I recently browsed through Brown’s published statistics, specifically its table compiling most popular undergraduate majors, found here:
and Economics, between 2007 and 2008, doubled in anticipated enrollment.
I’m not sure how other liberal arts programs compare but is there an explanation?
You realize that is just for Brown and not for all schools right? They probably created a new program or merged existing ones. I can try to find what specifically they did as long as you are just interested in Brown itself and not all colleges and universities because that isn’t the right data for it. If you are interested in economics at Brown itself, you could just call the department and ask. The numbers are on the web. I worked as a student administrative assistant at another university’s department and we got all kinds of inquiries like that and we tried to help.
I don’t know for sure, but I believe Brown has recently put more finance and business type courses into Economics and related majors. For example, the Commerce Organizations and Entrepreneurship started sometime during this past decade. I’m not sure when the joint applied math/finance program started. I do know that they hired some faculty like Ivo Welch, who had previously been teaching finance at UCLA and Yale.
It’s worth noting that Brown doesn’t have a business school, and that’s pretty unusual when you compare it against similar universities.
Price driving supply and demand? 