Transcription
Hey guys, how's it going? It's Calvin Rabb, and in this video, I'm gonna be going over the decision of deciding between a business major and an economics major. And this decision is all too familiar to me because out of high school, I had to decide between the two. And I actually come from an interesting perspective where I chose business originally, but I actually then switched to, I'm now economics.
But in this video, I'm gonna go over a couple things. So firstly, I'm gonna go over four key differences between the two majors that really set them apart from one another. And then I'm gonna jump into who a business major is for, you know, what your interests are, and who I think should be a business major. And then I'm gonna go over who I think should be an econ major. And then after all that, I'm gonna round it out and give a little bit of my personal perspective and talk a little bit about why it is that I switched from business to econ, and I'm extremely happy that I chose econ. For I do think it was a better fit for me. So let's get into it. There's gonna be a fun video to make, and it's, it's a tough decision, I know. But but in this video, you should have a good understanding of kind of where you fall and hopefully I'll help you navigate through this decision. But without any further ado, let's get into it. And if you're new here, my name is Calvin Rabb. I make videos all about personal finance and economics and different things like that. So if you're interested in anything like that, I would love it if you would subscribe.
Alright, so let's get started. I'm gonna start by going over those four key differences between the two. So the first big difference is practical versus theory. So when you are a business major, everything is very practical in what you're learning. So you're learning a lot of different things that you will use as in, kind of in the business world. You know, you were learning tools, you were learning things that you will use, and it is all very applicable. Oftentimes, if you're a business major and you're in class, you know, I'm gonna use this in this situation. Whereas econ is not so much, because in econ, you study a lot of econ theory, meaning a lot of mathematical equations and a lot of theory behind a lot of the things you do in business. So oftentimes, you may not use that in the world, you know, or in the business world in your future job. It isn't quite as applicable, but it is, I find it very fascinating. I find economic theory very fascinating, but it isn't as applicable. So that is something that you may want to keep in mind when making this decision.
The second difference is surface level versus dig deep. So in my experience, the business administration major that I was, or the business major, was very surface level. So oftentimes, as a business major, your classes are a lot of introduction courses. So it's a lot of introduction to finance, introduction to management, introduction to accounting, and you get this kind of jack-of-all-trades idea. However, you don't dig really, really deep. Whereas econ does that. So econ doesn't get all those like, all those managing classes, all those finance classes, but it digs very deep in economics. So for instance, as a business major, you will take macroeconomic courses and micro economic courses, and you'll learn about things like supply and demand, but you kind of stop there. You know, after you learn about, okay, what happens when supply shifts, when demand shifts, what causes those shifts, you kind of stop there. Whereas econ, that's where we get started. So I just took a course diving deep into supply and demand curves, learning all about the calculus that goes behind it in creating those curves, which I found quite fascinating. But that just goes to show how much deeper econ dives. Granted, I don't get all those other courses, and I don't get that broad exposure to all those kind of practical courses that a business major may get.
The third difference is the math. With econ, you will be doing a lot more math. So when I went freshman year to my business major, right away, I took the highest math course that was in the business school. And really, all it was was just a calc 1 course. All we did was derivatives and integrals. And in that calc 1 course, it was business calculus was like the name of it. We didn't even do any trig or really anything like that. So, and that was the highest kind of calculus-based course that was within the business school, at least that was open to me. Whereas econ, once I switched over, it's a whole different story. So with econ, you got to take calc one, you got to take calc two, sometimes you got to take calc three. I didn't have to specifically take calc three, although I did learn multivariable calculus, which is kind of calc three in some of my courses. So I didn't take an official multivariable calculus course, but I did have to know some multivariable calculus for a course I took Fall Quarter. So I did have to learn a little bit of multivariable, but it wasn't the full extent. But there is a lot more math involved with econ. You know, oftentimes you will have to go calc one, two, and three, at least calc one, two, at least from what I've seen.
Difference number four is non-business related information. So if you are a business major, guess what? You're really just gonna be sticking to business. Although you may get a few elective courses that you can dive into other things, but for the most part, the practical application stuff is gonna be all business-centric, which should be expected because this is all about kind of practical use of your business major. Whereas economics, you will go outside of the world of traditional business because you have to remember what economics is at its core. All econ is, it's just the study of decision making when it comes to scarcity. So decisions based on a scarce amount of resources. And from that very high-level definition, you can start to see that business isn't the only place that that issue will come up. You know, we learn about different things within the government and different social situations that everything's like that. So we will get out of, and when I say we, I'm talking about economics, get out of kind of the business world into general decision-making. We also look at the economy as a whole much more, whereas business tends to be much more centered on one company. So we get a much more holistic idea. Whereas, you know, that's maybe good or bad, maybe you just want to focus on one company, whereas econ may be a little bit too big, a little bit too general, because we'll look at equations and everything's like that that will map the entire economy. Whereas it isn't quite as applicable to a centered company that you may get with a business major where you're looking at one company's decision. So that may be something you want to think about. But this one is all about you get outside of business a little bit with econ because you are studying decision making.
