Business Economics Concentration
While the word ‘economics’ immediately calls to mind images of bankers, traders, and financiers, the field is actually far more comprehensive. Economics is a social science focusing on the way people behave when we are faced with scarcity. And every one of us is faced with scarcity every single day; most immediately, our resources and our time are both finite. Economics seeks to understand how that reality shapes our actions and behaviors. As such, economics is as much an exercise in philosophy, exploring why people behave the way we do, as it is an exercise in statistics or finance. This makes economics unique amongst the business majors, and an interdisciplinary field that is ideally suited for a liberal arts environment. Whether you want to understand the impact of a globalizing world, study how our individual biases can be skewed and exploited, or examine potential sources of the next recession, economics is a field of study that can satisfy a wide array of intellectual appetites.
A business economics specialty provides tremendous post-graduation flexibility. Graduates are well placed for work in industry, government, finance, non-profits, and graduate studies. Law schools, MBA programs, and many other graduate degrees routinely recruit and admit economics graduates. This is because business economics coursework emphasizes and develops highly quantitative and analytic skills. Being able to think analytically about complex topics and analyze relevant data makes you more appealing to potential employers and can differentiate you from other college graduates.
Further, a specialty in business economics will provide the student with the tools needed to understand how the modern economy operates. At a time when politics has become extremely heated, an understanding of economics provides a consistent framework to understand and address the challenges, grievances, and proposed solutions dominating public discourse.
Requirements
12 semester hours of required courses in:
9 semester hours of upper division business electives