Universities across America are still teaching an outdated, neoclassical way of economic thinking. The trickle-down curriculums taught in Econ 101 classrooms aren’t just bad for students—they have had disastrous, far-reaching effects on the economy. Decades of bad education has left students adrift: A new study from Rethinking Economics reveals that the majority of college students are critical of the US economic system, with a large majority believing it needs to change. Can we redesign economic curriculums to better reflect how the economy really works?
Abigail Acheson is network coordinator and staff organizer with the US Rethinking Economics National Network. A recent graduate, Abigail is dedicated to revitalizing student organizing for curriculum change at universities.
Nouhaila Oudija is a researcher and consultant at RE-USA. She recently published a research project about college students’ attitudes around the US economic system and about the lack of diversity of thought in economics curricula.
Twitter: @RethinkEcon_USA, @rethinkecon
Economics is Failing US College Students https://www.rethinkeconomics.org/2022/10/18/econ-failing-us-students
Website: https://pitchforkeconomics.com
Twitter: @PitchforkEcon
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Nick’s twitter: @NickHanauer
Nick Hanauer:
Almost all of college students think the economy needs significant transformation.
Nouhaila Oudija:
The large majority of the theories and models we are taught derive from neoclassical economics.
David Goldstein:
Our colleges are training the leaders, the movers, the shakers, the innovators of the future.
Abigail Acheson:
To have the discipline fail to provide students a basic understanding of how power, privilege, and oppression interact and shape the world we live in prepares graduates of economic programs to go out into the world thinking that what they know is neutral.
Announcer:
From the home offices of Civic Ventures in downtown Seattle, this is Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer the best place to get the truth about who gets what and why.
Nick Hanauer:
I’m Nick Hanauer, founder of Civic Ventures.
David Goldstein:
I’m David Goldstein, Senior Fellow at Civic Ventures.
So Nick, it should come as no surprise that economics has been failing us as a nation, as a world, but failing young people in particular because they’re the ones who are going to inherit this screwed up world that we’re creating.
Nick Hanauer:
Yes.
David Goldstein:
But it isn’t just that the economy is failing them. It turns out that the economics profession, academic economics, is failing young people as well.
Nick Hanauer:
Count me stunned and surprised,
David Goldstein:
But the good news is they recognize it.
Nick Hanauer:
It’s funny because our guests today, from Rethinking Economics, of this new report out that details basically how dissatisfied kids who are taking economics in college are, both about the economy and the economics they’re being taught. And it reminds me that there was basically one course I dropped in college, which was Econ 101 for the same damn reasons these people are pissed off today. I got a month or two months into this course and I was like, “This is just bullshit. This is just nonsense there. There’s no point in learning any of this stuff. This makes no sense.” And hell, they’re doing the same thing today, 30, whatever, 40 years later, however long it’s been.
David Goldstein:
They’re still teaching the same bullshit.
Nick Hanauer:
It’s just absolutely crazy. And I think there is this moment, this very important moment where the economics profession has to transform itself from this goofy, neoclassical, make pretend world into a profession that centers itself on the economic problems that we face, like climate change or inequality or what have you. And so these folks at Rethinking Economics, I think are centering their work on that, which I think is a really cool thing and a really important thing. It’ll be fun to talk to them.
Abigail Acheson:
My name’s Abigail Acheson, and I am network coordinator and staff organizer for the Rethinking Economics National Network in the US. And much of my work focuses on revitalizing student organizing at university and helping facilitate peer-to-peer study of the kind of economics that we want to see.
Nouhaila Oudija:
Hi, I’m Nouhaila Oudija. I’m a researcher and consultant for the US Network of Rethinking Economics. And my work revolves around research, external communications and strategy work.
Nick Hanauer:
Thank you guys so much for being with us. What is Rethinking Economics?
Abigail Acheson:
Rethinking Economics is a network of students and recent graduates working to rethink the teaching and practice of economics, and ultimately, to transform universities to be more democratic, equitable and liberatory through campaigning for curriculum change and through popular education.
So as I mentioned earlier, much of our work centers on revitalizing student organizing at universities, particularly student organizing for curriculum reform and facilitating peer-to-peer study of the kind of economics that we want to see. That is to say economics and economics adjacent learning that works to democratize, decolonize and make more liberatory and equitable higher education.
Nick Hanauer:
Obviously, this is a podcast dedicated to the notion that sort of traditional economics is extremely broken. So can you say a little bit more about what the Rethinking Economics team thinks are the biggest deficiencies of traditional economic teaching and practice and theory?
