{"id":8072,"date":"2020-11-24T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-11-24T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.economicsobservatory.com\/question\/what-do-economics-students-see-todays-biggest-challenges"},"modified":"2021-03-24T12:51:03","modified_gmt":"2021-03-24T12:51:03","slug":"what-do-economics-students-see-todays-biggest-challenges","status":"publish","type":"question","link":"https:\/\/www.economicsobservatory.com\/test\/what-do-economics-students-see-todays-biggest-challenges","title":{"rendered":"What do economics students see as today\u2019s biggest challenges?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The new cohort of first\u2013year economics undergraduates is having an initial university experience<\/a> unlike any other. Many students have had online classes exclusively, while others have had \u2018blended\u2019 teaching where some small classes still occur in person, but none will have sat in a lecture theatre packed with hundreds of their peers.<\/p>\n

They are also studying economics as the Covid-19 crisis develops in real time. In this respect, they are not dissimilar to the young people who came to the subject during the 2008\/09 global financial crisis \u2013 an event that led to an increase in applications<\/a> for places. Yet, many were left disillusioned by the content of their degree<\/a>, which they felt offered little explanation or even mention of the dramatic economic events that featured daily on the news.<\/p>\n

The emergence of a student movement for change led to a great deal of soul searching<\/a> in the discipline of economics and, consequently, to the creation of a new, freely available first-year undergraduate course \u2013 CORE<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Led by Wendy Carlin (University College London) and Sam Bowles (Santa Fe Institute), CORE, which celebrated its seventh anniversary last\u00a0week, pushes critical issues such as climate change, injustice, innovation and the future of work to the foreground, and teaches economic tools as a way to address these challenges.<\/p>\n

To \u2018check the pulse\u2019 of the issues that matter most to economics undergraduates, since 2016 the CORE team has asked first-year university economics students across the globe to answer (in a single word or short phrase) the following question: \u2018What is the most pressing problem economists today should be addressing?\u2019<\/p>\n

The word cloud below summarises this year\u2019s responses, collected from approximately 3,500 students in 17 universities across eight countries.<\/p>\n

\"Word<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, the term Covid-19 features prominently this year. The word cloud captures all mentions, including those accompanied by terms such as \u2018implications\u2019, \u2018recession\u2019 and \u2018recovery\u2019. Indeed, the pandemic has not only interrupted this cohort\u2019s education but also increased uncertainty about their future employment prospects.<\/p>\n