Economics Education for Sustainable Development: Institutional Barriers to Pluralism at the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin (France)

Abstract: While commitments made at the Rio+20 conference paved the road for the building of a green and fair economy, the ability of economics to provide a satisfactory intellectual framework to support this process has been increasingly questioned, particularly since the 2008 global financial crisis. In order to make economics more responsive to present and future challenges, this study argues that education in economics must be centred on the pursuit of sustainable development with what has been termed Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). To qualify as ESD, this paper contends that economics education must embrace pluralism on four levels (theoretical, methodological, disciplinary and pedagogical). This fourfold pluralism will improve economists’ capacity to deal with societal challenges and allow for the long-term building of resilient green-er and fair-er economies. The University of Versailles Saint-Quentin (France) Bachelor of Economics and Management is chosen as a case study to identify the current institutional factors hindering the opening of economics education to pluralism. The thesis draws on relevant literature in the field, and also utilises interviews undertaken with five economic professors teaching in the Bachelor. Following analysis of the case study, five main barriers to a plural economics education were found; these barriers are professionalisation, recruitment, evaluation, laziness and performance.