The University of Delaware has an economics workshop about Taylor Swift, which doesn’t count for any credits: “Data Enchanted: Transforming Numbers Into Knowledge.”
Swift’s dad went to U. Delaware. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:
Taught by longtime Swiftie and assistant economics professor Kathryn Bender, the not-for-credit workshop uses Swift’s Spotify streaming data and a sizable amount of Easter eggs to teach the basics of data visualization. Those who complete the workshop will receive a data analytics certificate, said Bender.Bender’s course is one of several popping up at colleges and universities across the United States that examine Swift through a scholarly lens. You can compare her songwriting to the works of revered poets at Harvard or use her lyrics to understand youth psychology at Arizona State University, but “Data Enchanted” is among the first to study Swift quantitatively.The angle makes sense: Swift became a billionaire as her international “Eras Tour” has boosted local economies still recovering from the pandemic. It’s the first tour to gross over $1 billion, and Swift has continued to break box office and streaming records.Bender said she hopes the workshop will get more women interested in economics at the University of Delaware, where only 25% of economics majors identify as women, under the national average of 33% for large research universities.
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