Forecasting Coverage In The Finance Curriculum

FORECASTING COVERAGE IN THE FINANCE CURRICULUM By: Pieter A. Vandenberg Forecasting course offered outside the business school is exclusively offered by the Economics Department... in the school curriculum, forecasting is often viewed as an end product rather than a tool for decision making... schools that offer a forecasting course or course with a forecasting content do not go beyond regression. The state of forecasting in the finance curriculum varies from school to school. Some schools have developed separate courses for students to take, while others have no formal coverage of forecasting at all. But even if schools have a separate course the likelihood of a finance student taking the course is very small. One wonders where students learn “How to get the expected value?” Firms that employ finance graduates should not expect the average student to have a great depth of formal forecasting knowledge. If firms are looking for such individuals a careful review of the student’s background would be in order since only about one in ten graduates in finance can be expected to have taken a formal forecasting course. The study further shows that finance students are two to three ...