Stanislav Andreev loves econ, too. Photo from web.
A lot can be said about Quinn Menchetti’s “Conn’s Saturday Night Social Scene, by Department” article a few weeks ago, especially how prevalent stereotypes regarding majors are, as well as how little we know about other people’s areas of study beyond stereotypes. Therefore, I decided to shed some light on a few myths regarding economics, one of the majors I know quite well. Hopefully, others might learn a bit about my area of study so we can all begin to understand, respect and appreciate others’ academic pursuits a little better.
Myth #1: Economics is the study of money (and so the pursuit of those who love it).
False. Saying that economics is about money is the same as claiming that music is about stemmed circles on staff paper. As a discipline, economics is the study of decision-making as it pertains to the allocation of resources humans consider valuable out of necessity or desire. Money, on the other hand, is simply the set of units that allow us to quantify and compare the absolute and relative values of these resources. In other words, just like music has existed long before we began recording it on staff paper, economic decisions have were made long before the invention of money and will continue to be made if we abolish the capitalist system altogether. The economic discipline is therefore about understanding how and why people take economic decisions and has very little to do with “paper chasing.”
Myth #2: All you learn in economics is a bunch of graphs and abstract equations, so it is all about math (and difficult math!).
If this is true, it demonstrates a failure in the learning process. Graphs and equations are used merely to illuminate the causal mechanisms guiding the decisions groups of people take and the outcomes associated with them, given a set of assumptions. Since human decisions tend to be influenced by a large number of factors, the more realistic a model tries to be, the more elaborate the assumptions become, so the more complex the math employed has to be.
At Conn, in order to have the major maximally accessible, our professors use an extremely small amount of math (yes, even in Intermediate Microeconomics or Econometrics) so the models we learn in most courses are unrealistic and might appear abstract. (By the way, some relatively new subfields, such as behavioral economics, believe the assumptions upon which models are based should be dropped altogether and experiments (or historical case studies) should be used as a better way of analyzing and understanding decision-making, but they have yet to become accepted into mainstream economic study).
Myth #3: Majoring in economics is the way to land a job on Wall Street.
Anyone who has ever worked in finance can tell you that this statement is very far from the truth. Financial services companies and management consulting firms are looking for a wide variety of competencies (e.g. analytical skills, ability to work long hours and under pressure, etc.) that could be demonstrated in a variety of ways but definitely not by the simple choice of a major.
In addition, the skill set we acquire in class, mostly knowledge of economic theory, is largely irrelevant to most finance-related jobs. In fact, the course that is mostly applicable to working in finance, Accounting, is not only not offered at Conn but would also not count towards an Economics major, even if you choose to take it at the Coast Guard Academy. Therefore, in principle, an accomplished art history major that can demonstrate the ability to learn quickly and has some knowledge of the markets has a much better chance of landing a job on Wall Street than an average economics major.
Myth #4: Economics is the “practical” major for people who either have no strong passion for anything else or are held back from pursuing it.
Deeply false. First, an Economics major is no more or less practical than any other major on campus. In fact, as liberal arts students we all learn very little “practical” knowledge, knowledge that could be immediately relevant to a specific career field. At the same time, the liberal arts “career enhancing life skills” such as analytical thinking, the ability to conceptualize and solve problems, coherent and persuasive writing, etc. that one obtains while learning economics could be perfected through virtually any of the majors Conn offers.
Second, economics is a pretty demanding major in terms of the amount of theory and relative complexity of some tools used, so one needs to be pretty passionate about the economic implications of decisions and events in order to understand fully and enjoy the material taught in class.
Myth #5: Economics is the major of a social group on campus that tends to hang out at the lax house on Saturday night.
This is kind of like saying that Lamborghini is the “rapper car” because rappers often show up in Lamborghinis in their clips. The truth is that economics is for everyone, which is to say every single adult should have at least some knowledge of it. The reason: most every adult engages in economic transactions and decisions on a daily, possibly even hourly basis whether or not he/she is ignorant about some (or most) of their consequences.
In fact, one of the big aspects of the Conn “bubble” and the adjustment to the so-called real world is that here we are sheltered from making economic decisions. Therefore, if you have some analytical aptitude and want to learn about human decision-making and how we are all affected by it, then econ is probably the right major for you, regardless of your background orcareer aspirations. •
