Should Calculus Be a Pre-Requisite for Business Statistics? A Longitudinal Study

Business Statistics is a required course for undergraduate business majors and presents significant challenges for students with weak quantitative and critical thinking skills. This paper shows that changing the pre-requisite for the Business Statistics course from Business Calculus to Probability and Statistics makes a significant positive impact, despite the increase in course content, on student performance for business students at a comprehensive regional university in the southeast. It is recommended business schools that experience difficulties with students successfully completing business statistics to carefully consider curriculum changes, particularly the chosen pre-requisite courses.