Business
Jump into the professional world head (and heart) first
Discover our exciting new major–coming in Fall 2025
Ashby Business Scholars
Build your network, delve into case studies, and travel to New York, Boston, or San Francisco to meet with leaders in the fields of business and finance. Recent Ashby Business Scholars have interned at firms including JP Morgan, Deloitte, and McKinsey.
Business, Finance and Consulting
Oberlin’s Career Communities provides structured opportunities for students to pursue their postgraduate career plans, placing interested students at a range of organizations from the World Bank to Marathon Capital and Riverside Company.
Featured Courses
Principles of Accounting
How is data used by people outside an organization—for example, investors and regulators—to evaluate its financial performance? Through this course, students gain experience in the creation, reporting, and interpretation of financial information. Students also explore how accounting data can be used within an organization as a planning and management tool.
- Taught by
- Paul Pahoresky
Fundamentals of Sustainable Business Management
Analyze the evolving role of business in society, corporate accountability, circular economy, impact investing, and social enterprises. Students will engage with management theory, case studies, and critical discussion while building the basic tools they will need to harness the potential of business to act as a force for good.
- Taught by
- Business Faculty
Principles of Finance
This course provides a thorough foundation in financial economics with applications to investment decisions and the management of business enterprises. Topics include capital budgeting, financial statement analysis, interest and risk calculations, principles of market valuation, the capital asset pricing model, financial funding decisions, dividend and cash flow analysis, and taxation.
- Taught by
- Business Faculty
Arts Management I
Develop an understanding of the critical areas that comprise Arts Management including: organization structure, management theory, budgeting and fiscal theories, Marketing and Audience Development. They will also begin to develop the ability to understand and navigate the challenges of competing priorities in today’s world, specifically, reconciling aesthetic, managerial and economic considerations.
- Taught by
- Eric Steggall
Student Profiles
Economics Team Wins First Place at Business Competition
For the second year in a row, Oberlin College was awarded first place in the Eighth Annual Peoples Bank Undergraduate Business Case Competition. The Oberlin team surpassed 15 other schools to secure the first place honor during the competition which asked teams to prepare case studies to present for Peoples Bank senior management.
The Path to Entrepreneurship
Robert Palacios ’14 came to Oberlin with an enterprising spirit, securing a summer internship at the consulting firm Monitor Deloitte and participating in the Ashby Business Scholars program. After graduation, Palacios was awarded a Venture for America fellowship to work for two years at emerging start-ups and early-stage companies.
Combining Business and Social Consciousness
At Oberlin, Ty Diringer ’14 majored in politics while gaining experience with several entrepreneurial efforts, such as Kenya Reads, ObieWear, Project Unbound, and InTown. Diringer spent the year after graduation as the entrepreneurship fellow for the Creativity and Leadership and LaunchU programs before being named a Venture for America fellow.
What does Business at Oberlin look like?
The business scholar program hosts regular networking events with alumni and industry leaders.
Oberlin’s Business Scholars at the Google campus.
Students attend a panel on careers in science and technology.
As part of a Winter Term workshop, students learned the basics of business and finance from Hollywood producer and Oberlin trustee, Steve Dolcemaschio.
Students in the Arts and Creative Professions Career Community at the Sony Pictures lot.
LaunchU gives students the opportunity to pitch startup ideas to industry judges who give feedback and award seed funding for new ventures.
