Brad De Long thinks very highly of Greg Ip, even when Brad thinks Greg gets something wrong. Brad thinks Greg is very sharp. So do I. But the other reason why Greg Ip is such a good economic journalist is that he was thoroughly trained in both Journalism and Economics. And I'm very proud to say that he was trained in both right here at Carleton University. (Since I'm blogging on Carleton time, I might as well give Carleton some advertising, especially when it's well-deserved.)
But the data I have (warning: DataCubes is a very powerful tool, but it takes practice to figure it out) make for depressing reading. Greg is very much the exception. Very few Journalism students at Carleton study any economics.
Carleton has the top Journalism School in Canada. (OK I'm biased, but it's still true). We admit about 200 students into first year, about 100 continue into second year, and most of those graduate with a Bachelor of Journalism. (It was about 125 continuing into second year in 2006 and 2007).
On average, about 10 BJ students take ECON1000 each year. Most of those are in first year BJ, with just one or two in second year. So let's say 6% of Journalism students have taken Introduction to Economics (a full year course). Since ECON1000 is a prerequisite to all other Economics courses, we can say that 94% of Journalism students take no economics courses while at university.
There are about 10 BJ registrations in economics courses (full course equivalents) beyond ECON1000 each year. Since some BJ students will take more than one upper year economics course, we can say that even fewer than 6% of Journalism students take any economics course beyond ECON1000.
If they are not taking economics, what are they taking (outside of journalism, of course)? Compared to about 20 registrations in economics courses each Fall term, there are about 300 in history, about 190 in political science, 170 in English, 160 in French (OK, a second language is required), 150 in Arts and Culture, 90 in law, 70 in psychology, 60 in sociology/anthropology, 50 in other languages, 30 in philosophy, and so on.
And what else are Journalism students not taking? Compared to the 20 registrations in economics, there are about 15 in geography/environment, 15 in Business, and 15 in the whole Faculty of Science.
I have two theories of why journalism students take so few economics courses:
1. Economics is seen as hard. Journalism students are especially keen to avoid courses they think are hard, since they need good grades to continue in journalism.
2. Journalism students are "artsies". Students who enjoy history and English at school but want a job decide to take journalism at university.
Perhaps these two theories aren't really distinct; economics, like science, is seen as hard by students who are good at and enjoy history and English. And my data can't really distinguish between those two theories anyway. But why do so few journalism students take geography/environmental studies? It's even lower than economics!
I think Canadian econoblogger John Palmer used to teach economics to journalism students at UWO. I would like to hear his views on the subject.
Anyway, I can't explain why journalism students take so few economics courses. But I think that fact does explain why good economic journalists are so rare.
One tiny data point of good news: one journalism student has recently taken advanced micro, advanced macro, and econometrics (it must be the same one; it can't be three different students)! Maybe we've got another Greg Ip in the pipeline!
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
I have concur with others that economics often gets a right-wing reputation. My own fear of right-wing economics lead me to avoid labour economics and public choice policy courses at one point in my academic career. In the beginning, I erroneously concluded that contemporary freemarket economics was incapable of dealing with hierarchy.
Many kilometers later, I now realize that neo-liberal economics can be easily deployed to strengthen a generous social welfare state. New institutional (property rights) economics can be readily deployed to understand, improve and strengthen the management of valuable public assets. I now realize that the tool kit is much, much richer than standard neo-classical tools and, especially with the addition of game-theoretic tools, manages to handle hierarchy quite nicely.
Guillaume, Good post. Am in agreement with everything you say.
I would add, however, that for some strange reason economists appear to command more respect and play a greater role in “nation building” in Quebec than other Canadian provinces.
Quebec economists have lent either explicit or tacit support for some of the key institutional decisions that Canada has taken in recent years: value-added consumption tax, the GST, freer trade with the USA and then Mexico, the Bank of Canada’s inflation-targeting mandate (Pierre Fortin’s protests aside).
If it had just been up to English-Canadian provinces, I’m not convinced that those controversial reforms would have passed.
