It is widely understood across society that all is not well in the house of economics. In particular, there has been much criticism of the discipline’s inability to anticipate the global financial crisis, with even the Queen feeling compelled to ask Britain’s leading economists why they did not see the crisis coming.

More recently, there have been growing protests about the narrow way in which economists have been educated. Last week, 48 associations of economics students from 21 countries (including Australia) formed the International Student Initiative for Pluralism in Economics and published an open letter calling for deep reforms in the way economics is taught. The students point out how the narrowing of the curriculum has meant that many of them only get a simplistic, uncritical coverage of just one area of economics: what is known as the neoclassical school. This is the school that has been increasingly criticised as inadequate.

Why do so many students care, and why should we care, about the narrow and uncritical economics education they are receiving? The students correctly point out that the way economics is taught has consequences far beyond the university walls: it shapes the minds of the next generation of policymakers, and therefore shapes how societies respond to the substantial challenges of the 21st century.

Because the big choices that face our society are increasingly framed in economic terms, it is critical that students obtain an education that allows them to properly assess the options in front of them.

The students are dissatisfied for three reasons. Firstly, there is generally no required study of economic history or the history of economic thought. This produces graduates with dangerous levels of historical amnesia in regard to the world and to the discipline they assume they understand.