First of all, I would like to congratulate all the +2 graduate students on completing your high school journey. For those who could not make it, I encourage you to try a little harder next time. For most of us, the biggest question after graduating +2 would be, What next? Some of you might go to science, management, or arts. It is your hard work, diligence, and interest that will help you achieve your career goals, regardless of what subject you choose.
Those of you who are looking forward to pursuing management programs must have come across several management courses. The Bachelors of Business Administration (BBA) is one of the most popular programs in management, among others. You might have already gathered several reasons for you to join BBA. But today, I present a slightly different perspective to look towards this BBA understanding of BBA.
Bachelors of Business Administration (BBA) program aims to provide you with foundational knowledge and practical skills in various areas of business administration. It also intends to develop the intellectual ability and managerial skills in students through business and other social science courses. Besides, the program helps you to develop proper attitudes and qualities required for managing business functions. The program specifically aims to produce the graduates who:
- Have a sound knowledge and proper conceptual underpinnings of business management,
- Are well acquainted with the broad contexts of business organizations in Nepal and outside,
- Possess analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills,
- Possess the ability to use electronic media and computers to solve organizational problems,
- Have the ability to work in teams and individually, and
- Have awareness of the environmental factors, social/functional relationships, and ethical standards that affect business and administrative decisions within an organization.
Having said that if you do not have any interest in current economic, political and social affairs around you, then you should not choose BBA. BBA requires you to have sound analytical skills along with the ability to comprehend real-life problems and come up with feasible solutions. If you always resort to a rudimentary approach to tackle the issues, if you think innovation and creative thinking is a waste of time, and if you believe critical thinking is just a myth, then you should not join this program. The BBA curriculum prepares you to think critically and nurture your ability to enhance problem-solving skills via various experiential learning mechanisms such as role-play, case studies, project work, research projects. Therefore, you better be prepared for the enriched learning experience, if you are willing to take the risk of choosing BBA in your bachelor’s degree. This curriculum is designed to equip you with the competencies, knowledge, skills, and attitude needed for success in the management field. The coursework provides a broad and holistic view of the challenges in today’s business environment. The BBA program provides you with the basis for career growth and prepares you for higher studies.
The BBA is a four-year program structured in eight semesters. You are required to complete specified credit hours of course work, project work, and internship for graduation. The beauty of a continuous evaluation system is that students are evaluated not only based on their academic performance but also consider students’ participation in other ancillary activities. Besides your ability to solve the exam questions, you will be examined based on your presentation skills, quizzes, project work, assignments, group projects, projects involving social work and welfare, class participation, interpersonal and communication skills and many other evaluation metrics as college and faculty deem necessary. If you fail to maintain attendance or obtain satisfactory performance on your internal evaluations, then you are most likely to end up with substandard grades or even fail the exam despite your satisfactory performance at the external evaluation.
Now, decide if you can do justice to the hard work and rigor required to complete the BBA degree. The general perception about management education in Nepal is that it comes next to science in terms of dedication and hard work, but that is wrong. BBA requires an equal amount of diligence and effort to succeed. However, it also depends on what dose of success fulfills your appetite; and of course, that differs from person to person. You would see someone excelling towards excellent career development while others not even making meager progress despite having the same course, college, and university.
BBA is a semester-based program. Every semester comprises six months, which means two-semester per year and eight semesters in total. Semester Intake differs across universities. You are expected to do an independent capstone project that involves fieldwork and its empirical analysis. In the end, the student must prepare a report of this work in the prescribed format and submit it to the authorized person/body. This project work is expected to expose you to a real-life working environment. It may not give you a big breakthrough, but it will provide you with the ice-breaker for your acquaintance with the corporate work culture. Within the course requirement itself, you are required to do an internship as approved by the college. The purpose of the internship is to provide students with a real-life situation. This will help you reduce the gap between expectation versus reality.
It is just a sneak peek at what BBA is about. Irrespective of universities, all BBA programs are designed with the same thing in mind, that is to prepare future managers. There are many things for you to research before you choose to join any college; a good pool of faculty, cost-friendly, campus environment, location, and campus culture are few things to start with. Meanwhile, I also suggest you stay away from institutions with big-talk-no-work. If anything, that pup up in your mind regarding BBA or you are still confused about whether to choose BBA or not, you can reach out to me via email at bishal@saim.edu.np.
Bishal Shrestha is a faculty at SAIM College. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Edusanjal.