Nouhaila Oudija:
First, there is the famous issue of monism or the systematic resistance of to diversity of thought within the discipline of economics. As many of your listeners may know, starting the seventies and eighties, the neoclassical paradigm came to dominate econ, academia and policymaking and basically has never left since. So even though there are upwards of a dozen schools of economic thought, all proposing diverse and complementary understandings about the economy, the large majority of the theories and models we are taught derive from neoclassical economics. And what’s worse is that we are not even told that these theories and models are simply one way to describe or illustrate phenomena, we’re told that’s just economics. That is the right and unequivocal theories. And we were actually able to demonstrate that through the survey that we did.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah, I think that the point you make about that kids are not informed that there are alternative ways of looking at this stuff. It’s just like, here it is, and it’s like physics, you’re stuck with it. I think that’s a very salient and important point.
Nouhaila Oudija:
Other problems within economics, because as you guys may know, the list is long.
Nick Hanauer:
It’s long.
Nouhaila Oudija:
Yeah. Another one that that’s worth mentioning is that alongside the lack of intellectual diversity, which really impoverishes the field, there’s obviously a striking lack of representation of identities within the field. It’s hard to overstate the absence of the perspectives and scholarship of women, people of color, people of the global south and working class people. So we end up almost exclusively with the thought of old white western men, which everyone can imagine the repercussions of that not only for the discipline, but also for public policy and the ideas and attitudes that are pushed forth. And really it’s outstanding how little economics has done to improve on this front, especially compared to other disciplines like STEM disciplines, for example. And there’s a lot of studies that demonstrate that, and economics has not really even started to reckon with this huge problem.
Nick Hanauer:
So last year you guys did a really interesting study on how college students are feeling about economics, what their perceptions are of the economy and economics teaching and so on and so forth. Tell us a little bit about that study.
Nouhaila Oudija:
Yeah. We surveyed a sample of over 2000 undergraduate students, representative samples. So from all demographics, fields of study, type of institution, political orientation, and we also surveyed around 350 economic students. And we actually asked a few things. We asked participants what their main motivations were for studying their major. We asked them what they thought were the most pressing issues in the US at the moment, and we also asked about their attitudes around the economic system in the US, how they would describe it, how they see their generations, economic prospects within the system. And then lastly, we asked economic students about their curriculum and education. So our results are multifold there.
Nick Hanauer:
Okay. So just to clarify, you surveyed 2,000 general students and 350 economics students, separately?
Nouhaila Oudija:
Correct.
Nick Hanauer:
Okay. Okay. Interesting. Tell us what you learned.
Nouhaila Oudija:
So as expected, we found that econ students are exposed to very few schools of thought. For example, only 22% reported haven’t been exposed to environmental or ecological economics. Only 7% reported haven’t studied feminist economics and stratification economics, which deals with race and only 30% reported having studied Marxian economics. And this is obviously something that we knew, but what struck us was how contrasting it was with what students of all majors reported as the most pressing issues for them.
So the ones that came up on top by a large margin were climate change, racism, gun control, and inequality, or other terms such as poverty, healthcare, housing, and homelessness. So how it is that students think that these are the most important and pressing issues facing the country, but they’re taught virtually nothing about them? How do you want to understand climate change, inequality, race, which are inherently economic problems without learning ecological, Marxian stratification economics? And we found that 33% of the economics respondents, only 33% could correctly identify having learned neoclassical economics, which that number should be a well-rounded 100%, because that is literally what is taught in every single program, including the few heterodox programs that exist in the country. So this points to the fact that, as we mentioned, the students are not told that the models and the theories that they learned are just one of many schools of thought, they’re just told that this is economics.
David Goldstein:
So they don’t believe they’re learning neoclassical economics, they believe they’re learning economics in the same way that physics students believe they’re taught physics, which they are.
Nouhaila Oudija:
Correct.
Abigail Acheson:
Absolutely.
Nick Hanauer:
And in the report, one of the things that seemed really clear that almost all college students think the economy needs significant transformation. Nobody’s satisfied with the status quo.
Abigail Acheson:
That was one of the more surprising findings of the survey. We were really struck by how vast the majority of students surveyed thought that the economic system should be changed. Only 5% of students said that they thought it should not change at all. And in the survey, they were given the options of saying, should the economic system not change, should it slightly change, should it be drastically amended or should it be fully replaced. And only 5% said that it should not change, and 53% said that it should be drastically amended and or reimagined, which is a really striking finding. And just gives you a sense of the dissatisfaction that a lot of students are feeling with the current state of affairs.
