Robert Frank, an economcis professor, opens The Opportunity Cost of Economics Education with an anecodte:
Shortly after I began teaching, more than 30 years ago, three friends in different cities independently sent me the same New Yorker cartoon depicting a woman introducing a man to a friend at a party. “Mary, I’d like you to meet Marty Thorndecker,” she began. “He’s an economist, but he’s really very nice.”
Most people seem to find intro econ courses unpleasant:
Needless to say, a course can be valuable even if unpleasant. Unfortunately, however, most students seem to emerge from introductory economics courses without having learned even the most important basic principles. According to one recent study, their ability to answer simple economic questions several months after leaving the course is not measurably different from that of people who never took a principles course.
(Hat tip to Alex Tabarrok, who, as an econ professor, is horrified that 78 percent of the economists asked a simple opportunity cost question gave the wrong answer.)