Before we move on to the upper-level blocks of the BBA degree plans, I want to take a moment to talk about the business field of study (FoS), formally known as the Business Administration & Management Field of Study. It’s one of many fields of study the THECB has established for disciplines all over campus. I’m not sure the original intent of all these fields of study, but they’re used as ways to standardize lower-level coursework and ensure that this coursework will transfer from one Texas public school to another, especially from community college to university.
We incorporate (most of) the FoS in the BBA degree, but it’s not laid out explicitly in the major degree plans. That is, the FoS does not have it’s own block in the degree plans. The courses are scattered between the Gen Ed and lower-level business core.
Here are the courses that make up the state’s current business field of study, which went into effect Fall 2019:
| TCCN | Notes | |
| ACCT 2301 | Principles of Financial Accounting | Lower-level core |
| ACCT 2302 | Principles of Managerial Accounting | Lower-level core |
| BCIS 1305 | Business Computer Applications | Not in our degree plans. Is UTPB’s COSC 1335, but do not have students take COSC 1335. We have them take BUSI 2345 instead. |
| BUSI 1301 | Business Principles | Lower-level core |
| BUSI 2305 | Business Statistics | Lower-level core. Is UTPB’s BUSI 2342. |
| ECON 2301 | Principles of Macroeconomics | Gen Ed |
| ECON 2302 | Principles of Microeconomics | One hour in Gen Ed, two hours in the lower-level core. (Why?) |
| MATH 1324 | Mathematics for Business & Social Sciences | Gen Ed |
The part of that arrangement that wreaked havoc with our degree plans was the rule that, if a business transfer student shows up FoS complete, we are not allowed to make them take any more lower-level courses, even if they’re required for the degree.[1]
Calculus & Business Law
That rule means that we couldn’t make those students take calculus or our basic business law course. So we dropped the requirement for calculus for all BBA students and promoted business law to the upper-level business core so that we could force students to take it.
BCIS 1305
We’ve opted not to make students take TCCN BCIS 1305, which at UTPB is COSC 1335. The reason is that we had already stopped making business students take that class, because we were getting complaints from students that they weren’t learning anything that they didn’t already learn in high school (i.e., MS Office stuff).
But we knew that our BBA students needed to learn more about MS Excel. So we replaced the field-of-study requirement for BCIS 1305 with a dedicated data analysis class using Excel, BUSI 2345. So if a transfer student comes to us with BCIS 1305, we can use that for BUSI 2345.
As I explain in the lower-level business core chapter, if the student wants to take BUSI 2345, which is a good idea, we have to count their BCIS 1305 somewhere in the degree plan. So we count their BCIS 1305 as an upper-level business elective. They’re then free to take BUSI 2345 and have it count toward the degree as well.
Footnotes
- Of course, if they're still missing Gen Ed classes, we can make them get those. ↵
Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. The state agency that oversees public higher education.
An advising term I use in this guide to refer to incoming transfer students who have completed the THECB's business field of study.