Is Economics Responding to Critique? What do the UK 2015 QAA Subject Benchmarks Indicate?

Abstract

The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education provides subject benchmarks which inform but do not determine the content of university and college academic programmes in the United Kingdom. These are revised every few years and have recently been completed in economics for the first time since the global financial crisis. Given the extensive criticism of mainstream economics since the crisis, one might anticipate the benchmark revisions to be extensive. However, this has not been the case. This article explores why this is so. The analysis may also be considered of broader significance because the conditions under which the review has occurred involve general processes that will be familiar, albeit with local variation, to heterodox economists elsewhere. In the conclusion, a more fundamental reconstruction of the benchmarks is provided. These will also be of interest as general orienting statements for a different kind of economics.

Keywords:

• economics education
• heterodox economics
• pluralism
• political economy
• realism

JEL codes:

• A11
• A12
• A20
• B50

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Ben Fine, Tony Lawson and Andrew Mearman for comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹Critics do not necessarily agree on all aspects of the problems and emphasise different elements to different degrees. Critiques then encompass different elements – so the critics referenced here are relevant to all of the points that follow in this section.

²One might note that natural and field experiments may be less open to the specific criticisms. There are always degrees of difference and dispute regarding this (see Davis 2006).

³By this I do not mean to imply that the problem is simply attitude – it is disposition created and reproduced through the structures of the discipline and the further structures that structure the discipline.

⁴Note also that at a recent Bank of England event, Dave Ramsden, head of the UK Government Economic Service (GES) commented that heterodox economics ought to be supported because it was a source of alternative ideas. This has been somewhat at odds with subsequent comments on the curriculum from the Royal Society and other influential sources (see references to CORE later).

⁵This is not new and students themselves have recognised it in the past: ‘A typical comment of upper-level students was, “The first two years were miserable. Now it is kind of fun and exciting, but I'm not sure the pain was worth it”' (Colander 2005, p. 179). Also: ‘one student noted that one of the teachers in the first year stated, “I'm not here to teach you; I'm here to brainwash you.” The student continued, “And that's been pretty much successful”' (Colander 2005, p. 187).

⁶I gave a talk at the Boom Bust Boom Bust conference (Manchester, April 2015) organized by Rethinking Economics and Post-Crash, sponsored by INET. Attendees included Martin Wolf, Ha-Joon Chang, Steve Keen and many others. There was a notable absence of interest or engagement from mainstream economists despite that the Royal Economics Society conference was also in Manchester the same week. See http://boombustboombust.com/

⁷See Gabor (2014) for some interesting non-mainstream work on central banks and financialisation.

⁸See Lancastle (2015) for comment by the student Rethinking Economics representative.