Administration courses are classes or schooling aimed at teaching someone how to run or operate a business or a specific aspect of it. Practical financial coursework, business operations, inventory control, and other issues that a business owner would want to know are examples of these types of classes. They could be for someone who wants to work as a manager in a large corporation or for someone who wants to start their own business. Specialized courses in areas such as hospital administration, educational administration, and general business administration are also available.
General administration courses are designed to teach students the fundamentals of running a business or office on a day-to-day basis. These classes may not cover everything a businessperson needs to know, but they can provide a good foundation for what they will need to know. Employee management, data entry, task delegation, follow-through, and database reading, for example, are all areas of instruction for these types of administration courses.
Other types of administration courses, such as hospital administration, can concentrate on specific industries and the skills required to run them. Knowledge of insurance industry practices, information on malpractice insurance and claims, understanding the laws and ethics behind medicine, and how to run health care effectively as a business, for example, would typically be included in hospital administration. These skills would not prepare someone to work as a doctor, health care practitioner, or nurse, but rather on the business side of running a hospital or doctor’s office. These types of administration courses might be useful for a nurse or doctor who wants to learn more about running a private practice or surviving in the hectic environment of a hospital.
Education-focused administration courses would prepare someone to run and operate a school or work in a school district in a similar capacity. These courses would not teach practical aspects of education such as educational theories, teacher pedagogy, or classroom management, similar to the hospital administration courses. Educational administration courses, on the other hand, would equip a person with the skills needed to run a school or a school district. These types of courses might be taken by a teacher interested in becoming a principal, as well as a superintendent or other political figure in a school system.