Why study economics?

What is economics?

Economics is the study of money, commerce, trade and finance. Rather than learning how to make money you’ll learn about financial systems, how they work, and how and why goods are produced and exchanged in a capitalist society.

Reasons to study economics

1. The skills you’ll learn

Studying an economics degree, you’ll learn a lot of transferrable and subject-specific skills. Some of the transferrable skills you’ll learn include presentation, research, report writing, communication, problem solving and information processing.

As well as these, you’ll learn a host of subject-specific skills, including interpreting data, financial analysis and knowledge of commerce and markets.

2. The career you could have

There are lots of careers you can go into as an economics graduate. You might work as an accountant, handling individual or company finances, or you might work for a corporation as a risk analyst, advising on financial decisions. You could also become an investment banker, or work as an actuary.

You could also go into teaching or lecturing of course and educate the next generation of budding economists.

NEXT: If you want to find your perfect career, give our Career Matcher tool a try.

3. All the topics that get covered

The exact things that covered will depend on the exact course you choose, as well as the optional modules you take. You can expect to learn the principles of microeconomics and macroeconomics, about the global economic environment and the global market. You’ll also cover topics such as banking and finance, financial accounting, business management and investing.

4. You can study all over the UK

Thankfully, economics is a pretty popular subject, so you can study it pretty much anywhere you want in the UK. In Complete University Guide’s 2027 economics league tables, the top three unis in the UK are:

When you rank unis by student satisfaction, the top three unis for economics are:

NEXT: Check out the full Complete University Guide economics league table.

5. It’s something you enjoy!

Hopefully, it’s a subject you feel passionate about and will enjoy studying! As you’ll spend three years of your life (maybe more) focusing on it and studying it almost every day. If you enjoy the subject you’re studying, your uni experience will be way more fun. Obviously, uni is about learning as well as having fun, but in an ideal world, you’ll be doing both at once. If you think economics is that subject for you, then it’s meant to be.

Overall, economics is a great subject to study at uni. You’ll learn loads of transferrable and subject-specific skills and have plenty of job opportunities when you graduate. As well as all of this, there are a wide range of unis that offer courses in this subject area, and you could go to a world-class university.

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