The Poor State of Economics Departments

I've always felt Economics departments at U.S. universities got the short end of the stick. Extremely high demand for the product, but limited capacity, resulting in an overburdened staff. Why? Greg Mankiw takes a look.

It is true that student satisfaction is lower in economics than in most other departments at the university and that student-faculty ratios are higher. I have been told, however, that if you do a regression of a department's student satisfaction on its student-faculty ratio, the economics department is right on the regression line. This fact suggests that our student satisfaction is low precisely because the student-faculty ratio is high.

Comments

[John]

"The economics department could reduce the number of students... by raising requirements (e.g., every major would have to take multivariate calculus and linear algebra)."

At the University of Texas at Austin Economics was the most popular major in the College of Liberal Arts until 2002. After 2002 Economics majors were required to take real calculus instead of calculus for business majors. Now the most popular major is Government.

http://www.utexas.edu/academic/oir/statistical_handbook/current_handbook/

[Tim Kane]

John,

Good idea, though? Isn't there a trend of American college students out of "hard" majors, so we end up getting lots of art critics and fewer scientists?

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