Opportunity Cost, Again

So, a bunch of people are writing about opportunity costs. It turns out that opporunity cost calculus actually got me into economics (more evidence for the "economic brain"?). At the end of last spring quarter I realized that I was finished with a B.A. in philosophy, which caught me off gaurd because my goal was to take more classes regardless of my degree status so I could 1, delay my loan obligations, and 2, better prepare myself for graduate school.

Funny thing happened around August last year though as the financial market began to tank, and with it academic department endowments, student loan interest rates increased, student loan availability decreased, vast increases in the number of graduate school applicants, university hiring freezes, and unrelated to the market changes was my increasing lack of confidence that I really knew what I was doing in philosophy besides having a love for it. Since, I hadn't chosen to graduate in the spring I had a new option, I could add a major. I wasn't prepared to enter the job market as solely a philosophy major and my loans repayment was drawing nearer. I quickly turned to adding an economics major because it wouldn't require any more GEC's and it was business related. At this point I actually calculated my opportunity costs for adding an economics major, and separately calculated the costs for trying to join the job market in august.

Simultaneously, another economic concept was lurking. My decision about adding another major reflects marginal cost/benefit analysis. Adding another major cost me a full year and close to 10,000 in debt, but the benefit of adding one more major (more precisely, adding a business related major) was greater starting pay as well as greater ratio between starting and mid-career pay.