Vis the Economics Department Web Site
Economics Overview
The Economics Department provides rigorous, wide-ranging major and minor programs designed to prepare students for a variety of careers.
Economics courses immerse students in computer-based data analysis and modeling, utilizing a vast national, regional and local database from: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Bureau of Economic Analysis and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Social Security Administration.
In economics courses you:
- Study economic theory and national policy
- Learn to analyze supply and demand, and examine the relationship between national income and its determinants
- Explore production, exchange and distribution in capitalist economies, as well as international trade and exchange rate theory and policy
- Receive numerous opportunities in upper-level courses for independent research, computer-based data analysis and modeling, and major writing projects
The Alma Difference
The Economics faculty take special pride in their consistent success in helping graduates win fellowships, grants and assistantships in first-rank doctoral degree programs.
Many students have received at least one all- expenses-paid offer from a graduate school.
Career Possibilities
- Industrial and financial corporations hire economists to gather and analyze business and economic data and to forecast market demand.
- Economists assess the feasibility of business plans and projected impacts of marketing strategies; develop or supervise strategies for financial investments; and develop or supervise quality control techniques for production lines.
- Your options as an economist also include federal, state and local government agencies.
- A bachelor’s degree in economics is sufficient to teach in many junior colleges; a master’s degree allows you to teach in all junior colleges and in some four-year colleges. A doctoral degree is considered to be a license to teach economics at the college level.
Successful Graduates
Alumni are working as:
- Economists in government and business
- Bank executives
- Financial analysts and consultants
- Teachers
- Think-tank researchers
- Heads of foreign exchange departments
- Self-employed business people
- Corporate lawyers
- Stock brokers
- Managers of all types
In recent years, roughly two-thirds of our graduates have gone immediately into graduate school doctoral programs in economics. These programs include Arkansas, Duke, Harvard, Indiana, Kentucky, Northwestern, Southern Methodist, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin universities.
Others have gone into law or have begun their professional careers with firms such as Dow Corning, General Motors, First National Bank of Chicago and U.S. Army Intelligence.
