The launch of ChatGPT 3.0 in November 2022 fundamentally altered the landscape of higher education. For economics academics and students, this technological shock has created unprecedented challenges as well as opportunities. The world has changed, requiring structured advice on how best to adapt what and how we teach and assess.
Our research with colleagues at other universities provides a snapshot of how those teaching on economics degrees in the UK have responded to this technological transformation in their assessment design and proposes next steps for such degrees.
Our work addresses a critical need: ensuring that economics graduates remain attractive to employers and that our degrees retain their value in a world transformed by generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). This is not merely about adapting to new technology; it represents a fundamental rethinking of what an economics degree should be in preparing students for their future lives and careers.
Using mixed methods to gather evidence – including surveys of professional economists and economics academics, a workshop and focus group discussions, and a comprehensive literature review – we analyse the impact of GenAI on assessment in economics degrees in the UK through three critical lenses.
Three perspectives on GenAI integration
Employer expectations and skills evolution
Our survey of professional economists reveals that GenAI is now embedded at every level of knowledge work in such jobs – from routine tasks such as coding and debugging, to mid-level tasks like literature reviews and summarising documents, and finally to high-level tasks such as data analysis and idea generation.
This suggests that the skills that economics graduates need have expanded and evolved significantly. In addition to existing employability skills expectations, graduates must be able to engage in complex collaborative processes with GenAI. They need to know how to use GenAI critically in the context of their work.
This requires continuous engagement with the tools, continuous learning, and insight into what constitutes responsible use of GenAI, both generally and within their specific work contexts.
Adaptation in economics degree programmes
Our survey of economics academics and workshop discussions reveal how the profession is adapting assessment. While UK institutions have developed more structured approaches to GenAI integration compared with their non-UK counterparts, concerns about academic integrity, inclusivity and inadequate institutional support remain prevalent.
We observe a variety of changes being made across modules and degree programmes, generally led by individual lecturers without significant programme-wide discussion about optimal integration of GenAI into the curriculum.
The overall sense is of a community of academics who are largely cautious in making change, with a small number of trailblazers and experimenters. Many are increasing in-person assessments (presentations and invigilated exams) without apparent evaluation of the potential impact on students’ skills development or on differential outcomes by demographic and socio-economic characteristics.
Institutional policy context
Our analysis of the institutional context in which economists design their assessments reveals that vague policies leave academics and students operating in a vacuum, with uncertainty stifling activity and experimentation. The lack of clarity on what constitutes firm rules versus guidance prevents academics from knowing the extent to which they can explore new approaches. There is a clear need for comprehensive policies and guidance from institutions, alongside discipline-specific guidance and sharing of practical examples.
Three core objectives for economics degrees in a GenAI world
Bringing these three perspectives together, we emphasise the need to consider curriculum design in a way that recognises three objectives that must be met simultaneously in our degrees.
Protecting academic value
We need to ensure that the awarded degree classification reflects a student’s knowledge and skills and is a credible signal for the labour market, thereby protecting the academic value of our degrees.
Developing essential skills
We must continue to provide students with opportunities to develop what they need for life after their degree, particularly skills that employers value.
Supporting student and staff adaptation
We need to recognise that everyone is navigating how to adapt to GenAI and support them in their journey, helping students learn how to learn effectively and responsibly with available tools, and supporting staff to facilitate this.
Assessment sits at the heart of these principles, embedded within curriculum decisions on what we teach, how we teach and how we support students with their learning – all of which must adapt to GenAI and its impact on university degrees and the labour market.
Recommendations
The Royal Economic Society (RES) is in a strategically important position as a platform to help academics in UK economics departments move towards meeting these objectives in their assessments. Several areas of support are needed.
Sector-level leadership
The Committee of Heads of University Departments of Economics (CHUDE) should endorse the need for change to ensure that we retain the value of our degrees, helping departments to influence institutional discussions. Pro-active leadership from economics, one of the UK’s largest degree subject areas, may help the sector to coordinate a credible response that emphasises the value of universities.
Discipline-specific guidance
Where institutional policies are vague, and delegated to departments, faculties and schools to determine context-appropriate approaches, there is a need for sector-wide and discipline-specific guidance and support.
Practice sharing and co-creation
Departments and professional organisations need to provide more opportunities to share practice and case study examples, as well as opportunities to co-create assessments and wider curriculum design for a GenAI-enabled world.
Stakeholder management
Economics degrees are delivered in a variety of settings from autonomous economics departments, economics divisions within business schools and degree apprenticeships with significant employers such as the Government Economic Service (GES). Work through CHUDE will need to be co-created through practice sharing from a diverse set of departments to ensure that our collective knowledge is built on our diversity of experience.
Programme-level assessment strategy
Heads of department, directors of education and programme directors must recognise the value of mixed assessment methods within an economics degree to meet different objectives and learning outcomes. This includes both GenAI-free assessments (like exams) and GenAI-enabled assessments (such as team projects using GenAI for empirical analysis).
Balanced assessment approaches
While mixed methods will include exams as part of GenAI-free assessments, we must ensure that 100% exams do not become the default option, or we will lose significant progress made in diversifying assessment for skills development and inclusivity.
Ethics integration
There must be discussion about incorporating ethical GenAI use, alongside wider discussions on ethics and data use, into the economics curriculum. Students need to make informed choices about when and how best to use GenAI within organisation-specific guidance contexts.
Scaled staff development and support
Successful GenAI integration requires high-quality training and support for all staff on ethical and effective GenAI use in classrooms and practical guidance on designing assessments. We need ambitious scaling of training and sharing opportunities through the Economics Network, CTaLE (an online Centre for Teaching and Learning Economics, based at UCL) and regional networks.
Student support
Students need training and support on learning effectively with GenAI, developed by departments to reflect their degree specifics. Discover Economics would be a useful partner in working with students to co-create this support.
The path forward
While this list of recommendations is extensive, we recognise that economics academics already operate under pressure with limited time for change and financial constraints. But we can make changes to retain the value of our degrees and ensure that they remain attractive to students. We should put our collective expertise together to reach solutions more quickly and sharing ideas and resources to limit duplication and reduce costs.
Although the report focuses on assessment adaptation, this is one piece of a larger puzzle. Moving forward requires a holistic whole-curriculum approach, accounting for academic, student, employer and pedagogical perspectives. A review of what economics graduates need to know and be able to do will be necessary as their future world changes, with consequences for teaching and assessment.
A co-ordinated effort across the UK higher education sector can help us to integrate GenAI into economics education to enrich the learning experience for our students while maintaining the rigour and value that makes economics degrees among the most in demand in the UK. The challenge is significant, but so is the opportunity to lead in preparing economics graduates for a rapidly evolving world.
