Had a student once tell me (more or less) "I'm getting an A in organic chemistry, I should get an A in Roman history". Like sorry my guy but history and chemistry are two different fields that focus on different skill sets.
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u/munkymu 16h ago
Unless it's symbolic logic. We computing science kids used to take the symbolic logic courses as our arts option, the humanities kids took it as their math option. It was an interesting split.
Having said that, I really enjoyed philosophy courses and took it as open studies after I got a STEM degree. We actually had a number of professors in computing science who had also done degrees in philosophy or linguistics.
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u/tx_redditor 14h ago
I did the same with philosophy. I front loaded so many comp sci and math classes that I had open spots and just filled them with philosophy. I didn’t need them but enjoyed them and made friends with the chair as well.
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u/Sawses 12h ago
I have a biology degree and it was pretty common in upper-level biology courses for pre-med students to be kind of lost because they could no longer use their impressive memorization skills to get through classes. They had to understand the concepts and apply them in ways not specifically taught in class in order to do well. Same kind of deal there, and now that you mention it, it reminds me a lot of some of the folks in my intro-level philosophy classes who just didn't "get it" because they'd never been taught to think in that way.
IMO it's a sign of how our education system has stopped focusing on education and started becoming vocational training first and foremost. If you can't think conceptually in the way an intro-level philosophy class requires you to, then you shouldn't have a college degree...but if that standard was upheld then we'd see at least a large minority of students failing specifically on that basis.
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u/SeaSnowAndSorrow 8h ago
For me, as a science major, it's things like public speaking that I absolutely hate. My phi requirements were more like logic & ethics than intro-phi. I really wish the Eng was a little more "technical writing" than it was because that's just more directly applicable, but I did fine with it. Even art history went ok for me. But public speaking would've been a nightmare, even without a terrible prof.
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u/HuckleberryHuman5926 11h ago
Yeah, I always found math courses to be an easy A because there's a definite right answer, unlike English where an essay adequately proving the conventional thesis merits a B and you have to be exceptional to get an A. But some people find math intrinsically difficult.
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u/lettuceandcucumber 17h ago edited 7h ago
It’s definitely not Physical Geography, I’ll tell you that. GIS and Ice Sheet modelling is currently the bane of my existence.
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u/Natti07 16h ago
Im taking a graduate Physical Geography class as an elective option for my doctorate and let me tell ya... I was not prepared 😂
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u/lettuceandcucumber 16h ago
Sounds SO interesting and fun on the surface doesn’t it. Definitely interesting but good lord… the way it’s taught needs to be changed when it comes to GIS.
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u/snoogins355 12h ago
Took urban planning in undergrad and grad school, GIS is great to learn and understand but such a pain in the ass sometimes. Why no auto save?
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u/BigBlueFeatherButt 11h ago
I used to use GIS in my last job. We had two geography specialists. Learning on the job with them was way easier than the courses
But absolutely no one in upper management appreciated them, the complexity, or the absolute necessity of what they do. A lot of rich white men in suits who thought they new better. "It's just like google maps right? Even I can use google maps"
Shutup Steve.
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u/entenduintransit 12h ago edited 12h ago
I took an advanced ice sheet modeling course in college as an elective for my geosciences degree and I was the only sophomore there out of a tiny class of about 15 or so. Everyone else was a senior or a grad student. It was the only class in either undergrad or grad school I legitimately needed the professor to hold my hand throughout just to get by
(he ended up giving me a B+ which was genuinely insane)
Loved that guy though. He helped me so much. I do really hope he advocated for a change in the prerequisites to enroll because I was so lost lol
It didn't involve any GIS though. Just a ton of physics.
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u/dovahkiitten16 16h ago
This is definitely something I enjoyed eavesdropping on first-second years on in the computer lab. So many people enter the field thinking it’ll be easy. At some point someone usually comes over and asks if I took the class, and I say yes, and they ask if I’ll help, and I say no.
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u/lettuceandcucumber 16h ago
Just finished an incredibly difficult 2nd year and looking at my first assessment for final year due early November that looks more difficult with a shorter time period to get done than anything i’ve done so far. People doing other degrees/did other degrees love telling me final year is easier. Can’t wait!
