Dumbing down or brightening up

1
Dumbing down or brightening up?

• Using computers and information technology to
  support quantitative economics teaching on our
  undergraduate degrees.

Guy Judge, Department of Economics, University of
Portsmouth May 2000
2
Background some stylised facts

• we face
• falling demand for single honours economics
  degrees (economics majors)
• reduced demand for economics options on other
  related degrees (e.g. business and management)

Guy Judge, Department of Economics, University of
Portsmouth May 2000
3
Further background more stylised facts

• bigger student intakes falling unit of resource
• ? rising student-staff ratios and bigger classes
• increasing tendency for students to have
  part-time jobs
• ? students have less time for out of class study
• (and/or they miss more classes!)
• decline in average level of maths skills and
  ability amongst students
• ? students less able to cope with traditionally
  presented courses

Guy Judge, Department of Economics, University of
Portsmouth May 2000
4
Some comments

• Becker (JEL, 1997) suggests that the decline in
  economics majors (in US) may be related to the
  persistence of chalk and talk teaching methods
• maybe economics is perceived by students to be
  mathematical and hard

Guy Judge, Department of Economics, University of
Portsmouth May 2000
5
possible faculty strategies (A)

• 1 dumb down
• reduce quantitative content on all economics
  degree programmes
• 2 substitute at the margin
• develop some new less quantitative programmes and
  modules to win back market share (especially to
  catch business wannabes (Salemi Eubanks 1996)

Guy Judge, Department of Economics, University of
Portsmouth May 2000
6
possible faculty strategies (B)

• 3 disguise courses and modules
• pseudonym course names e.g. Business
  Forecasting, Environmental Resource Policy
• 4 brighten up with the aid of C IT
• dont reduce the quantitative content but
  make it more accessible

Guy Judge, Department of Economics, University of
Portsmouth May 2000
7
new tools and resources are now widely available

• MathEcon
• spreadsheets
• user-friendly statistics and econometrics
  software
• equation-processing/symbolic algebra software
• the Internet

Guy Judge, Department of Economics, University of
Portsmouth May 2000
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