Can someone obtain dual Masters degrees in Mathematics and Economics in the same time it would take for one?

Just a thought, and wondering if anyone knows the answer right off the top of their head.

Public Comments

  1. Pretty close. You can choose one or the other as elective courses. That would probably get you within four or five courses.
  2. Of course you can- provided your school offers master's degrees in both disciplines. You will probably have to apply to each program separately and be admitted by each one. In addition, you will probably have to satisfy ALL adacemic requirements of both programs. Although some schools allow for some of the coursework in one program to count toward electives in the other. This can usually reduce the number of total classes needed for both degrees by 2 or 3 classes. The biggest constraint will be getting the right classes at the right time and in the right sequence.
  3. I know people who have done both and the answer is "sort of." A master's program and a doctoral program are coursework with thesis programs. Both programs intend people to take a certain number of electives and also take time for their thesis or dissertation. In the time that was normally intended for the writing you could still be taking coursework. However, that means your writing time has been crammed with courses. It also means you want to be very careful in your thesis topic so it will be counted for either program so you are not writing two. It must be on the frontier of both disciplines, not just one. That is what is hard. I am working with a PhD mathematics student to use economic data for her dissertation. The problem isn't the economic data, it is for her to be on math's frontier in a way that happens to be economically useful. Economists are users of math, mathematicians are makers of math. If an economist cannot find a solution, they either drop the problem or attack the problem in a different way. A mathematician may not have the luxury of dropping a method as the method is the true subject of study, not the incidental economic problem.
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