There is an interesting article Why fewer girls are studying economics on SMH by Jessica Irvine who wrote a lot of excellent stuff.

Since 1992, the number of year 12 students taking economics has declined by almost 70 per cent, from 40,000 to closer to 10,000.

Instead, students are taking up “business studies” with gusto. Why? According to the head of the Reserve Bank’s information department, Jacqui Dwyer: “Business studies is widely perceived as a more employable subject than economics, is less demanding for students to learn and is easier for educators to teach.”

While 25 years ago, high school economics classes were evenly split by gender, today there is just one female economics student for every two males. The decline in female economics enrolments is most pronounced in co-ed and non-selective schools.

I think the key takeaway should be students tend to gravitate to subjects that are easier to do and more rewarding in marks. The recent discussion with studying lower difficulties math will actually reward you with higher marks is a very good example of this problem. This can be addressed by properly scaling for the subjects in question. Would also be interesting to see what subjects are the all the girls studying now. This would shed further light on what exactly is happening.

Economics is very important to our modern society, however, if you are read up all the news and analysis, then apply your own thoughts to it, you likely do just as well on many economic topics as most of the economists. School particularly high school need to teach our children how to learn, which will impart a life long benefit. As my father had repeated over and over to me, the most important thing you learn in school is not this or that particular pieces of knowledge but is how to learn and acquire more knowledge by yourself. He turned out to be dead right in this particular case at least in my personal experience anyhow.

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