Hello guys, I got into UM econ program and Fordham U business school as a transfer student from UIUC. In UIUC, my major is Econ, but I feel like that econ is pretty hard to find a job in investment banking field. I know Fordham U is not as good as UM, but I just want ask about your guys opinion about importance of major or school. Very appreciated your post.
BTW, I am international student and sophomore. Even though I also applied Ross for Fall, I don’t think I can get into.
Go blue!!!
Document is pertinent mostly to PhDs, but gives what might be the optimist case for a degree
followed by moving into academia…thus doesn’t mainly address the trajectory toward business
It runs a few pages, but below is an excerpt
If you want to go into academia, go to the best possible graduate school you can as
defined by the standard research rankings. Good research universities, such as Michigan,
basically only hire from the top 20 schools and, within that group, hire most often from
the top 10 schools. In addition to more rigorous training, going to a top school plugs you
into a powerful and influential network.
If you want to get a Ph.D. and work in government or in policy type consulting, a Ph.D.
in public policy from a top policy school (e.g., the Kennedy School at Harvard or the
Harris School at Chicago) is a reasonable substitute for a Ph.D. in economics from a
department outside the top 20. You will have access to the economics courses and, to
some degree, the faculty, while paying less of a cost in technical preparation
Another one…
https://hbr.org/2014/02/how-economics-phds-took-over-the-federal-reserve/
Excerpt:
There was a lot of uncertainty and debate last summer and fall over whether President Obama would appoint Janet Yellen or Larry Summers as Federal Reserve chair. What wasn’t really up in the air was whether the new head of the world’s most powerful central bank would have a doctorate in economics.
Yellen, whose first workday as chair (the Senate confirmed her as “chairman,” but the Fed seems committed to leaving the “man” out) is today, got her PhD at Yale. She also has more than two decades experience teaching economics, mostly at UC Berkeley, although for the past two decades she’s spent most of her time in various White House and Fed posts. Summers got his PhD at Harvard, and has been going back and forth between there and Washington, D.C., pretty much ever since. Obama also mentioned Donald Kohn (PhD, Michigan, and a career at the Fed) as a possibility, and the name of Roger Ferguson (PhD, Harvard, and a private sector career plus a past stint as Fed vice chairman) came up a few times in journalists’ speculations. The lone exception to the PhD rule was former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, possessor of a mere MA in international economics, but he took himself out of consideration early on.
In 2006, the last time a President had to nominate a Fed chairman, the job went to Ben Bernanke, who had spent his entire career as an economics professor before being called up to Washington for a stint as a Fed board member in 2002. The other main contenders seemed to be Harvard economics professor Martin Feldstein, Stanford economics professor John Taylor, and of course Columbia Business School dean (and economics professor) Glenn Hubbard, whose students made an awesome viral video about his purported disappointment at being passed over.
So has an economics PhD basically become a prerequisite for running the Fed? “I think the answer is ‘probably yes’ these days,” former Fed vice chairman Alan Blinder — a Princeton economics professor — emailed when I asked him. “Otherwise, the Fed’s staff will run technical rings around you.”
That Fed staff is loaded with economics PhDs. In fact, the Federal Reserve System is almost certainly the nation’s largest employer of PhD economists, with more than 200 at the Federal Reserve Board in Washington and what is likely a similar number (I got tired of counting) scattered among the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks.
The first PhD economist to be Fed chairman was the illustrious Columbia professor Arthur Burns, who served from 1970 to 1978. History has not judged his tenure well. The next two chairmen didn’t have PhDs (although Paul Volcker had a master’s in economics). Alan Greenspan launched the all-PhD era in 1987, but his doctorate was of an unconventional sort — he acquired it in his early 50s from NYU after he’d left graduate school at Columbia decades before (Burns had been one of his professors) to start an economic consulting firm.
