Economics is a social science. It is not business, and it is not finance. Those fields can involve a practical application of economics, and many of the concepts learn may be generally useful in business or finance, but economics is far broader than that. Many college students may view it as the “business major if your school has no business major”, and many of them may be disappointed at the very theoretical nature of especially higher-level economics classes. but there are lots of different places you can take economics that don’t involve business or finance.
Also, I’m not really surprised at economics majors that don’t require calculus. High-level economic analysis does require higher-level math, both most undergrad economics majors don’t actually do high-level economic analysis. It’s kind of like any other social science in that regard - psychology and political science, especially. If you plan to study it on the graduate level, taking calculus and advanced statistics is really helpful, but the actual study of the field on the undergrad level doesn’t require it in most places.
In addition to this - consulting firms do like to hire students with quantitative facility, but you don’t need higher-level math (I mean multivariable calculus plus) to do this. It’s certainly helpful; they’re in higher demand. But I know several social science and humanities majors (and frankly, bio and chem majors) who went into management consulting and don’t have strong math skills. They have some facility in math, and a lot of the social science majors especially can do statistical analyses. But the case interviews for consulting firms don’t involve integration or anything beyond algebra and data manipulation. It’s more about the way in which you answer the question than having to know any kind of advanced manipulation of data. (Besides, it’s not the calculus that will really help you in that kind of quantitative analysis - it’s the statistics and real analysis on which the calculus is based. Simply taking 2-3 semesters of calculus won’t necessarily teach you what you need to know. In fact, a semester of non-cal based intro stats using a software program like SPSS or R may turn out to be more useful at certain levels.)