In a recent post, Nick Rowe speculated that the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis made basic macro mistakes in part because he has an undergraduate degree in math.
Yet a person wanting to make a career as an academic economist (or a president of a federal reserve bank) should not choose economics as an undergraduate major. Particularly in Canada.
Canadian universities typically offer up to three degrees in economics: BA, MA and PhD. Students are usually required to have a MA before entering a PhD.
An undergraduate major requires, say, between 13 and 18 half term courses in economics. An MA? Another 8 to 10 courses. PhD programs vary more, but the University of British Columbia's web site tells students to expect to take another 13 courses.
What's wrong with high standards, requiring students to be have a thorough knowledge of economic concepts and methods?
1. It's repetitive and dull.
In the course of an BA/MA/PhD in economics, how many times would a student interested in industrial organization be taught the basic theory of monopoly? Principles, intermediate micro, industrial organization,…. How many times would she be taught basic two-person non-cooperative game theory? The first theorem of welfare economics?
Now there is a theory of education that suggests such repetition is a good thing. Jerome Bruner's spiral curriculum theory says: 'A curriculum as it develops should revisit … basic ideas repeatedly, building upon them until the student has grasped the full formal apparatus that goes with them'.
So Ontario's elementary and high schools now use a spiral curriculum, for example.
I relish the thought of WCI commentators, usually skeptical of fancy Ministry of Education pedagogical initiatives, defending a spiral curriculum approach. To me it sounds unbelievably tedious.
2. The opportunity cost of coursework is high
Let me make two claims about coursework. First, in five years time, 90% of everything except for fundamental concepts (for example, the idea of opportunity cost) and skills and techniques used in everyday life (for example, a wider vocabulary) will be forgotten. Second, anything close to the "frontiers of knowledge" has a 50 percent or better chance of being completely obsolete and irrelevant in ten to 20 years time.
Requiring students to take courses they do not need is simply taking away their time and money. If students forget/don't use material, or if it rapidly becomes obsolete, educators are wasting students time requiring them to learn it.
True, general knowledge and 'learning how to think' are valuable. But history or biology or classics or religion are also valuable in building breadth of knowledge.
'Free to choose' works for students, too.
3. Learning other people's models does not teach you to build your own model. Learning other people's ideas does not make you more creative
At some point an economist, whether as a consultant submitting a proposal or a policy analyst writing a briefing note or as an academic writing a research paper has to come up with his or her own research ideas, his own analysis, her own model.
It's tough. Brutally hard. But more course work doesn't necessarily help. My own experience is that the most effective way of learning how to do something is to dig in and do it. Writing this blog, for example, is teaching me to be a better writer, because I know you can and probably will stop reading the second is gets long winded and dull.
My colleagues might disagree with my analysis of the value of course work in general (and their courses in particular). But many would agree that an undergraduate degree in economics is not necessary to succeed in graduate school.
The University of Western Ontario does not require new MA and PhD students to have any background in economics, and indeed actively recruits students with undergraduate degrees in math and physics. Other departments waffle a bit more about their requirements, for example, University of Toronto's MA program requires that applicants have completed, or must be in the final year of an appropriate four-year bachelor's degree program. But I've been involved in graduate admissions for years and am reasonably confident that there isn't a graduate program in the country that would not admit a student with a strong quantitative background and a good grades in a handful of core theory courses (Econ 1000, intermediate micro and macro, advanced micro and macro).
UWO is pursuing a rational strategy. For there are some ugly facts that many people are aware of but few mention in polite company.
Economics departments are usually located in faculties of arts and, at an undergraduate level, draw primarily from the BA student pool, as well as B Com drop outs.
But science and math programs require significantly higher high school grades than arts programs. For example, at Queen's a potential BSc student requires a "competitive average" of 84%+ in university-level grade 12 English, Advanced Functions, Calculus and Vectors, two of: Biology, Chemistry or Physics, plus one other grade 12 courses. A potential BA student requires a "competitive average" of 80%+ in university level grade 12 English plus their best 5 other courses.
If high school grades, especially grades in math, are a good signal of ability in economics, BSc students will, on average, have higher levels of intrinsic ability in economics than BA students.
Moreover, there is not a super-abundance of job opportunities in the natural sciences. There is a strong market for programs that can translate a degree in math or physics into a good job in government or academia.
So for these two reasons – a desire to attract students with a high level of intrinsic ability, and a desire to access a large potential student pool – it is rational for graduate programs to target people with undergraduate degrees in subjects other than economics.
But where does this leave students who choose economics as an undergraduate major? As graduate programs increasingly recruit people with undergraduate degrees in subjects other than economics, graduate programs will spend more time repeating basic economic concepts. How can a student who has already learned these concepts sustain his or her interest? And when students are evaluated on the basis of their mathematical modeling and problem-solving ability, how can a student with an undergraduate degree in economics compete with a physicist?
I see two solutions.
