As someone who went through an undergrad econ program, I strongly disagree for a few reasons: 1. Econ programs focus early on building basic mathematical model

As someone who went through an undergrad econ program, I strongly disagree for a few reasons: 1. Econ programs focus early on building basic mathematical models; a pretty normal curriculum is microeconomics, macroeconomics, econometrics (using stats + data), and then whatever you want your electives to be (e.g. international trade economics, labor economics, etc.). Without being fluent in at least the basic models, you don't have any framework with which to work with other subtopics, but learning the basics takes most of your time. 2. The specifics of how banks are run, or central banks work, or what we trade with China today, is more or less irrelevant trivia unless you actually work in that part of finance or will become a policy-focused economist, and you'll have plenty of time in your PhD to figure those details out. Economics is an extremely broad field and you can easily make a useful career out of, say, analyzing corporate acquisitions, or doing pure game theory, in which case how monetary or trade policy is conducted is pretty much irrelevant to you. 3. Since graduating, I found my econ education was extremely helpful when learning how central banks actually print money, or how trade agreements are put together, because I have a general high-level picture of how things move. That's in contrast to people who think just because base money is increasing, there must be inflation -- if you've worked with the models much, you know they're all approximations, but you get a much better sense for what is a reasonable vs. unreasonable result. I mean this is like complaining it's possible to get a CS undergrad degree without knowing how the Linux kernel works, or getting an CS PhD without knowing the details of TCP control flow. Both economics and CS are large fields and practitioners don't all work on the same thing -- the point of the degree is to provide a shared language and foundation, not to teach you every practical skill there is, because that's impossible and the relevant skills change very quickly.