Those were the enchanting days of the Keynesian revolution and bliss it was to be an economist. Economists have since honeycombed the public service, much to the chagrin of non-economists.

Today, however, student preferences reveal that economics, along with a career in the public service, has lost its appeal. Instead, the bright young things head off to business school. In doing so they might come across a cursory unit in economics, but the likes of Keynes, and Friedman, elicit yawns, if not confusion.

If that was not bad enough, there has been an exodus of students from doing economics degrees, largely because economics instructors have fervently placed rigor more than relevance in their model-building and methodology.

Interestingly, university economists seem to be the masterminds behind their own demise. Having turned their discipline inwards, economists, especially of the neoclassical variety, are having a real communication problem relating their science to the rest of society.

Salvation, however, may be at hand if some students in France have their way. A movement has sprung up complaining about the excessive use of mathematics, which has predictably become an end in itself.

Mainstream economics has consequently become an "autistic science". Moreover, it has become imperialistic by banning heterodox strands of economics from the curriculum. The French students also claim that modern economics is taught in a dogmatic teaching style that leaves little place for critical and reflective thought.

They probably had those ubiquitous and glitzy American economic textbooks in mind since the US exerts a hegemonic influence over how the discipline is taught.

The same goes for career aspiration too. If you really want to be an economist, sonny, pack your bags for North America and don't come back till you get your doctorate.

So say the professors.

Having none of that, the French students have drawn up a petition calling for less scientism and more pluralism in the teaching of the discipline.

They also want an "engagement with empirical and concrete economic realities" - in other words, less fanciful Disneyland-inspired models.

Finally, they have asked their professors to "rescue economics from its autistic and socially irresponsible state".

To their great surprise, the professors did not take refuge in the Bastille of the seminar room but have joined the revolt.

The bonfire of revolution has become so bad that the French education minister, Mr Lang, has ordered a commission to investigate.

Needless to say, it would never happen here, as the Australian economics community has, by and large, become a miniature rendition of the American profession. There's a pity.

Reading Skidelsky's final biographical volume on Keynes, which covers his struggle to get the Americans to be more generous in lending assistance to Britain to fight Hitler, might be an eye-opener in resisting the love of all things American - not least, how to do economics.

Alex Millmow is a lecturer in economics at Charles Sturt University.
amillmow@csu.edu.au