September 20th, 2008, 10:23 pm
SG,By definition Masters programs have to be difficult otherwise they can't be Masters. Finance is a fascinating mix of business, maths, law, psychology, commonsense, etc. It's hard to teach all of that, each subject being to just the right level. So there tends to be specialization. As far as the maths is concerned the right level is nowhere near the stupidly stratospheric heights that Masters in Financial Engineering reach (although many people wish it were), nor is it the dumb level of an MBA, say. That means it can't be a university course on its own. But ideally to work in this field you do need to be comfortable with probability theory, calculus, linear algebra, etc...i.e. to be some form of scientist, but can you teach business, law and psychology to a scientist? To some yes, but not generally I fear. (I don't think I explained all of that as well as I would have liked, sorry!)What about the "multiple choice qualifications" that you get now in risk management?! Is there anything more ridiculous and dangerous? Not to mention having to study ethics! If you haven't figured out your own personal moral code by the age of six then I'm not going to want to work with you! All that ethics courses are designed for is to show people which naughty things they can legally get away with. I feel very angry about the state of education in finance and risk management, at all levels.P