The first is truth in advertising: honestly advise our most talented undergraduate students to switch to a math major/econ minor. But given the sheer joy that my most talented undergraduates give me, it's hard to take that route – plus a student's aptitude for graduate level economics may not be readily apparent until their undergraduate choices are largely determined.
The second is to accept design separate graduate programs for economics majors, ones that skip the unnecessary repetition of undergraduate economics. But I'm having trouble imagining what that program would look like, or who would take it.
This is getting personal for me right now because I have university-age children. I have tried to convince them (and their friends, and my first cousin once removed, and hundreds of students) to study economics. An undergraduate economics degree is an excellent background for a career in law or policy analysis, and is a sound choice for someone looking for a general arts degree. But neither one of my children is interested in taking a BA. Both are applying for/taking degrees with more restricted enrollment and thus a higher prestige value. As a firm believer that the value of education is in large part the signal it provides of your ability, who am I to argue with their choices?
I'm just hoping one of them will stumble into ECON 1000 with a good prof, fall in love with the subject, and think about it for a graduate degree.
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
I started out in political science, and got hooked on economics as my degree progressed. I took principles and liked it, so I decided to take a couple of second-year courses for a minor. By fourth year, I ended up with a double specialist degree (as it was known at U of T back then). While I was never really a math-o-phobe, the task of picking up enough math to get through grad school was very much a catch-up operation.
In Quebec, things are structured differently. Students have to decide what programs they want to specialise in BEFORE they get to university. In order to attract a student, we have to hope – often vainly – that she had a decent economics instructor at CEGEP. That’s a problem.
On the other hand, once they’re here, we know they’ve made the commitment. So we do what we can to make sure our students have the required math background.
In undergraduate engineering, in my day, each semester sudents were req’d to take a 1/2 yr course from the arts faculty. I can’t recall if I took an economics elective (or whether it was taught as part of another engineering related course in their faculty), but I do certainly recall my intro Psych 101 course(hey is the use of 1000 as in Economics 1000 like grade inflation or some sort of marketing ploy?) and my third yr Liking and Loving psych course.
But, I have to say, wherever I studied economics – I hated those two line supply and demand “curves” (are they really stright lines?)- Like Pavlov’s dog (thanks Psych 101) my eyes immediately gloss over – boring, boring, boring. Add some coloured lines – marginally less boring.
So, from my perspective, promoting interest in the field of economics and a better understanding is best accomplished as you are collectively doing on this site – a healthy mixture of practical everyday situations, policy related discussions with a dose of politics, and some really high level stuff for thre heavyweights (it’s still entertaining to watch some battle it out in the comments even though generally I haven’t a clue of what they are talking about, and do’t want to).
So, carry on carrying on. Good post.
I just checked: Laval requires 25 half-year courses!
I have no recent experience regarding this subject, but it seems analogous to what I thought was a standard attitude in that MBA programs don’t look for commerce undergraduates. As I recall, UWO used to be particularly sticky on this.
“The second is to accept design separate graduate programs for economics majors, ones that skip the unnecessary repetition of undergraduate economics. But I’m having trouble imagining what that program would look like, or who would take it.”
If you want to salvage young minds, I think you have to do this as a matter of principle. Give course credits liberally, and in doing so make it tougher and more challenging to make the full grade in the graduate program.
Stephen: you wouldn’t be able to reproduce your U of T experience at Carleton today, because students have six required courses that they must take in second year, and if they delay taking those courses they most likely won’t have the prerequisites they need to complete their program in four years. As an undergrad, I would never have been organized enough to work it out. If I’d been at Carleton, I would have ended up either staying in business (less likely) or majoring in philosophy (more likely).
JKH: I think a student taking a B Com or BBA and then an MBA faces many of the same problems as I’ve identified here. Honestly, a student wanting a career in business might be as well advised to take a program such as Carleton’s Bachelor of the Humanities and learn how to write well and think clearly and then go on and do an MBA.
Yes, perhaps course credits is the answer – if someone has a strong undergrad background in econ, we should allow him or her advanced credit for fourth year undergraduate level field courses and instead allow the student to replace those courses with courses in the math department. There just aren’t that many students with Canadian undergraduate degrees in economics going on to Canadian PhD programs, so the issue doesn’t arise often enough for graduate advisers to devise standard solutions and alternative types of degree programs.
I dropped out of high school and got a GED, in large part because of that “spiral curriculum” bullshit. I’m sure it’s good for many of the students, but for a quick learner who retains information well, it is crushingly boring indeed.
“Writing this blog, for example, is teaching me to be a better writer, because I know you can and probably will stop reading the second is gets long winded and dull. ”
Aha! A new corollary (or perhaps extension) to Muphry’s Law: that any complaint about spelling, grammar or typos will contain one such at least as bad as the original being complained about.
Our extension being that any writing about how writing a lot makes you a better writer will contain the evidence that one needs to write (or at least proof) more in order to become a better writer.
A minor example with “is” and “it” but a score all the same!
