Does a Business Informatics Degree Actually Pay Off?
I graduated from the University of Pécs with a Business Informatics degree. Here's what I actually learned — and what I had to figure out on my own.
I studied Business Informatics at the University of Pécs. Four years, a diploma, and a lot of opinions formed along the way.
What the Curriculum Actually Looked Like
It started with the fundamentals — C++ and C#, the kind of courses where you write console apps and learn how memory works. Not glamorous, but useful. Then came Python, mostly for analytics and data processing. After that, Java — and that’s where things got genuinely interesting. We built complete desktop applications, worked with databases properly for the first time, and started thinking about architecture instead of just syntax.
Later came PHP and JavaScript. PHP clicked for me immediately. I started learning it outside of class, building things on my own time. That’s when the self-directed learning really started.
The Business Side
What makes a Business Informatics degree different from a straight Computer Science degree is the economic and business curriculum running alongside the technical one. Management, finance, business processes — subjects that at the time felt like filler.
They weren’t. Understanding how a business actually works, what problems cost money, what decisions drive growth — that thinking shows up every time I talk to a client or design a system. Writing code is one skill. Understanding what the code needs to do for the business is another.
Was It Worth It?
Yes. But with a condition.
A degree alone won’t make you employable in this industry. The curriculum moves too slowly, the practical exposure is too limited, and by the time you graduate, half of what was cutting-edge in first year is already outdated.
What made it worth it for me was building things outside of class — real projects, real problems — while the degree was still ongoing. The university gave me the foundations and the business thinking. Everything else I had to go get myself.
If you’re studying and waiting for the degree to make you ready, you’ll finish and still feel unready. Start building now.