Curriculum Health Check update: University of Leeds

In November 2024, Rethinking Economics UK, published a review of 20 economics undergraduate courses from across England, Scotland and Wales, Is Economics Education Fit for the 21st Century?.

This report established a new set of principles that we argue an economics education for the 21st century should abide by and a series of recommendations to ensure that economics education is providing students with the skills and perspectives necessary to take on the challenges of the coming century. Moreover, we found that the vast majority of universities did not reflect the central pillars of a diverse, critical, climate-conscious economics education.

Over the past year, Rethinking Economics has been working with members of the Economics Department at the University of Leeds to update the data used in the study. This is due primarily due to the fact that the original research had depended on older and incomplete module guides and that there were elements of recommendations that the department were keen to include in this coming academic year. 

We are delighted to announce that following our re-review, University of Leeds is in Category 1 of our study and is an undergraduate course that Rethinking Economics UK argues fits many of the principles that we want to see from an economics education.

Following discussions with Rethinking Economics UK, mandatory undergraduate modules such as The Evolution of Economic Ideas will be amended to include perspectives from ecological economics and pay more attention to the role of colonialist thinking and empire in the formation of the economics discipline.

This module is a mandatory undergraduate module and is taken by all undergraduate students.

We are also in discussion with the department on the launch of a new module looking at contemporary social and political challenges. Watch this space!