Tim – oops! – I won’t fix it so it can continue to give you and others pleasure.
Was Muphry’s deliberate?
Or is self referencing spiraling out of control?
I just competed my undergrad in economics and I think one of the problems is that my program seemed to lack focus. For my micro, 2nd and 4th year where were I learned most of the core theory, with 1st and 3rd being a mish-mash of optimization, edgeworth boxes and game theory. Macro was 1st year intro, second year Keynsianism, 3rd year Barro’s models which seemed to add very little to the Keynsianism, and 4th year a mish mash of theory focusing on growth models. You learn econometrics and stats pretty thoroughly and it one of the more useful skills you acquire in an undergrad degree. But other than that you are free to pursue your interests. I focused on finance, and even my finance courses werent really focused, a little balance sheet stuff, interest rate calculation, an intro to options and futures and a bit if international finance. A student that isnt focused could take a bunch of intro courses and easily forget it or not see how it all fits together. For example I didnt touch industrial organization nor the public policy courses and have very little knowledge of what they are about. What would have happened if I had dropped a few of the finance courses for one of these? I’d be a jack of all trades, master of none, and all that would be soon forgotten.
I can only speak for the program I was in, but I often felt that economics fell right in between being in the hard degrees like math, engineering, and science, and the typical soft arts degrees like history, psychology, and sociology. You get a lot of students that wouldnt be able to successfully complete a math degree but dont want to waste their time with what they perceive to be a worthless arts degree. I think this leads the econ programs to be designed to cater to this core of students while giving the opportunity for the more academically inclined students to pursue a more focused degree in with master’s and PhD programs. If you wanted econ to get serious you could ratchet up the math requirement and move a lot of the stuff learned in the masters program back down to undergrad level. I’m not sure what effect this would have on econ as an overall program as I think you would lose a lot of the more casual students.
Guild members are not suppose to tell the truth about this.
You’ve broken the Ivory Tower code of silence, and must be punished.
I’ll start by agreeing that an undergrad degree in economics can be irrelevant. I settled on economics as a major after first year and more or less just did what I had to while taking as many history courses as possible and writing history papers in my economics courses. Useless electives and only a basic coverage of theory didn’t really prepare me for the MA (not sure how, but I believe I managed to get through an entire honours BA in economics without seeing calculus applied to theory even once). Needless to say the MA was a shock, but I survived.
That being said, I would argue for making students take a variety of courses, and even contradict you when you say that “Learning other people’s models does not teach you to build your own model. Learning other people’s ideas does not make you more creative”. First off, you have to know what a model looks like to build one yourself. Secondly, I’ve found, in my own work and in what I see from others, that often the spark of creativity comes from seeing a variety of approaches to modeling in a variety of fields, and taking an approach that’s useful in one area and applying it in another.
Finally for now, I’d be cautious about assuming as you seem to that in being an Arts program, economics sets itself up to preselect a lower grade of student. I find very few of our majors come from the cohort that starts as a BA applicant. They come over from Science or Business, and not always because they couldn’t make the grade. More typically they find it more interesting of they prefer our approach to pedagogy. And even if it were true, I think that would be more of an argument for moving Economics out of Arts (as some schools have) rather than not taking an undergrad degree in economics.
Greg – I have a cartoon on my office wall “Mad? Why yes, I’m mad. But I have tenure.”
Jim, “I believe I managed to get through an entire honours BA in economics without seeing calculus applied to theory even once” – things have really changed in this regard. I don’t think that would be possible today, certainly not at any university I’ve taught at.
“that often the spark of creativity comes from seeing a variety of approaches to modeling in a variety of fields, and taking an approach that’s useful in one area and applying it in another”
Exactly. That’s why a broad undergrad background in biology, history, math, etc is probably much more useful than studying economics of the environment, public finance expenditures, and public policy towards business, all of which spend a week or three teaching the basic theory of externalities. Or, alternatively, perhaps we need a more anarchic approach in grad school. I was just chatting this morning to someone who knows a lot about math grad programs, and she was telling me that it’s very common to say to students “O.k., you’re interested in this area, go away and work on it and we’ll do a directed readings course for you.” That does happen in econ, but I wouldn’t say it’s common.
Jim, “And even if it were true, I think that would be more of an argument for moving Economics out of Arts (as some schools have) rather than not taking an undergrad degree in economics.”
I’ve thought about that. Moving into business means that econ becomes one of a number of departments, so there’s departments of marketing, accounting, finance, economics, etc. That can mean a loss of voice for economists, and also potentially culture clash (many academic economists don’t take kindly to being expected to wear a tie and/or pantyhose). Though having said that, the Sauder School of Business (UBC) and also HEC Montreal both have extremely solid and as far as I can tell very happy economics groups. Dalhousie’s econ department is in the faculty of science, and that creates other issues (the reaction of scientists to econ candidates at tenure meetings: “What do you mean you’re recommending someone for tenure with only six publications and just $25,000 in SSHRC funding?”)
