Assignments for a Writing-Intensive Economics Course.

An assessment of the undergraduate economics major commissioned by the Association of American Colleges (AAC) identifies the lack of writing assignments in intermediate theory and upper-level economics courses as a weakness. It suggests using the writing-across-the-curriculum approach to integrate more writing into these courses (Siegfried et al. 1991, 207 and 211). That assessment concludes that a “respectable” economics major program must include substantial writing, feedback on all writing assignments, and a synthesizing final project (Siegfried et al. 1991, 211 and 218). Reflecting these goals, recent articles describe efforts to incorporate more writing into economic courses and to assess the results of such changed pedagogic approaches on student performance (Hansen 1993; Cohen and Spencer 1993; Davidson and Gumnior 1993; Palmini 1996; McElroy 1997). Neither the AAC assessment nor these studies specify which types of writing assignments are better for helping undergraduate majors learn economic theories, models, and policies and for preparing them for the writing they will do in higher degree programs and future occupations. Without this information, writingintensive (WI) economics courses may include projects that improve student writing but do not enhance student knowledge of the discipline or prospects for successful careers any more than do traditional economics courses. Such an outcome thwarts the goals outlined in the AAC study and raises questions about the need to offer WI courses within the economics major. In this article, we present the results of a survey of alumni who majored in economics at Davidson College.1 The survey was designed to assess the value of the types of assigned writing in the college’s WI economics courses. Our goal was to discover which writing assignments best succeed in teaching students to write well, guiding them toward thinking like economists, and preparing them for their professional lives.