Alright, so those are four big differences that I see between economics and business. And now I want to jump into who I think business is for and who I think an economics major is for. So let's start with business. And keep in mind here that all of this is just my opinion. You know, nothing is set in stone of this person should be this, that person should be that. It is just personal opinion, and this stuff is all just things that I've seen from my experience. Who I think should be which, so take it or leave it. This is just my personal opinion. But let's start with that business major and who I think should be a business major.
Alright, so who do I think should be a business major? Well, I think you should consider being a business major if, you know, right after you graduate, you are gonna enter the business world. You know, you are gonna jump right into a job using that major. And then business may be better for you because they really do a good job of preparing you for the workplace. And because with econ, oftentimes a lot of the econ people that I know, a lot of my econ friends actually go to grad school and different things like that. But if you know you want to get right into the workforce, then business may be something that you wanted to do. Also, if you can see yourself pretty entrepreneurial and you wanted to maybe start your own company, then a business major may be better for you because you get that kind of jack-of-all-trades thing. You know, you'll learn about accounting, you'll learn about marketing, you'll learn about just general finance and different things like that and management. And it will probably better suit you for in, kind of an entrepreneurial lifestyle because you're learning how to kind of do everything and be kind of good at everything. And when you start your own company, oftentimes you do have to do everything at first before you grow it and start hiring other people. But if you are considering taking an entrepreneur route, and then you may want to consider being a business major. And then another part is if you just want early practical information. So some people are going to school the sole mindset of, I want to work after this, and I want this degree to help me to work. And if that's something that is a very big concern for you, then you may want to be a business major because oftentimes from my experience, being in an economics class or an economics theory class, or being in a high math class, I oftentimes in learning things that, if I'm being completely honest, I'm never gonna use. You know, I'm not gonna use it in the workplace. Now, I've had some classes where it will be quite applicable, but you will take classes that are diving so deep into something, or it's gonna be so complex, or the math is very, very complex, that you're not going to use it. So if you are purely based on kind of, you want everything to apply, then business may be a better bet for you. But if you really want to learn and you want to understand how everything works as a whole, then maybe econ more so would be for you. But if you get annoyed by learning a lot of stuff that you're never gonna use, then maybe business may be a better kind of suited major for you.
Okay, so now let's jump on over to who I think economics is for. So I kind of touched upon it at the end there, but economics is for someone that wants to dive deep into something. You know, if you don't want to be the jack-of-all-trades kind of thing, if you just really want to dive deep, if you want to be really, really good at something and a really good understanding of it, then econ may be that for you. I mean, me personally, I just like to learn things at a very deep level, not so much a surface level, and that's what kind of draws me to econ. I want to know why things work, I don't know how they work, I want to know why they work. So that's something that draws me to each person. And then another person I think should be an econ major is if you really enjoy learning new things and you really enjoy research because you have to remember, at its core, econ is a social science, and you are a social scientist. And what you are doing is you are researching methods for making decisions. And when you think of it like that, it helps you frame econ, at least in my mind. Whereas business isn't so much that research side of it. And, you know, the research of decision making, it's more so applying these systems to help a particular business. Whereas with econ, there aren't always these systems set up, and you have to do research, and you have to go find the answers. It's not all given to you. So that's a little bit of a difference there. Although I do understand that with a business and kind of in the business world, you will be doing research as well. So these aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, although they may be a little.
And then another person that I think would like being an econ major is if you like the big picture. So with econ, especially macroeconomics, you look at things from a large scale. You know, you were studying GDP of different countries, you are studying what the globalized world is doing as a whole. And that's something that business majors don't do so much because business is much more into the practical and applicable side of kind of their studies, in that they focus on one company. You know, this is how this company runs, this is how businesses do it. Whereas econ sort of takes that step back and says, alright, this is the effect of that, this is what it's doing to the world at large. And you come up with equations that can map it and different things like that. So if you are someone that thinks very big picture and wants to get a good idea of how the world is working from an economic standpoint, then econ may be something that you may want to fix.
So those are the differences. That's who I think should be a business major and that should be an econ major. And I'm kind of gonna end this with talking about myself and kind of my personal situation and why I made the switch. So as I said, out of high school, I chose to be a business major and I went with that. However, a few things happened that made me kind of switch. And the first one was, I really like math. So I'm someone who, I just am very passionate about math. I really enjoy it, and I wanted to go deeper in math and kind of with my math knowledge, I wanted to expand it a little bit. And as I said, with business, after like calc one, I stopped. And I wanted to go further. And econ allowed me to do that. I didn't really want to be a math major because I thought econ would be a little more applicable, and I wanted the business side of things as well. So I really liked math. That was something that kind of brought me over to econ more so. More specifically, I really, really like calculus. I really enjoy it, and I just find it really, really cool. So that's something that drove me over and was part of my reason for switching. But there are a couple other reasons that I want to go over.
