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Civitas Outlook
Topic
Economic Dynamism
Published on
Apr 8, 2023
Contributors
Wayne Geerling
Jadrian Wooten
Dirk Mateer
Nikhil Damodaran
Image: "My first computer" (Wikimedia Commons, 02/06/2025)

ChatGPT has Aced the Test of Understanding in College Economics: Now What?

Contributors
Wayne Geerling
Wayne Geerling
Wayne Geerling
Jadrian Wooten
Jadrian Wooten
Jadrian Wooten
Dirk Mateer
Dirk Mateer
Senior Fellow
Dirk Mateer
Nikhil Damodaran
Nikhil Damodaran
Nikhil Damodaran
Summary
The rise of artificial intelligence in higher education, specifically natural language models like ChatGPT, presents a new challenge to educators.
Summary
The rise of artificial intelligence in higher education, specifically natural language models like ChatGPT, presents a new challenge to educators.
Listen to this article

The Test of Understanding in College Economics (TUCE) is a standardized test of economics knowledge performed in the United States which primarily targets principles-level understanding. We asked ChatGPT to complete the TUCE. ChatGPT ranked in the 91st percentile for Microeconomics and the 99th percentile for Macroeconomics when compared to students who take the TUCE exam at the end of their principles course. The results show that ChatGPT is capable of providing answers that exceed the mean responses of students across all institutions. The emergence of artificial intelligence presents a significant challenge to traditional assessment methods in higher education. An important implication of this finding is that educators will likely need to redesign their curriculum in at least one of the following three ways: reintroduce proctored, in-person assessments; augment learning with chatbots; and/or increase the prevalence of experiential learning projects that artificial intelligence struggles to replicate well.

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This paper was originally published by The American Economist

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