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“The idea that economics as a discipline is narrow, inward-looking, or broken is one that has been present for over four decades. Rethinking Economics is the latest generation of trying to change it.”
Rethinking Economics
Expanding Economics is McGill University’s branch of a global network of groups called Rethinking Economics, which are united by the mission to practice and promote an economics that is open, relevant, and for everyone.
The global financial crisis of 2008 shook not only the global economy, but the discipline of economics itself. In the years following, economics departments, including at McGill, were flooded with more students than ever, many of whom came to study economics hoping to understand why the financial crash happened.
In the face of this, students at the University of Manchester came together to form the Post Crash Economics Society-- a group which demanded more from their economics education.
They felt that the very questions that drew them to economics weren’t being answered, and that the same theory that had led to the recent economic chaos was being taught as uncritically as it had been before the crisis. Later, these students graduated and went on to form Rethinking Economics, an organization to connect and support a network of similar student groups which had begun to pop up at many other European universities.
In 2018, Expanding Economics McGill became the first Rethinking Economics affiliate in North America, and today there are over 70 groups worldwide. They host conferences, foster discussion, and campaign for change in the curricula at their home institutions.
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