College economics classes - how useful are they? | Hacker News Reader

College economics classes - how useful are they?

5 pointsdwong11 comments

I'm a college student who's debating the value of college economics classes. I didn't like the AP economics class I took in high school. It seemed too idealized and non-applicable.

I'm wondering what you guys think about the value of economics classes in college, especially for pursuits related to entrepreneurship. If it matters, I'm attending a top 10 school.

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You'll get some subject matter information from the teacher that you'll be required to barf back on an exam. That's useless (as is almost every subject matter I studied in college/law school, in my experience. Statistics, a philosophy course in symbolic logic, and calculus excluded.)

What you gain (if you're lucky) is the meta-lesson of how to think like an economist. Meaning that you'll understand the reasoning methodologies. This will give you an ability to understand real life in ways that mere mortals cannot/do not. I can't say whether "thinking like an economist" is better or worse. But it will give you perspective and an understanding of how large groups of people behave.

Same deal with law school, in my experience. They teach you to think like a laywer. That's the useful part. Hint: If you are trying to figure out an answer, spend your time working out the correct question to ask. Then the answer comes almost trivially.

Second hint: law is binary. The answer is either "yes" or "no". Phrase your question to elicit an answer that is "yes" or "no".

I'm sure the same holds true for engineering and other disciplines. Yeah sure you'll learn some "stuff" but more important you'll learn how to ask a question and solve a problem.

I haven't looked at khanacademy.org's economics stuff. But I'll bet you won't learn the meta-skills there.

Go take the class. And demand a lot out of your professor.

(Disclaimer: econ major in college.)

It will similar to your high school class in terms of being idealized and non-applicable.

I think they are interesting courses to take and there are some great conceptual takeaways. I'm not sure how valuable for entrepreneurship economics would be. I would personally go for microeconomics for it's applicability to business. However, macroeconomics is still interesting in a broader (even political and global) sense though.

I don't know what you'd be taking as an alternative to economics, but I don't see why you wouldn't take them. I took both macro and micro in college. I enjoyed the courses and found them useful. As philphodgen pointed out... what you will gain from taking the course is the ability to think like an economist.

It is true that modern Economics is not just too idealized but also too mathematical. Economics has math envy toward Physics so they mimic the supposed "rigor" of mathematical analysis to give it a veneer of precision and respectability. That said, there are crucial principles you probably should know (Supply and Demand, Division of Labor, Comparative Advantage, etc). The college classes may be better than your HS AP course as it depends on the teacher more than anything. The intro classes tend to avoid the more advanced and abstract and do try to tie it to real life examples, especially Micro-Economics.

I don't know if I would call it envy. It's an attempt to try and model human behavior - as (ir)rational as it may be. Using math to try and get a better understanding seems like a pretty good idea. No model is perfect, but they constantly try to adjust.

This is the exact rationale and hope in the field but it a false hope. I'm not opposed to using math but as your comment implies, humans are not atoms or particles like in Physics and the subject requires different methods than the physical sciences. Economics is more closely allied with the methods of Psychology or Ethics, identifying and validating basic principles such as the examples I mentioned which require no math to understand. The proof of these principles are validated via logic and observation of human action not mathematical proofs. This methodology was dismissed as non-scientific early last century and, in the context at the time with very successful mathematical Physics, the mathematical economists took over the profession to counter the charges of not really being a science since there was no math equations.

I think taking an engineering economics class would be incredibly useful (something like: http://ardent.mit.edu/real_options/ROcse_CMI_latest/index.ht...). I'm a fan of the Austrian school of economics (Rothbard, Menger, Mises, Hayek), but micro/macro are good classes to see how to address complex system analysis - though it may be the wrong approach.

Joel Spolsky has a reputation as a programmer, blogger, and entrepreneur. His recommendation of microeconomics

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CollegeAdvice.html

is striking for its clarity and strength.

excellent article!

I would say take statistic's classes and read some econ books on the side. Also from my personal experience I found micro to be much more engaging and applicable. This is all my personal opinion of course.

you can meet loads of high-fliers on their way up and tag along for the ride

not much , khanacademy.org has a bunch.

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