Business education is often thought of as a distinct path or choice: “I’m going to business school” or “I’m going into business.”
Over the past 13 years as a member of the marketing faculty at the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina, I was primarily responsible for teaching our senior marketing strategy capstone course. During this time, I learned that business education is so much more than a class, a major, or a college within a university. Business education is truly the business of life.
Let me provide some context. We are all in business. The editor of this publication is a writer, but her business is this magazine. The director of Deep Well is running a nonprofit business. My doctor works for a hospital system, which is definitely a business. A homemaker manages a household budget, which requires business knowledge. Even as a teacher, I am part of a business.
We are all in the business of business.
Jeff Rehling, Director of the Institute for Business and Innovation at Hilton Head Preperatory School
Think about taking a class in sales. Sales is about learning how to influence people. A class in marketing is about how to tell our story and what makes us unique. The foundational principles in finance, like understanding a balance sheet, are transferable to balancing a checkbook. Being able to work as part of a team? That’s human resources. The point is that much of business education is transferable to our daily lives, regardless of our career path.
Here’s another way to look at it: You have probably heard of the need for young people to develop both hard and soft skills. We talk a lot about this at the business school. Hard skills are the tangible skills you need to do your job – creating an income statement, writing a press release, running a statistical T-test, drawing blood – whatever it takes to do your job day in and day out. However, there are also the soft skills, such as working as part of a team, being agile, communicating well, showing empathy when appropriate, and knowing how to compete (and win).
In business, we certainly teach the hard skills, but through understanding business principles, working on case studies, and doing projects, students also develop these soft skills. These are the skills you can’t teach in a textbook. Whether you are a doctor, attorney, marketer, or journalist, these soft skills can often be the difference between success and failure. It’s why I like to think of hard and soft skills as functional and foundational skills.
We all want to have strong functional (hard) skills; however, we also need to have strong foundational (soft) skills. Don’t just take my word for it. I work with dozens of leading companies around the world, and when I ask them what they look for in young talent, the first three are always foundational skills, like agility and grit, communications skills, and the ability to work as part of a team. It’s these foundational, or soft, skills that differentiate job candidates and the ones that help young talent add value to their first job on day one.
Hilton Head Preparatory School is launching a new Institute for Business and Innovation that is committed to integrating business education at the high school level.
At the university, when students approached me about picking a major, I always told them to find a major they like, one that doesn’t feel like work, and/or one that fits their interests and strengths. I’ve never told a student what major they should choose. That’s the first and most important choice: find a major that will lead to a career where you enjoy going to work every day. Then, no matter what you choose as a primary study area, add at least a business minor to it. If you’re in a business school, great. If you’re not, that’s fine too. But add business as a second major or minor.
It’s for this reason that everyone should have at least a basic understanding of business. Gaining an understanding of business principles and having the chance to apply them earlier than college is a recipe for success – not only in helping students identify their strengths, interests, and passions but also in preparing them for college and life. I’m a firm believer in helping students find business experiences in high school, even in middle school.
By fostering a strong foundation in business from a young age, we are not only preparing our students for academic success but also empowering them to become the innovative leaders and problem-solvers of tomorrow.
Whether through coursework, joining a business or investment club, participating in DECA, finding a summer internship, or finding a mentor who has been successful in business, there are plenty of opportunities to get started earlier than college when it comes to the education of business.
This approach is catching on. Many public schools now offer business courses, participate in DECA, and are involved in their community. Locally, Hilton Head Preparatory School is launching a new Institute for Business and Innovation that is committed to integrating business education at the high school level. In fact, two of their new business courses will be required for all high school students. The school has many other parts to the Institute, but what’s important is engaging and inspiring students earlier about the opportunities and roles business plays in our everyday lives.
Paul Horgan, head of school at Hilton Head Prep, talked about their investment in this program. “In late 2023 and early 2024, as we were going through our school’s five-year strategic planning process, we asked the question, where are our students going to school and what are they studying?” Horgan said. “We learned that about 30% were going into business school and 70% were going into what I call business-adjacent majors, for example, hospitality, retailing, sports management, advertising, and journalism. These paths may not live specifically in a university business school, but they are, without question, business career paths. It was then we realized that really all of our students are going into business in one way or another. This was when the Institute for Business and Innovation was created. We knew we needed to add a business component to our already rigorous college preparatory curriculum.”
As we look to the future, the one thing I am certain of is uncertainty. The world around us, and certainly the world of business, is transforming at a pace we have never seen before. I believe it’s clear that understanding business principles and developing essential functional and foundational skills early on are not just valuable but vital.
Although certainly not the only school investing in business education, the Institute for Business and Innovation at Hilton Head Prep is a local testament to the belief that providing students with the tools and knowledge they need to thrive in an increasingly complex world is critical. By fostering a strong foundation in business from a young age, we are not only preparing our students for academic success but also empowering them to become the innovative leaders and problem-solvers of tomorrow.
Let’s invest in our youth today, for they are the foundation of a prosperous and dynamic future for all of us.
