Find top-ranked online bachelor’s in economics degree programs that have rich histories of hiring and producing influential economists. A great online bachelor’s in economics can prepare you for a rewarding career or for graduate studies.
An online bachelor’s degree in economics is an excellent starting point for a career in finance, policy development, marketing, and a host of other highly lucrative fields. As an economics major, you’ll study production, consumption, wealth transfer, and the way these activities relate to policy and governance. Your economics degree will also incorporate such core principles of monetary policy, budget planning, and cost analysis. The best schools for economics are those which are regionally accredited, which offer a full array of economics concentrations, and which give you the chance to work with the best and most influential professors and classmates.
Degree popularity: Economics bachelor’s degrees are the 35th most popular undergraduate degrees across all student demographics. It’s most popular among Asian men and women, for whom it ranks as the 17th most desired degree, according to the number of degree earners reported by the National Center for Educational Statistics
Earning a bachelor’s degree in economics can open numerous professional doors. You could work as an internal financial consultant for a big company, as a stock trade for a brokerage firm, or as an analyst for a government think tank. In fact, the skills and knowledge you’ll acquire in your degree program are highly transferable. This means that your understanding of concepts such as local market behavior, small business enterprising, and investment banking could land you a role in any sector that interests you. The best schools for economics will put you in a position to become a leader in an array of fast-paced and well-paying fields.
Today, top influencers in economics are illuminating topics such as new economic geography, information asymmetry theory, wealth and income inequality, and much more.
Economics is an excellent major because it can provide a pathway into countless fields and career opportunities. If you’re looking for a well-paying and secure job, an economics degree is a great place to start. Students who major in economics gain skills that are in high demand across a wide range of professional sectors. Abilities such as budget analysis, cost estimation, and market analysis make economics majors highly employable. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the number of job opportunities for economists is expected to grow by a robust 14% by 2029.
Once you’ve declared your major in economics, you will likely be required to complete a set of core courses in a number of related subject areas. While your concentration will give you a chance to choose from a wide range of highly-specialized economics electives, there are a number of common courses that most economics majors will be required to take, including:
Earning a degree in economics can qualify you for a number of well-paying jobs. Your specialized knowledge qualifies you to work in one of the better-paying professional fields. According to the BLS, financial analysts earned a median salary of $81,590 in 2019, while personal financial advisors earned $87,850, and economists pulled in $105,020.
With a degree in economics, you’ll have a chance to pursue an array of high-paying opportunities, including these top jobs:
Learn more about how to major in economics.
Pursing your degree online doesn’t mean you need to settle for a inferior school. Today, most universities and colleges offer online degrees, and many respected schools are seeing significant growth in their numbers of online students.
The people affiliated with a school are ultimately what make it great. This is why influence — i.e., the academic impact of faculty and alumni associated with a school — gets at the heart of what is truly best in education. The combined influence score of a college or university’s top academic influencers is the best indicator of academic excellence. For our online degree rankings, we focus on the academic influence of faculty and alumni in the specific disciplines we’re ranking.
If you are serious about finding the best online colleges, you should be asking where the most influential professors are teaching, and whether their graduates themselves are advancing the school’s reputation for academic excellence. Most ranking sites rely on an opaque combination of reputation surveys and arbitrary performance metrics. Influence, as measured by our InfluenceRanking engine, provides a ranking that is free from bias, insulated from manipulation, and reflective of real-world educational outcomes.
Tuition + fees
$12K
Acceptance
85%
Graduation
65%
Student body
39K
Median SAT/ACT
1235/25
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$12K
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92%
Graduation
56%
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10K
Median SAT/ACT
1155/24
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$12K
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84%
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62%
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14K
Median SAT/ACT
1170/23
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$8K
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87%
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58%
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17K
Median SAT/ACT
1140/24
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$9K
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67%
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39%
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5K
Median SAT/ACT
1155/21
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$38K
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72%
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83%
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7K
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1240/27
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Tuition + fees
$8K
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27%
Student body
7K
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Tuition + fees
$8K
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93%
Graduation
51%
Student body
9K
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Tuition + fees
$7K
Acceptance
57%
Graduation
52%
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12K
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1060/19
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$14K
Acceptance
76%
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52%
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7K
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1090/21
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$13K
Acceptance
67%
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46%
Student body
7K
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1050/21
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$8K
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58%
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44%
Student body
8K
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1040/20
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$32K
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70%
Graduation
37%
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<1K
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975/19
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$19K
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50%
Graduation
61%
Student body
6K
Median SAT/ACT
1105/22
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Tuition + fees
$7K
Acceptance
67%
Graduation
19%
Student body
3K
Median SAT/ACT
1009/18
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Tuition + fees
$11K
Acceptance
83%
Graduation
50%
Student body
6K
Median SAT/ACT
1097/23
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Tuition + fees
$3K
Acceptance
91%
Graduation
42%
Student body
7K
Median SAT/ACT
1005/19
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Tuition + fees
$9K
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28%
Student body
8K
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Tuition + fees
$25K
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61%
Student body
6K
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Tuition + fees
$34K
Acceptance
77%
Graduation
53%
Student body
1K
Median SAT/ACT
1055/20
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Tuition + fees
$35K
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50%
Graduation
57%
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2K
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Tuition + fees
$3K
Acceptance
75%
Graduation
43%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
962/18
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Tuition + fees
$26K
Acceptance
68%
Graduation
33%
Student body
2K
Median SAT/ACT
1065/21
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Tuition + fees
$29K
Acceptance
71%
Graduation
44%
Student body
<1K
Median SAT/ACT
985/18
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Tuition + fees
$15K
Acceptance
50%
Graduation
54%
Student body
75K
Median SAT/ACT
1150/24
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If this is your first time taking an online course, the experience may require a time of adjustment. Although you’ll typically learn the same material and take the same exams as your on-campus peers, going online will require greater independence and responsibility than going in person. You’ll be accountable for your own time management, for harnessing the online educational technology that you’ll need to use, and for completing the course requirements, such as listening to lectures, learning lessons, reading texts, and handing in assignments. This means you’ll need to create a suitable workspace for yourself, maintain a realistic schedule, and take the initiative in building relationships with your instructors and classmates. With online college, your goal is to find a balance between independence and engagement.
