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Financial Times: Convention flipped: real-world economics gains ground in business studies

1 June 2021

CORE lecture theatre

The Financial Times discussed the reform of economics education, motivating students by complex real-world problems, rather than beginning with abstractions. Described as “diverse, practical and accessible”, this approach was created by CORE, an open knowledge global collaboration of economic researchers, including UCL Professor and CORE project director, Wendy Carlin, over ten years ago and is now embedded in universities across the world.

Professor Carlin highlighted that the different challenges we face today require different ways to measure the economy, including ‘natural capital’ which is inclusive of our natural environment. Not only will this make the subject more accessible for students, she hopes, but will also create new theories and frameworks to tackle these issues.

CORE (Curriculum Open access Resources in Economics) is based at UCL’s Department of Economics and aims to reform the teaching of economics to address today’s pressing problems – innovation, inequality, environmental sustainability, instability – linking to data and history, and incorporating recent economic research. A global coalition of researchers and teachers is developing free, high-quality, interactive online resources. CORE’s e-book, The Economy, is used in instruction in 368 universities in 61 countries.

Wendy Carlin is Professor of Economics at University College London (UCL) and Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). She is leading the CORE project, to reform the undergraduate economics curriculum.

 

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