|
Hi, I need some help with a course in labor economics. I was asked to teach it last year at the last minute and struggled through the semester. Now that I have some time and experience with the course, I want to plan the course much more carefully for next fall. Based on your feedback, I intend to finish planning the course enough to order textbooks at the end of this month. As one of only two labor economics courses taught at the university, the course is an introductory graduate course with no prerequisites. (The other course is undergraduate, mainly for econ majors.) Last year, 16 of the 21 students were in a graduate program in Labor Relations and Human Resources, for either a certificate or master’s degree. Although some of them worked for unions, the large majority either already worked in personnel offices or planned to do so. In the entire class, 5 had no previous economics, one (from Nigeria) had a single course in Marxist economic thought, and the rest had varying levels of preparation, ranging from a single introductory survey course to an economics major with about six previous econ courses. Even the students with substantial economics coursework did not seem to have very strong backgrounds. For example, for a class on general critiques of neoclassical economics, I had some students read Joan Robinson’s 1971 Monthly Review article summarizing the Cambridge controversies for a non-economist audience. One student, with a bachelor’s degree in business and courses in micro and macro, complained that the article was way over her head. Based on such experience, I think I must count on no prior knowledge. As one of only two courses on labor econ, and as a graduate course, I think this course has an ethical obligation to cover certain concepts. Therefore, last year the course used a standard textbook, two supplemental texts, and various readings. The textbook was Kaufman and Hotchkiss’ The Economics of Labor Markets, and the supplements were The State of Working America, 2008/2009 (by Mishel, Bernstein, and Shierholz) and Albelda, Drago, and Shulman’s Unlevel Playing Fields published by D&S. I chose Kaufman because my colleague who taught the course before me (a radical economist with a PhD from UMass Amherst) recommended it largely on the grounds that it treats institutional economics with respect. After using the book for a semester, I see his point but think the drawbacks are too severe. Out of almost 800 pages, fewer than 50 cover institutional economics, and it presumes students already know things like monopolist pricing. Now I’m inclined instead to use Modern Labor Economics by Ehrenberg and Smith because its authors claim they use it successfully for a graduate course with no prerequisites. Its main drawback is its sole focus on neoclassical economics. Based on my experience last year, when I did not require students to do homework other than read the textbook, I think students have to work through the math and graphs in order to understand the neoclassical stuff. The price for both the textbook and study guide with problem sets is $180, and this limits how much more I can ask students either to buy or to read. The book by Albelda, et al. is a good counterpoint to most labor econ texts and about the right level for this class, but its main focus is labor market discrimination. It also treats the difference between neoclassical economics and political economy as one of different world views, whereas I’d much prefer a strong critique of neoclassical labor econ. Partly because of this, I’m thinking of using the new Real World Labor, which has much broader scope. A major shortcoming is its lack of anything resembling a systematic theoretical alternative. Last year, to give the class some sense of institutional economics as a systematic approach, I had them read an article by Hodgson (“The Approach of Institutional Economics”), and this year I’m toying with the idea of adding selections from the first several chapters of David Harvey’s The Limits to Capital. Although the ideas are not simple, you’d be hard pressed to find a more clear exposition of the basic concepts of Marxian political economy for someone without prior exposure. Also, the sections on such things as the subsistence wage or heterogeneous labor power are very relevant. I like The State of Working America very much, although it too lacks an explicit, systematic theoretical framework. Without this, the book sometimes reads as an ad hoc, disconnected collection of empirical facts. This is not so bad in itself, but to learn this stuff it helps to have a more systematic scaffold on which to hang it. Last year I built the course around what I thought was a good idea, but it backfired. The publishers of The State of Working America have affiliates who publish similar reports for individual states. The last one for Rhode Island had been done a few years ago, so I had the class work on a collective project to update and extend the last report. The class was very excited about publishing something like this, but the exercise turned out to be a bit of a disaster because many of the students simply did not have the academic skills (grammar, knowing how to cite, working with data, etc.) to write a collective report of publishable quality in one semester. When I pushed them to write better, one student complained “this is not a course in writing.” (The same student later plagiarized the take-home final, and before I would agree to allow her to retake the exam in lieu of disciplinary action, I insisted that she read Deirdre McCloskey’s essay, “Writing is Thinking.”) Furthermore, some students never finished their work, and this screwed others in the group who were relying on them. For next year, I’m not sure what, if anything, I’d substitute for this class project. I do think I might cut back on several topics in order to cover others more slowly, in more depth, and with more explicit consideration of alternative perspectives. The only thing that I feel I have to cover are topics directly related to labor relations, particularly with regard to human resource management. So I’m pretty open to rethinking the whole thing. My goals for the course are simple. Students coming out of the class should have:
If you teach labor economics, other courses with similar structural issues, or just have some good ideas about this, I could really use your help. Thanks and Best Regards, Marsh Feldman --
Dr. Marshall Feldman, PhD
Director of Research and Academic Affairs  The University of Rhode Island email: marsh @ uri .edu (remove spaces) Contact Information:Kingston: 202 Hart House
Charles T. Schmidt Labor Research Center The University of Rhode Island 36 Upper College Road Kingston, RI 02881-0815 tel. (401) 874-5953: fax: (401) 874-5511 Providence: 206E Shepard Building
URI Feinstein Providence Campus 80 Washington Street Providence, RI 02903-1819 tel. (401) 277-5218 fax: (401) 277-5464 |
_______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
