Mainstream economists on the defensive

But critics of the status quo say that perspective reflects a very different philosophy of education than that being followed by advocates of pluralism.

“Memorizing something by rote is not the same type of learning as being forced to confront different ideas,” Lee said. “Students do have difficulty engaging with alternative perspectives and prefer to learn one view. They say, ‘just give us the truth.’ If you teach different approaches, they will struggle. But I think there’s value in that struggle. Students only learn to think if they’re getting confused sometimes.”

But Salemi and some other mainstream economists are more focused on a philosophy of education that emphasizes “proficiencies,” or practical skills.

“What’s the purpose of adopting a major in economics?” Salemi asked. “The goal is to achieve proficiencies, not familiarity with different bodies of thought. It’s not about sets of ideas, it’s about competencies.”

The emphasis on proficiencies, Salemi explained, is “to help them get ready to use economic tools in the workplace. A student who could walk into a job interview and talk very intelligently about Marx and Engels probably isn’t going to get the job, but a student who goes in and can do a basic cost-benefit analysis might.”

The proficiencies approach was developed in a 2001 article by W. Lee Hansen, an emeritus professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In an interview, Hansen also emphasized that the important question for educators to ask was “what do we want people to be able to do the day after they graduate?”

For example, Hansen said, students should be able to “write a coherent memo for their boss about some policy.”

Some critics of the current model of economics education also emphasize the need to impart competencies to students, but see the kind of competencies that mainstream economists advocate as being overly narrow.

Neva Goodwin of Tufts, for example, said that there are several proficiencies that are left out of the mainstream’s analysis, including the ability to place what is being learned within a social and historical context; the ability to think through the ethical implications of economics assumptions and decisions; and the ability to thoughtfully compare and contrasts various positions and arguments.

Julie Nelson, chair of the economics department at the University of Massachusetts Boston, characterized those kinds of competencies as “critical skills,” which she said need to be included in a broader understanding of what students should be able to do after graduating.

The mainstream ‘proficiencies’ alone, without the critical skills, “just make people able to do stupid and perhaps harmful things more effectively and efficiently,” she said.

Goodwin said that the difference between the two positions reflected a deeper difference in educational philosophy: “One is aiming at a narrow future employment trajectory,” she said. “It’s based on the workplace, and does not include the concept of a liberal education, which emphasizes citizen education, educating students to be able to engage usefully in society both within and beyond the workplace.”

An exclusive focus on workplace-based proficiencies, Nelson agreed, can detract from the broader, liberal philosophy of education that has always, at least nominally, been the hallmark of American higher education.

Salemi said that the proficiencies he was emphasizing would be useful to students going into a variety of fields. But when asked what students were going on to do with the proficiencies he taught them, Salemi — who sometimes referred to his students as “clients” — said, “Maybe not most, but certainly a lot of them are going into financial services.”

From where will change come?

“People who have spent so many years learning something and have so much human capital invested in it aren’t going to want to change because it will lower the value of their human capital,” said David Colander of Middlebury College.

David Ruccio of Notre Dame agreed. “Mainstream economists have an interest in reproducing themselves,” he said. “The whole structure of the economics department has been built around that desire, and I think that’s the single most important explanation for why there has been so little change.”

For that reason, many critics said that they were not hopeful that change was going to come from within the profession itself. “If change comes, it’s likely going to come from without,” Colander said.

“There’s a tremendous amount at stake here,” Ruccio said. “The way economics is taught has profound consequences for society in general because economics and policy are so intertwined.”

“More directly,” he went on, “it has profound consequences for students. And it probably won’t change until they really start to push back.”