Bachelor of Commerce


A Bachelor of Commerce is an undergraduate degree in Business, usually awarded in Canada, Australia, India, Pakistan, Ireland, New Zealand, Ghana, South Africa, Myanmar and other Commonwealth countries; however, the degree is no longer offered in the United Kingdom.

Structure

Bachelor of Commerce

The Bachelor of Commerce degree is designed to provide students with a wide range of managerial skills, while building competence in a particular area of business.
Most universities, therefore, plan the degree such that in addition to their major, students are exposed to general business principles, taking courses in accounting, finance, economics, actuarial studies, business management, human resources and marketing; some programs also require business statistics and -calculus, and information systems.
Depending on the institution, a formal academic major may or may not be established. Regardless, a Bachelor of Commerce degree requires students to take the majority of their courses in business-related subjects, including the aside, among others.
For a comparison with other business degrees, see Business education#Undergraduate education.

Honours Bachelor of Commerce

The Honours Bachelor of Commerce or B.Comm. is further advanced. It may consist of a four-year program or of a one-year program taken subsequent to a three-year Bachelor's degree. It is a combination of Bachelors of Business Administration and Bachelors of Commerce, as it has specialization aspect of BBA in subjects that are offered by B.Com. The degree requires additional academic courses to be completed with higher academic performance standards and may also require a researched thesis component; the one-year program is often focused exclusively on a single subject-area.
The Honours Bachelor of Commerce degree often serves as an abridgement between the undergraduate program and postgraduate programs, including the Master of Commerce and the Master of Business Administration degrees.

Duration

The curriculum generally lasts three years in Australia, New Zealand, India, Malta, South Africa, some parts of Canada and Hong Kong. The curriculum requires four years of study in the Republic of Ireland, the majority of Canada, Ghana, the Philippines and the Netherlands. In Nepal, the duration of the program can be three years.
In South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and some universities in India, the B.Com. degree is considered an additional postgraduate qualification, whereas in Malta, an additional year of study is not considered a postgraduate qualification. In Pakistan, the B.Com. degree lasts two years, the B.Com. degree lasts three years, and a four-year program leads to the BS Commerce degree.

History

The Bachelor of Commerce degree was first offered at the University of Birmingham. The University's School of Commerce was founded by William Ashley, an Englishman from Oxford University, who was the first professor of Political Economy and Constitutional History in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Toronto. Ashley left Toronto in 1892, spent a few years at Harvard University, and then went back to England to the new University of Birmingham where he founded the School of Commerce. Ashley began the program which was the forerunner of many other B.Com. degree programs throughout the British Empire.
Eighteenth-century economists had divided the English economy into three sectors: agriculture, manufacturing, and commerce. Commerce included the transportation, marketing and financing of goods. The Birmingham program in Commerce included economic geography, economic history, general economics, modern languages, and accountancy.