Reply to Economics Major and What Minor to Enhance Marketability?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Tell him to focus his Econ electives in Econometrics so he gets more stats/quantitative focus. If he's interested in an engineering field, that would make a good minor...as would literally anything else that allows him to develop an interest outside of the econ major. At a SLAC, it seems like a liberal arts minor would be the best bet.

It really depends on what his long term interests are, though. Econ major in and of itself isn't a strong indication of what he wants to do in the future.[/quote]
What's a liberal arts minor? Wouldn't that be covered in the distribution requirements? I think a more specific minor would be more useful. Math or a language are good bets. CS if it's available. [/quote]
I should have been clearer. A minor in a liberal arts subject. Ideally one in which is college is strong.

I think a properly constructed Econ major can be very quantitative if you are strategic in electives. Econ itself doesn't tell you a lot about a person, so developing another set of interests that would help an employer understand him better would be helpful (as well as help him understand what he wants to do better).

I have a physics PhD and now work as a data scientist...so I'm not dissing math in the least. I also work in a sector that gives me a lot of visibility to trends in SW and applied stats/math across a lot of sectors. A lot of math/modeling is becoming commoditized through SW, so raw math skills are becoming less important, and I predict there will be Excel-like tools for machine learning/AI in less than 10 years making it even less important to have the ability to do math yourself unless you are in a very technical role (which an Econ major will not be able to go in to).

What will matter is a broader understanding of where math/stats are important and how to effectively apply it. Econometrics type courses should give him the latter, and exposure to a field very different to his own will give him a good perspective of what's possible. Then again, I work in Silicon Valley where career trajectories are a bit more random.[/quote]

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