Finance is useless on the undergrad level?

tetrishead
Fri, 11 Apr 2008 17:11:15 +0000

You need to stop worrying about every stupid thing that is said on every little corner of the internet.

When someone uses phsyics in a way that is practical, we call them engineers.

When someone uses econ in a way that is practical, we call them businessmen.

No, we don’t. Each discipline has skill subsets, and it is the utilization of those in a specific manner that will result in what we call them. You have a fundamental misunderstanding of… everything, judging from your post, and you’d do well to spent some time on those pointless thoughts philosophy folk focus on. Then again, I suspect if you spend your free time posting to reinforce deeply held notions that are utterly false you’re a lost cause anyway.

No matter what you take, I think they both help develop the same underlying analytical skills which is more important than, say, knowing how to make a DCF. Those types of things can be taught in training sessions and on-the-job. Both are excellent for thinking critically about issues IMO.

Economics is great for thinking critically, it does not do a good job of developing the “same” analytical skills. Finance is not good for thinking critically, it does a good job of developing analytical skills that are practical. A good finance program is essentially about practical statistical analysis/modeling, which does not lend itself to critical thinking in the way people see it but to plug-in thinking. Economics, unless you structure the courses you take in a certain way, does not explore the practical side of things like capital management and budgeting, firm specific analysis, risk management, policy and structure, performance measurements, etc.