And I believe also this links to a dissatisfaction with their education as well. The survey also showed that 57% of economic students chose to study econ in order to understand the world better. And 53% chose to study economics in order to gain skills to make the world a better place. And so when you have that sizable portion of economic students interested in making the world a better place, dissatisfied with the current economic system and current social crises who are looking to learn about racism and climate change and inequality, and understand how they can use what they’re learning at school to address those social crises, it’s really a quite devastating finding to see that economics is not including schools of thought that address these particular issues.
Nick Hanauer:
And of course, what’s really striking about neoclassical economics is it effectively deliberately excludes all of the most important things, like those challenges that you describe.
David Goldstein:
It denies that you should be trying to make the world a better place. Neoclassical economics, as it’s taught today, insists that the only social responsibility of business is to maximize profits for shareholders. So it must be very disappointing to the majority of economic students who think they’re studying a subject that will help them make the world a better place when it’s taught in a way that tells them, no, you’re just going to make it worse if you try to do that, just make money.
Abigail Acheson:
Absolutely.
Nouhaila Oudija:
And just to add on that, perhaps economics doesn’t even teach its students to see capitalism as a system of itself. It just implies it. And one of our findings that also were really, really interesting was that when we asked students to describe the current US economic system, the three adjectives that were the most commonly used again by a huge margin were unfair, unequal, poor, capitalist, bad, broken and corrupt.
Nick Hanauer:
Other than that, how do they feel about it?
Nouhaila Oudija:
Yeah.
Nick Hanauer:
So did you guys survey economics teachers?
Nouhaila Oudija:
No, we did not. It was mostly student focused, yeah.
Nick Hanauer:
Okay. It would be very interesting to know how the people who teach the subject feel about their field and whether they understand, whether they appreciate the disconnect between what they’re teaching and what people want to know about and the tools that they’re looking for to acquire in their lives.
Nouhaila Oudija:
Yeah. That’s a really interesting question. So economics is basically, in a way, a self-fulfilling establishment. So to get to be a professor, you have to get a PhD, and all PhD programs are neoclassical except for a handful. So New School, UMass Amherst, Utah, and a few others. So if you want to research something from a non-orthodox perspective, so not using neoclassical models, methodologies, and logics, you are just unlikely to get accepted at a PhD program, notably the top ones.
And the same thing for teaching. If you got a PhD at one of the heterodox schools, it will be very, very, very hard for you to find a job, so much that so many of these scholars end up teaching in other departments completely. Many of them end up in polysci, anthro and sociology departments. Yeah, as we were saying, diverse thought and critical thought is systematically crowded out of the establishment. And so a lot of professors had to go through that system and have internalized it. There’s like a lot of resistance actually to criticizing economics and its shortcomings.
But that said, there are a number of professors that are open to debate that welcome diverse perspectives and that are absolutely sympathetic to the mission. Many professors in our experience changed the material they taught, the economist they taught, and the faculty that they hired based on exchanges with students and their lobbying efforts.
David Goldstein:
I’m wondering, so you have clearly this immense dissatisfaction with the economy right now amongst college students, and you have an economics profession that appears to be, I assume to them, totally irrelevant, that there’s this lack of relevance in terms of the way modern economics is taught. What type of impact? Obviously, our colleges are training the leaders, the movers, the shakers, the innovators of the future. What type of impact is this abject failure of the economics profession having on the outside world?
Abigail Acheson:
It has a really big impact. Economics programs are often gateways into positions of incredible influence, whether that be policymaking, consultants, the list goes on. And students are taught in university how to understand the world, how to think, how to interpret what goes around them, and how to think about their role in interacting with the world. And so what is taught at universities really matters because it shapes people’s personal and professional lives in a lot of ways. So there’s a really big and often, detrimental impact that this failing of economics to adequately address the most pressing crises of our time has. And in many ways, this particular state of affairs contributes to a dynamic that has been termed a few different things, econocracy is one term, economism is another. But essentially, a political and social order in which economic experts are given outsized deference in decision making, particularly political decision making, concerning the wellbeing of society.
And so to have the discipline not only fail to provide students a basic understanding of power, of inequality, of history, of how power, privilege and oppression interact and shape the world we live in, prepares graduates of economic programs to go out into the world thinking that what they know is neutral or objective, as opposed to inevitably impartial, and in some ways political. And that in itself contributes to a situation in which economics is seen as something that only experts can have a say in. The rest of us cannot wade into economic debates because it’s too complex and difficult for the vast majority of us to understand. And as a result, that leaves a lot of political and moral decisions in the hands of people who are understanding those as purely technical and neutral decisions.
