Why You Should Major in Econ: Short and Sweet Version
Jeff Miron has a whole op-ed on the wonders of the undergraduate econ major. But I think I can put the case for the econ major more succinctly. Here goes: Econ is the highest-paid of all the easy majors.
My students often howl in protest when I say this, but come on: Econ does not put the crimp on your social life that CS or Engineering do. It’s not even close.
HT: Mankiw
P.S. Here’s my argument for why Econ grad school is a great deal too.
The post appeared first on Econlib.
bryan caplan and steve sailer seem to be competing for who can make the shortest halfway meaningful substack post in the history of the platform.
Easy Major? I switched majors from Econ to Comp Sci. I seem to recall that the math required for Econ was pretty intense! Jacobian matrices, multivariate calculus, etc. Check out this course outline: https://www.studocu.com/en-ca/document/concordia-university/mathematics-for-economists-i/325course-outline-econ-325-syllabus/12344487
Certainly harder than the math required for Comp Sci. And econometrics was a lot of work and not easy.
I would say that Econ is harder than comp sci. Maybe less hard than engineering. But not an "easy" major. This wasn't like sociology. Where the most intense math you'll do is like hwhat? Creating a histogram and hypothesis testing?
That all being said, I guess it depends on the school. A lot of schools throw in a lot of unnecessary math and science into the Comp Sci program, that you never used on the job. Even more in Engineering. And can't get around it cause engineering is a licensed profession. And these courses are mandated by the professional body. Prolly just to lower the supply of engineers.
I haven't worked in the field of economics, but I get the impression that a lot of the math skills we learned in Econ are actually used in the real-world: Like for using models to optimize revenues, profits, etc. And for discovering new models through linear regression, etc.