<p>They say that economics/finance majors recieve high salaries here</p>
<p><a href=“http://money.cnn.com/2004/09/21/pf/college/starting_salaries/[/url]”>http://money.cnn.com/2004/09/21/pf/college/starting_salaries/</a></p>
<p>but I was wondering if BA in economics from a Liberal Arts College is equivalent to a economics/finance degree administered by a Business School or does that degree fall under the “Liberal arts graduates” category?</p>
<p>Im thinking of switching to the Business school so am quite curious whether getting a BA in Economics from Liberal Arts will give me equal prospects as a Finance degree from the Business school.</p>
<p>Economics is a major that focuses on developing your logic, problem solving skills. Most of the materials you learn is rather abstract and have no direct use in your future employments.</p>
<p>Economics major have high salary average is not because they’ve gain specific knowledge such as prediciting future macroeconomics forcasts, but rather on the intellectual thinking the Economics discipline has nurtured them.</p>
<p>So to make it simple, the two are almost equivalent(However, SOME economics degree from a business school is not really an economics degree, but rather a business degree, such as that offered from Wharton, Upenn.).</p>
<p>The article you have just referred states economics/finance as one category. This is because finance is based almost entirely on economics knowledge, and most economics graduates work in the finance sector. It’s impossible to distinguish these two in terms of the graduates.</p>
<p>You’ll definately NOT be in a disadvantage when you graduate and looking for employment. If it’s anything, the purity of the economics courses (aka, with less vocational training purposes) you take will take you even higher.</p>
<p>Thank you. Im somewhat surprised that an BA economics major would earn 10k more on average than other liberal arts majors since as you said </p>
<p>“Most of the materials you learn is rather abstract and have no direct use in your future employments”, but it sounds like your right and they are one and the same.</p>
<p>Instead of posting a new topic, I’ll just put my question here. I want to declare my major soon and I am deciding between Business Administration (Finance) and Economics. The finance degree is a B.S. and the Econ degree is a B.A. No B.S. Econ degree is offered at my school (Sacramento State). My question is simliar to the topic, but I’m also wondering how employers look at a B.A. compared to a B.S. I’m starting to think it may be more practical to go with the Business major because I’m guessing the Econ degree is a B.A. due to the coursework being more theoretical. Any ideas?</p>
<p>A finance degree is usually a business degree, not an economics degree.</p>
<p>If you want to work in the finance field when you graduate, there’s virtually no variance of your job prospect because you’ve choosen a certain degree over the other. That also means people won’t look down at your B.A. economics (big misconception) because it’s ONLY a “B.A.”. If anything, it is more intellectual challenging than a B.S. business degree and most people over 25 knows what i’m talking about.</p>
<p>However, if you need to advance further in finance, or want to take graduate schools in the finance field, such as financial engineering or financial mathematics, a quantitative or economics degree with courseworks in 3 sems of calc, 1 sem of algebra, 2 sems of math statistics, 2 sem of econemtrics (none of all those above can be water-downed versions offered by say business schools) are the absolute minimum. Some business degree might not allow this to happen because they have to take all those accounting, marketing, vocational stuff that could take up lots of courseworks already.</p>
<p>Economics or business is not the only way either. You can try math, statistics, industrial engineering, etc. All of them can lead you to a job in finance.</p>
<p>This is key though if you wanna skip all those stuff I said in last few paragraphs: the more economics, math and stats you take, the fatter your paycheck will be.</p>