Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Aw, fuck.

"As registration begins, you might have some advisees who ask if ECON 180 is being offered in the fall.  We have created a new course, ECON 101 Economics of Social Issues*, that replaces ECON 180 beginning in the fall.  ECON 101 will satisfy the same general education requirement as ECON 180. We think the new course will be a greatly improved course for non-business majors over ECON 180.  This summer semester will be the last time ECON 180 is offered."
Great.  We're going from teaching the principles of how economics actually works through supply and demand to the unicorn farts and rainbows model that the speshul snowflakes wish was real.  

I don't know whether to ascribe this to active malice or active stupid.

*Emphasis is mine.

8 comments:

  1. I'd say either or both would be likely motivations.

    Thank God I'm long past college. I went back in the early 90's to get my teaching credential and I hated every second of it. My undergraduate years were fun, though.

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    Replies
    1. Demand for CPAs will be rising, because there will be no one who can do their own taxes.

      I am so incredibly angry about this that I could commit mayhem.

      Delete
  2. Hmm. I suppose it would be to much to hope that the syllabus had items like

    Why Rent Control is bad
    Why raising the minimum wage will cost jobs
    Why jobs disappear as more people go on EBT and other social programs
    Why college is a waste of money for most people and why public schools fail
    How politicians steal money from tax payers to buy votes from the welfare nation
    What will happen with the house of cards falls apart.
    Why treating minorities as Special hurts their ability to compete.
    Why the death of competition in public schools is bad for the world economy, and worse for ours.

    See - those would be good sections to cover on the Economics of Social Issues

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    Replies
    1. Thomas Sowell covers all of that in his book Basic Economics. I'm going to have my kids read it when they hit about fifteen or sixteen.

      Delete
  3. I would assume, that under "academic freedom," individual faculty are still permitted to strongly counsel students to take the real economics class.

    We have an on-line speech class here. I regularly get advisees who go, "I hate public speaking in front of people so I want to take the online version" and I go "Listen to what you just said. Don't you think you really need the in-person version, especially if you're seeking a career that will require you to at least occasionally speak publicly?"

    A lot of campuses, though, are sadly dumbing way down. We now have "general studies with concentration in X" so a student can effectively do a "lite" chemistry or "lite" math major, without the heavy-lifting classes. I don't expect those students to get jobs like the students who actually majored in for-real Chemistry or for-real Math will.

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    Replies
    1. Nope.

      Ironically enough, I ended the speech class more afraid of public speaking than I was going into the class. I didn't lose the fear until I stood up in front of my first composition class as a GTA--now, as long as it's a subject matter I have some knowledge in, I'm fine.

      Delete
  4. Oh. Wait. "Real" economics is apparently going away.

    Well, carry on, then. At least we still have p-chem and advanced calc and all the "heavy lifting" type classes, they're not being replaced by "Chemistry in Popular Culture: Breaking Bad" or "How Do You Feel About The Number 3."

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    Replies
    1. Yep. We have no real econ being taught in the general ed core classes after summer semester.

      Delete

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