Ian L – “I think this leads the econ programs to be designed to cater to this core of students while giving the opportunity for the more academically inclined students to pursue a more focused degree in with master’s and PhD programs.”
Yup. That’s about it.
But what should the more academically inclined undergrads be told – quit and study math? Relax and take it easy? Or should everything be ratcheted up to the level of the more academically inclined undergrads?
any regrets? do you wish you’d chosen another major? are you going on to grad school?
I wonder how many economists just fell into the subject?
I started out as a philosophy major at UWO of all things. The only career path I saw from that was lawyer and I didn’t want to be one. I took first year Econ and aced it, so I ended up double majoring in Econ and Poli Sci.
Graduated, did a year at Queen’s, then went to Rochester. First year I passed all my courses there (which something many of my classmates couldn’t claim), but I got absolutely destroyed because my math skills weren’t up to par (I had been warned by UWO profs that I faced that risk, so it’s not just Frances letting people in on this secret). I spent the next year as a visiting graduate student in the Applied Math department at UWO – took a bunch of upper year undegraduate/MA courses in math and applied math and spent a summer doing financial math research.
Went back to Rochester, did a whole lot better my 2nd year and did quite well on my comps. But by then I decided that Rochester wasn’t for me for a variety of reasons and I wanted to move back to London. Had an opportunity at Ivey and took it.
Not sure what the point of this is, other than as a cautionary note. If you go to a high end PhD Econ program in the States without a math background, you’re going to be roadkill.
“Jim, “I believe I managed to get through an entire honours BA in economics without seeing calculus applied to theory even once” – things have really changed in this regard. I don’t think that would be possible today, certainly not at any university I’ve taught at.”
– I don’t think it was supposed to be true then either, but my point was that it turned out that while it might have helped, it wasn’t necessary.
On the varied course thing, I’d agree that taking a wide variety of things outside of economics as an undergrad helps, but not all economics electives spend three weeks on externalities. I learned very different things in my IO courses than my Labour courses, and the ability to take ideas from the one and use them in the other was very helpful. Excessive specialization is the killer of creativity in my mind.
“Was Muphry’s deliberate?”
Yes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law
Hi Frances. Interesting post. A couple of comments. (My background is B.Comm [Queens] and MA Economics [UWO], both early 80s., followed by 27 years of policy and consulting).
Apologies in advance for the long comment.
First, am I the only one that finds it a little bizarre that graduate programs in economics don’t want to consume their own profession’s or department’s output (i.e., those with undergraduate degrees in economics), particularly when the same departments determine what is taught at the undergraduate level and how it is taught? Wouldn’t we all think it was pretty odd if graduate studies programs in physics were actively seeking undergrads from other areas in preference to their own? (The BComm/MBA analogy raised by one of your commenters doesn’t hold- at least when I was at Queen’s, the BComm was at least as hard to get into as the MBA program and had not only more content but more sophisticated content.)
It seems to me that if undergraduate programs in economics are felt not to be preparing students adequately for graduate work, isn’t the solution to beef up the undergraduate program or at least increase the requirements for undergrad math (or whatever) before pursuing grad studies?
Second, the notion that it would be considered desirable to have lots of people getting PhDs after, say, a math or physics undergrad with relatively little economics, followed just two years of course work at the graduate level, seems remarkable to me. Technicians are great but can one be expected to have much economic intuition or judgment after that little exposure to the field?
Also, the financial crisis has reminded us that elements of theory or policy that we thought we “knew” and were settled were in fact not so settled. Much of the confusion and current debate is not about the super-sophisticated sub-atomic level of economic theory, it is about all the basic front-end stuff that was bypassed in the rush to focus on the sub-atomic level and all the assumptions of convenience made to make the math work. Is the answer really more people that know lots of math and not so much about economics?
Third, if the problem is a concern about repetitive subject matter then I would suggest the solution is to teach more and different stuff. I now find it utterly astounding that I went through five years of economics without ever being exposed to a) any mention whatsoever of, for example, free banking, the Austrian school and the apparent contradiction of the acceptance of central banking by a profession that normally extolls free markets and competition, or b) any serious treatment of the history of economic thought, disequilibrium and a dynamic conception of the market, the role and evolution of private property (and other institutions) in markets, experimental economics, the various theories regarding the causes and duration of the Great Depression (a good topic for a fourth year or graduate level course), the mechanics and history of the gold standard in its various forms, the economic history of other key eras (e.g. German hyperinflation), the debate (both historical and current) regarding the methodology of economics (positivism and its challengers), etc.
Is there really a shortage of material?
I was going to say “I wonder if this discussion says something about the lack of empirical content in economics?” because I could not imagine going into postgraduate chemistry (which I did) without the undergraduate degree – there is simply too much factual material to learn.
But on second thoughts, of course I did not use much of that factual material in my graduate studies – being more specialized, I forgot large tracts of chemistry very quickly and did not feel the effects. So maybe it does make sense to be able to go into an economics graduate course without an undergraduate degree.
