Academics back students in protests against economics teaching | Education | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/nov/18/academics-back-student-protests-neoclassical-economics-teaching
A prominent group of academic economists have backed student protests against neo-classical economics teaching, increasing the pressure on top universities to reform courses that critics argue are dominated by free market theories that ignore the impact of financial crises.
The academics from some of the UK’s most prestigious institutions, including Cambridge and Leeds universities, said students were being short-changed by their courses, and they accused higher education funding bodies of being a barrier to reforms.
In a startling attack on the agencies that provide teaching and research grants, they said an “intellectual monoculture” is reinforced by a system of state funding based on journal rankings “that are heavily biased in favour of orthodoxy and against intellectual diversity”.
The academics said in a letter to the Guardian that a “dogmatic intellectual commitment” to teaching theories based on rational consumers and workers with unlimited wants “contrasts sharply with the openness of teaching in other social sciences, which routinely present competing paradigms”.
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#dogmatic-intellectual-commitment
#orthodoxy
#economy