Nick Hanauer:
But I would say that it’s even worse than that because the people who are shilling for that so-called objective framework, the problem with the framework, because it actually, it would be one thing if it was just wrong, but the problem is that it’s wrong in a very particular way, which is that if you take any of it seriously, the only thing that will matter is a very small group of people at the very top will do better and everyone else will do worse. The existing economic framework is a protection racket. And in order to disrupt it, you have to show that it’s more than just inaccurate. You have to explain to people, I think, the degree to which it advances the interest of some and disadvantages almost everybody else, which is the big fight. That is what neoliberalism is. It’s a modality of oppression, like racism or sexism, it’s just for money.
David Goldstein:
Well, money and power.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah. Money and power.
David Goldstein:
Which is used in the service of racism and sexism and oppression.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah. Exactly.
Nouhaila Oudija:
It’s commonly said that econ is to today’s elite what Latin was to the clergy in the Middle Ages. It’s like it’s the language of the elites that commoners don’t have access to, and hence, they don’t have access to decision making because it seems it’s so mystified that they’re like, “I’ll just leave it to the experts. I have no clue.” But there’s this really cool quote by Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang. He says like 95% of economics is common sense, and the other 5%, you’ll get pretty easily if someone takes the time to explain it to you. So yeah, you’re right that there’s truly this huge effort of intentional mystification of economics just for it to be basically the language of the powerful really.
David Goldstein:
Whereas in a PhD program, 95% of economics is math, really complex math that they’ll tell me I don’t understand, and that’s why I don’t understand economics.
Nouhaila Oudija:
Yeah, exactly.
David Goldstein:
So tell us about the glorious future. What’s the end state?
Abigail Acheson:
Yeah. So a lot of what we’ve talked about can be addressed through changes in the education that economics students receive. That is to say economics curriculum needs to prioritize the wellbeing of people and the planet as opposed to maximization of profit and even the maximization of efficiency in their programs. And as we’ve said, social difference and power, inequality and just the earth need to be made central, not peripheral to the discipline. Prioritizing the demystification of economic ideas, as we’ve talked about, that is a really prevalent mechanism of deeply anti-democratic practice. And I would really invite people to think deeply about just how anti-democratic this state of affairs is. And we’re located in the United States of America, which consistently lauds its own status as a leading democratic power of the world. And so to say that so much of the political decision making that happens in this country is anti-democratic, and this is the mechanism by which that is justified, that’s a really, really devastating critique.
And so I think recognizing that no knowledge is purely neutral or objective, restructuring the discipline to make knowledge production from the global south and other oppressed groups central, and remembering that economics is a social science. It was mentioned before, the economics often aspires to be akin to the natural sciences, especially physics where it’s drawn a lot of inspiration from, and it’s models and theories. But it’s really important that economics learn to value and learn from the contributions of other social sciences. That’s a really important step in disrupting this state of affairs in which economists are given so much difference. So these kinds of changes in the curriculum are some really important first steps towards bringing about a better future where economics is relevant and is able to meet the expectations of these students who’ve joined the discipline and chosen to commit four or five years to the study of it in order to make the world a better place in order to understand the world around them and their place in it.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah. I think that’s absolutely fantastic. So one final question that we ask all our guests. Why do you do this work?
Nouhaila Oudija:
Well, for a variety of reasons. First of all, that it’s very much needed. Considering the volume of crises we’re facing currently, I mean, the biggest one being the ecological crisis. Crises of society, crises of economics, economic crises. And so I think first of all, change is absolutely necessary. And so it’s just about what part of change you’re part of. And then secondly, I do this work because lately, there’s been a huge momentum of youth organizing. There’s truly a renaissance of not only student organizing, but youth activism and youth mobilizing because we are the generation of the future and we want to start taking ownership of the world that we will inherit. Just recently, grad student and university workers strikes around the country have been booming. Just the University of California graduate student worker strike that ended in last January was the largest academic worker strike in US history, and it was over 50,000 workers, 10 campuses that really did not yield for five weeks until their demands were met.
And so that really shows that when people organize and apply pressure, anything can be achieved. And so yeah, my work is really inspired by such efforts and also sincere faith in our generation’s power and will to affect change. We surprisingly saw that in the survey. I really wasn’t expecting those findings, but people really want to make the world a better place. People really want things to change. They’re noticing that things are not well, and there’s like a lot of awareness being raised and a lot of momentum in change making. So that’s what inspires me in doing this work and what motivates me.
