Graduated economists are still sent into the world with blinkers on, states Joris Tieleman, PhD candidate at the Erasmus Graduate School of Social Sciences and Humanities and co-founder of the student movement Rethinking Economics in the Netherlands.
Economists lack a realistic view on the world. And that is mainly because of their education. Current programmes in Economics often lack insight into politics, power struggles and cultural differences, which all have significant impact on the economy. Instead, the programmes tend to focus on mathematical models and theory alone.
After their studies, economists start working for esteemed organisations such as the Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, the Dutch Central Bank, or the Ministry of Finance. They contribute to policy-making or use their ideas to steer the public debate on what is economically feasible or desirable. For all these positions it is important to have a broad view of the economy, says Tieleman.
He wonders why there is such a resistance to a broader spectrum of theory at economics faculties. According to Brigitte Hoogendoorn, Assistant Professor and Programme Manager of the BSc. Economics and Business Economics at Erasmus School of Economics, pushing for change in the academic world remains a difficult task. Hoogendoorn struggles with the question on how to make the programme more open and critical. ‘An education programme is like a supertanker. Changing course is a very slow process. Last year, we moved the course philosophy of science from the last Bachelor’s year to a more prominent place in year one.’
About the movement Rethinking Economics in the Netherlands
Joris Tieleman is co-founder of the student movement Rethinking Economics in the Netherlands, which campaigns for a broader, more realistic and more socially relevant economics education. He has previously published "Thinking like an Economist?”, a systematic analysis of economics programmes in the Netherlands. Currently, he and his colleagues are following that up with the project "Economy Studies", a book containing proposals on how to improve economics programmes at universities worldwide. This project has received support from the ISRF Flexible Grants for Small Groups (F5).
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Read the entire article in de Volkskrant, 16 November 2019 (in Dutch).
