The Econocracy by Joe Earle

Author:Joe Earle
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141986883
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2017-05-17T04:00:00+00:00

We use this definition as a basic guide to what we mean when we call for a liberal education in economics. We take liberal education to be an ideal, which is to be valued and sought after, but recognise that it is difficult for individuals and institutions to achieve this, as we explore in the next section. However, the degree to which they do is, in our view, a mark of their quality.8

The AACU argues that liberal education is a way of teaching (pedagogy) as much as any particular content (syllabus), although choices about one clearly affect the other. Our analysis of economics education at Cambridge University illustrates the centrality of pluralism to any meaningful liberal education. We introduced the concept of pluralism in Chapter 3, and Exhibit 3.1 illustrated a number of different important economic perspectives of which all economics students should have at least a basic knowledge. The historical wealth of Cambridge and Oxford means that now, of all the universities in Britain, they are best placed to provide students with a liberal education. This is apparent in our curriculum review. At Cambridge there is less of a reliance on textbooks and more engagement with economic literature; multiple-choice tests are not used; and they provide small-group supervision with academics instead of large tutorials with graduate students.9 Other universities cannot provide the same resources per student and so struggle to develop the personalised relationship between student and academic that is such an important part of liberal education.

However, our curriculum review showed that the actual content of Cambridge modules was very similar to content at other universities, and there were very few references to non-neoclassical perspectives. Exposure to diverse ways of thinking about the world distinguishes education from narrow technical training and prepares students to deal with the complexity, diversity and change that they will encounter in their lives. When you are taught that there is only one way to do economics you are only taught one way to think, and if you are not given the tools to critically engage with your learning, it is difficult to develop these deeper skills. Pluralism is for these reasons a necessary condition for a liberal education.

This is illustrated by the Cambridge Society for Economic Pluralism, which did a survey of 250 economics students and alumni. The survey found that over the course of their studies 60 per cent of respondents reported zero or negative improvement in verbal communication skills, 47 per cent reported the same effect for written communication, and 35 per cent reported it for critical and independent thinking skills.10 Despite its resource advantages, economics education at Cambridge fails to develop some of the core values of liberal education including independent thinking, social responsibility and critical intellect.

Undergraduate economics today undermines liberal education with its narrow focus on employability. The response we get from academic economists when we argue that pluralist economics is better for students illustrates this point. The first thing they tell us is that economics graduates have one of

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