For many college and high school students, there is only one introductory economics course they will take in this field. This is not their fault! It's okay to be interested in fields other than economics! Perhaps other interests should also be encouraged. But for those of us living in econoland, it raises real questions. What is the most important content to teach if only one crack at it is given to many students, perhaps for a semester or a semester?
of economic education journal just published a six-paper symposium on the topic, „What should be included in the only economics course a student takes?“edited by Avi J. Cohen, Wendy Stock, and Scott Walla.
essay by Wendy Stock, “Who Takes (And Who Doesn’t) Take Introduction to Economics?” , sets the stage. From the summary:
Of students entering college in 2012, 74 percent had never taken economics, up from 62 percent in 2004. Fifteen percent of students entering college in 2012 did not take economics. Economics12 percent is Done in one go student. About half of the introductory economics students had never taken any other economics class, and only about 2% of the students majored in economics.Features of Done in one go and Economics Students are generally more similar and closer to each other than the next student. no economics.
In his paper, Avi Cohen argues for economic principles that are “targeted at literacy.” „LT's approach is more convenient for students to learn and successfully apply a few core economic concepts than to be exposed to a wide range of concepts and techniques that the majority of students are unlikely to use again.'' We argue that it is much more valuable.”
Apparently, in 1950 there was an American Economic Association Committee on the Teaching of Undergraduate Economics. Cohen writes:
Eighty-five members from 50 educational institutions met from 1944 to 1950 to produce a 230-page special issue. American Economic Review (AERTwo recommendations in the report “Introductory Courses in Economics” (Hewitt et al. 1950 , 52–71) are:
The number and content of objectives in beginner courses should be reduced…The content of the elementary course exceeds all possibilities for a student to properly understand and assimilate in one year of three hours a week (56, italics in original).
Students need more training in the use of analytical tools.…(T)ypical courses in elementary economics tend to focus their attention on elucidating economic principles rather than training students to effectively utilize the principles they have learned. Exam questions test students' ability to explain, not their ability to use principles (59, italics in original).
These concerns that intro courses try to cover too much, resulting in the typical student being able to do too little, as Cohen explains in his lively review of intro class explanations: , has since become a regular criticism of Introecon. George Stigler's comments in 1963 are often quoted.
The flimsy encyclopedias that make up the current introductory courses in university economics do not teach students how to think about economic problems. With only brief exposure to each of the vast array of techniques and problems, students lose the basic economic logic needed to analyze the economic problems they will face as citizens. Students memorize a few facts, charts, and policy recommendations, and ten years later they are no more educated in economics than the day they entered the class (657). An introductory economics course can help students if it concentrates on a few subjects that are developed in sufficient detail and applied to a sufficiently diverse set of real economic problems so that students can absorb the basic logic of the theory. We will make the greatest contribution to education.approach (658, emphasis added).
I have watched the development of these debates with interest over the years, as I have taught introductory courses with some success and have been involved in writing several principles textbooks. Perhaps the fundamental problem, as Cohen notes, is that many economics departments only want to have one Principles of Economics class and want that class to count toward their economics major. You want that class to prepare students for the next course. Intermediate micro and intermediate macro. Each department has some degree of confidence that the existing principles of economics textbooks and classes can achieve this goal to a greater or lesser extent. There is low incentive for departments to have to adjust existing courses and perhaps also adjust intermediate courses.
Given this reality, even a major overhaul of existing introductory courses will likely face an uphill battle before it gains widespread acceptance. Cohen says that topics that can be reduced from a standard introductory course include cost curves, comparing imperfectly competitive industries, elasticity formulas (e.g., more than percent change in quantity/percent change in price), and It suggests that it will include details of income calculations, etc. Formulas for calculating fiscal multipliers and capital multipliers (for example, exceeding his 1 /% leakage from the circulating flow). Additionally, other papers at the JEE Symposium aim to move away from the exclusive use of classroom lectures and multiple-choice exams in general, and explore different types of pedagogy with an emphasis on graphs. , highlighting how it can help evolve introductory courses. I don't have a strong objection to this approach, but at the end of the day, I think its ultimate destination is a better-teachable version of an existing course.
Over the years, my own thinking along these lines has been toward an introductory course that significantly de-emphasizes textbooks, but textbooks do help with understanding opportunity costs, supply, and basic terminology and graphs. This does not exclude textbooks, as they are useful tools. demand, perfect and imperfect competition, externalities and public goods, fiscal and monetary policy, comparative advantage, trade balance, etc.
But for example, relying too much on textbooks in the internet age seems strange and anachronistic to me. Of course, an introductory course should provide conceptual guidance and be well-chosen with examples. But the web is full of real-life examples of economic reasoning and data. In fact, many of the links on this website lead to such articles. If your goal is to help students acquire economic literacy and economic functions, introduce beginning students to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Congressional Budget Office, the Energy Information Administration, the Social Security Administration, and websites from around the world. Development indicators etc. may be a useful starting point. It seems to me quite possible to create a series of exercises and readings in which students can choose from a variety of questions and exercises and discuss with each other what they find.
That is, choose a slightly shorter list of concepts and tools that you want your beginners to have, and explain them in your textbook, but provide them with both questions and a list of web addresses for examples and illustrations to answer.
Of course, jumping straight into real-world events while ignoring the underlying disciplinary structures is not a good introduction to the subject. However, focusing only on disciplinary structures and treating introductory courses as mere preludes to the rest of the economics major is unproductive for half of introductory students who never take other economics courses. Not the target. For about three-quarters of college students who have never taken an introductory course, it will be unappealing. When I ask people who took that one introductory course back in the day if they remember it now, they often shrug at me, smile ruefully, and say, „There were a lot of graphs.'' Let's talk about that. We can do better.