“On major reason is the academic prestige structure so important to economists, since academics such as Milton Friedman and Paul Samuelson are among the leading figures. The academic publish-or-perish system, the value of “pure research,” and the fact that the doctoral degree is the major license to practice all justify this emphasis on academia.

The most prestigious form of publication is a quantitative theoretical article in a “number-one” journal, such as The American Economic Review, a journal of the American Economic Association. While workers in some academic disciplines (e.g., history, anthropology) prefer books and monographs, economists since World War II, like physicists, prefer the journal article. Journal articles are cited far more than other publications. While many of those who are at the apex of the profession, including Nobel Prize winners like Milton Friedman and Paul Samuelson, have also written popular books and articles, their professional prestige derives primarily from their writings.” （Canterbery and Burkhardt, 1983, p. 23）

“…. ‘publish or perish’ has become the iron law of promotion of both graduate students and young professors.” (Redman, 1993, p.164)

从科学哲学的角度，自然科学的学术研究，除了问题的发掘而提出「新发现」或「新假说」外，在于对这些新发现或假说的「检验」；其研究成果系渐进、零碎的，对单篇论文的学术贡献，比较容易确认，也就是品质容易管制；故相对的比较适合以期刊论文之数量，评量学术工作者之「成就」。但人文社会科学之研究者，需具备一定之哲学基础、价值观，与完整、成熟之思想体系，与严谨之逻辑结构；故传统上，专着或论文集刊，才足以呈现其学术「素养」和贡献(Ward, 1972, p. 12)。因此，此种「削足适履」、「揠苗助长」，炒短线，以量取胜的评价制度，不仅无益于学术之发展，更扭曲了整个学术生态[19]。

“Enlargement of the infrastructure of communication affects the life of that which is transmitted and intensifies competition among transmitters as well as weakens resistance on the part of potential acceptors. Today economic information is diffused much more rapidly than it was 50-75 years ago. Vulgarized economic information as well as misinformation probably is distributed even more rapidly through so-called highbrow journals. The sheer extent of the flow of information can produce swamping effects. In the absence of an efficient information-retrieval system, it becomes costly to draw on the current flow, perhaps so costly that it is cheaper to generate the information anew. Contributions, significant and insignificant, tend to be forgotten, neglected or hidden from the minds of all but the authors’ contemporaries. Preoccupation ‘with the latest fashion causes much that is valuable in former work to be discarded and forgotten, only to be ‘rehabilitated’ when fashion changes again.’ Progress itself is slowed down by the resulting high ration of waste to gross output of ‘information’.”（Spengler, 1968, pp. 171~72）[20]

Colander and Klamer在访问212位University of Chicago, MIT, Stanford, Yale, Columbia, Harvard等六个大学的研究生之后，亦得到下列的结论：

“The likely reason for students’ transformation into technique-oriented individuals is that most of them aspire to academic jobs. They know that tenure depends on publication in the right journals. They logically choose a source of study that is most likely to lead to their goal of succeeding in that intermediate goal. Knowing a technique that can be applied to ten areas can lead to ten articles; knowing a specific area well might lead to one or two articles. Thus, students see little incentive to know the literature in an area or to have institutional knowledge of a particular area.” (Colander and Klamer, 1987, p. 108)

不仅如此，此种重量不重质的评价制度，更导致期刊数量的大量增加，论文数量的膨胀，衍生「品质」更难以管制的恶性循环。既使是自然科学，根据经济学人（The Economist）1987年”Why Scientific Fact Is Sometimes Fiction”之报导：自从1750年以来，科学期刊之数目，每十五年增加一倍；科学家在其专业领域，根本无法保持同样之步调，其导致之后果为，在过去的十五年之间，就被发现有十六件「重大欺骗」的科学研究，大部份属于生物和医学领域（Redman, 1993, pp. 163~164）。

（三）学术之传承：训练而非教育

”Publish-or-Perish”的学术评价制度，往下亦直接扭曲美国的经济学门之学术传承，并强化新古典经济主义：

“Of course it is not true, as the last paragraph may seem to imply, that this decision as to whether to become a normal science economist is made at the stage in his career at which the economist has obtained his last degree. For, as in all normal sciences, the entire academic program, beginning usually at the undergraduate level but certainly at the graduate, consists of indoctrination in the ideas and techniques of the science. As much as anything, this is a self-selection process. Those who do not accept the basic ideas of the science will not proceed very far with its study.” (Ward, 1972, p. 30)

”The average American economist is ….., swamped with literature to absorb or referee, intimidated by his superiors and colleagues, goaded along by two creeds – ‘publish or perish’ and ‘conform or perish’ – and unhappy with the state of current economics. In addition, the typical graduate student - … - believes success means techniques and not an understanding of the economy or even of the literature, even though, as contrary as it may be to common sense, he knows that publications are what will lead to recognition within the discipline.” (Redman, 1993, pp. 165~166)

“None of these doubts, however, was allowed to threaten the analytical core of ‘pure economics’ and for several decades the dominant brief inspiring the intellectual community of economists was that they shared a common nucleus of views in the scope and method of economic science. They could go on teaching successive generations of undergraduates from the same, or similar, textbooks of economic theory and could assume that, whatever the intractability of the problems posed in the applied areas of their discipline, they were building on virtually impregnable analytical foundations.” (Deane, 1983, p. 8)

一九八八年，美国经济学会会长Robert Eisner指定设立The Commission on Graduate Education in Economics (COGEE)[21], 除了就全美国各大学研究所[22]之经济学教育，由入学考、核心课程、领域课程、毕业论文等有系统的全面加以检视外，且就在学学生对经济学的看法，以及社会对经济学学系毕业生之能力的评价，做深入调查[23]。并于一九九一年提出报告(Krueger, et al, 1991)。

就经济学者应具备之「技能」（ skills），如果分为七项：Critical judgment, Analytics, Applications, Mathematics, Computation, Communication, Creativity; 根据COGEE之意见调查，一般教师认为目前美国经济学门对博士生的养成教育，「过度」偏重Mathematics，忽视Communication和Creativity。偏重程度（数字愈小表示愈重要），依序为：Analytics(2.1), Mathematics(2.9), Critical judgment(3.8), Applications(3.8), Computation(4.3), Creativity(5.3), Communication(5.5)。并认为「应有」（should be）的相对重要性，依序为：Analytics(2.2), Creativity(2.6), Critical judgment(2.9), Applications(3.9), Communication(5.0), Mathematics(5.2), Computation(6.0) 。就1977-78获得博士学位者而言，其所受到的专业训练，依序为：Analytics(1.9), Mathematics(3.1), Critical judgment(3.4), Applications(4.4), Computation(4.6), Creativity(5.0), Communication(5.4)；但就其现从事之工作所需之技能的重要性，依序为：Communication(2.7), Critical judgment(3.2), Applications(3.3), Analytics(3.5), Creativity(3.6), Computation(5.5), Mathematics(6.2)。若其是从事学术工作，包括研究和教学，所需之技能的重要性，依序为：Creativity(2.4), Communication(3.2), Analytics(3.5), Applications(3.5), Critical judgment(3.8), Computation(5.7), Mathematics(5.9)。(Hansen, 1991, p. 1071)[24]。

对经济学博士之「雇主」而言，亦认为，其缺乏「创造力」与「沟通技巧」：