Founded in 1976, DECA is an organization striving to give students an early taste of the business world. DECA’s Mission Statement is: “Our Mission is to prepares emerging leaders and entrepreneurs in marketing, finance, hospitality and management in high schools and colleges around the globe.”

  However, the more questions asked about DECA and Eastern, the more you will realize there is a large communication gap between DECA, Eastern, and participants that is preventing DECA from fully fulfilling its mission statement.

At Eastern, macroeconomics and microeconomics are both AP courses that discuss things like business cycles, the economy, and other monetary relating topics. You would think that business centralized courses like these would enable these AP students to participate in DECA, however since the courses are taught by social studies teachers, economics students at Eastern are not able to participate.

  DECA Executive Director, Dr. Jeffrey Victor, responded with this statement: “In New Jersey, a high school student member should currently be or formerly been enrolled in a marketing, business, hospitality, business finance, management or entrepreneurship class. Personal Financial Literacy, even if taught by the business department, does not qualify students to be a part of DECA. However, other courses that satisfy the financial literacy requirement that already fall within the qualifying class rule will not disqualify students from participation… Individual school districts may set their own eligibility guidelines as long as they meet this minimum standard… Economics is part of the social studies or humanities departments and not part of business, it would not be considered an eligible course.  However, beyond these minimum requirements, schools may impose their own rules…”

  From about 2015 to 2017 a group of parents with the same concern and outrage attempted to reach out to the state DECA advisors who revealed it is actually up to the school to determine policies like these.

  Dr. Victor said schools are able to impose their own rules as long as they meet the basic requirements, the school said they are simply following DECA’s rules and there is nothing they can do to change it.

  Top business schools in the nation such as NYU Stern business school, Michigan’s Ross business school, and even Rutgers business school all require economics as a basic requirement to obtain any type of business degree.

  Michigan’s business school website says that “Economics is a fundamental discipline that provides the foundation for other areas of study, such as finance, strategy, marketing and operations.”

  If economics is such a basic discipline, then why won’t Eastern allow economics students to participate in a business centralized competition?