Dickinson Launches Finance Major, Bringing Wall Street Closer to the Liberal Arts
Students gather around an array of Bloomberg Terminals in Althouse Hall. Photo by Dan Loh.
New major responds to surging student demand and positions Dickinson graduates for rewarding careers—without leaving the liberal arts behind
Dickinson has approved a new major in finance, one that reflects both the growing ambitions of its students and the college’s conviction that the best preparation for a career in financial markets is a broad, rigorous liberal-arts education. The major will be available starting in fall 2026.
Approved by the faculty and supported by the Burgess Institute for the Global Economy, the finance major brings together coursework in international business, economics, accounting and mathematics with an explicitly interdisciplinary thread, requiring students to examine finance through the lens of the humanities or social sciences. It also includes a required experiential learning component, ensuring that graduates enter the workforce with real-world credentials alongside their degree.
Finance majors at liberal-arts colleges remain rare, representing just 1.4% of finance degrees granted nationally. With this addition, Dickinson joins a small group in offering a finance major with a liberal-arts approach and makes its own distinctive argument for what that degree can mean.
“Dickinson has always prepared students not just for their first job but for a lifetime of meaningful work and engaged citizenship,” says President John E. Jones III ’77, P’11. “The finance major is the next step in that commitment, giving students the analytical tools and critical-thinking skills to lead in this field, in a way that only Dickinson can.”
TAKE THE NEXT STEPS
Published April 14, 2026