Is Our Economics Education Fit For the Future?

The future is created in the lecture halls of today. Do we want Neoclassical Economics to build this future alone?

©Photo by Henry Storck on Unsplash

The Week of Economics Education (Week van het Economieonderwijs) is an annual event in November that brings together academics from a range of roles across the Netherlands, with each day focusing on a separate level of Dutch education. On Tuesday at Radboud University the focus was on the University level, where a melting pot of lecturers, activists and programme coordinators engaged in discussions to answer one question: how can we make sure that Economics education at Universities is fit for the future?

The future is not something distant or unreachable, but instead is something that is being created in every moment. In the lecture halls of economic faculties are policy-makers, consultants, business leaders and financial analysts in the making. Understanding of the future as a range of possibilities shaped by the actions we take today emphasises the importance of an education that can build solutions for foreseeable challenges. These challenges include the ecological crisis, rising inequality, and the uncertainty surrounding AI technologies, all of which our Economics education has woefully under-prepared us to address.

Previous collaborations during The Week of Economics Education have resulted in the release of a manifesto. The manifesto summarises how a future-fit education can be built in four bold steps. These are: incorporating a pluralism of Economic perspectives (“Brede inzichten uit de discipline”); embracing interdisciplinary connections (“Interdisciplinaire verbinding”); incorporating ethical and critical thinking skills (“Ethische en kritische denkvaardigheden”); and connecting education to the real-world (“Verbinding met de praktijk en samenleving”). 

These manifesto recommendations are a response to a prolonged deficit of pluralism in Economics education. Pluralism is about incorporating a range of perspectives, allowing us to see challenges from different angles. This leads to solutions that are more well-rounded and effective. Yet Economics is a discipline that has isolated itself, not only pushing away from a multidisciplinary approach that integrates political, sociological and historical insights, but also internal pluralist ideas such as feminist, post-Keynesian, or post-growth schools. Economics education falls short by focusing on a restrictive framework that values market-based solutions, rational-choice theory and models that are rinsed and repeated across introductory textbooks. This framework is called Neoclassical Economics. 

Leading Economic textbooks would never mention this bias towards the Neoclassical school. Instead, the models and theories presented to us are implied as objective and value-neutral, moving in accordance with Newtonian mechanics. Yet humans are rarely so simple. In fact, studying Economics, it would be easy to forget you’re supposed to be talking about humans or society at all. Renowned developmental economist Ha Joon-Chang puts the domination of the Neoclassical school succinctly: “Economics has become like Catholic theology in medieval Europe”.

This bias toward the Neoclassical school has not gone unnoticed by Economics students themselves. In 2011, seventy students at Harvard staged a walk-out of Professor Gregory Mankiw’s class, the author of one of the most prevalent Neoclassical textbooks in the field. The students protested the lack of diverse views presented to them, especially amid the lingering fallout from the Great Financial Crisis, which Neoclassical models failed to predict. This snowballed into an international student movement, Rethinking Economics, which now has sectors all across the globe pushing for “a new way of teaching and practicing economics so that it truly helps us deal with the real-world challenges”. The Netherlands also hosts a flourishing community of Rethinkers, not only in Amsterdam but also in Nijmegen, Utrecht, Wageningen, and Rotterdam. This community provides an open space for heterodox reading groups, lectures and discussions.

Further, Our New Economy – an organisation of professionals campaigning for Economic education reform in the Netherlands – published the Dutch Economics Education Review last year. This report reviewed the progress made in Dutch undergraduate Economics programmes in recent years, highlighting many promising changes. For example, the University of Amsterdam has developed a recent minor in ‘Sustainability and Economics’, and a new programme at Leiden University, ‘Economie en Samenleving’ (Economy and Society), emphasises real-world applications and a focus on societal challenges. However, their evidence indicates that the bulk of curricula consists of Neoclassical perspectives, which have remained stagnant over the years. Where there has been progress, pluralist courses are often relegated to electives rather than included in the fundamentals. 

Change will not happen overnight. There are a range of bureaucratic hurdles that shape curriculum development, and beyond this there is a strong academic incentive to stay within mainstream thinking. However, even a movement towards ‘weak’ pluralism is an improvement. This includes the curriculum merely being explicit about the model’s assumptions, critiques on their application to the real world, and acknowledging that the Neoclassical framework is simply one of many. The path forward is not easy, but starting from recognising the flaws of our current education is at least the first step in building an Economics education that is ready for the future ahead.