Every midshipman at the Naval Academy majors in "The Navy." The courses in the academic core plus professional training are designed to equip each graduate with the knowledge and skills necessary to perform effectively as officers, regardless of warfare specialty. Midshipmen can thus choose a major in line with their academic strengths and interests without being concerned about its direct applicability to their job in the fleet. In short, the message is:
"This is your college education. Major in something you are interested in, rather than something you think you should major in."
That said, there actually are some vocational reasons for a midshipman to major in Economics:
First, the most fundamental lesson of Economics is that resources are scarce relative to potential uses, so that choices must be made -- that is what it means to "think economically." The Naval Officer can invariably say that "...if I had more people, or more ships, or more planes, or more supplies, or more time, the task would be easy," but of course the officer doesn’t live in that kind of world. Instinctively thinking in terms of alternative uses of scarce resources -- thinking economically -- tends to make an effective officer.
Second, an economics program provides understanding of the economic institutions and economic system each officer is pledged to defend.
Third, an officer operates in an international arena. Knowledge of world resource endowments, industrial patterns, trade flows, and the nature and the interdependency of the world's diverse economic systems is useful background for dealing with the citizens and representatives of other countries that U.S. officers will inevitably encounter.
Finally, an Economics major provides a strong set of mid-career skills. In particular, it prepares a midshipman well for (1) attendance at service schools such as the Naval War College, (2) staff billet assignments on fleet, joint and combined staffs, (3) postgraduate training in management, national security affairs, and intelligence, and (4) future subspecialty designations in management and politico-military or strategic planning. In short, there are plenty of reasons why having an Economics major is useful to a Naval Officer.
The goals, objectives, and performance criteria for the economics major are as follows:
Goal: To support the mission of the U.S. Naval Academy by producing graduates who can think critically, and who can understand, explain, and apply the core principles of economic reasoning including the economic approach to resource allocation problems, the functioning of economic institutions and the decisions of policy makers and other economic agents within a society. Objectives and Performance Criteria:
Apply economic reasoning drawn from microeconomics and macroeconomics to problems in several sub-fields of economics.
•Explain core concepts of economic reasoning •Explain fundamental microeconomic models •Explain fundamental macroeconomic models •Analyze economic problems in sub-fields using appropriate models
Use appropriate empirical models to test empirical economic questions.
•Employ descriptive statistics •Employ appropriate statistical models to explore univariate, bivariate, and multivariate relationships in data •Distinguish significant and insignificant statistical relationships •Apply statistical methods appropriate to analyzing categorical variables, or use appropriate quantitative techniques such as (but not limited to) calibration or laboratory experiments, to investigate empirical economic questions.
Describe and integrate the functions of important American and international economic institutions into analysis of public policy.
•Describe the functions of key macroeconomic institutions in the U.S. •Describe the functions of key institutions in sub-fields of economics
Demonstrate lifelong learning skills including the ability to locate appropriate reference material, evaluate popular economic commentary, and understand professional literature.
•Demonstrate ability to locate materials using library resources and internet resources •Distinguish between professional and popular source materials •For popular commentary, summarize the author’s argument, evaluate it using economic reasoning, and evaluate the expertise of the commentator •For papers in the professional economics literature, explain an author’s central argument and the empirical results to support it •Know how to locate and use primary data sources
Communicate effectively in written, spoken, and graphical form about specific economic issues
•Formulate a research question •Summarize past research findings •Formulate a well-organized written argument that states assumptions and hypotheses which are supported by the evidence •Present an economic argument orally
Demonstrate analytical / critical thinking skills
•Identify a question of economic consequence •Identify / select appropriate theory, methodology, and /or relevant information / data for analyzing an economic question •Organize and present collected information using appropriate tools and methodology •Apply the relevant information and data •Use theoretical and / or empirical results to draw logical conclusions •Propose reasonable solutions or policy options based on evaluation of results
As a general overview, the six objectives are met as follows: •FE210 Introductory Economics, the core theory sequence – FE341 Microeconomics and FE312 Macroeconomics – and the requirement to complete at least three 400-level elective courses support Objective 1 •FE331 Economic Statistics, FE475 Research Seminar, and empirically-oriented electives support Objective 2. •FE210, FE312, and many field courses support Objective 3 •FE475 supports Objective 4 by requiring the accessing of professional literature. Other core theory and electives have writing requirements in support of Objective 4. •FE475 is a capstone research project course, supporting Objective 5. Other core theory and electives have writing and presentation requirements in support of Objective 5. •All economics courses support Objective 6.