You can clearly see the PhDward shift in the makeup of the Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed’s main monetary-policy-making body:
@blue85 Thank you very much for sharing this article. It is very helpful. So, as an economist, basically, needs to have lots of math and statistics skills? Why don’t we just go to study math, which is the hardest major in the world.
slz: you make a fair point, but several things to consider: 1) a math trajectory would require a lot of time spent in proof-land, which may not be congenial to your tropisms; 2) econ is good in the sense that it requires soft skills and the accrual of knowledge that may help you understand how badly models tend to fit reality.
That said, if you are good at math, and have a skeptical bent as to fit between models and the world, math might be just the ticket for you. Few disciplines will offer so much leverage into so many other topics. Michigan’s math department is ranked in the top5 or top10 in many subfields; econ is ranked between 12th and 15th (after many ties); business is ranked highly both undergraduate graduate. Most schools are ranked so highly that the “weak” departments seldom rank out of the top 20.
A degree from Michigan, especially with a robust gpa, will point you into elite graduate schools.
@blue85 I am always confused with what the difference are between econ major graduates and business students. Who has more privilege? Many of my friends think people study economics because they cannot get into business school. What do you think? Also, in the article you provided, the professor said economics graduates can work for private sectors, like BB? Does this mean econ graduates has lower priority for investment banks when they are hiring?
Thank you very much for your help. I wish we can have a coffee if I go to Umich in the end. BTW, I paid the deposit yesterday to secure my spot in Umich.
“I am always confused with what the difference are between econ major graduates and business students. Who has more privilege?” <=== The business degree (BBA and MBA) is generally more privileged in that it is a broader degree (has some econ content) with off-shoots into the functional areas of a modern corporation (marketing, operations, accounting, finance) and positions the students into corporate hiring pipelines. The econ student generally has a less established and organized exit framework positioned for him/her and must generally make do on his/her (his for convenience) own. Econ students have plenty of opportunities in many corporations, think tanks, governmental agencies but, again, will have to be somewhat self-sufficient and make use of professorial contacts or internship contacts to start their career. I finished at Michigan a long time ago, so this may have changed and you should question everything I tell you and do your own research.
Many of my friends think people study economics because they cannot get into business school. What do you think?
<== I don’t know what the facts are but I seriously doubt that this is true…there is no fundamental intellectual difference or difference in intelligence…in fact some people might argue that there are more abstractions in econ and that MBA students/graduates are narrow and not that intellectually capable. Again, these are both stereotypes which probably have little merit. I would argue that the kids that go into econ do so due to intellectual predilections or perhaps because they want to solve social problems. Perhaps they have a more communal sensibility not found in business students by and large. Again, this is just theorizing and stereotypes both pools of students and is pure guesswork on my part.
Also, in the article you provided, the professor said economics graduates can work for private sectors, like BB? Does this mean econ graduates has lower priority for investment banks when they are hiring?
<=== probably lower in that an MBA is a bit of a plug-and-play degree for the functional areas listed above; an econ degree is probably viewed as being slightly more narrow for a slightly narrower and slightly smaller subset of jobs. That said, it is excellent preparation for any number of jobs and relative to other fields/majors is fairly broad, just not quite as broad as the MBA
Thank you very much for your help.
<=== take it with a huge heap of salt. Alexandre is much more enmeshed and cognizant of some of the differences and would be well worth querying…my information is part speculation and largely dated…things have changed since my graduation.
I wish we can have a coffee if I go to Umich in the end.
<=== that would be nice but I’m coastal so that is unlikely.
BTW, I paid the deposit yesterday to secure my spot in Umich
<== Tremendous. Michigan is a great school and will offer you a superb education and access to a great alumni body. Best wishes and Go Blue!!!
@blue85 Can’t appreciate more about your detailed reply. It helps me a lot!! You let me know that people from Umich are very very very very friendly and nice!!! I guess you graduated at 1985? Thank you again, and I will do more research about these two majors. 
I hope I was of some small help. Good luck with your further research. The cliche is to measure twice and cut once. Some front-loaded research will pay dividends. Good luck with your course of study. I hope you love Michigan, the students, the profs…and exit into and interesting job which just also happens to pay well.