Economics vs computer science

Hi, I was interested in studying economics at university as I enjoyed it a-level. However I'm now having thoughts about computer science. I found it alright at a-level and I enjoyed some parts of programming however disliked other parts such as data structures.

My question is which degree would be better for jobs in finance and other jobs such as data analyst/ business analyst. I know firms do not really care about what you studied but does one have an advantage over the other?

Finally, I cant really see myself in the field of software engineering but would an economics degree still keep this door open or other jobs in tech such as data science if I change my mind in the future?

Thanks.

Economics is very different at uni (when a Bsc), has a lot more Maths/ Stats than a-level buy obviously depends a bit on course you choose.

CS would probably be better for data analyst style job as likely need some technical knowledge/ will be helpful even if not required.
For business analyst probs makes very little difference.

Econ might keep some data science routes open but not a very standard path.
If pretty even between the two have you looked into any joint degree programmes?

Yeah, I looked at some but there werent many.

Also I thought economics would be better for data analysis whilst CS would be better for data science?.

Hi, I was interested in studying economics at university as I enjoyed it a-level. However I'm now having thoughts about computer science. I found it alright at a-level and I enjoyed some parts of programming however disliked other parts such as data structures.

My question is which degree would be better for jobs in finance and other jobs such as data analyst/ business analyst. I know firms do not really care about what you studied but does one have an advantage over the other?

Finally, I cant really see myself in the field of software engineering but would an economics degree still keep this door open or other jobs in tech such as data science if I change my mind in the future?

Thanks.

Yeah, will definitely look into it. Also I believe most universities teach R in their economics courses

Yeah, I looked at some but there werent many.

Also I thought economics would be better for data analysis whilst CS would be better for data science?.

Yeah, its definitely easier to get into tech with a CS degree. However when I was looking at jobs such as business analytics, the accepted degree subjects included economics and business management which was interesting but this varies with companies.

Overall I think most employers (especially in finance) do not really care about what you studied at university but rather other stuff as well like experience

Also would I be correct in saying that studying economics will still open doors in data science / analytics considering a large proportion of people in data science hold an economics degree (13%). (The largest being data science at 21%)

Issue is, many of the methods used in fields like business analytics and data science are built from Logistic Regression which comprises just a small topic usually covered in econometrics modules within economics degrees. This, combined with most economics degrees only teaching Stata/Eviews which aren't used very often at all in BA/DS jobs, means that economics degrees don't prepare you very well for BA/DS roles imo. This is obviously on average though, for example if you teach yourself to code in R/Python, know some SQL and sometimes do a master's in BA/DS, then obviously these fields definitely accessible to Econ grads, it's just a standard econ degree alone doesn't to an extent, whereas a CS/DS degree would.

It also depends on what sort of uni you study economics at. The general rule is that the better ranked an economics department is, the more quantitative the course will be (other than Durham imo), thus the better it prepares you for these more quantitative fields.

Yes, graduate roles in finance don't care what degree you study, they more care about which university you studied it at, along with the internship and extracurricular experiences you have. The exception is that typically Trading, Quantitative Research, Technology (and some quant risk roles) and some more complex roles in specific areas like Structured Products and Derivatives, either require or stronly prefer STEM graduates and economics graduates aren't included in this. But other areas like investment banking, equity research, sales, IR, risk, compliance, operations, HR, wealth management, asset management, etc, don't tend to have degree preferences to an extent.