Has uni-level economics lost its way? Why enrolments are down (and why it matters)
Students are shunning economics in a trend experts have linked to a worsening standard of political debate in Australia.
New analysis from the Reserve Bank of Australia shows just 1 per cent of year 12 students who applied to university between 1999 and 2023 ended up enrolling in an economics degree, making the subject far less popular than courses in arts, science, mathematics, commerce and finance.
Even students who studied economics in year 12 were more likely to choose commerce and finance or arts and social science at university – despite a “modest pick-up” in economics enrolments recently.
The RBA suggested this was more likely driven by students’ preferences than their level of academic achievement, citing other research that found students often considered commerce a broader, more interesting option with greater employability and a higher earnings potential than economics.
“The vast majority of the interested students who did not end up enrolling in economics went on to study commerce and finance,” RBA public education economist Emma Chow wrote in the analysis.
“Within this group, around 70 per cent enrolled in commerce and finance courses with a higher ATAR cut-off than the economics course that they preferenced, indicating an ‘interest gap’ in economics.”
The paper also explored how students interested in the so-called “dismal science” tended to be boys from well-off families – a trend EY Oceania economist Cherelle Murphy said would lead to weaker problem-solving and a narrowing in the subjects covered by the profession.
“The visibility of role models is important. There aren’t enough students seeing what a job in an economics career looks like, and therefore they can’t visualise themselves in that type of role,” Murphy said, adding that many students did not realise an economics degree could open doors to?positions of power in business and politics.
UWA Business School dean Peter Robertson said the drop in economics enrolments had also contributed to a decline in economic literacy “affecting the quality of policy debate in Australia”.
As for what to do about it, UNSW economics professor Alberto Motta suggested more clearly communicating the benefits of studying economics and experimenting with new ways of teaching it. He and his colleagues at 悉尼新南威尔士大学 even created a multiplayer video game that could teach the entire introductory ECON1101 course and “eventually become a substitute for it”.
Motta also said the economics discipline could learn from the “amazing job” the STEM field had done in marketing its importance to broader society.
“One thing that universities have done too little of, and probably not as successfully as we should have, is to articulate how economic skills are employable,” he said.
“It’s possible that even if someone takes a high school course, they may not fully understand the breadth of jobs that economics can lead to.”
Separately, the paper sparked a stoush between Sydney Morning Herald economics editor Ross Gittins and Financial Review columnist Richard Holden. Gittins argued the field has become overly obsessed with mathematical modelling that bares little relationship to real world problems; Holden rejected that premise, saying economists always centre on real world problems and math is simply an appropriate tool for the task. (Not to start a pile on, but columnist John Roskam reckons Gittins is right on this one.)
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Direktor im Ruhestand | Bildung, Coaching, Blogging and Life Skills
4 天前The Australian Financial Review If education fails, good students are bored, start daydreaming or mentally prepare a good night party. Means, they cannot be reached, learning Curve close to Zero. Shortcut in clear words: Leave school or Uni, as you are wasting your time … or rather not? Depends, said the wise Owl. But why? The answer is obviously wired ..
Technical Business Analyst @ The Star Entertainment Group | Data Analysis, Technical Documentation
4 天前I have three things to add to this article: Economics students tend more often than not to be male, especially once you progress deep into your degree. This can make the university classroom environment feel like a bit of a boys’ club. In that regard, I think it suffers from the same fate as other STEM-related degrees such as Mathematics, Engineering, and Computer Science. I certainly felt this way when I was studying at university. Secondly, not many laypeople understand the difference between a Business degree majoring in Economics, and a plain Economics degree. To them, they are essentially one and the same. This can undermine the importance of studying an Economics degree. Lastly, not many universities actually offer an Economics degree. When I started in 2017, The University of Queensland was the only university in QLD to offer a Bachelor’s. As a result, visibility of this degree may be minimal.
Owner and Creative at Kōhine Creations
2 周Yes to Ross Gittins, it is overly dominated by maths with intuition and common sense being thrown out with the bath water. And you have to ask yourself whether our enquiring, socially aware rangatahi can even see themselves in economics any more? There is a cognitive dissonance between the caring world we live in with our friends and family, and the mantra of self interest and competition that now dominates the profession. Would I choose economics again? I really don’t know.
???? ???? Professor (Uni of Queensland, AU), CRIW of NBER, #Productivity #Efficiency #Economics #Statistics #Econometrics #HealthEcon #OperationsResearch #ManagementScience #MachineLearning #BigData #Healthcare
2 周Perhaps this is partly the result of the substantially lowered fees for math and some hard sciences and increased fees for economics passed a few years ago in Australia?
Professor of Economics and Head, Department of Accounting, Finance and Economics @ Griffith University
3 周Econ grads are well paid and can walk into jobs in NGOs, governments, and consultancies. It is a passport to a huge number of international jobs in leading organisations. Applied economics is not phylosophy, it is a scientific approach focused on understanding causality. If companies, NGOs and governments ever want to know if A leads to B, then they better hire an army of economists, or they’ll be flying blind and wasting their time and money.