Sustaining Economics Education at Historically Black Colleges and Universities

The long-term supply of African-American economist is threatened by the latest national decline in enrollments in economics and the longer established decline in enrollments at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Recent research suggests that course content and pedagogy changes must be implemented to reverse these trends. However, since most of this research has been conducted in majority university environments, it is desirable to know if the reported successes can be duplicated in the HBCU environment which differs considerably because of mission, resource constraints, and diversity of student abilities. Improvements in the undergraduate economics curricula have the potential of increasing enrollments and the pool of graduates in these latter institutions, and thus contributing to the long-term supply of African-American economists. The overall objective of this proposal is to improve economics education at all HBCUs. The specific objectives are twofold: (1) to determine the current status of economics programs at HBCUs, and (2) to evaluate the effectiveness of an alternative teaching strategy in an HBCU environment. The first objective will be accomplished by conducting a survey of HBCUs with the primary purpose of determining instructional methods used, the use of computer technology in instruction, and other relevant curriculum content and pedagogy concerns. Secondly, to evaluate the effectiveness or computer assisted instruction (CAI) in improving student performance, understanding, and reception towards economics, introductory courses will be used to compare this methodology with the traditional lecture course. CAI is defined here to include various supplemental teaching techniques as well as micro-computer simulations and activities.