Share This with Your Economics Students

Every semester I give my students “the talk.”

The talk is called, “Why I majored in economics…and why you should too.”

My experience is that students enjoy economics, but they have no idea what it means to major in economics. Most importantly, they don’t know what a future in economics looks like.

In videos, I’ve shared things like how economics is the top major at Ivy League schools. But that is too abstract. It feels like someone else’s world. Of course Yale students can afford to major in economics. They’re living the carefree Gatsby life. What does an economics major mean for students at my school?

I’ve found the most successful way to tell them is to use data from my school. And it’s publicly available, so it’s probably available for your school too.

The US Department of Education hosts the data on their College Scorecard. You can navigate to a school (mostly public institutions) and you can get earnings by major. Here is the card for earnings for economics majors from Utah State University.

Median earnings is for 5 years after graduation.

How powerful is that? You’re not looking at data from abstract individuals across the country. You’re looking at their peers. I think it’s so cool.

What’s even cooler is that if your analytics savvy, you can download the data for yourself. This lets me present the data to help them imagine counterfactuals.

Choosing another social science is a plausible path for them. I like to show the students all of the majors and highlight the social sciences. Then we play, “Find the economics major.”

But we’re in a business school. So I also make sure I highlight the business school majors. The dots are the same between the two graphs, but it just is a difference in highlighting them.

I give my students two takeaways from these graphs.

1. If you’re interested in a social science, there’s a huge difference between economics and everyone else. You should seriously consider whether economics can help you achieve your goals.

2. If you’re already in the business school, you’re in a pretty good place. At this point, you should pursue what actually interests you. Are you majoring in accounting because you heard it’s a good career path? Because economics has just as good (and actually better) of a career path, but it’s about 10x more interesting. Do you want to spend your time learning about credits and debits, or do you want to explore seriously interesting topics?

Of course, your salary is not the only factor in choosing a major. But it should be something your students are aware of. And the closer to home, the better.