Owen, who is a former Federal Reserve economist, says, "One of the reasons we undertook this study is that choosing or rather not choosing economics as a major affects career choice and that affects subsequent compensation."
The study included approximately 2,000 students from 34 liberal arts colleges. Previous studies have focused on a female student's decision to become an economics major. While Jensen and Owen examined this decision, they also focused on factors that encourage and discourage female students continuing in economics courses.
" Women undergraduates are less likely to take introductory economics classes, less likely to continue in economics after the first class, and less likely to major in economics then their male counterparts," says Owen. "Although these gender differences are well documented, the reasons behind this are less well understood, and, as women economists, this concerns us."
Warm-up activities at the beginning of the semester, devoting a large percentage of class time to group problem solving, and counting exams as a smaller portion of the final grade all help encourage female economic students. Surprisingly, the inclusion of topics traditionally considered of interest to women encouraged students of both sexes, while class size and the percentage of female students in the class did not directly affect female students' decision to continue studying economics.
According to Owen, "There are things that we, as economics professors, can do to encourage women to take economics classes. Many of the factors that we have found to be advantageous to women students prove beneficial to male students as well."
Jensen and Owen's findings reveal that students who receive high economics grades relative to their GPAs, who are confident of their ability to understand economics, and who believe that economics is important to their careers are more likely to continue studying economics.
