Issue 17, Fall 1999

William A. McEachern, Editor

The Evidence File
TWO-YEAR COLLEGES

Because two-year colleges typically do not have departments of economics, I did a small study of the Web pages in Connecticut to see what they have to offer. Connecticut is home to two private two-year colleges, Mitchell and Mount Sacred Heart; neither college has a Web site. This seems like a lost opportunity.

Connecticut also has a dozen public two-year colleges under a common chancellor. Each has a Web site, but the similarity ends there. There is no better example of the diversity in the approach to the Internet than these dozen colleges. One of them, Capital in Hartford, offers descriptions of its economic courses along with extensive Web links to economic resources on the Internet. But several institutions provide no information about economics other than the fact that they do offer courses in the subject.

OVER-THE-TOP COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

In my virtual tour, I read a number of course descriptions. Make sure course descriptions can be reasonably understood by students contemplating course selections. As an example of what not to do, here is a description for a macro principles course I came across: "Topics include the pricing system as an allocation model, the internal dynamic of the business cycle, the effects of capital deepening and technology on productivity and real wages..." This description may resonate with someone who already studied some economics, but I count a half dozen terms that would be unfamiliar to most students considering the course.

* "Economic systems are not value-free columns of numbers based on rules of reason, but ways of expressing what varying societies believe is important."
-- Gloria Steinem

* "Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know."
-- Daniel Boorstin

* "Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence."
-- Robert Frost

* "Education should have two objects: first, to give definite knowledge, reading and writing, language and mathematics, and so on; secondly, to create those mental habits that will enable people to acquire knowledge and form sound judgments for themselves."
-- Bertrand Russell

* "The aim of all education is, or should be, to teach people to educate themselves."
-- Arnold Toynbee

* "Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance."
- - Samuel Johnson

* "All economics is micro."
-- Peggy Noonan

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