Alpine has it...he should choose what he excels in not try to second guess the future. I used to give a talk at the local university of the "so, you want to be a software engineer when you graduate"-type. At one point, I sent a survey to my company to ask them what college course turned out to be the most useful to them in their jobs. To anyone with more than 10 years in the field, the course was one of the "garbage courses"--psych, philosophy, comparative religions, etc. The only time a technical course showed up in the response was if the employee was less than a couple years in the job.

As many have stated in the thread, the road into IT management has many on-ramps. The US is not graduating enough of the "official degrees" so those on-ramps will still exist.

That said, it is hard not to have him lean technical because the opportunities are greater, but, if his heart really lies in finance....the math and management makes a lot of sense.