Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Prerequisites

I am slated to teach Economics of Organizations this fall.  Though I put in a proposal to make it a permanent course, at the moment it is still being offered as a special topics class.  Last time around I had the impression the listing that way  limited enrollments.  I ended up with 17 students.  For the fall class I currently have 23 registered.  When I previously looked at the roster, in the spring, I only had 13.  So I'm glad to see it filling up.  But for some of the students, I'm wondering why they are there.

I copied the detailed roster from Banner and pasted into Excel.  Then I washed out all the information that identifies the student and kept only major, minor, and class.  Most are Econ majors.  But a few are not.  (See below.)  Should I care?

In one sense, I really don't, but the Econ department might.  An offering such as this is intended for majors in the department so that have a rich variety of courses from which to choose.  It is not meant as a service offering for students from other departments.  But, given that there are still empty seats, it really should be open to anyone who is interested. 

I do want students with adequate preparation (already have taken intermediate microeconomics) and who can do the math.  One can't infer precisely on those prerequisites from the major, but one can make some guesses about it. 

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