Finance=Biggest waste of schooling
I am just about to complete my degree in Finance at a top 30 ranked university in the world. Not from the US.
And all i can say is that i have wasted 3 years "learning" finance, on stuff that i could have taught myself in my own spare time.
Example:
First two years of university= learned and retained information about a supply and demand formula everything else has been mostly forgotten.
3rd year subjects:
Derivatives subject here is a formula work this shit out, with no emphasis on the underlying workings of that formula. And even if they did teach you that, you would never be able to understand it without a maths degree.
Investments:
Here is another formula, work more shit out that you will never remember again when you finish the degree.
Exams: For both subjects teaching has to separate the good from the elite, (teacher make entire exam about manipulating algebra)
God i am so pissed that I did not do a useful degree that would have taught me more analytical skills such as maths/physics/engineering and taken these finance subjects as electives.
What will i be left with after i finish university this year? How to draw a supply and demand curve.
I used to think like you. Truth is, while 90% of what you learn in school as a finance major has no value outside of class, it's more about the rigor and difficulty surrounding what you learn. Nothing you do as an analyst is difficult. Therefore, if you can understand complex calculus, then you should have no problem doing a dcf. If you can build an impressive PowerPoint for an investments class, then you can make a pitchbook, etc. School becomes much more valuable if you look at it like that
I would have to agree with SlikRick, and the goal was to get you ready to function in a high pressure environment. The actual skills you will have to learn through working.
you think that learning physics or whatever will improve your analytical skills significantly? unless you plan on being a professor, the point of going to university is to get a good paying job (IMO) not to learn concepts. you will use less than 10% of what you learned on the job.
Parts of Econ is somewhat useful depending on what you do
Buddy welcome to higher education. Even my engineering pals admit they use basically nothing they learned in school on the job. According to them the degree proves that "you can handle the math." The same goes for people I know in law and computer programming.
Schools basically function as a middle man between employers and job-seekers, that's it. University is the best scam going.
The "rigor" of a finance degree? I'm pretty sure almost any other major is more of a workload than finance. First of all the degree is not quantitative at all, second the theories of finance are worse than any other subject since the whole field is man made.
It is not like engineering where you are at least learning the Laws of physics, statics and dynamics. It is not like social sciences where you are learning facts about the past in an attempt to grasp future behavior.
In this sense yes finance is pretty much the most useless degree outside of perhaps marketing. The point the OP is trying to make is not that he would have learned something 100% applicable to a job; it's that he would have learned something. And sorry but a degree that has you plugging in numbers to a million different formulas is not my idea of learning either.
Nice post, this is basically what i was trying to say.
If you are not passionate about finance then ,yes, you will think that your degree is completely useless and there are a lot of better majors.But if you love finance you will enjoy every subject during the three years and you will likely be even more interested in working in banking or consulting industry.So ,if you major at something other than finance,employers may think that "ok,but if want to work in the finance sector,why the hell major at something else?".And its not about analytical skills,i know a lot of computer science and engineering majors whose scores are not great at GMAT/GRE.
Everything i have learned so far i could have picked up in half the time on my own, while being able to learn something meaningful. Yes i have found some of the theories interesting. But when you don't have the maths knowledge to grasp why the underlying theories work, it will most likely go in one ear and out the other as soon as you step out of the exam room.
This is the only reason i can absolutely ace the exams even though i only study a few nights before, because there is absolutely no point wasting a whole year studying when you will just forget most of the stuff anyway.
Some stuff is easily remembered in regards to futures and their pricing, but when it comes to stuff like BSM and the rest of the option pricing as well as all the different portfolio theories it is pretty much gone as soon as class is over.
There is a lot more value in an education than simply the text book stuff. Not only does getting a degree show an employer that you can stick to something and pass with flying colors, but the team building skills you learn in school are valuable in the work place.
The connections you make in school also go a long way in the corporate world.
Higher education should be a well-rounded experience - that is why employers look at more than grades.
lol at team building skills, my whole uni (melb uni) is Asians, ive done one group assignment with 3 asians that could not speak a word of English. No disrepect to Asians but when your entire class is full of people that hardly understand a word of English, it becomes a bit of a joke.
Team building skills at university are non-existent.
Sounds like someone didn't get a ft offer!!
I haven't even applied yet, nor applied for internships because i need to do summer school. In aus you can only do interns in your second year.
Clearly it is difficult for Americans to believe that someone went to school to actually become educated and not just to receive a job. He wanted to learn something he would not have learned otherwise; do you not understand what he is saying?
It is not about this "team building" garbage or "getting a FT offer", some people actually want to gain a deeper understanding of the world.
I agree with what you said but what's with calling out all of America for some posts in an online message board?
the most "usefull" class i ever took was Financial Accounting.
Almost every degree that is not quantitative in nature is pretty much something you could learn on your own. Welcome to real life realizations. Now get a job.
Yeah and when you learned sinusoidal and cos in middle school? That's useless too as is probably reading a lot of other books. Better rid all that too
Man, there is a whole lot of pussy whining going on in this thread. Go study liberal arts (something you can learn with a library card) from your top 30 university and try and get a job. I like my coffee with cream and one sugar btw.
lol FU, I have spent the last day arguing with these idiots over the wall street occupation.
