Increased pressure from numerous sources for more accountability in higher education has caused many economics departments to develop assessment plans. This paper discusses a set of principles for programmatic assessment gleaned from the professional assessment literature, demonstrates one department’s journey to develop an assessment of student learning outcomes based on Hansen’s proficiencies, and puts both in context of data from a national survey of department chairs conducted in Fall 2007. Our survey results suggest strong confirmation for the Hansen proficiencies in the discipline and identify some broader learning outcomes as well. Acknowledgements This paper has benefited from the comments of Bill Goffe, Lee Hansen and various anonymous reviewers from the CEE selection committee and JEE. It is for presentation to the AEA session on Research on Undergraduate Economics Courses and Majors sponsored by the CEE, ASSA Annual Meeting, New Orleans, January 4 (10:15 am). We owe a debt of gratitude to Lee Hansen for his vision and his advice. Responsibilities within are all ours.

involvement in the design or teaching of the course described in this paper. He also thanks Gillis Maclean for comments on an earlier draft. SCHUMPETER’S “VISION ” AND THE TEACHING OF PRINCIPLES OF ECONOMICS Sixty years ago, Schumpeter’s Presidential Address to the American Economic Association discussed the “pre-scientific vision ” underlying the research of individual economists. This paper argues that a similar concept can be applied to different students studying economics. Resource students at a New Zealand university, obliged to take an introductory principles course designed primarily for commerce students, experienced significantly poorer outcomes than their commerce counterparts. Inspired by Schumpeter’s concept, a new course motivated the resource students to engage with the subject by paying careful attention to their concerns and interests. The result was a measurable improvement in the class’s relative performance.

Key Words teaching, statistical education, cases, statistical writing

*Address all correspondence to Scott Simkins. While much has recently been written about the overall effectiveness of economic education in the U.S. (see Becker, 1997, e.g.), very little systematic research has been done on the economic education of African Americans at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). This paper takes a step toward improving the understanding of economic education at HBCUs by examining the learning outcomes of students – as measured by pre- and post-testing – in a Principles of Macroeconomics course from a representative HBCU and comparing them to those of students from a comparable Traditionally White College and University (TWCU). We find that while students at the HBCU start the course with a lower level of economics knowledge, by the end of the course they perform similarly to the students at the TWCU. That is, students at the HBCU exhibit more value added to their stock of economic knowledge. We thank Terry Seaks and 1999 NEA/ASSA paper session participants for helpful comments and suggestions. We also thank Nikkita Mitchell, Will Black and Karen Blackwell for valuable assistance in organizing the data for this study. Student Learning in the Principles of Economics Course

ABSTRACT: This paper presents an overview to the study and practice of economics, and (by necessity) it presents a personal take on the teaching of economics, and on the student evaluation of the teaching of economics. The material in this paper has been assembled with the purpose of presenting a coherent perspective on each of these matters to students (regardless of major) so that they may make more informed choices about program and career. JEL CLASSIFICATION CODES: A2 and B4. 1.

"What is the best way to teach introductory economics?" Academic economists have debated this question for at least fifty years (American Economic Association, 1950). Invariably the discussion revolves around the traditional Principles of Economics course sequence taught to Freshman and Sophomores by a majority of American colleges and universities. More than one million students enroll in the Principles of Economics every year (Siegfried, et. al., 1991) and several Principles of Economics textbooks have sold millions of copies through numerous editions published over several decades. Given their large audience and their long-term publishing success, it would seem reasonable to assume that academic economists must know what to teach and how to effectively deliver their ideas. However, even after years of professional discourse,

Abstract: Several game-theoretical lab experiments helped establish the belief that economists are more selfish than non-economists. Since differences in behaviour between experiment participants who are students of economics and those who are not may be observed among junior students as well, it is nowadays widely believed that the origin of the greater selfishness is not the training they undergo, but selfselection. In other words, selfish people voluntarily enrol in economics. Yet, I argue that such explanation is unsatisfactory for several reasons. I also suggest alternative explanations for the observed differences, which have been so far unduly disregarded.