Nick Hanauer:
How about you, Abigail?
Abigail Acheson:
My background is history and education, and so I have a really deep kind of faith in the ability of education to transform the world and transform people and make big change. And so I do this work firstly because I think that university education is a really important juncture point for changing all the things we’ve talked about here, but in particular, the undue deference that economic professionals are given and the idea that only economic experts can wade into political and economic debates.
And then secondly, I really believe it’s time for a new round of widespread student organizing around curriculum change, around educational and working conditions, around the finances and structural policies of universities in this country. I think it’s not emphasized as much as it should be, but we had a really profound reckoning at universities in this country in the late 1960s when students across the country, not just in the Bay Area, not just in New York City, but truly in all regions of this country, were organizing and demanding changes to their curriculum that got at the heart of who the university was for and what the purpose of a university education should be.
And so as a student of history, I study and learn these examples, and they really demonstrate to me, the widespread impact that student organizing at universities can have, and the fact that the only way we can make the kind of deep change we’d like to see in higher education is through students working collectively to make that change. So that’s why I do this work. I find a lot of inspiration in the organizing that students have done before in this country and outside the US as well.
David Goldstein:
Yeah, that’s fantastic. Academic economics is not going to change all on its own without that pressure from students.
Nick Hanauer:
No, it will not. Yeah, that is for sure.
Abigail Acheson:
No. And this is something that professors have many times as well where they’ve expressed that we would change our curriculum if only students would express an interest. And often, that’s all it takes.
David Goldstein:
Well, thank you both for being with us and for your work. It’s really awesome.
Nouhaila Oudija:
Thank you so much for having us. It’s been a pleasure.
Abigail Acheson:
Yes, thank you.
Nick Hanauer:
One of the things that drives me crazy about the existing economic paradigm is literally all of the interesting stuff, whether it’s inequality or climate or whatever it is we refer to as market failures.
David Goldstein:
It’s an externality, it’s external to the market. Nothing to see here. The market’s got nothing to do with climate change or inequality or racism, but no, no, that’s not economics. Go look at social sciences or something else for that.
Nick Hanauer:
Become a sociologist for God’s sakes. We have nothing to do with that.
David Goldstein:
No, we’re not responsible for that at all. I think what struck me is, you called it a racket. I think of academic economics and the way they described it as more of a church, really.
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah. It’s a belief system. It’s a belief system.
David Goldstein:
And what happens is when you’re a heretic-
Nick Hanauer:
You get kicked out.
David Goldstein:
You can’t get ordained as an economics professor. Heretics don’t get into PhD programs at most universities because it’s hard to shake up a church.
Nick Hanauer:
It’s an insanely insular profession.
David Goldstein:
Right. But every once in a while there’s a reformation, and that’s what I hope we’re seeing forming right now.
Nick Hanauer:
Hopefully, without the actual burning of the people up in the bonfire.
David Goldstein:
Oh, you mean all the bloody wars that happened over hundreds of years?
Nick Hanauer:
Yeah.
David Goldstein:
That was a downside to the reformation, wasn’t it? The schism within the church. The other thing that comes out of their survey that I think is really encouraging here is that, I don’t know, class consciousness isn’t the right word, but certainly the destruction, how destructive orthodox economics has been to the American middle class. Well, it looks like the American middle class, at least young people are understanding that.
Nick Hanauer:
That’s right.
David Goldstein:
And we are in this moment where I think it’s a combination of things. It’s not just what they are being taught or not taught in college, but also the whole structure of the university system in the United States, this for-profit system in which students and their families are asked to mortgage their futures in order to afford a college education. Well, when you are paying that tuition and you are coming away with all that debt, and at the same time, what you’re being taught about economics is totally irrelevant to your lived experience, that causes people to rethink what they’re being taught.
Nick Hanauer:
That’s right. And the good news is that I think that most young people intuit the basic truth about economic cause and effect, and that is that a thriving middle class is the cause of economic growth and social stability, that the economy is people. And the more people we include robustly in the economy, the better it does, that the economy isn’t profits, it’s not industry, it’s not the stock market, it’s not GDP. It’s human welfare. And if you can’t center the study of economics around that, then the subject probably is not worth teaching.
Announcer:
Pitchfork Economics is produced by Civic Ventures. If you like the show, make sure to subscribe, rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Find us on Twitter and Facebook at Civic Action and Nick Hanauer, follow our writing on Medium at Civic Skunk Works, and peek behind the podcast scenes on Instagram, @pitchforkeconomics. As always, from our team at Civic Ventures, thanks for listening. See you next week.