Invasion of the intuition snatchers

June 2000 - in France a group of Economics students and professors appealed against the modern day methodology of teaching economics in graduate schools. Their petition protested against a lot of issues - one of the issues was the dogmatic teaching style in economics, which leaves no place for critical and reflective thought. Their academic revolution has introduced a new term in the world of academics "THE POST-AUTISTIC ECONOMICS MOVEMENT".I talked to lot of professors and students who are associated with the economics PhD programs in different graduate schools of US - most of them believe that the movement didn't affect the US economics circuit in any respect. I agree with them but does that imply we are happy enough to ignore any sort of consequences of the movement that is taking place in Europe. I'm not against the rigorous theoretical and empirical training that Doctoral students get in most of the US schools - but side by side can we ignore the fact that PhD students are not getting sufficient opportunities to get acquainted with more intuitive courses? No we can't and this is a reality! Ok..some people have already raised their eyebrows.Let me put it in different words. It is better to say that most of the grad schools in US (I'm from India and did both my bachelors and masters in Inida; I believe even Indian institutions are not exceptional in this context) are not very efficient these days in encouraging graduate students to apply their intuition to highbrow research!In US I'm lucky enough to meet some of the best intuitive people I've ever seen in my life - but even after saying this I'm not really contradicting the points mentioned earlier. The curriculum has been made in such a way that the students seldom get a scope of going beoynd all type of sophisticated techniques mainly taken from pure science subjects - going beyond doesn't mean pursuing more hi-fi tools but it means applying more and more intuition. It may sound like I'm complaining too much but that is not true - I'm just a bit conscious on making Economics more and more interesting. Economics being one of the most dynamic subjects in academic world drew my attention in early years of student life.I sincerely hope lot other people who have been fascinated by the charm of this subject will continue to pass on the message of making it more and more intuitive(and grad school shouldn't be an exception)

btw..if you want to know more about "THE POST-AUTISTIC ECONOMICS MOVEMENT" check the following links,

http://www.paecon.net/PAEhistory02.htm
http://www.btinternet.com/~pae_news/history.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_Autistic_Economics