Pluralism in university economics teaching: the case of France

This paper examines the range of courses offered in economics and management bachelor’s degrees in the 53 French public universities. Based on an exhaustive survey and a quantitative analysis of all the course outlines for 2020–2021, this paper analyses the curricula from the angle of pluralism, using the titles of the 6,433 courses offered in these outlines. We use an original categorisation of these titles. First, we focus on whether they denote a mainstream or non-mainstream approach. After noting the very significant weight of the mainstream in economics and management bachelor’s degrees in France, we examine their degree of pluralism along five dimensions: the pluralism of theoretical currents and paradigms; the plurality of themes addressed in economics; openness to other disciplines; the variety of methods taught; and reflexivity (i.e., the ability to develop historical analyses critical of the discipline). We demonstrate, with supporting statistics, that in each of these dimensions, the range of economics courses offered in French bachelor’s degrees in economics and management is marked by a very low degree of pluralism.