Teaching the Greek financial crisis in an introductory macroeconomics course: university students' perceptions

Abstract

The same survey of a self-administered questionnaire was handed out to introductory macroeconomics students in Spring 2014 and Spring 2015 at the University of Macedonia in Greece, to determine students' perceptions of how including the Greek financial crisis (GFC) in the teaching of introductory macroeconomics benefits students. The methodology of the survey is quantitative in nature based on descriptive statistics and t-tests were carried out for each variable of interest. The research questions under examination are: 1) Did the incorporation of the GFC in the teaching of introductory macroeconomies influence university students' perceptions about the course?; 2) Did the evaluations of the course by the two cohorts of students change as the crisis intensifies in a statistically significant manner? The innovation of the study is determining students' perceptions of the value of incorporating the GFC in the teaching of macroeconomics and the statistical evaluation of responses of two cohorts of students as the crisis intensifies. Overall, students evaluated positively the incorporation of the GFC in their learning in the introductory macroeconomics course. From 2014 to 2015, the student level of understanding of the GFC incorporated in the teaching of introductory economics increases. Nevertheless, students are not interested in employment as economists.