Education is a scarce good

I think that learning is a noble pursuit, that I am privileged to help students learn, and that students are privileged to have the opportunity to learn. Here is some advice to help students make the most of their opportunity. Remember: people generally get out of an activity what they put into it.

You will learn more as you devote more time and effort to this class. Since education is not a free good, the cost of learning is not zero. The cost comes in many forms, some explicit and some implicit. The explicit costs include the tuition you pay and any subsidy that the government gives to the University. The implicit costs are the time and effort that you, the student, must devote to your classes. The rule of thumb is to spend three hours studying outside of class for every hour spent inside class. Completing an economics class successfully is unlikely without spending a considerable amount of your time and effort. If you limit your effort to only the time spent in the classroom, you will not learn much and the experience might be miserable.

“Read, read, read; write, write, write; think, think, think” is how a group of teachers summarized the goals of education. I believe that you will learn much and enjoy the class if you read, write, and think about the material on a regular and ongoing basis. This article from the NYT argues that your study time is more effective if you break it into several small sessions.

Preparing before class is crucial. I attempt to fill the time we have together with problems, exercises, discussion and debate; students without proper preparation will not be ready to learn because they will not be ready to participate meaningfully. Complete readings and assignments when they are due, not after.

Use the time we have together wisely. 

1. Bring questions to class about material we covered earlier that you don’t understand. 
2. Be ready to start on time, clickers, paper, notes, and pen or pencil out and ready to use. 
3. Take good notes: summarize the main points and outline the discussion. Writing down what you are seeing, hearing and thinking helps you remember.
4. Pay attention and avoid distractions. Contrary to some popular conceptions, your brain works better when it focuses on one activity at a time. Browsing the Internet and social media are distractions to your brain and the brains of the students seated near you. Contact the instructor if another student’s use of the computer distracts you.

Review and organize your notes the day you take them. Studies show that if you review and organize your notes within 24 hours of taking them you will retain 80% of the information for 8 weeks. A student who heard this remarked, "That's long enough."

Identify and learn the general principles used in the course as you study. Economics is more about the forest than it is about the trees. Learning why you followed a particular approach to solve a problem is usually more important than learning how to solve the problem; the problem is usually an example of a more general principle. The goal is to have you apply the principles and concepts to draw your own conclusions and to support them. “The theory of economics does not furnish a body of settled conclusions immediately applicable to policy. It is a method rather than a doctrine, an apparatus of the mind, a technique for thinking, which helps the possessor to draw correct conclusions” (John Maynard Keynes).