All students studying for a Bachelor of Commerce degree are required to complete four compulsory units, three in their first year: BUSS1000 – Future of Business, BUSS1020 – Quantitative Business Analysis and BUSS1030 – Accounting for Decision Making and one in second year, BUSS2000 – Leading and Influencing in Business. With these compulsory subjects consisting of one quarter of the commerce degree when studying it combined and one-sixth of a single commerce degree, there is a question of whether there is a better way that this space in students’ commerce degrees at USyd can be taken up.
Given these subjects are compulsory, all have a huge cohort of students undertaking them each semester. There are no in-person, traditional lectures for these subjects, instead, there are weekly modules, to be completed by students at their own pace before their tutorial for the week. While challenging to run weekly in-person lectures for so many students, this learning method is undesirable, particularly when the overwhelming majority of other units since COVID have reverted to in-person lectures.
It is hard to see how BUSS1000 and BUSS2000 should continue to be compulsory at all. These subjects, as pointed out by Pei Wen Tan a few years ago, are part of the University’s attempt to make students into ‘askers’ in the hope of cultivating entrepreneurial skills and commerciality. Students have expressed complaints and criticized them for their vague marking criteria and learning objectives, arising from the highly subjective nature of both units. The content, highly disconnected across the different weeks, doesn’t seem to fit in clearly alongside any of the majors.
Through my experience undertaking these units, I found many other students questioning their usefulness, with many deeming them a “waste of space”. Just examining the titles of BUSS1000’s weekly topics reveals how vague the unit content is. Examples range from, ‘Your Future in Business’, ‘Business and Society – intertwined or separate? and ‘Digitizing and transforming the workplace’. At a university that highlights employability, every unit should be as targeted as possible, teaching specific skills rather than general concepts within the business world. It seems difficult for the Business School to justify making these units compulsory moving forward.
There is a sentiment amongst students that BUSS1020 and BUSS1030 are irrelevant to the major(s) that students elect to study in the rest of their degree and their future career aspirations. Given the broad nature of the commerce degree where the number of majors available to students to study has expanded to eleven following new additions such as Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Business Information Systems, amongst others, most specialties are vastly different in their content to these core units.
One second year BCom student described them as being “irrelevant to the rest of my degree”, leaving many students feeling that these subjects are simply ones they must tick off before moving on to courses that engage them. Another second year felt that they didn’t “match their skills and strengths”.
However, these subjects still have a place in the degree, although in a different capacity to now. Similar to what has now become BUSS1040 – Economics for Business Decision Making, previously a mandatory course for all business students, is now only mandatory for students undertaking a Finance or Banking major. This was part of a larger degree structure change that took place in 2018. A similar move with BUSS1030 and BUSS1020, whereby they are only compulsory for students undertaking Accounting and Business Analytics degrees respectively, would be a simple step. This change would help to manage students’ concerns and give them more space in their degree to study more specialised electives. While also ensuring that students undertaking these majors still study these two subjects at the start of their degrees, offering them a solid foundation of basic skills and concepts before moving on to the more difficult subjects in those disciplines.
When asked if the University planned to make any changes to what units were requirements, a University spokesperson said “Following last year’s course review, our Business School is currently redesigning our Bachelor of Commerce.” Students would be consulted in that process through “representatives on the Business School’s Education Committee and Faculty Board.”
No specific changes to core units were confirmed but the spokesperson said “We consider data, AI, digital, financial and numeracy literacy as foundational for students in our Commerce degrees.” The University did not reveal the results of recent student surveys on any of the core units discussed above.
In the best interests of students, the Business School is being increasingly pressured to re-consider the four mandatory subjects, culling BUSS1000 and 2000 whilst only making BUSS1020 and 1030 mandatory for students undertaking Accounting, Finance, and Banking majors. Enabling students to have more space in their degree and undertake subjects that better align with their interests, and skills would improve graduate outcomes.