Should Econ 101 Be a Required Course at Every University?

Econ 101 continues to be a very popular course at Harvard.   I expect that Prof. Mankiw does a great job teaching and he must be familiar with the textbook he has selected for the course.   If Econ 101 is so popular at our leading institutions,  shouldn't we simply agree that it should be a required course for every undergraduate in the USA?  What would be the benefits and costs of such a requirement?  At UCLA right now, new course requirements are being introduced.  This opens up the possibility to consider my proposal.

Benefits:   First, the economic approach for explaining and predicting human behavior is powerful stuff.  Read Gary Becker's Nobel Prize Address if you need a quick proof of this claim.  Econ 101 makes you a smarter, more subtle problem solver.  Isn't that the whole point of a liberal arts education? Second, we live in the age of "Big Data".  Economics is the best suited approach for organizing such data in order to think about causal statements.   For example, would raising taxes on the rich increase income equality without slowing down US economic growth?  Can you answer that question, or even think about that question without having taken Econ 101?   Third, Economists such as Jim Heckman have figured out how to fuse insights from statistics and economics to build a powerful set of tools that even undergraduates can appreciate.  Many young people will make their names using "Big Data" and a basic training in economics provides them with a higher probability of lifetime success.  Fourth, many young people are naive about the role that government plays in our life.  A little bit of cynicism about government official's true objective and about the unintended consequences of almost all public policies will help to actually foster better public policy because such educated citizens will be "smarter" consumers in the political market place.  

Costs:  If Econ 101 is required, then students will not take some other course at their University.  What course will that be? What is the value of that marginal course?   I have a vested interest in arguing that this competitor course has low value added.   For every student who never takes Econ 101, go ask them what their least favorite class in college was.  I would argue that Econ 101 will always offer greater flow value of fun during the class and lifetime extra human capital than that "despised class".

Would the UCLA Senate approve my proposal?  Economic theory says "no" because the non-economists have many more votes than the economists and self-interest would lead the former to oppose this pareto-improving policy.