I guess it can be helpful, but not very much. You're given models, formulas, principles, relations, etc to study and memorize mostly without any hint of the original texts or theories. I never studied Smith or Malthus in the University (did study Ricardo) only read it outside of it. The whole time there did make me much more extreme than I was before, but from being there it was quite obvious that someone that doesn't reject Capitalism to begin with or at least doesn't accept it as perpetual will not obtain any knowledge to radicalize himself and will take the idiotic approach that Capitalism can be ethical and that it's greed and other bad morals to blame. And how could they not? The denial of any of the inherent barbarisms of Capitalism while at the same time expousing the new "great strategy for business" which will create great wealth without the commonly spoken problems of society, stamps out any kind of profound thought on the implications of the system. Nobody wants to be the bad guy in society and the students are there studying to go into exploitative professions so obviously they'll also be most comfortable with the easy answers on their role in society and will accept the ideology that is fed to them by the teachers. Economics as a course has no kind of deep critique and it's this future role in society of the students that will make they're ability to think/discuss on ethical, moral,... implications so limited.
I'm going to say this without knowing him but...It's not that it gets the better of him, he doesn't deny the system. He can't deny it, because he has to believe in the crap he spouts. If he's a "bad guy" or not, depends on how you see people that perpetuate an exploitative system everyday, but don't actually think that it's the system to blame.
I think economics is one of the very few courses you can study while thinking what bollocks it all is.
Every class/course/... I have done while thinking it was bollocks xD
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Now this is completely offtopic... but hey.
I think having a formal education in economics can be really helpful for communists because they get a first-hand experience of bourgeois ideology and practice, making for better and harder critics.
The teacher in question is not really a bad guy on a personal level, but obviously his role in the reproduction of ideology gets the better of him.
In my experience, most students of economics would be either people out for the big $$, people who have a slight interest in the inner workings but no formal opinion on it, or state socialists (since you can use and apply a lot of orthodox economics for and to planned economies, for example). The latter are very, very rare however.
I think economics is one of the very few courses you can study while thinking what bollocks it all is.
For instance, I plan to write my bachelor thesis on the correlation between technical progress and wage levels in the UK in the 19th century. I haven't started data mining yet, but I think the outcome is clear.
This may just be some foolish dream, but I wanna go David Harvey one day, holding lectures and shit (yes, I am flirting with the idea of becoming an academic, hold that against me if you will).
That means I have some serious studying to do, and in a way econ classes help me understand just what the hell it's all about and coming up with coherent critiques of it.
Econ classes are really agonizing though, it's kinda a love-hate relationship, haha...