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Michael Williams wrote the following: 
 
"I have met so many bright and motivated students who felt that they  
were repeatedly required to 'pay their dues' again and again by not  only 
mastering, but actually doing original work at the  ever-expanding 
technical frontier of orthodox economic modelling,  before being allowed 
to 'play the blues' and get down to serious  theoretical criticism of 
orthodoxy. Too often the result is that they  either quit economics in 
favour of another social science, or perhaps  philosophy, or they put 
aside the critical enthusiams of their  'youth' and immerse themselves in 
orthodoxy's 'normal' science.  Neither of these consequences can be 
good for the health of the  discipline, I would suggest." 
 
My own graduate school experience was that of 15 or so grad students 
moaning and groaning about how ridiculous all this theory was.  I 
predicted to my felllow students that by the end of the second year they 
would not be maoning and complaining and that by the end of the third 
year, they would teaching this theory.  Now they are, primarily,  
practicing this theory without any insights into its true shortcomings.   
They get answers that journals and corporate supervisors like to see and  
so they keep on playing the game. 
 
Some neoclassical economists are doing some interesting work 
because they are loosening some of their assumptions.  But, they 
inevitably find that these new results were already explained by Post 
Keynesians, Institutionalists, Marxists etc. 
 
Ed Slattery 
 
 
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