Undergraduates at Manchester University propose overhaul of orthodox teachings to embrace alternative theories, reads Guardian on 25th October 2013.
[sws_pullquote_right] “[U]niversities ignore empirical evidence that contradicts mainstream theories in favour of “overly technical nonsense”.
Adam Posen, former member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England. [/sws_pullquote_right] Economics undergraduates at the University of Manchester have formed the Post-Crash Economics Society, which they hope will be copied by universities across the country. The organisers criticise university courses for doing little to explain why economists failed to warn about the global financial crisis and for having too heavy a focus on training students for City jobs.
A growing number of top economists, such as Ha-Joon Chang, who teaches economics at Cambridge University, are backing the students.
You can read the whole article here.
We’re very pleased with this great initiative!
Most university economics courses still teach a model of banking that doesn’t apply to the real world – a model of banking that’s at least 40 years out of date! (See our Video Course Banking 101 to learn more.)
Although there has been some progress, e.g. the book ‘Where does money come from?’ (co-authored by Positive Money’s Andrew Jackson) has already been included in university courses, even as a core text on a City University undergraduate economics course, the way monetary economics and banking is still taught in most universities is very misleading.
On the Post-Crash Economics Society website there’s a part dedicated to banking which includes our video on ‘How banks create money’.
They ask if the Balloon Model is more apt in describing the function of money in today’s economy and would like to know your thoughts. You can leave a comment here.
You can also join their Facebook Group UoM Post-Crash Economics Society and participate in the discussion there.