Yale professor Richard Ruggles gave a great deal of thought to the organization of undergraduate and graduate instruction in economics. For a special issue of Challenge magazine dedicated to the question of improving economic literacy in society published in 1964, Ruggles contributed the following short essay on the difficulties of offering a single principles of economics course to meet the needs of very different publics compounded by the incentives that lead instructors to teach as though every student’s ultimate goal was to become an academic research economist. Plot-spoiler: one size does not fit all.
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On graduate training in economics.
Ruggles’ Yale conference, 1955.
During the fall and early winter of 1954-55, Richard Ruggles and colleagues in the Yale economics department organized a series of interviews with representatives of business, government, international organizations, and universities to review the ultimate goals of a graduate education in economics and to identify future desirable directions the evolution of economics training might take. The interviews were followed by panel discussions in the Spring of 1955 attended by, among others, seven future economics Nobel prize winners.
GRADUATE TRAINING IN ECONOMICS,
A Report on Panel Discussions at Yale, 1956.
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TEACHING COLLEGE ECONOMICS
By Richard Ruggles
There is a wide divergence of opinion on what subject matter should be emphasized in the elementary college economics course. Some argue that its primary function should be to improve the student’s ability to be an intelligent citizen; others feel that the basic economics course should be handled as part of the general cultural background offered in a liberal arts college. A third view is that freshmen economics is basically a useful background subject for those entering business, law and engineering. And, finally, there are those who feel that introductory economics should be taught as a professional discipline. RICHARD RUGGLES, Professor of Economics at Yale University, examines the different approaches to the teaching of college economics, as well as the equally thorny problem of teaching materials.
The teaching of economics to college undergraduates is viewed with considerable uneasiness by both students and teachers. Many of the students find themselves in the difficult position of arbitrating between the ideas they hear in the classroom and those which are established doctrine in the minds of their parents. Others find the subject dull and uninspired, full of abstractions and generalizations which do not appear to match the reality around them. The teachers, on the other hand, are plagued by the multitude of purposes which the teaching of economics is supposed to serve. Disagreements among faculty members about the major purpose of economics teaching are often responsible for considerable acrimony.
First, there are those who believe that the primary function of economics training is to improve the student’s ability to function as a citizen and an individual. Proponents of this view point out that the level of economic literacy in the nation is very low. Neither voters nor legislators generally understand the basic problems involved in economic policy making. But, it is argued, if the next generation is properly trained, economic policy will improve. While the obvious irrationality of economic decision making at the national level propels many teachers of economics to concentrate on this aspect of economic education, others, who do not feel the frustration of economic events as acutely, place more emphasis on the individual aspects of economics training for citizenship. They may give priority to instruction which will help the student spend his money wisely, invest, and cope with financial problems he may encounter.
A second view of economic education considers economics as an integral part of the general education which should be given to all students attending a liberal arts college. The basic economics course is viewed as a cultural subject much like survey courses in literature, music, history and science. For such a purpose it is appropriate to paint with a broad brush, providing a survey course which is related to other subjects but also has its own individual stamp as a separate discipline. In the more extreme cases, economics may be submerged in a general course which treats the behavioral sciences as a group, or it may be combined with political science or history.
A third point of view presents the argument that economics is basically a tool subject, useful as a background for students who are intending to go into business, law or engineering. Economics in this role serves the same function as biology is supposed to serve for pre-med students. Economics is also viewed as useful for students in related disciplines such as history and political science. From this point of view, the major function of economics teaching is to provide needed service courses for students who are primarily concerned with other professions and disciplines. Emphasis is therefore placed on providing information on how the economy functions in terms of its institutions and government regulations. Finally, there are always a number of staff members who feel that economics should be kept pure and untainted. From this point of view, economics is a professional discipline with a body of rigorous theory which must be mastered if one is to enjoy the essence of the subject. Abstractions are not necessarily the means to this end; they are in large part the heart of the subject. Since the proponents of this view consider that it is the integrity of the discipline which is at stake, they often put up strong resistance to the service concept of economics, and even object to the presentation of institutional material or to any orientation of an applied nature. Instead attention is focused on the type of material which a Ph.D. candidate in economics is expected to master.
The content of economics as taught to undergraduates reflects these divergent objectives. The major exposure of college students to economics comes, of course, in the basic elementary course. Typically, 50 to 75 per cent of undergraduates take the elementary course in economics. No more than 10 to 15 per cent of these become economics majors. And no more than two to three per cent of economics majors go on to graduate training in economics. Thus the number of potential professional economists is a very minute percentage of those taking the elementary course, yet in many ways at many institutions the course is created for these few. At the major universities which offer graduate training in economics, the elementary course is often taught by graduate assistants. These graduate assistants are aspiring to be professional economists, and they have a tendency to wish that their students shared these aspirations. In fact, the pride and joy of a teacher is a student who wishes to be just like that teacher, and in a profession where theory, abstraction and a high degree of specialization are status symbols, the results for the teaching curriculum are obvious. The energy and enthusiasm of graduate assistants is often very great, and they are anxious to impart to the students the full kit of abstract tools which they themselves have so recently mastered. The course must also serve all the other purposes.
It must present a wide range of contemporary economic policy issues and information about major economic institutions. It must provide a comprehensive survey of economics for that large body of undergraduates who will never take any more courses in the area. It must also equip the student who expects to major in the field of economics with the tools he will need for more advanced courses. In most institutions the elementary course is a prerequisite for all other courses in economics, and it is expected that higher level courses will build on the foundation of the elementary course. The result of all of these pressures is to produce a jumbled polyglot of topics which are jammed into an incredibly short span of time. The major benefactors of these basic courses are those who teach them, since they are forced to master and digest an enormous amount of material before they can present it. In fact, a graduate student’s training is not complete until he has taught the elementary course.