But on third thoughts – specialization means that just because you have a graduate degree in subject X does not make you an expert X-ist if you don’t do the undergraduate (or equivalent). You are building on foundations that may be sand or may be rock – who knows?
Any of you U of T grads ever take a class in the old McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology, now part of the Faculty of Information Studies? If so, perhaps you’d know how the guru taught a whole generation of intellectuals. Not that he taught me, but arrived at the same way of educating from different directions. Foundational to his “medium is the message” was using the figure and ground (two principles) of Gestalt psychology (I came onto it through generating substance theory using fuzzy logic). His picture of the whole was to put Medium in the middle with diametrical opposites of Enhances and Obsolesces; Retrieves and Reverses. He’d ask 4 questions, which I think are excellent for any student to ask his prof in an intro class…
1. What does the medium [of economics] enhance?
2. What does the medium [of economics] make obsolete?
3. What does the medium [of economics] retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier?
4. What does the medium [of economics] flip into when pushed to extremes?
The answers that appear about right to me are:
1. Selfishness and false utility
2. Self-interest and utility
3. Enlightened self-interest (self-interest + classic sympathy/new empathy)
4. A flippin gated community fostering narcissistic culture.
And, thank you WCI for having an open door and being so tolerant. However, the only way I can learn how i’m right (sometimes) and where I’m wrong (always in some way) when riding onto your turf is to be challenged. Is the pay dirt from the staked claim gold or fool’s gold?
David, thanks for your long comment. You hit on a point that perhaps I should have clarified:
“Second, the notion that it would be considered desirable to have lots of people getting PhDs after, say, a math or physics undergrad with relatively little economics, followed just two years of course work at the graduate level, seems remarkable to me. Technicians are great but can one be expected to have much economic intuition or judgment after that little exposure to the field?”
That’s the point Nick raised in his post that inspired this one. Sometimes, technicians don’t, and that’s a problem, as Nick points out.
But I don’t know what the answer is. If a grad programs only admits people with undergrads in econ it will miss out on many of the best and brightest potential students. Mike Moffat’s experience is typical – a good econ undergrad will be slaughtered by math majors in grad school. And that won’t change unless the nature of economic research changes and what is valued by the academic economics profession changes.
But if grad programs repeat all of the basic Econ 1000 concepts to bring the technical students up to speed, students with undergrads in econ will be bored.
Sometimes I think we should add an additional comprehensive exam for our PhD students – the Econ 1000 final.
I was going to say “I wonder if this discussion says something about the lack of empirical content in economics?” because I could not imagine going into postgraduate chemistry (which I did) without the undergraduate degree – there is simply too much factual material to learn.
I was thinking the same thing. My undergrad was in mathematics and political science, so arguably I would’ve been well positioned to have pursued graduate study in economics (instead I did a statistics grad degree and proceeded to medical school). Despite being interested in the subject, I never did take an economics course, yet I feel my knowledge is more than adequate to question the simplistic economic arguments made in the media (e.g. in the Globe’s business section) and bizarre internet popularity of methodological dead ends like the Austrian “school”.
Second, the notion that it would be considered desirable to have lots of people getting PhDs after, say, a math or physics undergrad with relatively little economics, followed just two years of course work at the graduate level, seems remarkable to me. Technicians are great but can one be expected to have much economic intuition or judgment after that little exposure to the field?
I question that there exists some kind economic “intuition” or “judgement” that can be taught through a combination of coursework and research. What can be taught is good scholarship and research methods and an appreciation for theoretical models and principles. As important is the assessment of evidence and data, and those trained in explicitly quantitative and/or abstract disciplines unsurprisingly can hit the ground running rapidly. That said, it’s not about math per se, but about the evaluation and analysis of data, i.e. statistics, though given your mention of “positivism” I wonder what your stance on these fuzzy notions of empiricism is.
In political science, at least, we had no shortage of long discussions about methodology and theory. One seminar I took was “Approaches to International Relations”, and much of the discussion was given over to Liberalism vs. Realism in the context of differing methodologies for describing or explaining the behaviour of political actors. If economics has long since veered away from the speculations that once dominated such research in favour of empirical study, I’d say this can only be regarded as the maturation of the discipline. That’s not to say that “economic thought” is unimportant, but it cannot and must not be separated from discussions of political economy or politics in general. I’m not sure the field is particularly equipped to address such questions, though.
“Mike Moffat’s experience is typical – a good econ undergrad will be slaughtered by math majors in grad school.”
Yep. My mistake was in thinking that an aptitude at math would be enough – it’s always been a strong subject for me. But you need the actual training, to learn the vocabulary, to polish your skills, etc. For me the year of 3rd-4th year undergrad/MA courses got me up to speed enough where I could hold my own. But without that year, I was completely and utterly lost.
Josh, I love the idea that people with backgrounds like yours are reading this blog (and will avoid a long digression into realism v. liberalism).
