Not many economists are great teachers. The sorts of skills that get you into graduate school (like getting an “A+” in Advanced Real Analysis) are not highly correlated with being a star at the blackboard. Combine lack of natural talent with weak incentives to teach well at the top research institutions, and the results in the classroom are often not pretty.
If there were a prize given for the best economics lecture at the University of Chicago in a year, I know who would have won it last year. I brought in a very high-priced call girl to guest lecture at my undergraduate Economics of Crime class. The next day, I asked my students whether they liked the lecture. More than one-third of them said it was the single best lecture they had attended in their four years of college. I had to agree with them.
The Association of Private Enterprise Education and the Market-Based Management Institute are doing their part to try to improve the level of economics teaching. They’ve put up $17,500 in prize money to be split between the three contestants who prove themselves most effective at communicating economic concepts.
I’m going to encourage my call girl friend to enter, so probably the rest of you are competing for second place; but that is still worth $5,000.
and 
. You can also watch it on 
I can vouch for this.
There was also a few cases of Miller Lite involved.
The next obvious question is: Does there exist a positive correlation between enjoying a lecture and being a good economist? If all I care about is having good economists, who cares if students enjoy the lectures if it won’t make them any better economists? College courses are not just intellectual entertainment. I believe that as long as the professor isn’t boring, if he is smart students will be able to learn from him.
Since many high class call-girls tend to be intelligent, educated, charismatic and generally interesting people who have a lot of perspective on life, I am not surprised. A question you could ask is, how many of your existing good professors, graduate students or business associates also happen to be high-class call girls on the side?
My undergrad intro to macroeconomics class at columbia was probably my most fun class in college, thanks to the incredible professor, Xavier Sala-i-Martin. Don’t just trust me, though: check out his website http://www.columbia.edu/~xs23/indexman.html
Enjoy.
Do you have a transcript of the lecture?
We have the same problem in natural science fields (my degree is in Chemistry).
The most interesting line IMO is this: “prove themselves most effective.” Fun, exciting lectures by charismatic, popular instructors are frequently no more (and sometimes less) effective than boring lectures by dull instructors — although nearly all students prefer the infotainment version.
I’m very curious how they will be measuring effectiveness. If it’s just a popularity contest, then the winner will be the best thespian/screenwriter.
I guess I’m another Oberlin grad who reads this blog. The most memorable part of my undergrad Economics degree was a Labor Economics class in which a member of the steelworkers’ union came to speak about the demise of the industry in the blue-collar town next to our cutesy, liberal elite college. It really brought home issues of employment, wages, bargaining, etc.