The 2026 access scores to higher education show that Management obtained a higher access score than Economics at all 13 Portuguese public institutions that offer both degrees. The author, João Tovar, considers this trend not a one-off curiosity, but the result of a transformation that has been underway for a long time. Students respond to their perception of incentives: Management presents itself as closer to businesses, more flexible, more international, and with easily identifiable career outcomes, while Economics requires theory, mathematics, statistics, and econometrics, demanding the ability to think in abstractions and mechanisms.
The author identifies an irony in the fact that Management won precisely because it knew how to do what it teaches: positioning the product and communicating a value proposition. Pedro Santa Clara recently warned of the risk that artificial intelligence might create an illusion of learning and lead to intellectual atrophy when it replaces the effort of thinking. Economics and management schools have adapted to the market, with courses such as Macroeconomics for Business emerging, in a reversal where it is Economics that descends to fit into Management, rather than Management rising to meet Economics.
João Tovar argues that Economic Science is distinguished by characteristics that become more important in a world flooded with information: analytical rigor, understanding of incentives and consequences, long-term vision, the ability to quantify the abstract, and methodological skepticism. The author argues that when AI produces strategies and presentations in seconds, those skills become abundant and value shifts to whoever knows whether the answers make sense, which assumptions were ignored, and which causal mechanisms are at play.
The author concludes that some Economics schools responded to Management's rise by becoming more like American business schools, softening theory and mathematics, which he considers the wrong path. He argues that Economics will not regain ground by becoming more like Management, but by being more Economics, with more theory, mathematics, statistics, econometrics, and rigor. He acknowledges that Management knew how to sell itself better, but considers it premature to conclude that Economics lost the war.