“But what should the more academically inclined undergrads be told – quit and study math? Relax and take it easy? Or should everything be ratcheted up to the level of the more academically inclined undergrads?
any regrets? do you wish you’d chosen another major? are you going on to grad school?”
Well I think there was a lot of room in my program to accomodate both types of students. If all you want to do is the bare minimum the only really mathematicall difficult courses are 4th year micro, 4th year econometrics, possibly macro too although mine wasnt heavy on the mathematics. Although it sounds like im criticizing it I’m one of the students that couldnt hack it in the math program. Econ actually took me from relatively easy math to rediculous courses like quantitative finance. It definately taught a marginal student like me how to excel academically and now I am starting my MA at Carleton.
No regrets on my major, I love economics and I’m lucky enough for it to all work out and am allowed to pursue studies in something I’m very interested in. Not something everyone can say.
Ian L – excellent! If you see me please introduce yourself and say hi, Frances
Frances, ahem, I don’t know where to start. Basically you are saying undergrad econ programs have a bad set of course requirements. If you think more math and science is important, teach more math and science. I have physics degrees (BSc, MSc and PhD) and my course training consisted of two things: First, working out really hard problems – ie learning to think about single problems that took a day to solve sometimes and second, learning physics. As an undergrad in physics I learned how the hydrogen atom worked, why the sky is blue, how heat-shrink plastic works,… It was important that I learned this stuff.
Surely in economics there is stuff that a subset of he population actually needs to know. Teach them this stuff. And then give them gruesome problem sets where individual problems take ten hours to solve.
Oh yeah – make them take “lab courses” and work with actual data.
I’ve wondered why Economics departments were in Arts faculties. Locating them in the business schools always seemed more natural to me.
Chris J – “I don’t know where to start”
Here’s a suggestion: Start by responding to the argument made in the post.
I am saying that an undergrad econ program is not an ideal training for a PhD in economics. Physics degrees teach you to work out really hard problems. That’s why a first degree in physics is really useful when it comes to studying economics at a graduate level.
If we gave all of our undergrad students gruesome ten hour problem sets, we would be doing them a disservice. The overwhelming majority are not going on to PhD programs.
To clarify: I’m not saying that undergrad econ degrees are not useful. In my undergrad taxation course last year, we used a simple model to analyze the potential consequences of legalizing and taxing marijuana in California (this has been proposed as a way to reduce their budget deficit). We could get all sorts of fascinating insights into the issue with basic tools from first and second year economics.
But most people with PhDs in economics don’t spend their time doing things like analyzing the possible consequences of the legalization of marijuana – the economics are completely straightforward, and there’s not enough data to do a sophisticated analysis (in ten years time, though, you could write a really nice paper using the legalization as a ‘natural experiment’).
In Canada, we’re seeing a rapid growth in masters degrees in public policy or international relations. Graduates from those programs have a basic undergraduate-level background in economics, and can write and communicate effectively. A lot of employers are looking very seriously at graduates of these programs when they need policy analysis done.
To follow up on that last point, I think the point where a standard economics BA fails most is in training students to write. I like writing, and I like to think that I write better than the average economist (an admittedly low hurdle). But much of that came from my poli sci background, where I had to write any number of tightly-worded, well-argued essays.
Our MA program at Laval is one of the few that still requires a master’s thesis – at least two sessions of full-time work – and the main stumbling block for our students is getting them to write a comprehensible first draft. But at least by the time they leave, they know what it’s like to write up a research report.
I think it was suggested above, but I’ll repeat it anyway…
I studied mech eng at McGill in the ’90s. We had required math courses. Lots of required math courses. So why not do like the engineers do and make the required math part of the program? Have a series of math course for econ majors and stagger the econ material so that it’s presented after the students have taken the required math. First semester could be econ 101 and the weeder math course (just like first year mechanics is for engineers). And advertise the fact that economics requires math.
Patrick, click on the link that says ’18’ in the original blog post above.
Every undergrad econ program in the country requires math.
But there is no level of math that will simultaneously (a) not discourage a large number of potential majors who would enjoy and benefit from an undergraduate degree in econ and also (b) allow someone with an econ degree to compete with someone with a math degree at the PhD level.
An alternative is streaming students and giving some gentle math and others rigorous math. But this requires enough students of each type and, crucially, students need to work out which stream suits them early on.
Frances, I think my inability to write effectively is letting me down. I wasn’t claiming that current programs don’t require math.
As to (a), maybe Econ dept. might consider taking a harder line. I’m sure I would have very much enjoyed an easy stroll through plant biology and horticulture (I like gardening) if they skipped all that nasty biochemistry and microbiology. But is that what a university undergraduate degree should be about?
Without really knowing anything about what PhD economics students do, I find (b) above to be somewhat shocking if it’s true. I can’t think of another field where having a undergraduate degree in the field puts students at a disadvantage relative to students coming from some other field of study. You really should attach a warning label.
