College economics classes - how useful are they?

not much , khanacademy.org has a bunch.

You'll get some subject matter information from the teacher that you'll be required to barf back on an exam. That's useless (as is almost every subject matter I studied in college/law school, in my experience. Statistics, a philosophy course in symbolic logic, and calculus excluded.)

What you gain (if you're lucky) is the meta-lesson of how to think like an economist. Meaning that you'll understand the reasoning methodologies. This will give you an ability to understand real life in ways that mere mortals cannot/do not. I can't say whether "thinking like an economist" is better or worse. But it will give you perspective and an understanding of how large groups of people behave.

Same deal with law school, in my experience. They teach you to think like a laywer. That's the useful part. Hint: If you are trying to figure out an answer, spend your time working out the correct question to ask. Then the answer comes almost trivially.

Second hint: law is binary. The answer is either "yes" or "no". Phrase your question to elicit an answer that is "yes" or "no".

I'm sure the same holds true for engineering and other disciplines. Yeah sure you'll learn some "stuff" but more important you'll learn how to ask a question and solve a problem.

I haven't looked at khanacademy.org's economics stuff. But I'll bet you won't learn the meta-skills there.

Go take the class. And demand a lot out of your professor.

(Disclaimer: econ major in college.)

It will similar to your high school class in terms of being idealized and non-applicable.

I think they are interesting courses to take and there are some great conceptual takeaways. I'm not sure how valuable for entrepreneurship economics would be. I would personally go for microeconomics for it's applicability to business. However, macroeconomics is still interesting in a broader (even political and global) sense though.

I don't know what you'd be taking as an alternative to economics, but I don't see why you wouldn't take them. I took both macro and micro in college. I enjoyed the courses and found them useful. As philphodgen pointed out... what you will gain from taking the course is the ability to think like an economist.

This is the exact rationale and hope in the field but it a false hope. I'm not opposed to using math but as your comment implies, humans are not atoms or particles like in Physics and the subject requires different methods than the physical sciences. Economics is more closely allied with the methods of Psychology or Ethics, identifying and validating basic principles such as the examples I mentioned which require no math to understand. The proof of these principles are validated via logic and observation of human action not mathematical proofs. This methodology was dismissed as non-scientific early last century and, in the context at the time with very successful mathematical Physics, the mathematical economists took over the profession to counter the charges of not really being a science since there was no math equations.

excellent article!