Harvard economics professor Nicholas Gregory Mankiw announced on 4 March that he will stop teaching the university’s flagship economics introductory course after 14 years.
He was chairman of the Council of Economic advisers under President George W Bush and economic adviser to Mitt Romney during his presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012.
Mankiw’s retirement as a teacher has led to fresh calls for Harvard to overhaul its approach to economics to take into account the impact of the 2008/09 financial crisis and the rise of alternatives including modern monetary theory (MMT).
There are three reasons to study at university. The first is to acquire knowledge of scientific methods that help us understand the universe. This includes mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and related subjects.
The skills and knowledge acquired may have no useful application. For example, knowing the structure of the distant universe that it would take millions of light years to reach has no practical purpose.
It’s knowledge for its own sake and is in line with the honourable tradition of thousands of years of human endeavour.
The second is to acquire vocational skills. This encompasses medicine, law, engineering and other disciplines required for a professional career doing something of social value, or, at least, what other people will pay for.
The third reason is to master communications. These disciplines include languages, history, philosophy and literature.
They may not expand knowledge of the universe or equip students with professional skills. But knowing how to tell a story and the importance of human intuition is exceptionally valuable.
Economics, sadly, can’t be justified on any of those three counts.
It’s not a hard science, since it focusses on the uncertain nature of human reactions to different situations. Having an economics degree is deemed useful for people planning to be accountants or work in finance. But no one’s going to trust an auditor whose sole qualification is being an economics graduate. And when it comes to communications, economics is a disaster. Its definitions are imprecise and unstable. Its models are complex to the point of incomprehensibility.
The truth is that the only thing economics might teach you is how to teach economics, like Mankiw. People emerge from the economics departments of fine universities with their heads filled with bad science, unusable knowledge and, probably worst of all, an inability to tell a story anyone can follow.
This perhaps explains why economics is today a disastrously contested field of human disputation.
Practically nothing any economist says is beyond challenge. All of it is fairly dull. And speaking in a form of code that even their peers struggle with, economists can come across as weird.
So maybe the point’s been reached where every economist should do what Mankiw’s done.
Stop teaching economics.