Thomas Piketty, the economist of the moment, writes that…

““Thomas Piketty, the economist of the moment, writes that after he obtained an economics doctorate, and spent several years teaching at M.I.T., “I was only too aware of the fact that I knew nothing about the world’s economic problems.” Piketty goes on, “To put it bluntly, the discipline of economics has to get over its childish passion for mathematics and for purely theoretical and often highly ideological speculation, at the expense of historical research and collaboration with the other social sciences.” The student group agrees with Piketty. In the open letter, the students argue that an economics degree “should include interdisciplinary approaches and allow students to engage with other social sciences and the humanities.” But the students’ main beef is that, even within the subject of economics, the standard curriculum is overly restrictive, and excludes much that is valuable. The letter calls for students to be exposed to “a variety of theoretical perspectives, from the commonly taught neoclassically-based approaches to the largely excluded classical, post-Keynesian, institutional, ecological, feminist, Marxist and Austrian traditions—among others. Most economics students graduate without ever encountering””

— Anonymous