Economic Literacy

UM Economic Literacy

What do UM students really know about Economics? is a question I've always wanted to answer since Economics plays an important role in everyone's life because we all are confronted daily with economic issues related to topics such as inflation, unemployment, economic growth, federal budget deficits, taxes, government spending and many others in different ways, mainly through news media by reading newspapers or by watching the news, but do college students really understand what each of this topics mean and how they affect the American economy? I think the answer is definitely in Economics education because they first need to study and understand the economy theory in order to apply it into real life and to be able to identify and describe the various economics phenomena that happen around them.

According to the national survey that was conducted by the National Center for Research in Economics Education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1992, most American college students know very little about economics. This conclusion made me reflect on our society, taking into account that students are the future of this country and at least basic knowledge about economics is necessary to improve the quality of their lives and make American economy grow. Therefore, this study has encouraged me to conduct my own survey at the University of Miami, specifically to the students from the school of business to find out if that conclusion also applies to UM.

My study had three main objectives. First, it assessed the economic knowledge of UM students from the School of Business about basic economic topics that arise in discussions of the national economy and economic events and which are related to the economy theory, making students differentiate aspects of Microeconomics from the ones that belong to Macroeconomics. Second, it measured the importance that UM business students give to each of those aspects by ranking them from 1 (the most important) to 5 (the less important) according to their knowledge. The third objective is to evaluate economic education.

The study survey I present in this paper is based on a sample of 40 students who belong to the school of business. Students were asked two main questions. The first one was to write down a list of five main topics that are part of Microeconomics ranking them