CORE Econ is a global project mobilising economists and researchers around the world to create top quality open access teaching material. Using the best research and a new benchmark model, it addresses the world’s most pressing problems. Launched by Wendy Carlin and collaborators in 2013 and based at UCL, now more than 115,000 students each year are taught using CORE Econ, in over 360 universities in 61 countries, and in five languages. 48 of the 60 universities teaching economics in the UK use CORE Econ, covering some 19,000 students per year.
Watch: meet Wendy Carlin and find out more about CORE Econ
Impact of CORE:
A study comparing grades of UCL first year economics students who were taught using CORE Econ with the previous cohort, which had studied a traditional introductory economics course, confirmed that students are better prepared for their intermediate economics courses in year two.
In both micro and macroeconomics, the CORE Econ cohort did on average significantly better than their non-CORE Econ counterparts. More students got first class or upper second class marks. Also, there was a clear reduction in third class grades, and fewer students failed macroeconomics. There is no evidence that this was an unusually talented group of students.
CORE Econ in the news:
- Efforts to modernise economics teaching are gathering steam, The Economist, 20 March 2021
- How to fix university economics courses, Financial Times, 16 January 2018
- The teaching of economics gets an overdue overhaul, The Economist, 23 September 2017
- The student revolution that is shaking post-crash economics, The Times, 12 September 2017
- A new way to learn economics, The New Yorker, 11 September 2017