I actually think Finance is a good major. The only thing that concerns me is when they don't know shit about real world event. The other day I was talking to a female finance major who didn't even know what country comprised the PIGS. A kid that trades even mimic accounts will always be able to out "finance" the finance major,period. Sure, maybe not complex valuation models, but I'm willing to bet a Finance major wouldn't be able to explain a Mountain Range Option to me nor have the math skills(if given 20 minute lecture on the exotic I'm confident I could teach him though) .
my 2c
I was a finance major and I felt like it very much was a "it is what you make of it" major. I went out of the way to take harder electives and work on big projects but most people in the major were struggling too much with the core concepts to do that.
most useful..
rofl, and my dads 1-on-1 lessons on how to fix random shit at home. Sooo useful in college. Tons of lousy landlords/ plumbers etc. trying to scam and hustle college kids.
If by team building skills you mean dealing with stupid fucking idiots that can't figure out how to make a simple line graph in excel without asking me 20 questions while not even trying to figure it out by themselves, then yeah, I guess I am developing team building skills in my chemistry lab this semester.
... sorry. Real sick of this idiot who doesn't help out at all then when he opens his mouth, your better off not listening to him anyways because he can't do anything right.
/rant
^Teamwork skills are exactly what you just described - dealing with fucking idiots. Learning to do that will be indispensable for your career.
Yeah I know haha. That's what I think about to keep myself motivated to deal with them.
I think building teamwork skills in college are what you make of it... In one of my groups I have to try to be outspoken while not going overboard because there's another kid that is assertive (he knows what the fuck he's talking about though, so it works out), while in my chem lab I pretty much have to take the leadership role. Instead of trying to deal with team hw in college as "ok, lets get this shit done then leave." I think people should think of it as trying to explain your ideas, being open minded of others', and doing the best possible job while making sure that everybody in your group understands what the hell is going on.
That's just me though. I've noticed that I wasn't born with a leadership mentality and know that it's something I need to work at, whereas others may already think that they were born with it and not try to hone their skills in stuff even as trivial as team homework.
OP, you also forgot another point. All these useless classes that you're taking is what differentiates you from an uneducated person. Normal people go to school just to pass; wiser ones attend to get educated.
When you go to a social setting, the whole point of an education is to make your comments not sound as if you just left the woods of Kentucky. Don't spite the education system if you're currently attending it to educate yourself, it makes you look really hypocritical.
If you could learn these things outside of class, why didn't you? Oh, that's right, you had no motivation to better yourself anyway, so this 'mockery of an education' that you have been preaching against HAS been helping you out. It's not only enlightening you, it's letting the possible employers know that you're able to handle their workload.
It's less of a waste of schooling than Celtic Studies (an actual major/concentration at Harvard).
But, imo, we definitely need more STEM majors (Physics, Chem, Bio, Math, Engineering, Comp Sci etc.). Currently, only 6% of students in the United States graduate with a STEM major.
Could be worse, you could be an engineer whose knowledge only use is understand what Sheldon is saying (and argue that Sheldon is wrong).
Get a job. Education is overrated.
education rules
"If your dreams don't scare you, then they are not big enough."
I like that :-)
But anyway, I found the finance major unsatisfying, especially during a downturn when employment was anything but certain. I remember sitting in my investments class in 2008 learning about Market Efficiency while the Dow was dropping 700 points a day. I also found a couple of my finance professors frighteningly stupid--one woman, the worst professor I've ever had, hacked 25% off my exam grade for a clerical error in a long problem, then proceeded to lecture me on how the entire financial crisis had been caused by small clerical errors like these (incorrect, fyi...) I switched majors the next day.
I majored in accounting and have been satisfied with that decision. It was hard, it got me a job, and it's an important certification to boost your resume as an executive. You do have to get out of it though or else you'll stay an accountant forever, so I'm going for my MBA now.
There is a middle ground, guys. I did my Finance degree and all the dumb business required courses; I don't disagree that the rigor leaves alot to be desired. You can double major at almost any school though such as not to sacrifice the advantage of career services within the Business faculty. However, I can tell you: you grow weary of all the quantitative shit when you know you'll never use it. Markov chains, Brownian motion, Cox-Ingersoll-Ross, ARIMA models; they were all the bane of my existence last year. It's hard to spend sleepless night after sleepless night studying stats when you know the most math you'll ever do is basically 1st year algebra in your future career.
You took Time-Series as a second year HBA? That's laughable, how did you deal with the intellectual juxtaposition in contrast to your 'case-based-courses'? You certainly must have been an outlier among a horde of two year vocational 'degree' students.
If you've seen my previous posts you'd see I'm a double degree with Statistics/App. Math. So ya, business stuff is mostly nonsense but it's more work because you actually have to go to class.
If you really want to see what you DIDN'T learn, start taking the CFA exams.
I was shocked at home poorly my education prepared me for this.
OP whats considered a "top 30 university" outside of the US?
Regarding the comment that finance theories are not interesting because they are not as well defined as laws of physics - that's a silly thing to say. That ambiguity/opaqueness is exactly the beauty of them, but it takes some outside the box thinking to understand it. While I agree that much of it can be learned on your own, a good professor can add a lot to a class. If your professor doesn't then you picked the wrong school.
Regarding market efficiency the day the Dow dropped 800 points - I would love to hear how that is inefficient. Please tell me.
It demonstrates inefficiency because the Dow should never have been at 14000 in the first place. If the market were efficient, the wall street geniuses would have priced in the risk of the housing bubble bursting in the first place.
I would love to hear how a swing between 13000 and 6600 within one year on no new information demonstrates market efficiency. Please tell me.
On no new information? Really? No new information came out during that year? Markets reacted to the information as it became available, in an efficient way. Try a momentum trading strategy for that period, with pre-defined parameters (pick them before testing to avoid data mining). Not much inefficiency there.
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