Decay in Masters Quality

[Philip_Mitterrand]

http://www.maths.bath.ac.uk/~ak257/mathematician15.pdf
A great candid assesment by Prof A. E. Kyprianou.

 

[Daniel Duffy]

I think the term 'Financial Mathematics' mean different things to different people. It is not a branch of Mathematics IMO but the application of Mathematics to Finance. If this is so, then a precondition to enter is knowledge of Mathematics.

One also does not use terms such as

Reservoir maths (but you could say the Mathematics of Reservoir Simulation)
Transport maths
Cognitive maths

I like this term (AMS classification)
Mathematical finance, also known as quantitative finance, is a field of applied mathematics, concerned with financial markets. Generally, mathematical finance will derive and extend the mathematical or numerical models without necessarily establishing a link to financial theory, taking observed market prices as input. Mathematical consistency is required, not compatibility with economic theory.

 

[Daniel Duffy]

http://www.maths.bath.ac.uk/~ak257/mathematician15.pdf
A great candid assesment by Prof A. E. Kyprianou.

[...] a new sub-discipline of mathematics: financial mathematics.

I don't agree with this statement, at all.

Even more unfortunate is that there is no definition of what financial mathematics is in the article, precluding a precise discussion (and mathematicians tend to be very good at giving definitions before the Lemma->Theorem->Corollary chain).

 

[bigbadwolf]

As far as masters-level vocational training is concerned, the reality for most academics is that many are not up to date on the kind of challenges and routines that are undertaken
en masse by industrial quantitative analysts on a daily basis. Moreover, few can claim to
have recently seen the inside of a bank and interacted in a mathematical capacity with its
quants. Therefore, one has to question the extent to which the academic specialism that is
injected into postgraduate financial mathematics taught courses should be valued
over and above any other numerate discipline taught at this level, in terms of vocational training.

Agreed. Though obviously this holds a fortiori for the lower ranked programs. Also, one has to question how much and to what depth the subject material can be taught in the space of a year -- perforce it has to be superficial and a rush job.

That said, there is still the issue of what employers want. Webpages, posters and brochures for postgraduate education in nancial mathematics often advocate the value of the course in question as useful in preparing for a job in the nancial industry and point towards some of the many employers that their graduates have gone on to work for. But, realistically, to what extent are banks interested in hiring individuals with such specific masters qualifcations? It would be more appropriate if marketing for these programmes could use hard data to indicate the true demand for such education from within the industry itself. In the experience of the author of this article, an academic who has spent a modest amount of time inside a number of banks and financial institutions engaging with their quantitative analysts, very few banks seem to care whether or not a student is in possession of an M.Sc. in financial mathematics.

But for universities to mention this would be the kiss of death for their programs. The game would be up. False expectations have to be nurtured -- but in a general and vague sort of way so that students can't subsequently make the charge that they were deliberately deceived by the uni.

The familiarity with certain concepts and academic specialisms that an M.Sc. in nancial mathematics o ers, some of which are not directly relevant to working practice, is not necessarily deemed to be of huge value to the quant employer, who would expect that the smart hire can pick up what is needed anyway once in post. Often, but not always, this means that it is those who are trained to the level of a Ph.D. in a numerate discipline (not necessarily financial mathematics) that have a competitive advantage as far as quant jobs are concerned. If nothing else, this is because of a self-selecting bias through their ability to undertake a Ph.D. in the fi rst place.

True, though this is widely known.

British universities have been going down the same road as US universities: charge whatever the market will bear. They've been encouraged to do this by the British government, which has been anxious to cut back its own funding of universities. In particular foreign students -- often of dubious quality -- have been admitted provided they've been able to cough up the tuition.

 

[Philip_Mitterrand]

To a good extent the paper captures the state of reality ...

"Webpages, posters and brochures for postgraduate education in financial mathematics often advocate the value of the course in question as useful in preparing for a job in the financial industry and point towards some of the many employers that their graduates have gone on to work for. But, realistically, to what extent are banks interested in hiring individuals with such specific masters qualifications? It would be more appropriate if marketing for these programmes could use hard data to indicate the true demand for such education from within the industry itself. In the experience of the author of this article, an academic who has spent a modest amount of time inside a number of banks and financial institutions engaging with their quantitative analysts, very few banks seem to care whether or not a student is in possession of an M.Sc. in financial mathematics. Indeed, hiring strategies for quants (the industrial job whose technical requirements most 5 closely match the training on the typical Financial Mathematics M.Sc.) are based around looking for sharp problem solvers who can deal with the fast pace of work and learn and develop in-house technical procedure. The familiarity with certain concepts and academic specialisms that an M.Sc. in financial mathematics offers, some of which are not directly relevant to working practice, is not necessarily deemed to be of huge value to the quant employer, who would expect that the smart hire can pick up what is needed anyway once in post. Often, but not always, this means that it is those who are trained to the level of a Ph.D. in a numerate discipline (not necessarily financial mathematics) that have a competitive advantage as far as quant jobs are concerned. If nothing else, this is because of a self-selecting bias through their ability to undertake a Ph.D. in the first place."