I’m currently a community college and planning on doing a double degree when I transfer. One of the degrees I’ll be pursuing is a degree in economics. I want to know is an economics degree useless as some people say it is? Also is it possible to go into fields such as investment banking, hedge funds, and corporate law with a economics background?
It is my opinion, based on my daughter’s experience, that an economics degree can be very useful, as long as you get a strong quantitative grounding (i.e., lots of math). I’m not sure about economics as preparation for investment banking and hedge funds. For corporate law, you need to be a lawyer, which means going to law school. The particular undergrad major is less important than GPA and LSAT score.
Most of the elite schools that see heavy recruiting from IB, hedge funds, etc do not have undergraduate business majors, and people major in economics. So anyone who tells you that it is a “useless” major is, at the very best, ill-informed.
I agree with @rosered55 and @Consolation. Economics is such a useful and lucrative degree. Of course, it is very difficult to become an actual economist because that requires graduate degrees. However, a bachelor’s degree in economics can definitely land you a job in any of those aforementioned fields. It’s all about maintaining a high GPA in college and bagging a few good internships along the way. It’s important to take quantitative courses in the economics field if you want to enter the business world. A lot of people pair an economics major with applied mathematics, pure mathematics, statistics, operations research, actuarial science, etc. These quantitative majors will ADD to your analytical skills. Remember that economics emphasizes theories and a lot of those theories won’t be used in the real business world. This is why a lot of people think it’s useless because you don’t gain a lot of technical skills along the way. For example, a degree in accounting or finance teaches very technical skills that you can use in your day-to-day job responsibilities.
I’m going to disagree with ccctransfer - you don’t HAVE to take a lot of quant courses to be successful in business with an economics major. Economics is the most business oriented major at most liberal arts schools that don’t have a business degree, and will teach you critical reasoning, presentation and writing skills that will help you in any walk of business. Whether or not you take more quantitative courses really depends on what you want to do. You don’t need a lot of math classes to be an investment banker or a lawyer. Working for a hedge fund, it depends if you want to be a quant jock or someone on the business end. You DEFINITELY don’t need a course in actuarial science unless you want to be an actual actuary - otherwise I don’t know why you would ever torture yourself in that course. While I agree that microeconomics has few direct applications in the real world, macroeconomics is in the Wall St Journal every day. Further, the beauty of an econ degree is that it’s usually taken in a liberal arts context, which implies that you are taking a well-rounded load of courses across many subjects that interest you. If you go “quant up” an econ degree, you may as well be a business major.
Actually, the economics majors who load up on more advanced math and statistics are often the ones targeting PhD study in economics. General business majors typically have similar or less math compared to economics majors.
True enough UCB, but he didn’t seem like a PhD in Econ candidate, wants to get an honest job 
Is the question you are trying to ask:
Is an undergrad economics degree alone sufficient to get a high paying job?
The answer:
Probably not. From all the posts above, you can conclude that for a high paying job, an undergrad econ degree is an intermediate step to grad/law/bz school.
The key words here are “elite schools.” Econ majors from elite schools do fine (although yes, their futures usually involve more school at some point). My daughter is one of these people.
But what happens to econ majors from less elite schools? The OP is a community college student planning to transfer. I don’t think we should assume that he will necessarily be transferring to an elite school. Most of the universities that welcome community college transfers (which a few exceptions) are a little lower on the academic food chain.
Well actually I have been researching a couple of schools out of state that aren’t considered “elite”, but still strong in academics such as UI Urabana- Champaign, IU Bloomington, and University of Minnesota, but my back up plan is to attend a state uni like USC (South Carolina) if those school don’t work out. So basically if I want to land an internship or a job after college I need more math courses? Also economics is considered a liberal arts major instead of a business major at most the colleges I’ve listed.
macro or micro makes a difference at IU. They push one discipline way more than the other, but I forget which is their preferred course.
What’s the other half of the double degree you’re planning?
At many colleges, many of the students in the economics major are using it as a substitute for the business major (perhaps because business is not offered at the college, or requires more selective admission to the major). Some of these colleges’ economics departments cater to such students with “business-like” electives, such as managerial economics. It is likely that such economics majors seek the same kinds of jobs that business majors seek. Note that the economics department at the University of South Carolina is under the business division, and offers a business economics major as well as a regular economics major (see http://mooreschool.sc.edu/academicprograms/undergraduate/majorsoffered/economics.aspx ).
Typical business and economics majors require single variable calculus and introductory statistics. Math beyond that is not generally used or necessary in typical course work or jobs, unless your goal is to eventually go on to PhD study in economics or business, or work in a specialty area like quantitative finance. Some colleges’ economics majors and courses do require multivariable calculus (e.g. Stanford, MIT, Chicago, UCSC, UCSD).
@Marian the other degree I plan on pursuing is History.
Marian, in other threads people are busy lecturing me and others that there is no such thing as an advantage from attending a elite school, that everything is just the same academically except the brand name–which is of course worthless and/or only valued by stuck-up snobs-- that there are more opportunities at non-flagship state schools than at medium-sized elites, etc, etc. So clearly you must be wrong. B-)
My firm hires econ majors. Take the quant side. It is in many cases seen as comparable to a business degree. And before you look at those OOS public Us run the Net Price Calculators on their web sites. Make sure you’re sitting down when you look at the results.
You have not shared too much information about yourself. But, be realistic. If you are at community college because you did not gain entry to university (not saying that is the case, but possibly) for one reason or another, then you need to evaluate your likelihood of doing well enough in Math to pursue a quantitative-oriented Econ major.
If you haven’t yet looked at the requirements for a BA or BS in Econ at the schools you are considering, you ought to do that right now.
Another thing I want to ask is that is applying to an honors program as a transfer how will that reflect on my transcript?
I didn’t actually state an opinion (for once in my life).
I asked a genuine question – whether an economics degree from a non-elite school will help someone get a job. I don’t know the answer. I was hoping that people who have kids who graduated with economics degrees from non-elite schools would supply some information.
As for what you’re being told on other threads, the truth is that it depends. In some career fields, and with some specific employers in other fields, a degree from an elite school matters very much. In others, it doesn’t. Two of the career fields that economics majors might consider – investment banking and consulting – tend to value elite degrees. But there may be other good opportunities for economics majors where the name of the college doesn’t matter. I’m just not sure what they are because I don’t happen to know any kids who pursued those opportunities.
OP, your resume will only list your 4 year institution (if that’s what you put on it - some people list their AA or AS from a CC as well and that’s not an issue at all). As to how that will be reflected on your transcript, you need to ask the college. There are no hard and fast rules.