A lot of people struggle in this field, especially the business majors who wander in for a class or two. If ya can't hack it, there are the dumb majors like english, psychology, history, etc... Good luck.
So in other words, he should basically do a business degree (with a finance major) if he is interested in trading. Couldn't agree more myself, that's what I'm doing. For those that aren't familiar, a business undergrad degree generally includes: - a calculus class - minimum of three econ classes - minimum of two accounting classes - minimum of one finance class - minimum of three statistics classes - at least one ORG class - at least one marketing class A programming class or two can easily be thrown in, I did an intro Java class, but I haven't had time to pursue this further (programming classes are generally a major timesuck compare to business classes). So like I said, the original poster should probably contemplate a business degree as the best area of focus.
The economics that I learned from my days at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA has not helped me much in the forex trading arena. However, if you do like economics, then go ahead and major in economics. The only thing I remember from economics was that no one will ever pay me what my Marginal Productivity of Labor is.
As far as trading goes, no college degree while help you, experience is the best teacher (so is a really succesful trader as a mentor). As far as an economics degree, I have one and its pretty worthless imo. I wish I studed something in the life sciences or computer science instead.