I did a little thinking about this, and a little digging. I asked each contracts professional in my organization whom I respect (both of them....joking) what their undergrad was in. Not one of them majored in a business related field, and all of them would not have gotten to be a CO using today's standards without leveraging their additional and graduate coursework. That seems to be the sense here as well.

Because the field of federal contracting is one that deals primarily with law and regulation, it would strike me that those majors that are most prevalent in law schools could be most applicable in contracting. Though there are no nation-wide statistics that I can find on this, it appears to me that business management is a large minority in terms of majors accepted to law school. Accounting is also very low on the list. The highest related major was Finance, and that fell below the traditional liberal arts assocated degrees like History, Political Science, English Literature and Letters, Philosophy, and Economics. Interestingly it looks like Physics had the higest acceptance rate. I haven't met a CO who majored in Physics yet, but the more I think about it the sillier it seems that the federal government would exclude a rocket scientist as candidates for COs (at say Missle Defense Agency) because they lack 24 hours of busniess.

I read over the Kriegner article. Seems to me that OFPP has been doing agencies and the contracting community a disservice with the 24 business course requriements.

What school are you enrolled in for your PhD? Do they have active departments in economics, business and/or IT? I would think it would be both interesting and fruitful for the acquisition community as well as others to explore a topic that spans them. Maybe cross-walking between IT development best practices and the distinction with contracting processes. Another could be how the IT companies with the best business track records often do not work with the government much if at all due to our antiquated systems and maybe attempt some economic waste quantification's?

Vern, please pardon the pedantry but the trivium are just a part of the classical liberal arts. The other four arts, the quadrivium, include arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. See Plato's The Republic, Book 7.

H2H

Quite right. It's not pedantry to provide good info, and that's good info.

"In war, as in prostitution, amateurs are often better than professionals." - Napoleon

I've definitely seen that idea in action often in my acquisition travels and other vocations as well.

Back in the early post-war years, companies wanted engineers because they are taught problem-solving skills. Later, companies wanted liberal arts majors because they are taught to think.

The best contract administration practitioner, manager, and director I ever saw was a retired E-9 who has no degree.

I'm like the Don, BA in Spanish.

To me a degree, any degree, means discipline and persistence, among other things, but for anyone who is not a new grad, in a hiring decision I place high value on practical experience, the things we learn on the job that are not necessarily quantifiable.

Related question: Should an 1102 (or similar) with more than 10 years of experience be expected to write and publish articles? If so, is one a year too much to ask?

If not, why not?

H2H

It takes quite a few hours to do it properly and so not with my workload which already has me working more hours than I should.