At institutions which do not have graduate students, elementary economics may be quite a different subject. The content of the course will depend a great deal upon the individual teacher. Where the course is taught by someone just out of graduate school, he will tend to behave like his recent colleagues, the graduate assistants, and in these cases he will face many of the same problems. In some institutions, however, the course may revolve around such practical matters as how the stock market operates and the problems of family finance. In other instances, the elementary course may be a propaganda piece on how well the free enterprise system operates and how all problems would be solved if we left everything to the invisible hand as described by Adam Smith.
Economics courses beyond the elementary level at almost all schools are generally considered the domain of senior faculty members, whether or not they are equipped to teach them. Every professor regards the course he teaches as his own private property and does not take kindly to suggestions by his colleagues. Rightly or wrongly, he considers himself the authority on the subject he teaches. If, for any reason, the course must be taught by someone else, as for instance when the regular teacher goes on leave, it is usually found that the same course differs considerably in scope, orientation and content.
Thus, for example, a course on money and banking taught by one instructor may cover a body of material on banking institutions, banking practices, problems of credit, and the money supply. Another instructor teaching the same course may disregard such material entirely and cover instead problems of employment, prices and output, with heavy accent on fiscal policy and income analysis. As a result, it is often necessary to supply the name of the instructor as well as the name of the course in order to understand what training a student has had.
Teaching materials probably play an even more important role in economic education than do teachers. Many students can educate themselves if they are assigned good texts and readings, even though their teachers are mediocre or poor, but it is difficult for even the best teacher to provide a good course in the absence of good teaching materials.
Unfortunately, teaching materials are normally produced as a by product of academic life, with a mere fraction of the total resources devoted to the educational process. In a course of 20 or 30 students, instructional costs amount to about $100 to $200 per student, but the total cost of teaching materials will rarely be more than $10 to $20 — and most of that goes to the paper and printing industries, not to the more intellectual factors of production. Authors usually receive 10 to 15 per cent of the total amount spent on teaching materials, or approximately one per cent of the total teaching cost for the course as a whole. The preparation of teaching materials, furthermore, is never considered a full-time job. There is a mass of material produced, but most of it is developed on the side a kind of moonlighting activity. The fact that textbook writing often attracts the best talent in the profession is due to the existence of relatively high returns for those few who can turn out successful texts. But even the best talents could do a much better job if textbook writing were not just a spare-time activity.
Textbooks, like platforms of political parties try to be all things to all people. They are designed to cover a multitude of purposes, and try to echo the most widely accepted doctrines in a manner that will offend no one. Teachers are supposed to pick and choose what they want to use, rearranging and adding. The resulting mixture is often an ill-adapted set of disjointed and heterogeneous readings, and much of the potentiality for a consistent and cumulative body of teaching material is lost. In some fields, notably physics and mathematics, there are indications that the profession is sufficiently concerned about this problem to provide an organized effort to improve the quality of teaching materials. In economics, however, the development of teaching materials still depends upon the invisible hand.
It is quite possible that a different mix of the factors of production and some innovations in the teaching process could be introduced which would greatly improve teaching effectiveness and provide a greater feedback in terms of the advancement of the subject itself. At the present time, it is not feasible for textbook writers to undertake major efforts to fill in gaps in knowledge. Economics texts rely heavily on causal empiricism and reasoning by analogy; their major effort is devoted to organizing and presenting existing knowledge. But the preparation of good teaching materials should involve devoting substantial resources to those problem areas to which adequate attention has not yet been given.
The dynamic factors which economics relies upon to explain productivity growth in other sectors of the economy, such as specialization, division of labor and the development of new techniques, are all sadly lacking in the preparation of the discipline’s own teaching materials, and production is essentially still a handicraft process.
There is no obvious solution to this problem, but one thing is certain: the present industrial organization of the teaching profession does not readily foster the kinds of approaches which are capable of yielding a solution.
It is very difficult to evaluate the impact of college level economics courses. In terms of the prevailing views on major economic policies, it would appear that the economic and political temper of the times is a more important factor than the level of intellectual enlightenment. A recession accompanied by substantial unemployment or a major threat to a nation’s security will be quite effective in making both voters and legislators doubt the validity and meaningfulness of traditional balanced budget precepts. But in a prosperous peacetime economy, these doubts evaporate, and college graduates who once were exposed to economics but who are now a part of the business community echo the “sound” doctrines around them, despite the fact that such doctrines would result in slower growth, smaller profits and future recessions.
Despite the obvious shortcomings of confused objectives and inadequate resources devoted to the preparation of teaching materials, economic education nevertheless does progress. Much of this progress is due to the development of the subject itself. From this point of view the future holds considerable promise.
With the introduction of electronic data processing and the development of statistical techniques, economists are now able to formulate and test hypotheses in a manner which has not heretofore been possible. Up to now economics has been an armchair discipline, depending mainly on logical reasoning and causal empiricism. Perhaps in the near future it can evolve into the social science it claims to be. Then and only then can the teaching of economics reach its true potential.
Source: U.S. Congress. Joint Economic Committee. Subcommittee on Economic Progress. Economic Education: Hearings before the Subcommittee on Economic Progress of the Joint Economic Committee Congress of the United States vol. 2, Selected Materials (1967),pp. 231-234. Originally published in Challenge (Special Issue “Economic Literacy in a Free Society”, March 1964).
Image Source: Richard Ruggles, noted economic statistician, dies. Yale Bulletin & Calendar Vol. 29, No. 23 (March 23, 2001). Image smoothed using AI.