Instructors have developed courses designed to help students acquire professional skills and experience workplace expectations. Some courses focus on communication and the ability to convey economic ideas to non-specialist audiences. For example, Picault (2021) describes a course that teaches students to write economics for the media and communicate effectively with the general public. Similarly, Marks et al. (2024) propose activities that help students present economics research to audiences without formal economics training. 

Other courses expose students to specific forms of professional practice. Diersen and Wang (2022) introduce a student-managed investment fund that develops market analysis, trading, and risk-management skills. Picault (2025) presents a course devoted to the design of economic experiments, allowing students to gain hands-on experience with experimental economics while developing projects of their own. Connolly (2025) places students in a consulting-type environment where they work with stakeholders in the food industry and produce professional recommendations based on original data collection and analysis. Samwick (2022) adopts a social entrepreneurship perspective and asks students to develop business-oriented solutions to social problems. Collectively, these courses demonstrate how economics instruction can expose students to professional environments while helping them develop skills valued beyond academia.