In this article, the author updates his prior studies of LSAT® scores (Nieswiadomy 1998, 2006, 2010, 2014, 2017) using current data for 2022-23 law school applicants, finding that economics majors remain at or near the top of all applicants. Results of the previous studies showing economics majors scored well on the LSAT® have often been posted on…

Faculty often report limited student engagement in their economics courses. This deficiency makes it challenging for educators to excite students about our field, a situation that could have ripple effects in terms of the number of students who graduate as economics majors. For students, the lack of classroom engagement makes it unappealing to…

This article's authors use student transcript data to identify differences in the study of economics among Black students at HBCUs and PWIs. The data show that a higher fraction of Black students at HBCUs initially intend to study economics, relative to those at PWIs (4.0% vs. 1.3% of micro principles enrollees) and persist in the major (9.4% vs.…

The undergraduate economics curricula for most of the 793 U.S. colleges and universities that conferred an economics bachelor's degree in 2019 are described in this article. Besides updating the prevalence of the economics major core requirements and their differences by institution type, the authors record new information on requirement…

The author of this article summarizes which, when, where, and how students take introductory economics. Among students who began college in 2012, 74 percent never took economics, up from 62 percent in 2004. Fifteen percent of beginning college students in 2012 took "some economics," and 12 percent were "one-and-done" students.…

Using the backward design model, the author of this article surveys and connects the economic competencies literature evolving from Hansen with the literature on literacy-targeted principles courses. He makes the case why departments should offer LT principles courses--which focus on higher-level mastery of a shorter list of concepts that students…

Understanding how to make the world a better place requires interdisciplinary knowledge. Public policy analysis helps policymakers arrive at informed policy decisions. The policy analysis process involves public problem definition and data collection, stakeholder identification, a rationale for government involvement, evaluation criteria,…

It is challenging for economics major programs to support an undergraduate research capstone where the goal is for all majors to complete a research project that creates new knowledge. Our program has found a way to achieve this for all of our majors in the face of resource constraints and varying student skill levels, and has done this without…

Stock, Finegan, and Siegfried establish that completion times in U.S. economics PhD programs have been on the rise, with the median steadily approaching six years. Do European programs experience the same trend? The authors of this article present new hand-collected data on job market candidates from the top European PhD programs in economics. In…

Undergraduate degrees awarded in economics by U.S. colleges and universities were stagnant from 2009-10 through 2012-13, increased rapidly (almost 15 percent) over the two years from 2012-13 through 2014-15, but have again leveled off in 2015-16 and 2016-17.

Using student transcripts from six institutions over a 23-year timespan, the authors investigate the movement of students into and out of the economics major. Considerable movement between majors occurs with 83 percent of economics graduates switching in after their first principles course. These eventual majors come from a variety of sources, but…

Undergraduate degrees awarded in economics by U.S. colleges and universities were stagnant from 2010 (2009-10) through 2013, increased rapidly (almost 15%) over the two years from 2013 through 2015, but have subsequently leveled off in 2016 through 2018.

The article's authors report on a comprehensive curricular reform aimed at communicating the broad range of social issues that economists study while engaging students in active learning strategies. The reform increased interest in taking additional economics courses and majoring in economics, broadened students' views of what economists do, and…

Those aspiring to law school must first complete the Law School Admissions Test, or LSAT. When ranking undergraduate majors by mean LSAT scores, economics has proven to be near the very top, if not the number-one major, over the last two decades. The goal of this analysis is the search for additional evidence that an economics degree is good…

Undergraduate degrees awarded in economics by U.S. colleges and universities were stagnant from 2009-10 through 2012-13, increased rapidly (almost 15 percent) over the two years from 2012-13 through 2014-15, but have again leveled off in 2015-16.