My DD is in honors and thinking of majoring in Economics. If possible, we would like some upperclassmen or recent grads’ feedback, experiences, or pros and cons, on the differences of the two routes at UA - a BS or BA. What are the strengths of each? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
My daughter majored in Economics through Culverhouse, so that’s what I’m familiar with. All of the economics courses will be the same whether one is pursuing the degree through Culverhouse or CAS. The big difference, as I understand it, is that a student in Culverhouse would need to take all of the functional field courses at Culverhouse, such as Accounting, Business Law, Finance, Marketing, Operations Management, Business Communications, Financial Analysis and Modeling, and Strategic Management, whereas I believe the CAS student would be taking a specified number of courses in CAS disciplines. I think there’s more flexibility in the CAS course requirements, since in Culverhouse a number of the courses, particularly 300 and 400 level courses, outside of the major are specified, whereas I don’t think that’s the case in CAS. At least that’s what I think the difference is - maybe someone who majored in Econ through CAS could jump in and confirm. My daughter wanted the business background - in fact she also majored in Finance (and Math) - so we never really explored the CAS option.
I don’t know that one is better than the other - it seems to me that the chosen path would depend on the student’s interests and what they want to do with that economics degree. I would say that if a student is interested in a career in business or obtaining a good business background, Culverhouse would be the right path, and the upper level courses would be business courses. If the student is more interested in the liberal arts, and would prefer upper level courses in those disciplines, they’d choose CAS. The couple students I know of who majored in Econ through CAS had double majors or minors in Political Science and went on to law school, although I’m sure there are all kinds of paths.
My daughter majored in Economics through CAS. She also doubled majored in math and when she graduates next weekend she will also have her masters in Applied Statistics thanks to the University Scholars Program and a decent amount of AP credit coming in.
She went through CAS for Econ because she wasn’t interested in taking marketing, accounting, etc. I believe she did take some finance classes though. That may be due to her Masters being in Culverhouse, but I’m not sure. Besides her lack of interest in some of the business classes I think this path worked better for her as far as fitting everything in and being done in 4 years. (although now that graduation is close I think she wishes she could stay at UA forever!)
She will be working in insurance as an actuary. I can put you in touch with her if you want. She can give a lot more specifics/pros and cons than I can.
Subscribed/ Thanks to the folk posting in this thread.
Trying to get a handle on how my S18 might build a course of study replicating Actuarial Sciences degree around the UA offerings if he were to enroll there. Some PMs on the way …
There is a specialization under finance for Actuarial Science. I would suggest e-mailing Dr. William Rabel for additional information. With an Econ/Finance/Math major, I think my daughter took all but one of the courses in the Actuarial Science curriculum. She had Dr. Rabel as a teacher and found him to be incedibly helpful. You could also look here: https://culverhouse.ua.edu/insurance