FOCUS ON COURSE: Economics

Welcome to the first edition of FOCUS THIS WEEK on Jarushub. Like I mentioned in the post that introduced this new initiative, I shall be taking a course, career and personality to analyse every week. I am starting with economics as a course, economist as a career and the personality to examine is late Professor Sam Aluko.

FOCUS ON COURSE: Economics

Economics is one of the oldest courses, globally and in Nigeria. Stripped bare, economics is simply the science of allocation of (scarce) resources. Every course will claim it is as old as man itself, but truth is, economics is one of the few courses that has been around in structured form, for a very long time. In the early days, economics was actually not a separate line. Many leading economists of yore were philosophers and generally social scientists. This is why you will come across someone like Karl Marx (1818-1883)  in economics, sociology, philosophy, name it. Adam Smith (1773-1790) himself was a philosopher as he was an economist. All those lines overlapped and were not distinct until a century ago.

Coming home, economics is one of the oldest courses offered in Nigerian tertiary institutions. Other than the specialized ones, almost all Nigerian universities have economics as a course of study. Polytechnics in Nigeria do not offer economics.

To study economics in most reputable universities you must have at least 5 credits in your WASSCE, including English, Mathematics and Economics. Some schools have lower standard though and may not require all that. Economics as a course is both theoretical and mathematical. Theoretical in the sense that you read and must understand a lot of theories; mathematical because most of those theories are later stripped into equations and inequalities. So you need to be good in both to be able to excel.

Economics has many branches – Broadly, we have micro and macro economics. We also have monetary economics, financial economics, political economy, international economics, labour economics,  industrial economics, public finance,  development economics and emerging fields like health economics, environmental economics etc. You run through all or most of these aspects in your undergraduate studies before specializing at graduate and practice level.

Some people have dubbed economics the king of management courses. I tend to agree. The prospect for economics in Nigeria is very bright. I always advise my non-science younger ones to try and opt for economics, even ahead of accounting, if they want to become accountants. David Dafinone, one of the most accomplished accountants, studied economics. So was Doyin Owolabi, immediate past ICAN president. Yours sincerely studied economics too and now doing accounting job. I can still apply for a job that requires economics. That is the option economics offers.

Economics offers many options. There are many places you can work. It is also an academic course. You can stay in academia and go ahead to become a professor, you can  get job in research centres and continue to research; you can enter practice and join professions like banking; you can write accounting professional exams and become an accountant (like me). In fact, in most instances, an economics graduate is first considered for a banking job before even someone that studied banking in school! This is because economics is broader and practically subsumes banking.