Everyday in class some of my students will continuously look at me with open bugged-eyes as if what I'm articulating is coming out in Mandarin. A few semesters of this and I decided to look for the root cause as to why economics is difficult for some people. Some hypothesis that I threw out there were
1. Students are not really interested in Economics
2. Maybe its the way I teach
3. Perhaps some psychological biases make it difficult to understand economic dynamics
4. It could simply be that the vocabulary confuses them
There can be many more but I didn't really have a big budget.
Testing my first theory was relatively simple. I passed out a survey on a random day in class and simply asked students, "What do you think of economics?", "Do you think economics applies to you?", "Do you think you might consider majoring in economics, or have you already considered it?". I had some other questions in there so as to get them to think the survey was about something else, and not just tell me what they think I want to hear.
The results were as one might expect. The students who had an A in the class were either students that indicated they wanted to major in economics, or who seemed to enjoy the information. The students who had C's and below were not really interested in economics and didn't want to major in it. Its also noteworthy to point out that 91% of the students with a C or below didn't think economics applies to them. (The answer is, is that it applies to everyone)
Testing out my second hypothesis was a little tricky but I was bale to get good data. I knew I couldn't simply just ask the students in person or on a survey of their thoughts on the way I teach, as I'm sure they would censor their words to make sure I didn't curve their grade down. What I ended up doing was asking one of my friends, who happens to be a student in that class, to ask students what they thought of my teaching. The reviews were very enlightening, from what she told me, it seems that what students have a lot of difficulty at is the way I articulate the math portion of it.
There's no way around math unfortunately, you can't calculate inflation without doing some division, and you can't find the marginal cost of a good without derivatives.
My third theory couldn't be done in a survey nor do I have any data to present but here is my theory in narrative form. When I was in High School and first learning about economics I remember a lecture on price ceilings and price floors and the shortages and surpluses created. What burns that memory in my mind is that there was always this student, who kept arguing with the professor about the effects of price ceilings saying things such as, " Why wouldn't someone just sell it at that price and continue building houses" or "Why wouldn't [producers] hire the same amount of people and keep prices the same?". This logic still comes up in some of my lectures, I remember lecturing on corporate taxes and regulatory costs and how they lead to price increases, there was this one student who passionately yelled "That's so unfair!!! Why are they making us pay for their taxes and [regulatory costs]?" I stated that companies are their make as much money as possible and that transferring costs over is how the markets work. This didn't seem to work as she came back and said "But companies already make so much profits, why cant they just make less?"
The psychological bias I think this shows is that some think that the world revolves around them and that they shouldn't have to pay higher prices for safer food or cars nor should they see the quality of their housing fall because the government cut their rent in half. I'm sure if I asked them if the government put a ceiling on their wages and the most they could make was $15,000 a year they would probably lose the incentive to go to college, or work harder.
With that being said, I don't want to give the impression that I'm against all government price controls. The minimum wage certainly helps people escape poverty, and utility companies that have monopoly power certainly can't be allowed to choose their own prices.
To test whether it was the vocabulary that was hard I had a vocabulary quiz in my class. The quiz was straightforward, I had a list of words with numbers next to them and asked students to articulate in extreme detail what these words mean when economists use them. Words I included were limited to basic economics examples being, marginal, utility, dynamic, stochastic and so forth.
The results were as one might expect, almost every student regardless of their grade in the class could articulate what demand & supply meant. Words like utility received definitions like "your water and electricity" from students who had C's and below. Words that received no attempt or where even my A students got it wrong were, dynamic, stochastic, endowment, and welfare. Welfare received 0 correct responses as the students thought it government welfare, when I was just looking for the same definition of utility.
My theories certainly aren't perfect and I'm sure other professors might have their own ideas for this phenomenon. One thing for sure is some people don't realize the importance of economics on their lives or think they live above the laws of it.
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