Economics in Interdisciplinary Courses

Abstract

In order to learn something about the kinds of interdisciplinary courses containing some economics being offered, the methods of teaching these courses, and satisfaction with them, a survey was mailed to 218 departments of economics in randomly selected colleges and universities in the United States. Replies were received from 101 of the schools. It should be stressed that the answers to the surveys reflect the view of the respondent, and not necessarily those of the entire economics faculty or of departments which did not reply. Questions about enrollment size and about affiliation with either business administration or the social sciences were asked. Of the total respondents, 59 percent were associated with business administration and 41 percent with the social sciences. But the observed distribution indicates that far more schools of size 5,000-10,000 have departments of economics affiliated with the social sciences than would be expected, using a Chi Square test. For schools at either end of the enrollment size spectrum, the observed distribution is very close to the expected. The kinds of interdisciplinary courses being offered were divided into categories of double-numbered (those which are listed in two different departments and taught by only one faculty member), overview (those which contain material from several areas, but are taught by only one faculty member), team-taught (those which are taught by faculty members from more than one department), and informal participation courses (those in which a faculty member from outside the department in which the course is being offered is asked to participate several times during the term). Using a Chi Square test, a difference significant at the .01 level was found between the expected and the observed distribution of these courses. Business administration affiliated departments of economics offered more double-numbered courses than expected. The social science affiliated departments offered more of the team-taught and informal participation courses and less of the double-numbered than expected. No statistically significant difference was found in the number of kinds of courses offered by departments affiliated with business administration or with the social sciences. When schools were classified as small (enrollments under 5,000) and large (enrollments over 5,000), no statistically significant difference was found between the number of kinds of interdisciplinary courses offered by enrollment size. The last question on the survey stated: Do you feel your school is offering an adequate number of interdisciplinary courses which include some economics? If the respondent answered No, he or she was asked to indicate which of a number of possibilities are problems.