Anyway, I’m biased. I was lousy student and had to work my ass off to get even mediocre grads so I tend to be unsympathetic to the view that students should enjoy school or that it should be anything but a horrendous slog – I suffered so everyone else should too dammit!
Compare the math requirement in honours econ to the math requirements for honours Mech Eng at McGill:
http://www.mcgill.ca/mecheng/undergrad/curriculum/streamc/
(full disclosure: I certainly wasn’t honours during my 3 year incarceration, and in fact I bailed on mech and switched to comp sci – much to everyone satisfaction I’m sure).
I can vouch for the masters of policy. I’m a comp sci/bio double major finishing up a summer job with Alberta environment, doing modeling. A number of people in the office working on policy have them. Plus anytime in a meeting with economists, I never had the opportunity to use the 2+ years of econo blog reading. I guess my feeds are tilted heavily toward monetary policy for some reason(0 lower bound/recession) but specific policy analysis is required in a lot of the presentations. And I assume the phd programs tackle the interesting stuff.
@Frances, Thank you. You clarified something I missed in your argument. You were talking about people who would develop new and different models, not people who would use economics to develop policy. I had not made this distinction. (The economics I read is this blog, Brad DeLong, Tyler Cowan occasionally and a few others – all of whom are academic economists and public-policy people. This caused me not to make this distinction.)
But I stand by my claim that making people think hard about serious problems is great training for everyone. The best way to learn to think is to be made to think about hard problems and then have your arguments read carefully.
Chris J “But I stand by my claim that making people think hard about serious problems is great training for everyone.”
Absolutely.
And as Nick Rowe’s posts in this blog show, you don’t need mathematical analysis to think hard about serious problems.
Personally, I find questions I can ask in an undergraduate economics course more interesting than graduate economics. For example, here’s one that I find fascinating: the big thing in economic development is microcredit loans. These are small loans, usually made to women, and do not require any collateral. Responsibility for repayment is collective, that is, there is a group of women who are jointly responsible for making sure that the members of their group repay their loans.
But here’s something interesting: is a woman’s optimal strategy to invest her loan in, say, a new stove for her business selling pickles, that will increase her labour productivity, or a new rickshaw, that will increase her husband’s productivity? The new stove gives her income that she can control, so she is guaranteed of being able to repay the loan, and may give her greater power within the family. But she risks having to work a double day (doing her regular work+making pickles). The rickshaw may offer a higher financial payoff with less work for the woman, but the woman retains the responsibility of paying off the loan while the husband is the one with the greater earning possibilities.
Undergrad econ is so much fun…
Interestingly, my wife Wan is dealing with a case right now here in Asia. A husband (who is a policeman) wants his wife to borrow money for him. And, he has hit her to get it, but she has resisted so far. She hid in the back room of my wife’s shop for three days but the husband found her and she went with him. The reason she did so was she didn’t want anyone to hear angry voices in public; she’d loose face; and would rather be beaten in private. That’s the situation now. Wan just got off the phone pleading with her not to give in to him…
I’ve had to deal with black-shirts on motorbikes who regularly come to the village to extract money, beat up people and take what they want. They back off with a foreigner present. On some loans people can pay 30% a month interest. Many are forced into it with hospital bills and the men tend to gamble a lot. I’ve eliminated most of this by being the major microcredit lender in the village. I usually make $100 loans at 0% to the women (never to men): one is with a family with a child that’s chronically ill (and I’ve forgiven some of the loan), but most are with a project and a plan. When they pay it back (which they do in their own time; I just insist on something minimal which they determine each month) the amount they can borrow goes up depending on the project they have in mind. They usually buy products cheap on a rural market and make a profit on them in an urban public market.
With my McLuhan post I dangled a carrot to get a challenge; to give someone a friendly poke with my stick. Perhaps the contradiction appearing in “right (sometimes) and wrong (always in some way)” was too simple. The point: the phrase has an underlying “double-truth”: true to the part; true to the whole. In other words, I’m right sometimes with the core or pivotal principle; always wrong in some way with the details (rough around the edges).
Just some correction, clarification and a little extension.
Wan suspects the woman has been hit. She doesn’t really know: the woman won’t talk to her about that.
“Black-shirts” are literally and figuratively true: a double-truth. Also, I infiltrated the police force to became a “volunteer”: supposedly to help tourists. Never helped a tourist yet when I put on my police hat (I’ve no authority and say nothing other than to inquire as to the problem) the bullies back off; and the police don’t extort me when they stop my car (seldom) or motorbike (often). Also, the uniform is occasionally worn for the the big bosses, politicians, police, army, who like very much to have their pictures taken with me all dolled up in a white uniform. Look like a bald big-wig navy officer.
