Has it come to this? Degrees in financial services?

The time was when school kids wanted to be teachers, train drivers, astronauts or marine biolgists when they grew up. Now, it appears, they want to be financial advisers. Or at least enough do to prompt the ifs School of Finance and the School of Management at the University of Surrey to offer a four year degree course designed to offer comprehensive preparation for anyone considering a career in the field.

Considering that financial services accounts for about 16 per cent of our national output, it looks like a useful addition to the choices facing school leavers. It may not be as much fun as swimming with dolphins as a marine biologist or taking on G-forces in the upper atmosphere as a would-be astronaut. But teenagers that can bear the ribbing from chums, and the sheer tedium, will be making a thoroughly sensible career choice. No doubt.

But do we really want university courses to be this vocational?

Would it be better - for the financial services industry as well as everyone else - if students learned how to think, and how to learn. Subjects starting with anthropology, continuing with botany and ending with zoology can do that. So can history, modern languages, social studies, and literature. And if a degree in financial services management is needed, does it show that financial services has become just ridiculously proscriptive?

Full details of the course can be seen at www.ifslearning.ac.uk or www.surrey.ac.uk/undergraduate/fsm 

And one word of advice to anyone thinking of doing the new course. Lie at parties. If anyone asks, just say "fighter pilot" and move swiftly on.

Comments

[Peter Washer]

But couldn't the same argument be made against studying medicine or law?

[Sarah]

I think there's a lot to be said for medicine and law (and other vocational qualifications) being postgraduate degrees, and for people studying a pure academic subject first. For example life sciences or physical sciences for medicine.