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Do I want an Economics BA? (jumping the humanities PhD train)
citric
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Registered User regular
Do I want to be an Economist or to do the things that people with BAs in economics do? I want these in a career:
1) Something that'll keep my mind engaged.
2) Something that connects to real life and real society so that I can feel that I have some kind of value in the world.
3) Something that's mobile: I want to have the option of working at a non-profit organization for little money, but I also want to be able to get a better salary and earn money if it ever becomes necessary. It should also be useful wherever I end up geographically.
I thought I'd like to help run government. But I'm having a hard time figuring out what an economist sits down and does all day. I think they go through lots of data (numbers) and try to predict the future and suggest actions. I'm going to meet a career counselor and email an Economics prof to try to get some contacts with former students so I can ask them questions. I've already looked around the web and read the descriptions on Economics departments' web sites. The sites are thin on details and big in promises; they can't even really say what my job title would be, which makes it harder to use the Career Occupational Outlook Handbook and other sites.
Anyone have an Economics BA or know someone who does? Dumb choice, good choice? What's the work like?
1) Something that'll keep my mind engaged.
2) Something that connects to real life and real society so that I can feel that I have some kind of value in the world.
3) Something that's mobile: I want to have the option of working at a non-profit organization for little money, but I also want to be able to get a better salary and earn money if it ever becomes necessary. It should also be useful wherever I end up geographically.
I thought I'd like to help run government. But I'm having a hard time figuring out what an economist sits down and does all day. I think they go through lots of data (numbers) and try to predict the future and suggest actions. I'm going to meet a career counselor and email an Economics prof to try to get some contacts with former students so I can ask them questions. I've already looked around the web and read the descriptions on Economics departments' web sites. The sites are thin on details and big in promises; they can't even really say what my job title would be, which makes it harder to use the Career Occupational Outlook Handbook and other sites.
Anyone have an Economics BA or know someone who does? Dumb choice, good choice? What's the work like?
No, we need no more tires.
citric on
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Alright, well . . if you get an econ degree, and you don't go into business, you have a few options.
Be really good at econometrics and forecasting. This is the "pure numbers" shit, and if you don't go to grad school it's probably what you'll end up doing. If you're really good at it.
All of these require grad school:
being a professor
working at a think tank (thats your non-profit option, you'll earn decent money though)
working for the fed (grad school isn't necessarily required for this, but you'll probably end up going sooner then later)
Or you can minor in finance and go into banking. I'm getting a BS in Economics with a specialization in Finance and I'll be working at JP Morgan Chase this summer. And then hopefully getting offered a full-time job.
As far as the major itself goes, Econ is great. The best social science as far as I, and quite a few others, are concerned. Plus Once you really get Micro and Macro theory, all your upper level classes (besides econometrics and forecasting) are pretty easy because they base pretty much everything off of what you learn in theory.
Then again you could say that about . . . any of the liberal arts. I know I'd rather hire an econ major over a history or sociology major any day.
Poli Sci is the worst. Your choices are . . . law school or a PhD.
Econ works great as a second major, preferably to compliment a technical one.
Could you elaborate on this? Isn't this something that computers have largely taken over by now, with economists pretty much working as consultants or overseers?
Computers make it easier, so I'm not saying you'll be pecking away at a calculator all day. But you'll be doing alot of analysis and whatnot, plus constructing models. I don't have any experience with the actual real world applications of econometrics, but the basic deal with it is that it's the math of economics, and you use it to model theories.
The classes themselves though are pretty painful. Econometrics sucked.
Read Confessions of an Economic Hit-man, by John Perkins.
Seconded. He confuses alot of people using econometrics.
Business is great.
The reason a lot of people can't do jack shit with their business degree is because the first and most fundamental lesson of business goes right over their heads: it is all about connections.
Business and econ... I'm not so sure. Econ is usually about consulting/forecasting, whereas business is management/finance/marketting. I don't see how you can use one to compliment the other.
But chances are, you'll be required to take some econ courses to get into business anyway, so you might as well take a few more econ classes and get a minor.
I can think of a few ways how Finance and Economics might compliment one another (in fact, I would argue that someone studying finance should take quite a few courses on Economics). And I also see how Economics would work together with marketing (microeconomics, supply and demand, indifference curves, and likely much more complicated things I can't really think of). And I can also see how management and economics might work together (economies of scale, etc).
I'm really tethered down for a variety of reasons. Econ is one of the few majors I can actually take coursework for; the university restricts what I can take to what I can justify for my dissertation project. Oh well...
Yes, exactly. Specifically what I want is to be employable and mobile. My wife is also doing her thing, so I'm tied to this university for a couple years and then we'll move somewhere (who knows where) together. As it stands, I'm looking at a lot of pain, very little job satisfaction, a lot of work, almost no money, and no change in these factors for a couple years -- after which, when I have a PhD, my chance of getting any job is poor, and getting a good one along with my wife is very poor. Due to a lot of university restrictions on students like me, I can only take coursework in a few areas. Economics seemed the most promising.
That said, I wonder if your resume will look odd to go BA whatever, MA whatever, BA Econ? My thought is that once you've got one BA, there's really no point to getting another.
Have you considered getting a job for a while, even if it's entry-level-ish, and then getting an MBA? I mean, just because your wife is finishing her degree doesn't mean that you have to be going to school too?