Loans were usually up to $100 but with trust more often give $20 here and $30 there kinda thing. They keep track; I can’t be bothered with details. No big deal really, though it does cut into my teacher’s pension. And, I did give money to a man. Indeed, the largest of a $1000 to help build a new house, but I got the broken down house in return on the family land, which they still own. And, I’ve a good guy that helps an old man, whose head spends more time in the air than his feet are on the ground. Still the idea is to renovate the old house as it can get crowded in our home. We can have up to 4 girls from the outer villages staying at our place and taking the 7km ride into the city to go to university. They are poor people, stay here for free. (An interesting aside: Wan gives her former teachers money occasionally, and she will for the rest of their lives.)
You’ve heard of red-shirts, yellow-shirts, now black-shirts; anyone hear of the green-shirts? They are comprised of women over 50 from a couple of dozen villages battling (for about 10 yrs now) big government-big business on a huge potash project that will undermine (double-truth there) their villages and rice fields. They are remarkable, wonderful – and that’s where you’ll find me wondering. Just look for the silent old white guy in the shadows surrounded by a bunch of old women chattering away.
I should mention that what i do is officially illegal. Some people think I’ve been red-flagged but I don’t think so. Wan worries too much. Still, the government watchdogs might be reading this.
“Graduates from those [public policy and international relations masters] programs have a basic undergraduate-level background in economics.
Would you really go so far as to say they have a basic undergraduate level background in econ? As far as I can tell most of these programs only require one course in undergraduate micro (taught one half of the year) and one in macro (taught the other half) – sometimes even these are “dumbed down” because so many of the students have difficulty. Better than nothing perhaps, but probably not even amounting to a minor concentration.
Matthew, all I can say that, if that is true, then the following should make you very worried about the Department of Finance, economics graduate programs, or both:
(the following is cut and pasted from the recruitment information on the department of finance website, http://www.fin.gc.ca)
What are the different recruitment streams?
Finance Canada hires university recruits through three streams. Most recruits are hired through the Economist and Policy Analyst stream, which is open to recent graduates at the Master’s level in our four target disciplines:
* Economics.
* Public policy/administration.
* International relations/studies.
* Finance.
The two other streams are highly specialized. The Tax Legislation stream is open to those with training in law, taxation or accounting and who wish to pursue a career as a specialist in income or sales tax. The Doctoral Researcher stream is aimed at recent Ph.D. graduates who wish to conduct theoretical and empirical research. Information about the application process for these two streams can be found here.
Frances, you might be interested to read Greg Mankiw’s comments from a few years back in “Why Aspiring Economists Need Math” (gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/09/why-aspiring-economists-need-math.html). I don’t think you need worry about having revealed any shocking secrets about Econ grad admissions.
Gregory S, thanks for that link, very interesting article, especially what Mankiw says at the end, “Is it possible that admissions committees for econ PhD programs are excessively fond of mathematics on student transcripts? Perhaps.”
I think what’s slightly different about the argument I’m making here is that I talk about the supply and demand in the market for graduate students – the large potential supply of students/demand for places that a department can tap into by marketing their program to underemployed mathematicians and physicists. Those people who are really smart but just a little bit too sensible/not quite crazy enough to be successful as pure mathematicians.
William Hayes, thanks for sharing these stories, they’re fascinating. It sounds like microcredit deserves a post on its own!
“Matthew, all I can say that, if that is true, then the following should make you very worried about the Department of Finance…”
I would be worried if policy analysts actually did anthying except drinking coffee and trolling economics blogs!
Thank you, Frances. Muhammad Yunus recently opened a school to teach microcredit and microfinance here. It’s evolving well. So yes, please, do a post on it’s own.
OK. Let’s see if I can kill two flies with one swat: the problem of circular curriculum being boring and Francis’ concern about learning retention with what’s being taught.
Her concerns have no substance; actually the opposite: because the prof in NZ ONLY remembers Frances cooking cookies at midterm (and nothing else) precisely tells me that her teaching was a success, the cookies were a winner – and indicates she’s a good teacher.
Why? Because cooking cookies was a big positive that only happened once and perhaps only once in all his schooling: it was an accented or WOW moment. Think about it. When a child first observes an airplane it makes a big impression the first time: like wow! Next day, hears it; sees it – heh, neat…3rd day ok…until the plane goes over and over and the child is not even conscious of it. But, it’s not really forgotten. As soon as something different happens with that plane, different noise perhaps, the child will become conscious of it, if for only a short unaccented moment. Same with what she taught her students; it’ll become conscious when something is different, a negative, something that challenges what was learnt and internalized from Frances’ class. With circular curriculum, it appears (and notice phenomenology is the main tool i use) they keep getting students to look at that damn plane over and over again. They eventually loose interest and booorring. They need to change to accent cars or horses or whatever…for a theme on transportation perhaps.
William: Wow!
Matthew: Last Winter, I taught Macro (half course) to Carleton’s MA Public Admin students. They had already had a full course of Intro Micro and Macro (Mankiw). I taught them using the intermediate text Blanchard and Kneebone, minus the math, plus a bit more intuition and policy. They get similar micro, plus a lot of more applied stuff. A lot less math and technique than economics majors, but they are grad students, so you can stretch them a bit more on other dimensions. I don’t know about other Universities.