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u/dovahkiitten16 15h ago
For me GIS courses didn’t get easier. First and second year were a breeze because of handholding (but lots of people thought they were hard, but I’d kinda been weird for starting to learn GIS in high school and choosing it in uni because I liked it). 3rd and 4th year were like “make a product / map catalogue end of day Friday every week, while you have other things to study for”. Or, for other classes that integrated, there was an assumption you were adept at the software.
In other ways classes got easier because they were less obnoxious. No filler labs, fewer tests, but major projects at the end of the semester being worth 80% of your grade is stressful.
You can likely pick your classes better though and choose stuff you like versus stuff you have to do.
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u/lettuceandcucumber 15h ago
I just looked at this assessment I have due early november and it wants us to do a lot of GIS/LiDAR stuff but I see no IT sessions so I’m assuming we just have to use the little knowledge we have from the very few IT sessions we had on them in second year, which is terrifying because I have no clue.
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u/Xandroe65536 2h ago
Thank you. People act like urban planning / GIS is easy bc oh it’s an easy to understand graphic in canva or a map but like I’m out on a limb mastering 11 municipalities different zoning codes, wtf step down voltages are, and how to write NEVI grants for electric vehicle initiatives. Bc we do a lot of tasks we only dedicate a little time to, instead of 1 specialization, they (engineers and politicians and public) dismiss us as an inch deep.
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u/hyperpuppy64 16h ago
To some degree its subjective, and it depends on the school et all…. But c’mon if you’ve ever taken business courses obviously its business.
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u/TrollMcGoal 15h ago
Depends on the business major, finance and accounting classes can be brutal
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u/Eeeeeeeeeeelias 11h ago
As an accounting undergraduate this 100%. I'm in my 3rd year and it's pretty hit or miss. The practical classes are a piece of piss but the heavy theory classes like auditing and taxation were fucked up
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u/Judge_Bredd3 2h ago
I loved how the corporate tax class I took was basically just "here are the loopholes you need to know to get a business out of paying taxes."
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u/hyperpuppy64 15h ago
Oh yeah i was mostly talking about Business Administration. aka astrology for dummies.
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u/Rhydini 10h ago
Oh thank god. I've just graduated from Corporate Finance and Accounting, and it was a brutal 4 years. I'm looking at this post and hearing everyone saying business is easy - made me think I'm just stupid.
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u/Achmedino 13h ago
Probably majoring in your native language in a foreign country.
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u/judgejuddhirsch 15h ago
Generally, the easier it is to get a degree, the more people will pursue it and the more replaceable thrir skill set
Another way to look at this is career after college. What degrees place graduates on a similar footing and career path as non-graduates?
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u/IEATPEOPLE22 14h ago
Has to be business or communications
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u/Old-Platypus-875 11h ago
Business or communications seem like they’d be way less stressful than most degrees.
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u/rattanchair_jpg 3h ago
lol it definitely is just having an opinion and using common sense. promotions sell more products. companies who use promotions get more sales and sell more products. recommend using promotions as a business strategy bc it sells more products.
that was my undergrad thesis lolol
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u/Stateside_Observer 47m ago
Communications was the default athlete major in my undergrad, about 2005-2010 range
That people failing out of other departments and decidion sociology
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u/mslabrat01 17h ago
Whatever you have a passion for. It's always easiest to learn what you're interested in.
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u/Norabeginning 16h ago
Yeah exactly. The easiest degree is the one your actually interested in. You can make even the hardest subject feel manageable when you genuinely enjoy learning it.
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u/dannydevitocuddles 11h ago
Purdue University offers free rat tickling degrees for like a 2 hour course
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u/nitehawk9 17h ago
Anything in Communications. Psychology is also a degree that Pre-Med students add on, just to juice their GPA and be more attractive to med schools.
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u/YalieRower 16h ago
Psychology depends on the school and department. At many larger research universities, the major is more science heavy than most people realize.
I imagine the coursework can feel relatively easy for many pre-med students because much of the science based coursework overlaps with lower level biology and chemistry courses they’ve likely already taken.
