Why Do People Study Finance?

Why Do People Study Finance?

A seemingly simple question, someone asked this question during class this week and it left both the Professor and some of the students somewhat perplexed. First, because why would someone enroll into a finance course when they were not even sure they wanted to study the subject? However, the question is manyfold and has some depth, even if it does not appear so at first glance. For example, some students come into finance lectures with the sole hope of learning how to become rich quick, oblivious to the endless mathematical calculations, not to mention the hordes of financial geniuses, standing in between them and their coveted prized possessions.

A Gothic lion next to Bloor Street in Toronto city. Image: Megan Jorgensen (Elena).

Additionally, finance seems like a sort of an umbrella term for everything that has to do with business, entrepreneurship, accounting, real estate, commerce, technology, investing, insurance, innovation, stock exchange and even marketing. Simply put, finance has to do with money and many people just equate the two terms in their minds. Therefore, the countless Websites on the Internet promising the reader to teach them to get rich quick and so on and so forth. Who hasn’t seen an advertisement claiming to teach or plainly make one wealthy from simply reading it? While hard to believe, and whether fraudulent or legitimate, such claims and reports also rime with finance in many people’s imaginations, whereas finance is such a large field, and so, so much more than that