As an econ student I sometimes get annoyed with my friends thinking economics = business and lumping me in with the finance kids, but I tried to seriously engage and here are a few of my ideas with how I think the field is complicit in this:

We don’t complicate any of the major assumptions we make in econ for undergraduate students, so they leave never having to consider the implications of many of our major assumptions. Perfect competition, separating firms/households, and profit maximization are weird at best

I could go through explaining what I think is wrong with those assumptions, but simply put, as a Black woman in this country, the idea that my community is disposable is normalized via many of those assumptions, yet never explicitly questioned in the classroom

I’ve heard a lot of BIPOC students express distrust of econ because they see the connection to business and neo-colonial forces like gentrification.

And I think all this talk about how to get more Black and Brown econ students requires you seriously engaging with us.

Only teaching heterodox econ is limiting. I had to go through @AEASPmsu to actually explain what an economist is or does. That’s pitiful. We literally just argue using our field’s tools. The most basic requirement of being an economist is having an opinion.

Presenting the field like that would be so much more welcoming to students because, if there’s one thing we have, it’s opinions. Instead, I feel like I’m walking on egg shells with everyone except for @snaidunl

It’s good exercise for students to be interlocutors w professors

That’s part what I love about research. It doesn’t happen in a vaccuum, you’re constantly interacting with ideas. Advancements and steps back, but if you have to bank on every curious econ student being part of Econ Twitter... lol maybe that’s whats wrong with the pipeline?

If I had actually believed that I wasn’t allowed to do research until junior year I would’ve kindly seen my way out the door and gone to African American & African Diaspora Studies where they act like they care what I think. I know so many more who have done the same.

And before anyone tries to “we can’t introduce X before we teach Y” their way out of this, @belindaarch taught me the best econ class ever (theoretical foundations of political econ) with only principles of econ as a pre req. There’s no excuse.