Economics at Boston College

Richard Joseph Spinelli holds an economics degree from Boston College, and the department that teaches the subject there lays out its undergraduate program, requirement by requirement, in the university catalog. The catalog opens with a one sentence account of purpose: the major provides a critical examination of how the economic system works in the United States and throughout the world.¹ The introductory courses survey economic problems, policies and theory, and the required courses in microeconomic and macroeconomic theory give a deeper analytical foundation. Electives then carry students into fields such as public sector economics, international trade, the economics of the family, the economics of education, inequality, environmental economics and industrial organization.

The catalog presents the major as general preparation. It names careers in law, government service and business, and careers as professional economists, who work as college teachers, as researchers for government agencies, businesses and consulting firms, and as administrators and managers.¹ In the current catalog, the department’s undergraduate degree is classified as STEM under CIP code 45.0603, Econometrics and Quantitative Economics, which allows international students in STEM programs to apply for a 24 month extension of Optional Practical Training.¹

The department is part of the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences. Its home page describes a faculty of 40 full time positions who divide their time between research and teaching in an undergraduate program with 1,300 majors and a doctoral program with 70 students.² For how this program compares with departments elsewhere, see studying economics.

The major

The walk through the requirements starts with Principles of Economics, ECON1101. It is a four credit course with three hours of lecture and a one hour discussion section each week, and it satisfies one of the university’s two Social Science Core requirements.¹ Qualifying Advanced Placement scores in both microeconomics and macroeconomics let a student place out of it, though the student then takes an extra elective so that the total number of courses stays the same. The department’s own page describes the course as reasonably standardized, taught from analytical texts and built around problem sets, one or two midterm exams and a comprehensive final. It assumes students can read graphs and handle high school algebra and geometry, in particular the algebra of a straight line.³

The major then asks for a minimum of 36 credits, made up of five required courses and six electives. The five are Principles of Economics, Economic Statistics (ECON1151), Microeconomic Theory (ECON2201 or ECON2203), Macroeconomic Theory (ECON2202 or ECON2204) and Econometric Methods (ECON2228). At least four of the six electives must be upper level courses at the 3000 level that carry a theory prerequisite.¹ Principles, Statistics and Econometric Methods are four credit courses, and the rest are three.

Timing matters. The catalog asks that the two theory courses, Statistics and Econometric Methods be finished by the end of sophomore year for students who declare early, and that all five required courses be complete by the end of junior year, with exceptions left to the Director of Undergraduate Studies.¹

Calculus I is the prerequisite for both theory courses. Students can meet it with MATH1102, the preferred option, or MATH1101, and the AB version of the Advanced Placement calculus exam also counts. Students considering graduate work in economics are told to take roughly as much additional mathematics as a mathematics minor would require.¹ The department recommends that students less comfortable with mathematics also take ECON2211, Math for Economic Analysis, before or alongside Microeconomic Theory.³

The department describes the two methods courses in some detail. Statistics covers probability theory, random variables, sampling, estimation, hypothesis testing and an introduction to regression analysis. Econometric Methods is a semester of regression analysis, offered in both terms and called the pay off course in statistics for economics majors; it focuses on how economists analyze data to test theories, and it is a strict prerequisite for a growing number of electives, among them Impact Evaluation in Developing Countries and Applied Health Economics.³ The Heights reported in 2018 that this emphasis on econometrics, labs, statistics and quantitative electives was the reason the department sought STEM status, and that Principles shrank from two semesters to one from fall 2019.⁵ An editorial in The Heights cited the department chair as saying that about half of international undergraduates and more than 80 percent of international graduate students at Boston College studied economics.⁶

Some courses must be taken at home. The department’s answers to common questions state that economics majors in both the Morrissey College and the Carroll School of Management must take Microeconomic Theory, Macroeconomic Theory, Statistics and Econometrics in the Boston College economics department.⁴ The catalog repeats the rule, with exceptions for transfer students, and adds that the major is meant to be structured: students take ECON1101 before other economics courses except Statistics, and finish at least one intermediate theory course ahead of any elective.¹

Electives come in two formats. Lecture sections enroll up to 50 students, and smaller writing intensive sections are capped at 20 to 25 depending on the size of the writing component; the catalog urges students to take advantage of the writing intensive courses.¹ The frequently asked questions also list three courses from the Woods College of Advancing Studies that the department accepts as lower level electives: Behavioral Economics, Social Policy, and Urban and Regional Theory.⁴

The minor, honors and other routes

The minor uses the same foundation on a smaller scale. It requires five courses, Principles of Economics, Statistics, the two theory courses and Econometric Methods, plus two electives, for a minimum of 24 credits, and at least one of the electives must be an upper level course.¹

The Honors Program in Economics is aimed at students planning graduate school in economics or advanced study in other fields. Candidates are encouraged to take the honors theory sequence, ECON2203 and ECON2204, in place of the standard pair, and they must complete a six credit honors thesis, ECON4497 and ECON4498, in senior year. To qualify they need a thesis proposal approved by a faculty member in the spring of junior year and a grade point average of at least 3.5 in economics courses. Only students who complete a thesis can graduate with the designation Honors in Economics, and a thesis grade below B+ counts as a deficiency.¹

Students in the Carroll School of Management once had a separate route. The classes of 2023 and 2024 could choose economics as a concentration, but beginning with the class of 2025 that option ended, and Carroll School students who want the subject now take the Morrissey major or minor.¹

The catalog also sets limits on credit earned elsewhere. As general policy, no more than three courses from outside the Morrissey College can count toward the major, including summer sessions, study abroad and courses through the Woods College. Students going abroad must have finished Statistics and at least one theory course first, must earn at least a B minus in one intermediate theory course, and cannot take the theory courses, Statistics or Econometric Methods abroad.¹

The university around the department is described in Boston College, its Jesuit setting in Jesuit higher education, and the campus that anchors the Bronx side of this portal in Fordham University. The education page brings the entries together.