Determinants of Student Retention of Microeconomic Concepts

In this study, we examine a variety of individual, institutional, and course-specific factors that influence students' retention of concepts from the microeconomics principles course. Students in 15 upper-division courses in the SUNY-Oswego economics department completed a survey instrument and the TUCE exam at the beginning of the Spring 1999 semester. A regression analysis is used to examine the effect of principles course characteristics on student recall (as measured by TUCE score), controlling for student demographic and ability characteristics. Among the factors examined are the impacts of large-class instruction, writing-intensive curricular, and the time interval since the completion of the principles course. The results suggest that students who have completed a writing-intensive introductory microeconomics course perform significantly less well on the TUCE exam at the start of their upper-division courses than do students who participated in classes that relied on multiple-choice examinations.TUCE; class size; writing requirements; economic education; student performance; multiple choice exams