| Educating Economists |
| Edited by David Colander and KimMarie McGoldrick, Edward Elgar, 2009, 242 pages, £75. |
| This book had its genesis in the US in 2006 when the Teague Foundation gave grants to six academic disciplines to assess the role each of them played in promoting liberal undergraduate education. One of the disciplines chosen was economics; and the American Economics Association, on being invited to undertake the inquiry, asked two respected academics, David Colander and KimMarie McGoldrick, to produce a report and to invite feedback. The resulting report was wide-ranging. It was also very critical of current practices and, therefore, highly controversial – as a large number of the responses contained in this volume illustrate. |
| As far as the content of undergraduate economic courses is concerned, Colander and McGoldrick are critical of lack of breadth and ‘big think’, the overweening emphasis upon mathematics, statistics and technique in general and the wholesale omission of subjects such as economic history and the history of economic thought. As for teaching, the report’s authors are critical of a process being driven by economists whose overriding priority is research in highly-specialised areas rather than teaching, and who, moreover, generally lack the necessary training to teach to the highest standards. |
| Such a debate, of course, resonates on this side of the Atlantic. The content of the economics taught to undergraduate students in the UK is very similar to that in the US (indeed, the same text books are often used). In addition, the teaching is generally done by staff incentivised by career considerations to ‘publish, publish, publish’ – but only in narrowly-focused peer-reviewed journals. |
| As has happened in the past – notably in the 1930s with the Great Depression and the 1970s with the Great Inflation – the inadequacies of economics as currently taught in universities on both the US and the UK have been exposed by the ferocity of the recent financial and economic crisis. Markets, it was blithely assumed beforehand, were both rational and efficient; there was precious little focus upon the potential inter-action between the financial and real sides of the economy; there was scant, if any, awareness of what had gone before by way of New Era hubris being succeeded by its inevitable nemesis. |
| Unsurprisingly, the Great Recession – and, particularly, its unexpected advent – has produced a variety of contrarian responses: whether Akerlof and Shiller’s Animal Spirits, Skidelsky’s Return of the Master or the re-publication of Minsky’s Stabilising an Unstable Economy. However, whether academic economics – and what academic economists teach their students – changes remains to be seen. As Collander and McGoldrick point out in the US context, unless the priorities and in particular the incentives which drive academic career paths are changed, things are likely to continue much as before. |
| Reportedly, applications to study economics at British universities have been rising, as have the number of school students opting to study Economics at A-level. One can only speculate, but it may be the case that much of this surge in interest in economics is motivated by the desire to understand why the Great Recession happened and how similar screw-ups might best be avoided in future. I may be wrong (and I sincerely hope that I am) but I can see little at present to suggest that British universities are yet rising to the challenge. |
| Last summer I paid a visit to my alma mater where I had enjoyed (more years ago than I care to remember) the good fortune of not just learning the technicalities of micro and macro analysis but also of studying both economic history and the history of economic thought. When I enquired about the last two subjects, however, I was told that they were no longer part of the syllabus. What really disturbed me, though, was that – despite my protestations – the academic economists with whom I spoke clearly believed that there was nothing wrong with this parlous situation. In this regard, as in others, Colander and McGoldrick would seem to have directed their fire at the right targets. |
Ian Harwood
Chief Economist, Evolution Securities |
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