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Updated on: 21 Oct 2006, 16:37
It is also interesting to consider the academic majors of major CEOs.
One of the first facts that suprises many people is that dozens of CEOs of the largest firms have degrees in English, classics, or one of the other majors in the humanities/liberal arts.
Not surprisingly, the most common academic major for CEOs falls under the Business Administration (e.g. Management, Accounting, Finance, Marketing).
Approximate Percentage of Undergrad Degrees of S&P 500 CEOs
Business Administration 31%
Social Sciences 24%
Engineering 21%
Humanities 13%
Natural Sciences 10%
However, business administration is also one of the largest major groups in the United States. Around the time that current CEOs were college students, roughly 21% of all undergrad degrees in the US were in business. This means that business majors were rather moderately overrepresented among CEOs (1.4:1). Again what is somewhat surprising is that the humanities are actually slightly better represented than business majors (1.6:1).
The Social Sciences (e.g. Economics, Government, Anthropology, History) were more overrepresented, since they constituted only about 10% of all degrees c. 1980 yet nearly a quarter of CEOs.
The Engineering majors had impressive performance since they represented only 7% of the degrees granted yet represent 21% of the CEOs. The success of engineers seems reasonable if one considers that they tend to have the highest academic scores of entering undergraduate students and take part in a numerate yet applied discipline (much like business).
Originally posted by
Hjort on 11 Oct 2006, 19:00.
Last edited by
Hjort on 21 Oct 2006, 16:37, edited 1 time in total.