While pondering the post-college job market, many students ask themselves, “What can I do to earn a lot of money?”

In a world where a Sodexho turkey sandwich costs over $2, financial success is extremely important to many BU students and the School of Management and Harpur College of Arts and Sciences at BU are responding to this concern accordingly.

The three most popular majors in Binghamton University’s School of Management are accounting, finance and marketing, while human resources and management information systems have become less desirable among students.

“MIS has really fallen off the cliff,” said SOM dean Upinder Dhillon. “We used to have a significant number of MIS majors, but jobs in this area have become less available due to the ‘dot com’ bust.”

The majority of SOM students major in accounting, and SOM offers the greatest number of courses in this area of study.

“It’s all about supply and demand,” Dhillon said. “When students increase the demand for courses in a specific area, we increase the supply of those courses.”

Between spring 2004 and spring 2006, SOM has consistently offered between 22 and 24 accounting courses, and the number of students choosing to major in accounting has remained at the top. In spring 2004 there were 440 accounting majors, spring 2005 took the lead with 485 majors, and spring 2006 is expected to have approximately 469 majors, with many students still undeclared.

The School of Management has offered between 11 and 12 courses in finance between spring 2004 and spring 2005, as finance is SOM’s second highest declared major. Spring 2004 saw 187 finance majors, and the number grew in spring 2005 to 203 majors. The spring 2006 graduating class is expected to have 148 finance majors, without taking into account undeclared majors thus far.

Management information systems saw better days in spring 2002 when 13 MIS classes were offered in SOM, with 130 MIS majors in the school. In spring 2006, SOM will offer only seven MIS courses, with a mere 25 declared MIS majors.

Harpur’s economics department is also shifting its focus to finance. Some students believe that majoring in economics with a concentration in financial economics may offer more lucrative job opportunities than students with a specialization in economic policy analysis might encounter.

“If you aren’t specializing in financial economics, there can be a lot of trouble getting the courses you need,” said senior Erin Hauck, economic policy analysis major. “During registration there was a spot open in an economics course that satisfied one of my requirements, but it was restricted to financial economics majors only.”

Hauck said she was ultimately able to register for the class, but only after running in circles in the economics department, speaking with an adviser, the professor and the head of the department.

“It was really frustrating,” Hauck said. “There was a spot open in the course, but I had to go through this whole process because I wasn’t a financial economics major.”

According to Susan Walcott, associate professor of economics and assistant director of undergraduate studies, the economics department restricts some courses to financial economics majors because a strong math background is required for these courses, and these courses are also required for financial economics majors to graduate. Some of these courses may include econometrics, monetary economics and international trade.

“The policy analysis concentration has very low student interest, while finance is the most popular concentration,” Walcott said. “This seems to be because students feel that the finance concentration makes them more marketable.”