ECU Graduate Certificate in Finance – FINISHED!
Thursday, I took my last exam in my graduate certificate program at East Carolina University. It only took two and a half years to complete a four course sequence, but I’m done at last! Looking back at my original post on the program, I realize that my personal and career objectives have changed, and that I probably won’t see any real utility from this certificate (at least not immediately), but I’m still very glad to be done.
Would I recommend the program to others? Well, it’s a mixed bag. On one hand, it’s an AACSB-accredited graduate certificate that is super affordable (less than $3K for the whole program, books and all). On the other hand, ECU’s finance department is horribly understaffed, so the courses you need to complete the program don’t come up often enough. The administration understands this, and has promised to hire more instructors, but I’ve been listening to that for almost three years now. Also, I have some concerns about the workload – I feel like it’s a little too light, and that too much time is spent reviewing basics like time value of money and bond pricing, and not enough time was spent on stuff like derivatives and financial engineering and the more “meaty” topics of finance. Teamwork was generally pretty good, I got to know some of my fellow students well, although there were some terms where I felt like I was carrying three other people on my back.
This was the first program I’ve been in that used proctored exams, and although I was worried about it at first, it proved to be pretty much a non-issue. The UNC system (NC’s public university system, of which ECU is a part) has proctoring down to a science, so finding and utilizing proctors was no big deal – just go to the proctoring website, and point and click till you find someone close by and available.
Overall, it was a positive experience. I didn’t get what I wanted out of the program, but that was more because my life and the economic environment both changed dramatically over the last three years. I had my first child during the program, and the economy went into the toilet, both of which made staying in my current IT job much more appealing that trying to start over again in the world of finance. I did learn a lot, and maybe a little later down the road, I’ll test the waters somewhere else.
What’s next? Well, I think that my wife is ready for me to take a serious hiatus from schoolwork. For basically the entire duration of our ten years together, I’ve been chasing one degree or another, starting with on-campus coursework at NC State, moving on the my BSBA program at Wyoming, through the MBA at Duke, and finally the certificate program at ECU. She’s stood by me the whole time, but I think that it is time that family occupies the center of my life. I’ll continue to be an evangelist for DL, spreading the twin Gospels of CLEP and DSST, but I’m pretty sure I’m done as a student, at least for the foreseeable future.
The Boom and Bust Cycle
Sometimes, especially if you’re a long-dead economist, you have to climb down from your ivory tower and speak to the youth of today in a language that they can understand. In this music video, two giants of economics break down their differing views on how to fix what ails us when it comes to boom and bust.
The Mars Bar Index
Some random surfing brought me to this essay in the Financial Times by the late Nico Colchester. Apparently, Mr. Colchester had decided at some point during his childhood to measure his worldy wealth by the number of Mars Bars it would buy. Because the cost of a Mars Bar (or, at least, the set of ingredients that goes into one) turns out to be a measure of a basket of commodities that are not widely subject to speculation (as opposed to say, gold), it is an amazingly stable “currency”. For example, an entry-level salary from 1940 would have bought roughly the same number of Mars Bars in 1940 that today’s entry level salary would buy today. Not all items are stable when priced in Mars Bars, however – the price of today’s Rolls Royce in Mars Bars is roughly twice what it was back in 1940. Obviously, you can’t buy things with Mars Bars. But it makes for an interesting thought exercise. Of course, since I’m currently on a low carb diet, maybe we should create a “chicken sausage index”.
East Carolina Graduate Certificate Update
I’m passed the halfway mark in my quest to earn East Carolina University‘s graduate certificate in finance. My first two courses went very smoothly, and I earned an “A” grade in both of them. However, after finishing my second course, I came to something of an impasse – there were no more classes in my program offered online, and going to campus during the day is simply not an option for me. Apparently, I’m not the only student with these concerns, because ECU has allowed students in the finance certificate program to use certain courses from the Professional Investment Management and Operations program to satisfy certificate requirements. This is how I find myself in FINA 6904, Mutual Fund Management and Operations. The course has just started, but looks like it will be very interesting material that builds upon the information from my previous finance courses. There is going to be a lot of non-quant stuff as well, but it’s the price I pay to be able to continue with the program instead of just spinning my wheels. Of course, after this course, I’ll have one class remaining. Hopefully, I’ll be able to wrap this up during summer session!
Why Do Fannie and Freddie Need a Bailout?
There is a great column by Paul Krugman in today’s New York Times that does a great job of explaining explains why the government is being forced to ride to the rescue of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. One thing I found interesting about this column, as opposed to the majority of reporting about the bailout proposal is that Krugman makes it clear that Fannie and Freddie don’t have any subprime exposure themselves, it is the decline in asset values due to the subprime crash that makes them vulnerable. What Krugman implies, but doesn’t explicitly state, is that this doesn’t bode well for the rest of the financial sector, because anyone who makes mortgages loans is exposed to the decline of asset values, regardless of whether or not they cavorted in subprime lending. That means that bank stocks are in for a rough ride until housing prices recover. It wasn’t entirely unexpected that a bank like IndyMac went under. But if housing prices decline to the point where even those with conforming loans are willing to walk away, we could see much worse. (Full Disclosure: I gambled on 400 shares of IndyMac stock two months ago and lost.) So, if bank stocks are looking cheap to you, be aware that the market is pricing in risk you might not even be thinking about.