Despite behavioral economics producing multiple Nobel laureates, undergraduate microeconomics textbooks remain fundamentally unchanged since the 1970s. This highlights a significant inertia within academia, where foundational curriculum often fails to incorporate revolutionary, field-altering discoveries even years after they are widely accepted.

Economic theory is built on the flawed premise of a rational, economically-motivated individual. Financial historian Russell Napier argues this ignores psychology, sociology, and politics, making financial history a better guide for investors. The theory's mathematical edifice crumbles without this core assumption.

Fields like economics become ineffective when they prioritize conforming to disciplinary norms—like mathematical modeling—over solving complex, real-world problems. This professionalization creates monocultures where researchers focus on what is publishable within their field's narrow framework, rather than collaborating across disciplines to generate useful knowledge for issues like prison reform.

Nobel laureate Robert Solow critiques modern macroeconomic models (DSGE) for being overly abstract and failing to represent an economy with diverse actors and conflicting interests. By modeling a single representative agent, he argues, the field has detached itself from solving real-world economic problems.

Post-WWII, economists pursued mathematical rigor by modeling human behavior as perfectly rational (i.e., 'maximizing'). This was a convenient simplification for building models, not an accurate depiction of how people actually make decisions, which are often messy and imperfect.

Political Science is ranked at the bottom tier because its departments are dominated by quantitative analysis over political theory. Students complain they can no longer find theory courses, as the field has been taken over by statistical modeling that often yields little insight.

Academic disciplines structure research differently. Economics has thousands of niche topics, creating many lone experts. In contrast, fundamental physics concentrates most researchers on a few big problems, leading to a hyper-competitive, high-pressure environment.

The primary function of a college degree is to signal desirable employee traits—intelligence, work ethic, and compliance—rather than to impart useful skills. As more people get degrees, the signal weakens, forcing students into an expensive and wasteful 'credential race' for ever-higher qualifications to stand out.

Academic journals often reward highly specialized, siloed research. This creates a professional dilemma for economists wanting to tackle complex, real-world policy problems that require an interdisciplinary approach, as that work is less valued by traditional publishing gatekeepers.