Rethinking Economics Education

During my studies, I was very active on reforming Dutch university economics education. Together with other members of Rethinking Economics NL, I organized events, run campaigns, engaged with curriculum makers, build a movement of students, and wrote articles as well as the report ‘Thinking like an economist? A quantitative analysis of economics bachelor curricula in the Netherlands’.

This work paid off more than I initially expected. Multiple universities, such as Utrecht University, Radboud University Nijmegen and the University of Amsterdam have started substantially changing their curricula. And both the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Leiden University even decided to create entirely new bachelor programmes inspired and informed by our ideas and advice.

After having spend a lot of time analysing Dutch economics education, Joris Tieleman and I put together the constructive ideas from the global movement of students and academics on how economics education should look in the book ‘Economy Studies: A Guide to Rethinking Economics Education’.

Since the publication of the book, we have been able to help grow the independent Dutch think tank Our New Economy from an organization of 4 to 14 people in one year. We now have teams working on reforming European academic economics education, Dutch business education (in collaboration with ‘hogescholen’) and Dutch secondary economics education.