In the years following the global financial crisis, the academic study and teaching of economics has come in for a bashing. In fact, it has faced the kind of fundamental criticism rarely directed towards entire disciplines.
The apparent failure of economists to predict, let alone prevent, the 2008 crash has led to accusations that conventional economic teaching cannot adequately explain the complex dynamics and risks of modern economies.
Among those championing reform have been disgruntled students, who have demanded that a more “pluralist”, diverse, range of theories be taught on their undergraduate degrees.
What success have they had so far? After years of campaigning, universities are making modifications to their courses, or adding new ones.
Pressure groups
The Post-Crash Economics Society at the University of Manchester has received much coverage for its campaigning, while the Rethinking Economics network is connecting like-minded groups at universities throughout the UK. Both have links with the wider International Student Initiative for Pluralism in Economics.
Student critics have been backed up by prominent academics such as Robert Skidelsky and Ha-Joon Chang and a Reteaching Economics group has been founded alongside the student movement. Meanwhile, surveys of employers have uncovered industry demand for changes to university programmes, identifying areas for improvement in the skills and knowledge of economics graduates.
New modules
Now a growing number of UK universities are implementing changes to adapt their degrees to a “post-crisis” world. For some institutions, this has meant the launch of additional modules within existing undergraduate programmes.
Lecturer Alan Fernihough says the economic history module added to the course at Queen’s University Belfast “gives students a long-run perspective on economic conditions and helps contextualise the recent state of the global economy”.
A new first-year module at Royal Holloway, University of London, covers non-market voices in economics; growth from an historical perspective; difficult allocations for markets to handle; and behavioural economics. Professor Jeff Frank says he and and his colleagues saw a “market opportunity” to make changes to the course.
“Students realised that the dry-as-a-bone economics they were being taught couldn’t deal with the complexities of economic issues,” Frank says.
Real world
The real-world application of economic theories is an important part of these new curriculum initiatives. With this in mind, Goldsmiths, University of London is launching a new single-discipline degree in economics in October. Lecturer Constaninos Repapis says it has been developed in consultation with student and academic reformers with “an interest to develop a curriculum that better prepares economic graduates for the challenges of the modern world”.
The University of Greenwich, which introduced modules in economic history, the history of economic thought, and international development and finance in 2014, says it too isresponding to student demands for pluralist teaching.
“We’ve included more pluralism and real-world application in the classroom in order to explain current economic events,” says lecturer Sara Gorgoni.
At Kingston University, Professor Steve Keen teaches a module on “becoming an economist”, which explores disagreements between economic thinkers, and a range of schools of thought. Kingston, he says, “has set itself the objective of being the leading pluralist school of economics in the UK – and possibly the world”.
Others, including University College London and the University of Bristol, have worked on an open-source curriculum programme, the CORE project (Curriculum Open-Access Resources in Economics), which takes a restructured approach to the format of the traditional economics degree. Materials from this programme have also been made available as an online learning tool.
Universities say they are also trying to address concerns from employers. “As a direct response to employer demands that economic graduates are better able to communicate their knowledge to non-economists, Goldsmiths has developed a third-year module called communication and presentation skills that focuses on how economists present their findings to non-specialists in an accessible way,” says Repapis.
Way ahead
This collaboration between students, lecturers and employers has begun to generate greater reflection on the way in which universities teach economics more generally.
Frank argues that more resources need to be allocated to these departments. “Economics departments in particular operate on the cheap, with very high student-to-staff ratios,” he points out.
“There is a myth that electronic resources can substitute for academic time. It can, for superficial textbook learning. But what students really want is a chance to interact with academics, engage with ideas.”
Perhaps this is the next step in improving economics courses.
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