The Boom We Didn't Really Have: Australian Economics Degree Enrolments, 1990-2007

This paper revisits the matter of attracting students to study economics, an issue that faces every Australian university economics department. While the Australian economy has been in a boom phase for some period it has not led to a relative increase in economic degree enrolments for local universities. While some of the Go8 universities have seen a steady increase in economics degree enrolments between 1995 and 2007, the national picture, taken over a longer period, reveals that economic degree enrolments as a percentage of the overall student population is still falling. The paper concludes with the shy hope that, apart from improvement to the syllabus and teaching methodologies, the marked economic slowdown might elicit an increase in student interest in economics. The paper closes by suggesting that now might be an appropriate time for the regimen of the ideal economics degree offered by Australian universities to be re-examined. Copyright (c) 2009 The Economic Society of Australia.