Symposium: The Intermediate Macroeconomics Course - Current Challenges and Future Directions

Intermediate macroeconomics is a core course in the undergraduate economics curriculum that offers a unique set of challenges for the instructor. This article introduces a symposium on the course that outlines these challenges and suggests ways to address some of them. The symposium begins with results from a national survey of intermediate macro instructors at U.S. institutions that documents current course structures, content, and instructor perspectives. Three additional papers propose specific approaches to issues that intermediate macro instructors typically face: whether to align the course more closely with the research frontier, how to teach contemporary Federal Reserve monetary policy implementation, and how to expand the coverage of growth theory beyond the standard Solow Model. By documenting current practice and offering specific approaches to course design, the symposium contributes to ongoing discussions about the purpose, scope, and future direction of intermediate macro in undergraduate economics programs.