Economics ≠ Business

I was reading Greg Mankiw’s blog this morning when I came across a link to an interesting article written by David Colander, Chair of Economics Department in Middlebury College. Basically, he was trying to identify the reasons why many students want to be economics majors, evident from the rising enrollments every year. Several were discussed and the root cause appeared to be economics being a “just-right” major. To quote him: economics major provides the appropriate middle ground of skill preparation, analytic rigor and intellectual excitement that students look for in a major, and that employers look for when hiring students.

Well although I won’t be attending economics classes anytime soon and so will not be able to give you a first-hand experience on attending one, I have to agree that is one of the reasons I have applied to do a postgraduate degree in economics. The opportunity to learn about science, apply it in a social context and in the process, improving the lives of the people is another reason why I have made up my mind to switch to economics. For students whose motivations to learn economics are the same as those shared by David and/or me, I think that enrolling in an economics course is an excellent decision.

For students who haven’t really made up their mind about their future plans, enrolling in economics is also a very good decision because the nature of the training doesn’t restrict you to a particular field and therefore allows you to venture to your field of interest once you have found one. Economics is one of the few fields that still keep many doors open even after you complete the course.

However I have to express my disappointment with students who already made up their mind of working in business but take economics simply because their liberal-arts colleges don’t offer business courses and economics is a good substitute. I believe that by doing so, these students are depriving others who are keener than them in learning about economics of the opportunities to do so by competing for the limited number of available places. I have to qualify that I make this statement without any concrete information about the number of applications and number of available places in each college and hence the degree of competition between these 2 groups of students.

Regardless, my point is: if you have made up your mind on a particular field, then you are strongly advised to enroll in a course on that particular field. Don’t enroll in another field that you have no interest in and intend to leave because you will only end up depriving others of the opportunities to enroll in the field of their interest.