Rethinking Economics, the movement changing how the subject is taught | Economics

AAs the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crash reverberated around the world, a group of students at Harvard University in the United States walked out of their introductory economics course, complaining that it taught a “specific and limited view” that perpetuated “a problematic and ineffective system of economic inequality.”

A few weeks later, across the Atlantic, economics students at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, unhappy that the rigid mathematical formulas they were taught in class had little to do with the tumultuous economic fallout they were experiencing, created a “post-crash economic society.”

These small acts of discontent found echoes on campuses around the world in the months that followed, as usually staid economics students demanded a broader, more inquiring curriculum that more accurately reflected and challenged the world as it was.

These disparate strands came together in early 2013 at the London School of Economics with the inaugural meeting of Rethinking Economics – a student-led organization that has continued to challenge the way economics is taught at universities around the world.

“That first meeting was a bit chaotic,” recalls Yuan Yang, one of the group’s founders and a Labor MP since 2024. “It was right after our final exams and it was a bit intense. But I was really surprised by the number of students who came not only from LSE but also from other universities.”

Yang, who was studying a master’s degree in economics at the time, said the first meeting was held on “a shoestring”, relying on volunteers and “some real acts of kindness” from family and friends as well as some of LSE’s most distinguished academics.

“It was run by volunteers,” she said. “My father, bless him, helped me by doing some filming…and we had help from some of the most eminent teachers. [The South Korean economist and academic] Ha-Joon Chang arrived early and helped us make badges.

Chang, now a leading author and professor of economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, said the launch came after decades where the neoclassical school of economics had come to dominate universities “like Catholic theology in medieval Europe… a doctrine that fundamentally defines the way humanity sees the world.”

“By demanding that economics education be more pluralistic, more ethically minded, more historically aware, and more real-world oriented, Rethinking Economics has exposed glaring shortcomings in the way economists are trained and has brought about significant, though woefully insufficient, changes in economics education across the world,” he said.

Rethinking Economics has flourished since the first meeting and now has thousands of members, including several prominent economists, in more than 40 countries.

According to its communications manager, Sara Mahdi, its objective is to make economic education “plural, critical, decolonized and historically anchored” rather than “dominated by a single framework presented as “neutral” or “objective””.

“We are building an international movement of young people who organize, educate and advocate for an economy that takes into account the real world we see around us,” she said. “An economics that describes economics as rooted in ecology, power, institutions, history, and inequality, and that treats competing economic theories and methods as legitimate and not marginal to a kind of classical, almost mathematical view that has dominated many institutions for decades. »

Mahdi, a graduate in degrowth, economics and anthropology from University College London and the Autonomous University of Barcelona, ​​says the group has achieved tangible changes in the way economics is taught in many institutions – from completely overhauling curricula to introducing new core modules – at many institutions.

“Since 2019 alone, the movement has supported and recorded more than 80 campaign victories at universities in 35 countries, including 23 major curriculum reforms, impacting tens of thousands of students,” she said. “These are the kind of reforms that don’t just add ‘an elective,’ but reshape what students learn as traditional economics.”

Among the changes highlighted are the launch of a politics, philosophy and economics course at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2014, an interdisciplinary program at the University of Lille in France in 2020, as well as an undergraduate program in economics and society and a master’s program in public sector economics at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands in 2023.

One of Rethinking Economics’ most active groups is based in South Africa, where the campaign grew out of a broader student protest movement calling for greater access to higher education for poorer communities.

Amaarah Garda, junior program officer at Rethinking Economics for Africa, said what began as a protest against tuition fees had become a broader critique of the university system and its colonial perspective.

Initially, universities refused to change traditional economics teaching, and so the campaign changed course.

“We had to create our own progressive courses and events at these universities,” Garda said. “So it’s not that everyone who studies economics is exposed to a more progressive view, but these courses are now available. »

The movement is growing, she said, as students seek answers to issues they face in the news and in their everyday lives, from how war economies work to what’s being discussed at U.N. climate negotiations.

“In South Africa, and perhaps around the world, we can see that our students find these ideas not only interesting but increasingly urgent given the multiple crises we face,” she said. “They contact us to explain topics because they see how essential they are to society and they can’t get this information in their regular classes.”

Many academics have praised the space opened up by the campaign.

Clara Mattei, professor of economics at the University of Tulsa in the United States and president of the Forum for Real Economic Empowerment (Free), said her group was collaborating with students at Rethinking Economics to “improve economic education and make it a useful tool for expanding economic action among the general public.”

She said the current economic system was “showing its most violent face…with rampant militarism and obscene and unprecedented levels of inequality, with four people owning more wealth than four billion people.”

“There is an urgent need for the economics discipline to learn to understand these problems as systemic features of our capitalist economy rather than the result of market imperfections or crony capitalism,” she said, adding that students such as those involved in Rethinking Economics were “pushing toward braver frameworks within the economic tradition…to prioritize the logic of need over the logic of profit.”

Jayati Ghosh, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the United States, said Rethinking Economics required established economists to ask fundamental questions that many had been trained to overlook.

She said there were still power structures within institutions, think tanks and journals that wanted to maintain a narrower, more restricted view of the economy, but that the campaign was making progress.

“It’s a battle, but what I really like about this group is that they approach things thoughtfully, they’re willing to hear the people on the other side.”

She said she has spoken to Rethinking Economics groups around the world.

“They bring together all kinds of people, not just economists and students, but also activists and other people, and they approach the same questions in such different ways… I actually learned a lot from them… It made me realize that economics is too important to leave to economists.”