The win
In February, the Swiss local group VWelles Rethinking Economics Bern will kick off its first self-organised lecture series, “Introduction to Pluralist Economics”. The course will give an overview of the different schools of thought, after three introductory sessions on philosophy of science. Six guest lecturers were invited from Switzerland, Austria and Germany to participate in person.
Students from the Sustainable Development program are able to gain credits for attendance in this course (3 ECTS).
More information about the course (in German) can be found here.
Economics students are unfortunately not able to get credits for this course at the moment. The VWelles Bern group has their next campaigning target already planned out: make the Intro to Pluralist Economics part of the economics curriculum!
The way there
Switzerland is a good place to be a Rethinker. With five active groups and two supporting national coordinators, group organisers have a lot of solidarity and support to count on. And this is what got the VWelles group started on this track: the support of Plurale Ökonomik Zürich in writing an application for a 10,000F grant, which they themselves received some years back. This successful grant application enabled the VWelles group to make their visions of a better economics education come true!
I remember when I started studying at the university of Bern, I was missing this kind of course, like “why isn’t there something like that?”. And now years later, being able with a group to build up the course yourself… It’s a nice feeling. Kind of realising you can actually change something. And also, to be honest, to learn a lot!
Essential in this process was to get the university to sign off on adding this course to the curriculum. This was made possible thanks to the close collaboration between the local group and the Center for Development and Environment, a university institute with lecturers inclined to question business and economics as usual. Specifically one academic ally was key to helping the group succeed, in mentoring them through the administrative process of both applying for the grant and also of getting their department to accept credits for this new course.
Factors of success
- Group friendship: working together was fun for the VWelles Bern team members!
- Solidarity between Rethinking Economics groups
- Support of an academic ally and good connections with a campus institute
- Available funds: without the grant, the work to convince the university would have been a lot more difficult
Learnings
It was possible to keep a high level of motivation because things worked out for the group: the grant was successful, the university accepted the course in the official curriculum… Maintaining momentum in the face of bad news is a lot harder and something that the team hasn’t gotten to practise – yet!
Update, 26th February 2024: The initial version of the article implied an active resistance by the Economics department, which is incorrect.
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