This was an argument on another forum being made between Marketing/Management degrees and Arts/Social Science degrees.

This topic has been discussed to death over and over again each year whenever the uni admissions open up. All I can say to people who assume that B.A = toilet paper is that they are severely shortsighted. It says a lot about their professional experience and the people they interact and network with. There are Sociology, Pol Sci and even Philo majors (just look at Tin Pei Ling) working in both the back-end operations as well as Finance sector. Of course notwithstanding the connections Ms Tin has, nothing is impossible. You say you want to take a business degree because you want to work in a bank. But throw a stone today and you're likely to hit not one, but 3-4 people holding a BBA (be it local, Wharton or otherwise.) Are you going to just be another individual in the herd holding a BBA, or someone with a B.A with extra-curricular experience (internships, running projects etc) who is seen as more versatile? Finance and Accounting majors still hold a key advantage due to their subject matter expertise but if you're a bba student doing marketing or management then you really need to work doubly hard to market yourself and prove why you're the better choice for these generalist roles.

It depends on how you view the matter. Arts grads in a way can have the best of both worlds eg. being a teacher (especially for history, lit etc.) or jobs in the civil service while on the other hand with relevant training and experience, can be trained to take on marketing and HR roles. While for the bba student, there is no marketing or management classes in our schools available of them to fall back on and be a teacher.
It really boils down to how you present and market yourself to your future employers.


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Anyway the starting salaries cited look very low to me (could be adjusted to factor in PTE sector and SME pay, which is horrendously low).
Civil service salaries, if you read the other thread, are slightly higher and a few hundred dollars more if you're a Singaporean male.