How do university students value economics courses? A hedonic approach

Abstract

This paper adopts a hedonic approach and uses a multinomial logit model to assess students' valuation of courses based on their characteristics, e.g. presentation, organization, knowledge, accessibility, responsiveness, enthusiasm of the instructor (i.e. instructor), student's amount and type of thinking (i.e. intellectual stimulation), and how demanding a course is (i.e. demand level). Students applied the same quality standards consistently across courses regardless of the class size and the title, degree and position of the instructor. However, elective courses valued more favourably. The most important course attribute is the instructor, intellectual stimulation is the close second, and demand level has a negative impact on the value of a course. Yet, having found that intellectual stimulation's positive contribution is much bigger than the negative impact of demand level, the following emerges as an important yard stick for increasing the value of a course: as long as intellectual stimulation level gets higher, students are willing to put more time into a course.