Economics vs Computer Science: Which Major is Better in 2025?

so I've traded millions of dollars on Wall Street and I've also created a couple of applications that are now used by tens of thousands of people throughout the world and today I actually want to settle the debate which major is better computer science or economics the answer my chalky I'm about to show you what they don't tell you during college open days [Music] so what's up everyone a little bit about me I am William and I actually got my bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Rochester and then I got my master's degree in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania so I've lived both of the worlds of actually majoring in both of these subjects and I just want to give you guys the hardcore truth about majoring in these subjects so what I want to cover is actually three things the first thing is going to be the good what's good in economics and computer science the second thing is going to be the bad what's bad about these two majors and then the third thing is my opinion on which one is better and here let's actually start at economics now economics is all about understanding markets and scarcity so when you think about scarcity it is the lack of resources and how you're going to allocate them so economics is all about studying that how do you allocate scarce resources now this branches off into many things so if you look at international trade or Finance there are going to be buyers and sellers of a specific product or service and you have to determine what are the prices these people are going to be trading at or should I say what is going to be the equilibrium price of many of these markets so you're going to be discovering all of those kind of good stuff in economics and the brilliant thing about all of this is there's a lot of career opportunities so you'll see people who've majored in economics entering into a variety of different fields I've seen them entering into data science Investment Banking Finance business management there's a whole slew of things that you can enter into if you have a degree in economics and one of the other cool stuff is it is a decent paying major so when you graduate with a degree in economics you can expect to make more than $6,000 which is a lot of money for starting out in a career so that's a good about economics the other great thing about economics is you're going to understand markets and you're going to understand how the world works this is a very big skill because often times the whole world is dictated on economics what happens in your local markets or in the international markets or in the stock market is going to determine your quality of life it's going to determine whether you are in a recession or an expansionary phase it's going to determine a lot of aspects of your life and understanding all of that will definitely help you in so many areas of life so that is the good of economics and why you should think about majoring in it now let's look at the good of computer science well if you think about computer science one of the biggest things about majoring in computer science is your salary once you graduate so it's not very uncommon to see computer science graduates making six figures in their first job now the other thing about it also which is great is that there's typically a much higher demand for computer science students than economics students there are going to be more companies hiring in software engineering positions then they will be in economic related positions that's just the Dynamics of the market and as a good Economist would say scarcity and allocating scarce resources technology is a scarce resource that companies are trying to acquire so that's why they often get paid more than economists or people who major in economics so when it comes to job market it's really really great to be a CS major but overall majoring in computer science is a great decision because it often translates to you getting a very highp paying job now this is changing and this is going to bring us actually to point number two the ugly or should I say the bad about these Majors so for computer science the market is changing for CS grads I has now been introduced into the workflow of many CS positions and what that means is that companies don't typically need as many Junior developers as they previously did this is because AI can write like 80% of basic code so the code in the code base that would often have required a junior developer to do guy can now do that and not to mention so many other AI agents are being created which are doing tasks that Junior developers would otherwise have done so when it comes to the ugly of computer science the employment market for CF is changing and it's very uncertain on which direction it's going to go we don't really know whether introduction of these AI tools are going to be increasing the demand for developers because because there's going to be more applications getting built which would still require those Junior developers we don't know if that's going to be the case or if companies are going to cut back and eliminate entirely Junior developers I think companies are going to be cutting back a little bit on Junior developers but of course we will see in the future so that's the ugly of computer science the other thing which is ugly about majoring computer science is the fact that a lot of computer science courses are heavily theoretical and what that means is that only three or four of the classes that you take you're actually going to use in the real world and what is sad about that is that these are typically like the first couple of classes you take in a computer science major so this would be your introduction to JavaScript or Java or Python and then your data structures and then your algorithms and then maybe also some web development those are the courses that are going to be most relevant to you in the real world many of the other things such as complexity Theory graph Theory and all of those type of things aren't really going to be used when you go out in the real world not to mention the big negative of majoring computer science is the fact that you're going to have to do a technical interview which often requires lead code type questions now if you don't know about lead code type questions I'll definitely be making some more videos in the future where I talk about it now we've been bashing computer science for so long let's actually now look at the negatives of Economics now the biggest negative about majoring in economics is actually the Fier competition when it comes to entry-level jobs so if you want to become an economist most likely you have to get a master's degree in order to do that if not it's going to be very chall alling to landar one of those economics roles so if you don't become an economist then what do you become the other big negative about studying economics and it depends on the person of course but it's the fact that you're going to need a lot of math so this is also very similar in computer science but that's kind of more of a stem field so you understand that math is needed but in economics in particular you're going to have to do something called econometrics which you can think of as regression analysis and statistics depending on the person might like it or might not so there is a lot of math in economics that you need to learn in order to make major in economics so this brings me on to my third point which major is better and why now again this is in my opinion and it's going to be very controversial but I think it's better for you to major in economics than it is to major in computer science let me tell you why AI can write code and this is in 2025 where it's already writing 80% plus of the boilerplate code that many corporations are using right now what's going to be happening in 2035 or 2045 as AI becomes much more sophisticated will it just stop at doing basic code or is it going to get much much more advanced in my opinion it's going to get much much more advanced so this is why I think that it's better to major in economics because AI can write code but it can't really understand markets or predict human behavior or spot Market opportunities so the biggest thing going forward in today's world is understanding human dynamics now what I think is the best thing to do and why I also think that economics is the best thing that a person should major in is because if an a person majors in economics and gets a minor in computer science then that person can leverage AI to code not to mention you only need to understand a little bit about coding in order for you to leverage Ai and this is the big thing if you are an economics major and you minor in computer science then you're already better than most CS students are at programming this is because you'll be able to leverage artificial intelligence to code for you so you understand how markets work you understand Market opportunities and you can also code as well as a CS major if not better because you're using AI so when it comes to thinking about how you want to position yourself in the future you definitely want to be a person who can use AI to code which is going to ensure that you can still get technical jobs while also being able to spot Market opportunities and understand how the world works that's going to allow you again to leverage AI to figure out how you can make your mark in the world today so the barriers to entry for Tech are lowering because AI is now there and people can use it this is why it's not as important majoring in like computer science in order to understand the Technologies behind everything because right now you have ai which can help you understand those Technologies and also help you build so as I promised it is controversial I think that the winner in terms of what you'd want to major in in 2025 is economics and the caveat there is is get a minor in computer science so I'm not saying just get economics and forget about computer science i' say it's better for you to get an econ degree with a minor in computer science than it is for you to get a computer science degree so having said that definitely drop a comment below to give me your thoughts about this topic because it's very controversial and to be honest there's no real right or wrong answer if you like economics more than computer science then major in it and if you like computer science more than economics then major in it it won't really go wrong majoring in either of those two Fields as there's still a big Market of employers who want to employ students with these degrees but definitely leave a comment below and if you like this video definitely like And subscribe as it would let me know that these are the type of videos that you would like to see and one more thing just remember in a world where AI is replacing programmers understanding human behavior and market dynamics is becoming more valuable than ever so Choose Wisely so thank you so much for watching and I'll be seeing you in the next video