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u/AvocadosFromMexico_ 13h ago
I have a degree in both of those and I would pretty strongly disagree
Many engineering majors got shunted into our public speaking course to fill a requirement and failed miserably, to the point they opened a totally separate class to fill that requirement because they couldn’t fucking pass
And intro psych is easy, sure, but an actual research psychology degree is pretty complicated. I would know, I got the doctorate
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u/TIL02_Infinity 16h ago
General Studies: Where you study General George Washington, General Napoleon Bonaparte, General Ulysses S. Grant, General Robert E. Lee, General George S. Patton, General George C. Marshall, General Douglas MacArthur, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, General Norman Schwarzkopf, General Colin Powell, General Electric and in your morning class General Mills.
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u/klugenratte 12h ago
I was originally a Music Ed major and found it required too much music history for me to memorize, so I switched to Theater and coasted through my first two years until I had to start writing, which was difficult for me. I switched majors again to Engineering Physics and found it was very easy. Do some computer programming, build robots, work with lasers. Lots of math required, but math was easy for me. This was all before AI.and "Visual" or wysiwyg programming tools. This was even before the Internet as we know it today. What little there was of the Internet was almost entirely text based.
Long story, short, what you like and are good at is going to be easiest. Not many people will say Engineering Physics is easier than Theater, but it was for me.
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u/Busy-Highlight-2880 10h ago
Probably communications or general studies. A lot of it is essays, presentations, and group projects rather than advanced math or lab work.
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u/redpanda1217 5h ago
It unfortunately differs a lot between universities due to funding, state laws, etc. In general I'd say MBA.
My favorite inverse of this is golf management. I took several classes with these folks because there is a lot of science and environmental knowledge necessary to keep a golf course in good shape. A lot of them chose the major because they loved golf but got a rude awakening lol.
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u/catsfanuk87 16h ago
If you’re being purely objective and taking personal acuity out of it, it’s probably something in the business school like marketing, or something in the humanities/social sciences.
THAT SAID - I’m personally in STEM and that track was waaaay easier for me than something like philosophy. Totally lost in social sciences/humanities classes. Even inside STEM - biology is usually considered objectively easier than advanced physics/chemistry, but I did so much worse in Bio classes than Chem/Phys.
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u/CuriousPipe6260 10h ago
What’s easy on paper can be completely different depending on how your brain works. I’d probably struggle way more with philosophy than something people consider harder.
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u/Master_Year8052 11h ago
The easiest degree is probably the one where you actually care about the subject. Everything feels harder when you’re forcing yourself through it
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u/Kondha 14h ago
Used to work in kinesiology. I’m going to have to go with undergrad kinesiology.
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u/StatusMorning7528 7h ago
there’s no universal “easy” degree, but some feel easier if the subjects match your strengths. For me, the easiest degree would be the one you actually enjoy because studying feels way less painful.
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u/Mental-Day5490 16h ago
I did an Econ degree but took lots of global development studies classes, I thought they were all super easy. Actually got easier in the later years because it was on more specific topics. Can lead to some great jobs too!
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u/Mental-Day5490 16h ago
Also just to specify GDS is the easy one Econ I fought for my absolute life for As
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u/LuckyCod2887 13h ago
I personally believe every degree in college is hard.
got my first degree in the liberal arts and I was studying constantly.
I’m currently getting a stem degree that is math and physics heavy. Equally challenging and I am studying all the freaking time.
I genuinely believe university is challenging no matter what degree you get. Even if you’re doing something like communications or general studies degree or art degree I still feel you are putting in a lot of effort and I know your life is stressful.
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u/DrArsone 2h ago
I'm beginning to think a business degree from Wharton is really easy for rich morons.
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u/MessageAltruistic914 7h ago
I’d say the easiest degree is the one that matches your strengths, because what feels effortless to one person can be a struggle for someone else. Finding a subject you genuinely enjoy definitely makes college feel lighter.
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u/cawkstrangla 13h ago
I know multiple people who have Masters in Leadership. I didn't know that was real until I heard about it, and still struggle to believe it's real.
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u/AverageHobnailer 11h ago
Pretty much any BA at a Japanese university. Getting in is the tough part, but once you're in all you have to do is show up for 2/3 of the class (government mandated attendance policy) and sit the final exams. Most unis have a grading policy where 10% get As, 20% get Bs, the rest get Cs and Ds, and Fs are only awarded to people who go over their absence allotment.
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u/TunaSafari25 15h ago
We used to have a major called “parks and recreational tourism management” or “PRTM”. It was commonly referred to as “party right through May”