Economics

Next time there's a huge demonstration at a world summit, or the anti-capitalists take to the streets of London, remember what motivates the protestors - yep, economics. If single-issue politics is what galvanises young people, the (social) science that informs them is economics - whose money is making the world go round, and why they control it. And as Bill Clinton had pinned to the walls of his campaign offices - "it's the economy, stupid".

Whichever angle you come from, it's economics that runs the world (or ruins, if you're a dreadlocked anarchist) - or as the 20th century's greatest economist, John Maynard Keynes, rather more elegantly put it: "Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist."

If proof was needed of the influence of economics, ask yourself who the Iron Chancellor himself, the (generally) unbending Gordon Brown, actually listens to. The answer is, of' course, the Oxford- and Harvard-educated economist, Ed Balls - reputedly the most powerful under-40-year-old in Britain.

So studying economics could make you powerful, but it could also make you rich. Post-university employment rates of economists are among the highest for graduates. The subject gives students a good intellectual training - sitting somewhere between science and humanities - which employers like. It also, obviously, has lots of practical applications to the world of business.

Once qualified, you'll have transferable skills in problem-solving, quantitative analysis and communication. Very few economics graduates work as professional economists, but the majority do find work in related areas - finance, banking, insurance, accountancy, as well as management and consultancy.

On an economics course, you'll often start with a basic grounding in the social sciences generally, before moving on to economics proper. Then you'll he studying both macro- and micro-economics, and the links between them: the millions of small choices that make up the big ones. To understand economic models, you have to understand both. You'll learn about reasoning and methodology - how economic models fit, or not. In some ways, studying economics becomes a little like philosophy - you'll have to be prepared to defend (often against intense ridicule from people you may grow to hate) theories and economic ideologies you may have long held dear. You can also view economics as a science - you'll work to basic assumptions about how people, and therefore economies, will behave and make a set of deductions from that.

So from that, you shouldn't be surprised that economics requires a lot of maths. If you're not keen on number crunching, you could be in for a nasty shock - you're going to need maths to help formulate theories and extrapolate assumptions and you're going to have to provide statistics to back yourself up. First-year students studying economics can be divided into two camps: those who did A-level maths and those who did not. The first group breeze through the introduction to quantitative methods, the second sweat, wide-eyed and panicky, for hours over its long equations and formulas. If you hate maths, don't rule economics out, but brace yourself.