Deakin sets challenge for high school economics students

Australia's economy isn't the only thing that is in recession, so are the numbers of budding economists wanting to study it.

High school students studying economics or commerce are being invited to enter a competition being run by Deakin University designed to stimulate their interest in the discipline.

"There is a real misnomer about economics and the types of jobs people go into when they study it," said Head of the School for Economics and Accounting Professor Mike Kidd.

"That feeds into the numbers across the board from the numbers of students wanting to study economics at high school, to those taking it further into University.

"It is a challenging discipline, but what has been forgotten is that it underpins most other disciplines and develops strong skills in analysis. You get to deal with an extraordinarily broad range of subject matter. Economics is everywhere and in everything.

"At Deakin for instance some of the aspects our academics are exploring include the economic impact of happiness, interventions in health, trends in car use and obesity, whether development aid has any benefit in developing countries, issues associated with the financial markets in the US and South America, the links between economic growth and democracy."

Economics enthusiast and Deakin University Commerce student Michael Schnittler will get to see how one of the world's largest economies work first hand when he heads off to Korea for a semester after winning the $8000 Korean Ambassador's Scholarship for 2009.

"I love applying economics to an actual situation, such as the Global Financial Crisis, you can look at it and say this is why it happened. Economics is one of the better skills to have, the world always needs economists and the world always needs accountants. At the end of the crisis they are going to need someone to pull them out of this situation."

Michael credited his teacher at Mt Waverley Secondary School for sparking his love of economics. "He made learning really interesting and it was something different."

Michael is hoping to work over in Asia when he gets his degree and decided to apply for the Korean scholarship as he wanted to do something different.

"I thought it would be a good way to see what it would be like to live in a foreign country, independently without anyone there to push you along," he said.

One of the organisers of the competition, Associate Professor Mehmet Ulubasoglu, said students would be asked to prepare a three page proposal outlining a solution to one of two economics problems – should people have to pay to visit environmental sites such as the 12 Apostles or how the developing world could catch up with the developed world.

"20 of the top entries will visit the Melbourne Campus at Burwood on Open Day where eight teams will be invited to debate their proposals and take questions about them," he said. "All of the students will also get to use the APLIA application, a tool used by our first and second year students, for a supply and demand experiment."