Topics include the role of government in a market economy, and the principles and effects of government spending, taxation, and deficit financing. The purpose of the course is to make the student an effective consumer and producer of empirical research, with an emphasis on the intuitive understanding of empirical work and the application of statistical principles to research. Topics include statistical analysis, the presentation and interpretation of data, theory of probability and basic sampling distributions, and statistical inference, including principles of estimation and tests of hypotheses. In these courses, students will be tasked with research and writing projects, all supervised by professors. All work is categorized by fields in the discipline and supervised by professors according to their areas of expertise.
All work is graded by supervising professors.
Students will enroll in a number of credit hours on an elective basis so that they may pursue more deeply their individual interests, and all students will serve some time in a semester as fellows tasked with conducting whatever research the department's research director requires. Whenever practical, students will conduct research for entities and individuals outside the college who request it, and all research will be made available to the general public via the internet. This course will introduce students to the often-conflicting ethical dimensions of contemporary public policy issues. Topics of study will be drawn from the most current public policy debates, including issues such as gun control, school choice, abortion, health care, etc. Students in this course will study the impact of relevant education policy-making bodies such as local school boards, state and federal agencies of education, on current issues of education policy, including school violence, multiculturalism, gender equity, and school choice, among others.