A professor of economics has turned to crowdfunding to pay his salary because universities ¡°no longer provide the time and freedom they once gave to original thinkers¡±.

Steve Keen, who is currently employed full time at Kingston University but expects to remain there next year on a quarter-time basis only, hopes to raise enough money to enable him to continue his work as a public intellectual.

He is initially hoping to raise $10,000 (?8,232) a month, which he says would allow him to work full time on the third edition of his book, Debunking Economics, plus a series of papers, and to continue producing videos for his , which has more than 10,000 subscribers.

Writing on Patreon, Professor Keen complains that ¡°almost all the money¡± for economics research continued to go towards ¡°mainstream¡± theories, even though they had ¡°failed so abjectly¡±.

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

Professor Keen says that he has been working to develop an ¡°alternative, realistic¡± economics for 45 years, but had struggled to find funding.

¡°Universities have¡­been starved of research funding over the years, and buried under bureaucratic controls,¡± he writes. ¡°They no longer provide the time and freedom they once gave to original thinkers like me.

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

¡°It¡¯s so bad now that the best way for me to have the time and resources to build a new economics is to leave the university sector, and get supported directly by the public.¡±

Professor Keen is looking for individuals to become his patrons and pledge as little as $1 a month, for which they will get access to exclusive blog posts, videos and podcasts.

He is hoping to attract between 2,000 and 4,000 people willing to commit an average of $3 to $5 a month, in return for additional benefits, including access to lecture slides and e-books.

Rewards for larger contributions include an annual seminar for patrons prepared to pledge $1,000 a month or more, and naming rights for a research centre that would be established if anyone pledges $150,000 a month or more.

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

The appeal went live on 8 March and, as of 14 March, 164 patrons had collectively pledged $1,508 a month. If donations exceed the initial $10,000 monthly target, Professor Keen hopes to employ staff and to develop an online university of non-orthodox economics that he calls ¡°Kore¡± (Keen Online Realistic Economics).

Professor Keen told Times Higher Education that his new initiative offered a welcome release from ¡°the bureaucratic pressures which govern academic life¡± and, if sponsors come forward, should give him ¡°the freedom to do real research¡±.

But it also responds to developments in both the academy as a whole, and economics as a discipline.

¡°If you go back 40 years, Cambridge had a range of economic perspectives being taught,¡± Professor Keen said. ¡°Now students are only taught a single neoclassical paradigm. The most prestigious universities have been captured by the mainstream.

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

¡°If you publish in non-orthodox economics, you get taken up at the less prestigious institutions.¡±

External factors such as the removal of student number controls had led to reduced recruitment at these universities, and the consequent reduction in staff funding ¡°massively reduces the diversity of thought in economics¡±, he said.

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

A Kingston spokeswoman said that Professor Keen's views were "about the funding of the university sector as a whole and the impact of government policy on that".

matthew.reisz@tesglobal.com