Are marketing degrees useless ?

OP - what A level grades do you have/ are you predicted.

Hi, I'm Elena, a second year Business Management (Marketing) student at Surrey. I wouldn't say a marketing degree is useless at all. Marketing is becoming increasingly important for businesses, and there are different modules you can choose from depending on what you're most interested in. If you are interested or passionate in marketing, I would really advice you to go for it and study it at university. You'll gain lots of skills that you'll be able to use in your future job, or it might even help you to set up your own business and have an idea of how to start it or market it. You can view Surrey's Business Management (Marketing) degree and the other pathways here.

I want to add that any degree is what you make of it. Someone that just has a degree will likely be less employable that someone with a degree, work experience and other relevant experience. I've also found that in my case at least, uni has helped me to grow personally - living away from home, I've had to be independant and learn about things and had experiences I wouldn't have had otherwise.

Hope that helped.
Elena, Business Management Rep.

I’m predicted AAB

Those are great grades! You should have loads of options. If it were me I would rather do a general business/ management degree on a course with plenty of marketing options to see if that is something you enjoy in the university setting. I don't think marketing degrees are a big thing in the UK (as opposed to the US) so employers tend to expect to recruit staff without specialist degrees. Plus business is a broader subject and exposes you to more avenues. I've met a lot of people with business degrees and don't think I've known many (if any) who regretted their choice.

Of course if you like a subject like - I dunno - geography - that would also be great.

Please consider the advice above to look into a year out or more while you look into careers and courses.

My maths gcse grade is too low for me to apply to some of the unis I wanted to do it’s a shame but I do like business

The problem only arises if you study (for example) geography and apply for a job as an accountant, they will want to know why you want to become an accountant from a Geography background.

Why would that be a problem? You just tell the the reason.

It’s just more difficult to justify the reason, if you get asked in a interview “why do you want to work in finance” it’s good to give a reason and then justify it with an example from your past. Coming from a background completely unrelated makes this harder. I probably misspoke tbh it’s not a problem just makes interviews harder. On the other hand tho this could be of benefit because it makes you a more interesting candidate.

You should seriously considering studying and retaking your GSCE maths - possibly on a year out.

there aren’t many jobs that require specific degrees in business/finance/accounting. Almost all large grad recruiters test your math ability in the application process so it really doesn’t matter.

The problem only arises if you study (for example) geography and apply for a job as an accountant, they will want to know why you want to become an accountant from a Geography background.

This idea that doing a stem or economics or CS degree is some guarantee of a Grad job is ridiculous. Yes generally those degrees are respected more but employers will employ the people who impress them not because of the degree they took.

You shouldn’t go to university to get a job because you won’t enjoy your course, nowadays there are so many apprenticeship options.

OP - do what you would like to do but keep in mind that a degree isn’t a guarantee of a job.

edit: lots of grad roles require you to have at least a C in gcse maths, I’m not sure what that equates to with the new grading system but maths is important

Given that rather a lot of geography grads enter accountancy its not very unusual or interesting.... I don't believe it does make it harder - possibly the opposite. Accounting/ business grads when asked that question tend to just talk about their favourite subjects at university. Geography/ humanities graduates tend to have looked at a broader range of jobs and sound more considered about their reasoning, and how they have appraised their own skills and interests.

I’m not very good at maths so I don’t like any of those options, is a business degree more useful than a marketing degree ?