No. The only part of online education that’s easier than campus-based education is ease of access: all you need is a computer and an internet connection for online education. But even this seeming advantage of online education can be misleading: what’s easier, studying online with your computer and internet connection from your home where you need to cook, clean, pay rent, and maintain a job? Or studying on campus in a dorm where all your living needs are handled by the school, and college staff are there to help you every step of the way?
If you take the commute to campus out of the equation, campus-based education is easier. All the support structures available on campus for students, especially with real people to help you in person, are not there online. The demands on you as an online student will largely be the same as for your campus-based counterpart, but without the same helps.
In general, your online courses will present the same material and test you in the same way as traditional in-person courses. In many cases, you’ll even have the same instructors as your on-campus counterparts. In fact, if you are adjusting to the experience of independent learning with remote educational technology for the first time, online college may be considerably more challenging than campus-based college. For a few insights on how to manage this new online experience, check out our 10 Tips for Adjusting to School Online.
Accreditation is especially important when it comes to online college. This is because the online education landscape is a mix of highly-reputable non-profit institutions on the one end and less-than-reputable for-profit institutions on the other end. Accreditation gives you the power to identify the more reputable actors in online education. Accreditation is a stamp of approval from an independent accrediting agency indicating that a college or university is meeting standards of quality and credibility. School-wide accreditation falls into two major categories: regional and national accreditation. Regional accreditors generally hold jurisdiction only over schools in the states comprising their region, whereas national accreditors hold jurisdiction over schools in all states. Regional accreditation is widely regarded as a more rigorous standard of quality and credibility than national accreditation.
Attending a college or university that is not regionally accredited could limit your opportunities. For students seeking an online education, we strongly recommend that they opt for regionally accredited schools. Regional accreditation ensures eligibility for federal loans and grants, ensures your college credits can be transferred between schools, and ensures that your degree credits can be accepted if you wish to earn an advanced degree. For more on this important topic, check out our What is Accreditation and Why Does It Matter? College & University Accreditation Guide.
As long as your online college degree is regionally accredited (see the previous point), you should have little difficulty transferring most of your credits or credentials to another regionally accredited undergraduate school. Every school carries its own standards and procedures for granting a transfer of credits. In many cases, you will encounter some bureaucratic haggling in which some of your credits will be transferred and others may be refused. However, provided that you have attended an online school with recognized regional accreditation, you should be in good shape in transferring your credits earned online.
In most cases, as long you graduate from a well-regarded, regionally-accredited online college, prospective employers won’t look sideways at your degree. In fact, unless you attend an exclusively online college or university, there will likely be no specific indicator on your degree, transcript, or resumé differentiating your school from its brick-and-mortar counterpart. This means that your employer will likely only differentiate between an online and in-person degree if you mention this distinction.
Some employers may express the concern that because you did your degree online, you may need to transition from an online education experience to in-person workplace experience. But in an age of Covid, that concern seems much diminished. The fact is that much employment these days is remote. And collaboration increasingly happens online over Zoom. Many employers will therefore view your online degree as evidence of valuable 21st century professional skills such as independence, self-motivation, time management, and tech savvy.
If you are a student who thrives on the dynamic energy of in-person discussion, who requires the physical surroundings of a classroom to feel engaged, or who considers the social aspects of education to be of equal importance to the actual content of your courses, online education will be less than ideal for you (though depending on your circumstances, it may also be the only viable option).
While there is much in traditional campus-based education that can be substituted or simulated through the online medium, some students may find that there is nothing that can replace the conversation, collaboration, and motivation that occur in an actual in-person classroom setting. As you transition to online education, one of the biggest challenges you will likely face in getting the most out of your online classes is overcoming this difference between “real reality” and “virtual reality.” Fortunately, we’ve got some great Tips for Online Education Beginners.
The advantages of online classes are many. Above all, online courses give you the freedom and flexibility to attend class from anywhere that works for you, whether you’re at home, in a coffee shop, or in a quiet conference room at work. In many cases, you’ll also enjoy the convenience of asynchronous learning opportunities—educational experiences that you can complete at your own pace and on your own schedule. This may include pre-taped lectures, ongoing chat-board discussions, and 24/7 access to digital materials. And of course, just as there are some learners who prefer the energy of a live classroom, there are those who learn best when working in their own personal space, free from distractions. If this sounds like you, you might find the solitude of online learning to be a major advantage.
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