A project to create a new core curriculum for economics was launched with a seminar at HM Treasury, attended by academics, policymakers, business leaders and students from around the world.
The CORE curriculum project at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School was created in response to widespread discontent among students, employers and university teachers, and is aimed at economics being taught "as if the last three decades had happened".
CORE stands for Curriculum Open-access Resources in Economics. The project provides a new approach to the design, content and way of teaching the core economics curriculum for undergraduates. The CORE project’s first task will be to deliver a pilot of a new first-year undergraduate 'Introduction to Economics' course, to be taught in participating universities during the 2014-2015 academic year.
The CORE project will produce open access online resources, including e-book course material for students with interactive content including diagrams, data and videos. It is being developed by an international team of academics under the leadership of Professor Wendy Carlin of the Department of Economics, University College London and visiting professor at INET Oxford, with technical support from Azim Premji University in Bangalore. The course materials, plus supporting teaching materials, will be available at no cost to participating institutions. Instructors will be free to adapt them to their local needs.
The CORE curriculum will equip students to understand how the economy has evolved and how it works by bringing advances in economics research over the past three decades, lessons from economic history and the comparative experience of different countries into the curriculum. Students will be encouraged to develop their ability to use economics for understanding problems that are important to them and for engaging with policy debates.