And then another reason was after my freshman year, I finished a macroeconomics course, and I remember thinking it was really cool. I really was enjoying economics. I was very passionate about it. And all of a sudden, when the class was over, I felt like I had this big void in that there was so much more that I wanted to learn, and we just got through the surface level. So I kind of gave that example of supply and demand. There was so much more to that class that I just wanted to learn more about. And I, as looking through the econ courses and classes, it dives so much deeper into that. And I wanted to learn more about that. I wanted to know why these graphs were a thing. I didn't want to know necessarily just how they worked, I wanted to know why they worked. I wanted to know the math behind it. And that was something that drove me to being an econ major. And the cool thing was knowing how those worked involved a lot of math and a lot of calculus, which I kind of converged those two interests.
And then another reason I made the switch, I just said this one may be somewhat controversial, and this certainly could be part of my bias, sort of, I guess, towards econ, even though I don't feel I necessarily have a big bias towards it. I respect both of these majors a ton. But I thought of the job market afterwards, and I kind of came to the conclusion that, or the thought process that as an econ major, I can kind of get all the jobs a business major can get. And a business major, I don't think could get all the jobs that I could get. Because econ goes so deep in math that it opens up a lot of jobs within data science and different things like that. And business majors don't quite go far enough in math, in my opinion, to get or be very qualified for those jobs. So that was also something I thought it opened up the job market even more. However, I do have to say that business majors are more prepared for those jobs than I am because they've been doing things that are so applicable and so practical. Once they get into the job world, there isn't as much of a learning curve for them because they've done this, they've done all the finance stuff, they've done all the accounting stuff, and they know how to do it. Whereas me, there will be a pretty steep learning curve because I haven't learned this stuff. I've learned a lot of math at a very deep level, but I haven't learned all this kind of practical stuff. However, I can learn that on the job. Whereas the flip side, it would be very hard for a business major, say in like a data science position, to learn multivariable calculus on the job. That's kind of something that you need a classroom or a sort of course setting to learn. And, you know, you can't really learn multivariable calculus on the job. Whereas accounting and different financial things that I didn't do in the classroom, I can learn that on the job. So that was another reason that I made the switch was that opening up of the job market. However, I do understand that there's probably a lot of business majors that would disagree with me, and that's okay. That was just kind of my personal opinion here, and I totally could be wrong.
And that being said, I don't think econ is perfect. I don't think it is the perfect major. I do find myself getting frustrated because I'm not learning a lot of practical stuff. I was actually just talking to one of my good friends who is a business major, and I was talking with her going over what classes she was taking. And she was talking about how like she was learning and looking at real financial P&L statements and different things like that, learning how to make business decisions. And I was, jealous, probably isn't the right word, but I was a little frustrated that I don't do anything like that. Now, I did bring that upon myself of being an econ major, but I do wish econ had a little more practical side of it because I don't necessarily feel as prepared as she may feel to go out in the business world and just start working right away. I do, and am very confident in myself that I can learn everything that she knows along with other business majors. But I do wish econ did have a little bit more of a practical element to it. Whereas oftentimes, I just feel like I'm a math major sometimes.
And then there were a couple other things. Like I do plan on getting my MBA, which I think will encompass and allow me to take courses that are a lot more practical to myself. And then another big thing that I do want to touch upon was I also transferred schools. So I was at Gonzaga University as a business major. And when I did transfer, I am at UCLA now. They actually, or we actually don't have a business major for undergrads. We just have an economics degree and a business economics degree. And I'm just econ, not business econ. And that's kind of what also pushed me over the edge. But I think had I stayed at Gonzaga, I would have also made the switch probably over to econ as well because it is something that I am passionate about.
So that will wrap it up. I hope this gave you a pretty good understanding of the differences between the two, who I think fits in one, maybe business versus who fits in the other. And then a little bit of my personal explanation as to why I switched. And I'm very happy that I switched. I do absolutely love econ. I do think it was the right choice for me. I am now a third-year economics student at UCLA, as I said, and I love it. But there is no perfect kind of major. There's no real right answer necessarily. And it's okay if you're wrong. Like I was wrong, I chose the wrong major and I switched. It's okay. So don't worry too much about it. You know, don't lose too much sleep over making sure you have the right major. I know so many people that have switched majors, and they make it seem like as soon as you sign up for a major your freshman year, it's set in stone. It is most certainly not. You can move around, shift around, and eventually you'll end up where you should be. And that's exactly how I feel right now.
So that will wrap it up. Thank you so much for watching. If you have any other thoughts or any other just big differences or why you chose one, why you chose the other, or just questions in general about either, I kind of have an interesting perspective in that I was a business major and now I'm an econ major. So I see both sides. So let me know in the comments below if you have any questions. I'll be talking to you guys down there. But this is something that I really enjoy talking about. So if you guys want more econ videos, let me know what you would like to see in the comments below. I'll be going through there talking to you guys, and I really appreciate it. So again, thank you so much for watching. I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. As always, my name is Calvin Rabb, and I'll see you soon.
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