There’s a lot of different info out there regarding the value of an econ degree but unless you go to an elite school and really fully immerse yourself (with the intention of perhaps going to grad school), it’s pretty useless imo. I don’t learn anything that can be particularly useful in most jobs or internships econ majors would apply for. They’re not quantitative enough (like math or stats) and also not micro enough (like accounting). Plus it’s so saturated that schools have to grade deflate and the job market is inundated with tons of people who have identical resumes. This is just a bit of a rant but if anyone has any opinions on this I’d love to hear them
Are you defining useless/useless as gaining practical skills that will help you in a particular role? In that case I somewhat agree but majors like finance and accounting don’t give you the flexibility.
If you want to go into things like IB, it is a very attractive and marketable degree to hiring managers. Also keep in mind a BS may be worth more than a BA. For many industries, an econ degree signals that you’re interested in that particular field (e.g. business, finance, banking, consulting etc.). It also gives you a very valuable perspective of analyzing the world. You probably have a better sense of critical thinking and logic than perhaps someone who studied something much more on the humanities spectrum. Even though you may not be learning a lot of hard and concrete skills, it does teach a valuable way of looking at and solving problems, which may not be obvious until you start working. It of course depends on your econ program and how much effort you made to learn the material. Also, I would agree that things like math would be a even stronger candidate for these things.
This is true and I would add that for fields that require macro-level thinking about the markets, it’s pretty useful. But so many econ majors dick around and don’t really take it seriously so these days it’s more for the piece of paper.