The Complete Guide to Becoming An Economics Teacher, Postsecondary

Chapter 1: What Does a Economics Teacher, Postsecondary Actually Do?

Let's strip away the phrase "postsecondary economics teacher" and talk about what it actually means to show up to this job on a random Tuesday. You are not standing in front of a lecture hall of 200 students for eight hours a day. You're not just explaining supply and demand curves. And you're not doing the kind of economic analysis you see on cable news. The reality is a mix of teaching, research, grading, advising, and a surprising amount of administrative juggling, and the balance between those parts depends heavily on the kind of school you work at.

First, the basic split. If you get a job as a tenure-track professor at a four-year university, your contract likely spells out a "teaching load" of anywhere from two to four courses per semester. That might sound light, but it's not just about the hours you spend in the classroom. For every hour of lecturing, you'll spend several hours preparing. A single 90-minute lecture on, say, the theory of comparative advantage might take you four to six hours to prepare the first time you teach it, especially if you want to include current examples, interactive problems, or a small dataset for students to analyze. You'll also spend time writing or updating your syllabus (the document that outlines the course schedule, reading list, grading rubric, and policies), and you'll need to make sure your course materials align with the department's expectations for what