When the study of economics becomes a “science” based on mathematical models, it loses its meaning and is analogous to studying the curve of the toenail on an elephant in attempts to understand why it eats.
Economics is the study of human action. Praxeology is fundamentally better suited to understanding the significance and importance of individual human decisions than calculous or algebra. Economic knowledge is “a priori” – the observation and measuring of economic phenomena is secondary.
From Guillaume:
“Is economics subjectively and primarily a ‘right wing’ discipline?”
It should not be. Economics should answer the question “will this policy produce the desired effects?.” Economics should provide the facts of cause/effect. It is “value-free”. It can’t state right/wrong. Just as gravity is a fact of the natural world, the Law of Supply and demand is a fact of the natural law and does not belong on a “political side”.
The wiki page has a good overview of ‘Political Economy’ and its various usages through time.
Wiki-page
Westslope you say:
“I would add, however, that for some strange reason economists appear to command more respect and play a greater role in “nation building” in Quebec than other Canadian provinces.
Quebec economists have lent either explicit or tacit support for some of the key institutional decisions that Canada has taken in recent years: value-added consumption tax, the GST, freer trade with the USA and then Mexico, the Bank of Canada’s inflation-targeting mandate (Pierre Fortin’s protests aside).
If it had just been up to English-Canadian provinces, I’m not convinced that those controversial reforms would have passed.”
Not just with reformation by economists, but in broad expertise and among the people in general too. The reason isn’t strange to me, as it is the nature of the reasoning itself. As I see the situation, it is the way and manner of reformation and it doesn’t just distinguish English-speaking Canada from Quebec; it is also an outstanding feature of Canada as a relative state distinguishing it from America as an absolute state. The ability is to take an established thesis, then, challenged with an anti-thesis to think and put in place a synthesis. The thesis of Canada’s sovereignty; the anti-thesis of a sovereign Quebec though not resolved has been quite a dialectical process. My experience with jurisdictional conflicts and overlaps within Canadian institutions (integrating 22 government ministries at all levels) also demonstrated this manner of reformation. But, what is most interesting occurred in Mount Royal with the Federal Election of 1965. The Left was represented by one of the 20th century’s leading Hegelian theorists, Charles Taylor; the Right by someone considered as the 20th century’s leading neo-Hegelian practitioner, Pierre Trudeau. And, Hegel is undoubtedly the great (though somewhat grandiose) grandmaster dialectician – Marx, a Hegelian methodologist, is a midget in contrast.
“The wiki page has a good overview of ‘Political Economy’ and its various usages through time.”
The quality of the overview makes what’s missing stand out like a sore thumb. Arguably, John Stuart Mill was the greatest political economist as expounded in his Principles of Political Economy (1848). It dominated economic schooling for the rest of the 19th century and was the main textbook at Oxford until after WW1. It was replaced by Marshall’s neoclassical Principles of Economics.
I believe mainstream economists can still learn something in growth theory and practice with Mill’s book chapter On the Stationary State, transformed into the ‘steady state’ in Ecological Economics. I discovered this in the early 1990s when working on the problem of the high throughput system of 110 single industry forestry towns in BC stuck in a boom-bust cycle. Moving the system from high quantity successive states towards a balance by improved quality with steady states through value added production was commonsense. However, the political economics of the provincial government entwined with a few forestry corporations, that control the industry provincial-wide, generally stuck to the high throughput system: promptly increased the exportation of raw logs and propped up dinosaur pulp mills. The communities continue in a downward spiral: booming in bits; busting a lot.
Maybe Journalism should be a postgraduate field?
One of Ireland’s most prominent economist-broadcasters (or broadcaster-economists?) has just been elected to their Parliament.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lee_%28Irish_politician%29
Mark: Carleton also offers an MJ, and the students entering that program will nearly always have a previous degree in something else. It would be interesting to see if any had previous degrees in economics, or science, but I suspect not many do. But in principle that could be a way of getting journalists who are better trained in a variety of fields, especially if they enter after a few years working.