For a Higher Education

In Becker (1997), I called attention to economists' lack of interest in the teaching of economics and the plunging number of majors in economics within the United States. Six years later I reported on the growth in economists' interest in the teaching of economics and an apparent turnaround in the number of majors (Becker, 2003). For instance, when economics degrees were at a relative high of 2.13 percent of all U.S. Bachelor's degrees awarded in 1988, only a couple of sessions at Allied Social Science Associations meetings were devoted to the teaching of economics. At the low point for economics degrees in 1996, there were six ASSA sessions devoted to teaching economics, with an explosion to 16 such sessions by 2002. The mistaken notions that there are no incentives for teaching and that teaching does not matter in a student's choice of a course of study were refuted by the revealed preferences of academic economists at these ASSA meetings, where attendance in these higher numbers of sessions on teaching economics were also among the highest of all sessions. Economists apparently recognized that their teaching is one of the few policy levers they controlled, but that does not necessarily imply that they have learned what is required for good teaching (Becker and Watts, 1996; 2001), or what should be taught. In this article I primarily address the latter (content) with passing reference to the former (teaching methods). In essence, in this article I synthesize my articles in the Chronicle of For some time within the United States there has been a move to impose standards on high school subjects, including expectations of students passing literacy tests in economics for high school graduation (Siegfried and Meszaros, 1998). But these standards for literacy can also be seen in the teaching of economics at post-secondary levels (Hansen, Salemi and Siegfried, 2002). At both the high school and post-secondary levels, the goal is to enable students to use basic concepts (opportunity cost, comparative advantage, demand and supply, marginal comparisons, etc.) in diverse situations as the mark of being literate in economics. It is believed that having students learn to use a few