Pro-corporate "free"-trade economists dominate university economics departments: by design?

I've been reading about how the nation's universities have been stocking their economics departments with as many Milton Friedman disciples as possible. Requirements: must believe and be willing to advocate that "free" trade raises everyone's standard-of-living; must believe that lower taxes on the rich raises everyone's boats; must believe that state-owned and state-run properties and services be privatized; must believe that enacting things like a living-wage will cause unemployment; etc.

Some of these young economists proudly boast how they were inspired by that great intellectual huckster, Ayn Rand. Here's just one example: http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/autobio.htm

Funny how Limblow, Inanity, and O'Leilly like to paint American universities as bastions of left-wing insurrection, when the evidence shows quite the opposite. Heck, even at Harvard, for the past three decades, every new economics and social science undergraduate major has been required to first take Economics 10 ("Ec 10"), taught by only one professor, Reagan economics advisor Martin Feldstein, who basically indoctrinated each one of his students with the supply-side, privatization, ruthless free-trade spiel. When some Harvard undergrads recently protested the Ec 10 hegemony, and demanded changes, "liberal" Harvard gave them the stiff-arm: the required indoctrination will continue. As lame consolation, a more honest economics general survey course was finally created -- but it's not part of the Harvard Econ department, and credits earned can't replace the obligatory Ec 10.

What's behind all this? Are universities doing this by design, or is it just the way economics department hiring turns out? Anyone here familiar with economics department politics?

China, India, there are good points.

Sadly, the toll it's taking on Americans - never mind the solutions to the problem are ones nobody wants to discuss...

:kick:

and I don't think it is a conspiracy or due to outside pressure

Neoclassical economics tends to be very quantitative, giving economics the veneer of a science (though without the substance).

There is also a certian amount of peer pressure and self-selection. Once a dominant ideology establishes itself, it tends to perpetuate.

Also, the last 35 years have seen a rise in the glorification of the "free marketplace", hence motivating academic economists to follow the herd.

Of course, you also tend to find lots of Marxists in sociology departments, so left-leaning academics will move in that direction instead of economics

Sad when you can actually find more progressive sympathies in the business school than in the econ department

Union For Radical Political Economics

http://www.urpe.org/

They are still around, do they have any influence?

I was taught Keynesian economics as well as Friedman style theories not to mention both macro and micro economics. I think this (teaching Friedman economics as the sum total of economics) is what has led us to our current situation.

:kick: