WEBVTT

NOTE Getting Out the Word: Alternative Research, Teaching, and Outreach

1
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.000
Good afternoon, everyone.

2
00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:04.920
It's a great pleasure to be here with you at the Mises Institute

3
00:00:04.920 --> 00:00:08.240
to talk about how we get out the word.

4
00:00:08.240 --> 00:00:11.560
I noticed in beginning his luncheon speech,

5
00:00:11.560 --> 00:00:14.520
Lew Rockwell mentioned that Joe Salerno and Gary North

6
00:00:14.520 --> 00:00:16.400
had stolen some of his thunder.

7
00:00:16.400 --> 00:00:18.960
Well, Rockwell proceeded to do the same to me

8
00:00:18.960 --> 00:00:20.920
by stealing quite a bit of my thunder

9
00:00:20.920 --> 00:00:24.680
from what I was going to talk about this afternoon.

10
00:00:24.680 --> 00:00:28.500
But I'll see how I can do.

11
00:00:28.500 --> 00:00:33.220
As Doug mentioned, this is a talk about getting out the word.

12
00:00:33.220 --> 00:00:36.460
So you've heard quite a few talks already this weekend

13
00:00:36.460 --> 00:00:41.460
presenting some of our radical alternative perspectives

14
00:00:41.460 --> 00:00:45.340
on current events, on the causes of the economic situation

15
00:00:45.340 --> 00:00:47.620
we're in, what to do about it, and so on.

16
00:00:47.620 --> 00:00:50.220
So take it for granted or stipulate

17
00:00:50.220 --> 00:00:52.400
for the purposes of discussion that we have

18
00:00:52.400 --> 00:00:55.220
a viable alternative perspective.

19
00:00:55.220 --> 00:01:03.180
But it is, as the title indicates, or my subtitle indicates, it is an alternative perspective.

20
00:01:03.180 --> 00:01:08.420
So the Austrian position on the business cycle, libertarian, social and political theory more

21
00:01:08.420 --> 00:01:15.540
generally is clearly not in the mainstream of American or world political, social, economic

22
00:01:15.540 --> 00:01:16.540
discourse.

23
00:01:16.540 --> 00:01:18.980
You know, what do we do about that?

24
00:01:18.980 --> 00:01:20.660
How do we change things?

25
00:01:20.660 --> 00:01:23.060
How exactly do we educate?

26
00:01:23.060 --> 00:01:24.840
How do we communicate?

27
00:01:24.840 --> 00:01:32.840
How do we persuade? Right? We have great ideas. We have the great legacy of the Austrian economic

28
00:01:32.840 --> 00:01:38.580
tradition that has been bequeathed to us. It's a living, active, evolving tradition.

29
00:01:38.580 --> 00:01:43.820
We have many great writers and thinkers and scholars and teachers, but we cannot assume

30
00:01:43.820 --> 00:01:50.820
that these good ideas will sort of sweep the field on their own. Right? Ideas matter, but

31
00:01:50.820 --> 00:01:56.620
Actions are required as well. We have to do something to try to get the ends that we seek.

32
00:01:56.620 --> 00:02:03.580
It reminds me of the story of the religious man who wanted to win the lottery, and he

33
00:02:03.580 --> 00:02:09.740
prayed every day without ceasing for that one thing and that one thing only. Every day

34
00:02:09.740 --> 00:02:16.340
he would say, oh God, please, please let me win the lottery. It's all I seek in this life.

35
00:02:16.340 --> 00:02:20.580
If you would just let me win the lottery, I would have peace and happiness, fulfillment,

36
00:02:20.580 --> 00:02:28.580
and Tentament. He prays this day after day after day. And one day he's out walking and the clouds begin to move.

37
00:02:28.580 --> 00:02:35.580
The clouds part and there's a bright light and a booming voice coming down from the heavens saying,

38
00:02:35.580 --> 00:02:48.580
Jerry, meet me halfway. Buy a ticket.

39
00:02:48.580 --> 00:02:53.500
So we've got to meet people halfway, or at least part of the way.

40
00:02:53.500 --> 00:02:57.900
How can we influence, for example, academia?

41
00:02:57.900 --> 00:03:02.060
How can we spread the ideas from our research?

42
00:03:02.060 --> 00:03:07.220
How can we increase awareness of Austrian business cycle theory within economics departments,

43
00:03:07.220 --> 00:03:10.160
for example, not to mention the media and so on?

44
00:03:10.160 --> 00:03:16.720
How do we spread the ideas of Mises and Hayek and Rothbard and others among scholars, among

45
00:03:16.720 --> 00:03:46.720
should we sort of work within the established institutions of scholarship, the established universities and research organizations and so on, seek to infiltrate them as it were, seek to shape them, seek to push them in one direction or another, or should we build up our own alternative parallel institutions and sort of bypass or outflank the established prestige universities and institutions?

46
00:03:46.720 --> 00:03:54.300
How do we influence the next generation in our teaching?

47
00:03:54.300 --> 00:03:57.760
We have many skilled and accomplished teachers of Austrian economics.

48
00:03:57.760 --> 00:04:03.280
Do we try to place them in established colleges and universities?

49
00:04:03.280 --> 00:04:09.040
Do we try to write textbooks and sell them to mainstream institutions and so on?

50
00:04:09.040 --> 00:04:15.120
Or do we again try to set up our own alternative set of institutions for spreading the word

51
00:04:15.120 --> 00:04:16.660
to the next generation?

52
00:04:16.660 --> 00:04:22.660
Do we want to sort of complement or do we want to supplant the establishment?

53
00:04:22.660 --> 00:04:23.860
That's research and teaching.

54
00:04:23.860 --> 00:04:31.280
What about outreach to the lay public, to practitioners, to business people, to journalists and so on?

55
00:04:31.280 --> 00:04:32.480
What do we do?

56
00:04:32.480 --> 00:04:35.740
Do we try to get on CNN and write in the New York Times?

57
00:04:35.740 --> 00:04:42.100
Do we run for public office or do we seek out alternative mechanisms, the alternative

58
00:04:42.100 --> 00:04:46.580
media, social media, new networks and so on?

59
00:04:46.580 --> 00:04:53.380
So in research, in teaching, and in outreach, what do we do to try to have an impact?

60
00:04:53.380 --> 00:04:58.020
Now these are not easy questions with obvious answers.

61
00:04:58.020 --> 00:05:04.500
And these are not generally, with some exceptions, not generally matters of what the Austrians

62
00:05:04.500 --> 00:05:12.980
would call a priori theory, but rather questions of wisdom, practical judgment, and so on.

63
00:05:12.980 --> 00:05:17.300
But I want to suggest that there are a few things we can say in general about this problem

64
00:05:17.300 --> 00:05:22.620
and give you some examples of some different ways that we might try to put some of these

65
00:05:22.620 --> 00:05:24.620
solutions into practice.

66
00:05:24.620 --> 00:05:33.420
So I'll start by referring to the fields of industrial organization and business strategy.

67
00:05:33.420 --> 00:05:39.420
When I took my PhD, one of the fields in which I was formally trained and certified was what

68
00:05:39.420 --> 00:05:42.700
we call industrial organization or industry studies.

69
00:05:42.700 --> 00:05:55.700
It's a well-developed field in many courses and journals, both college texts, graduate texts, and also managerial-oriented books on strategy and competition.

70
00:05:55.700 --> 00:06:02.700
Well, we know a lot about how firms compete with, how they interact with their rivals.

71
00:06:02.700 --> 00:06:08.500
For example, a lot of this literature has looked at how entrance, how upstarts, new

72
00:06:08.500 --> 00:06:15.140
firms seeking to get into an industry or a sector can compete with large established

73
00:06:15.140 --> 00:06:18.500
dominant incumbents.

74
00:06:18.500 --> 00:06:23.860
Incumbents would prefer to keep new people out, to keep new competition out of the industry.

75
00:06:23.860 --> 00:06:29.860
And incumbents use a variety of tactics to create what economists call entry barriers.

76
00:06:29.860 --> 00:06:33.780
Those could be government grants of monopoly privilege, including intellectual property

77
00:06:33.780 --> 00:06:34.780
protection.

78
00:06:34.780 --> 00:06:42.860
They could be economies of scale, customer loyalty, upfront capital expenditures, and

79
00:06:42.860 --> 00:06:44.900
so on.

80
00:06:44.900 --> 00:06:52.580
New entrants, on the other hand, seek to take on or to subvert or to go around the established

81
00:06:52.580 --> 00:06:59.780
players through innovation, right, by introducing better products, newer products or by producing

82
00:06:59.780 --> 00:07:05.780
the same products at lower cost, with better technology, with new distribution mechanisms,

83
00:07:05.780 --> 00:07:11.300
and so on. Maybe charging lower prices or targeting particular audiences. There are

84
00:07:11.300 --> 00:07:17.380
lots and lots of strategies that firms can use to try to get a toehold in a market like

85
00:07:17.380 --> 00:07:26.380
this. This characterizes what the great economist Joseph Schumpeter called creative destruction.

86
00:07:26.380 --> 00:07:31.240
What Schumpeter described as the perennial gale of creative destruction is the process

87
00:07:31.240 --> 00:07:39.620
by which new technologies, new firms, new players in different markets seek to supplant

88
00:07:39.620 --> 00:07:41.540
the established incumbents.

89
00:07:41.540 --> 00:07:47.700
Now, naturally, incumbents do whatever they can to resist the actions of these entrants,

90
00:07:47.700 --> 00:07:48.700
right?

91
00:07:48.700 --> 00:07:53.480
Through aggressive pricing or advertising or marketing and distribution or trying to

92
00:07:53.480 --> 00:07:58.920
to lock up particular suppliers or retailers through exclusive contracts and so on.

93
00:07:58.920 --> 00:08:04.760
Now, assuming they aren't employing the machinery of the state to try to keep rivals out of

94
00:08:04.760 --> 00:08:09.280
the market, there's nothing obviously illegal or unethical about this kind of aggressive

95
00:08:09.280 --> 00:08:11.040
behavior.

96
00:08:11.040 --> 00:08:17.100
One of the lessons that we get from looking at history and thinking theoretically about

97
00:08:17.100 --> 00:08:22.840
what kind of strategies might work for entrants and incumbents is that entrants rarely prosper

98
00:08:22.840 --> 00:08:30.560
by taking on the incumbent head-to-head. Incumbents rarely prosper through direct head-to-head

99
00:08:30.560 --> 00:08:37.840
competition with an established dominant incumbent. Rather, successful entrants tend to employ

100
00:08:37.840 --> 00:08:46.720
a niche strategy or some kind of outflanking strategy by going through or beside the incumbent

101
00:08:46.720 --> 00:08:52.000
rather than trying to topple the incumbent off of his perch. Lots of examples. You know,

102
00:08:52.000 --> 00:08:57.040
The technology sector is a great place for examples.

103
00:08:57.040 --> 00:09:04.240
Think of Microsoft supplanting IBM as the dominant maker of computer operating systems,

104
00:09:04.240 --> 00:09:09.800
not by producing mainframes, but by producing what in the early 80s was considered a sort

105
00:09:09.800 --> 00:09:13.240
of a niche product, a fringe product, the personal computer.

106
00:09:13.240 --> 00:09:15.800
Who in his right mind would want to own one of those?

107
00:09:15.800 --> 00:09:20.800
So by producing an alternative product that ended up doing the same things much more effectively

108
00:09:20.800 --> 00:09:31.440
Microsoft was able to overcome the dominant players of its day, IBM and many other digital

109
00:09:31.440 --> 00:09:34.480
and Wang and other large hardware makers.

110
00:09:34.480 --> 00:09:39.860
Think about Google taking the place of Microsoft in the 2000s as the dominant player in the

111
00:09:39.860 --> 00:09:47.060
technology field, not by producing desktop operating systems and a full-fledged office

112
00:09:47.060 --> 00:10:03.060
to compete head-to-head with Microsoft but by developing an alternative revenue model in the search space by revolutionizing ways that people make money from electronic commerce, from doing business on the web, etc.

113
00:10:03.060 --> 00:10:11.060
Again, you can think of Google's strategy as going around Microsoft rather than trying to do exactly what Microsoft did and doing it better.

114
00:10:11.060 --> 00:10:19.560
Even think of Walmart, right, which took on in the 1960s and 70s the dominant retailers of its day, Montgomery Ward and so on.

115
00:10:19.560 --> 00:10:28.560
Again, not by competing, not by putting in stores across the street from the incumbents, but by targeting a different demographic, right?

116
00:10:28.560 --> 00:10:40.560
Low-income consumers in rural, underserved communities and eventually reaching the place where it could, where it replaced Sears and Ward and so on.

117
00:10:40.560 --> 00:11:10.560
A less sort of sexy example might be Nucor Steel, which is now the US's largest steel company taking on US steel and the other incumbents by introducing a different technology, so-called mini mills that are smaller and more specialized using scrap metal as input, which the incumbent firms were not effectively doing. So going around the establishment tends to work better than taking on the incumbent head-to-head.

118
00:11:10.560 --> 00:11:20.560
What about our industry? What about the industries of research, teaching, outreach, the industry of academic work, of scholarship, of education?

119
00:11:20.560 --> 00:11:27.560
What lessons can we learn from industrial organization and strategic management theory that might be useful to us here?

120
00:11:27.560 --> 00:11:33.560
Well, let's take research, teaching and service in turn. Let's start with kind of the status quo.

121
00:11:33.560 --> 00:11:45.560
Well, in research, it's pretty obvious that the problem is, there is too much of it, and what is done is typically of pretty low quality, okay?

122
00:11:45.560 --> 00:11:52.560
There was a very controversial piece that ran in the Chronicle of Higher Education this past summer in June.

123
00:11:52.560 --> 00:11:56.560
It was titled, We Must Stop the Avalanche of Low Quality Research.

124
00:11:56.560 --> 00:12:00.560
And there were five authors representing a variety of economic disciplines,

125
00:12:00.560 --> 00:12:05.840
Disciplines, Natural Science, Humanities, Social Science, and so on, arguing that, quote,

126
00:12:05.840 --> 00:12:10.480
the amount of redundant, inconsequential, and outright poor research has swelled in

127
00:12:10.480 --> 00:12:15.080
recent decades, filling countless pages in journals and monographs.

128
00:12:15.080 --> 00:12:19.680
And they pointed as evidence to the number of journals and the number of journal pages,

129
00:12:19.680 --> 00:12:26.280
the number of authors in journals, and declining rates of citations to articles in journals.

130
00:12:26.280 --> 00:12:30.920
And they said, these authors went on to say, quote, instead of contributing to knowledge

131
00:12:30.920 --> 00:12:37.120
in various disciplines, the increasing number of low-sided publications only adds to the

132
00:12:37.120 --> 00:12:40.640
bulk of words and numbers to be reviewed.

133
00:12:40.640 --> 00:12:45.240
Even if read, many articles that are not cited by anyone would seem to contain little useful

134
00:12:45.240 --> 00:12:46.560
information.

135
00:12:46.560 --> 00:12:54.780
This avalanche of ignored research has a profoundly damaging effect on the enterprise as a whole.

136
00:12:54.780 --> 00:13:01.020
Not only does the unsighted work itself require years of field and laboratory or library research,

137
00:13:01.020 --> 00:13:05.780
it also requires colleagues to read and provide feedback, as well as reviewers to evaluate

138
00:13:05.780 --> 00:13:10.780
it formally for publication. Then, once it is published, it joins the multitude of other

139
00:13:10.780 --> 00:13:15.780
related publications that researchers must read and evaluate for relevance to their own

140
00:13:15.780 --> 00:13:21.820
work. Reviewer time and energy requirements multiply by the year. The impact strikes at

141
00:13:21.820 --> 00:13:24.940
at the heart of academe.

142
00:13:24.940 --> 00:13:28.820
You know, I think this assessment is generally on target, certainly for the fields that I'm

143
00:13:28.820 --> 00:13:30.380
closest to.

144
00:13:30.380 --> 00:13:35.260
You can ask most scholars in a field like economics, you know, how many journals, how

145
00:13:35.260 --> 00:13:39.180
many journal articles do they actually read from front to back?

146
00:13:39.180 --> 00:13:43.020
How many journals do they subscribe to for the purpose of actually reading the articles

147
00:13:43.020 --> 00:13:46.820
when they come out rather than having them to display on the shelf?

148
00:13:46.820 --> 00:14:02.820
Surprisingly small numbers. In this particular paper, the authors, I think, did not hit on exactly the right solutions, because they did not identify the heart of the problem, which is government funding.

149
00:14:02.820 --> 00:14:11.820
Think of how much the research university establishment has swollen, certainly in this latter half of the 20th century.

150
00:14:11.820 --> 00:14:21.820
There are simply too many universities, there are too many institutes, too many research faculty, too many granting agencies, too much research money, and so on.

151
00:14:21.820 --> 00:14:32.820
Now this sounds surprising to university professors who think that they're in a climate of extreme financial austerity and there are never enough research funds to go around.

152
00:14:32.820 --> 00:14:35.820
They're always fighting and struggling for the next research dollar.

153
00:14:35.820 --> 00:14:49.820
But again, when I say there's too much research, I mean relative to some notion of how much research there should be and would be in a free society, not relative to how much research university professors would like there to be.

154
00:14:49.820 --> 00:15:00.940
And, Lew already mentioned this in his talk, you know, the amount of, and he's mentioned

155
00:15:00.940 --> 00:15:05.100
in other talks too, the amount of sort of federal direct and indirect subsidy for higher

156
00:15:05.100 --> 00:15:10.820
ed is just astonishing, particularly at the so-called private universities, that many

157
00:15:10.820 --> 00:15:16.100
of the so-called private universities, Yale and Stanford and Chicago and so on, once all

158
00:15:16.100 --> 00:15:21.620
sources of federal, state and local government funding are taken into account, research grants,

159
00:15:21.620 --> 00:15:27.700
student financial aid and so on, easily get 60-70% of their budgets from government.

160
00:15:27.700 --> 00:15:32.620
And that's often more than nominally public universities receive in government assistance.

161
00:15:32.620 --> 00:15:40.180
So the whole higher ed establishment is almost completely a servant of the state, of government,

162
00:15:40.180 --> 00:15:44.500
at least in terms of where its funding comes from.

163
00:15:44.500 --> 00:15:50.100
We certainly wouldn't expect a system like that to produce high-quality research, right?

164
00:15:50.100 --> 00:15:54.060
I mean, in a sense, this is sort of a miracle that any good research gets done at all under

165
00:15:54.060 --> 00:15:55.060
those kind of conditions.

166
00:15:55.060 --> 00:15:56.060
What about teaching?

167
00:15:56.060 --> 00:16:02.400
I mean, there's sort of a growing backlash against overcrowded university classrooms

168
00:16:02.400 --> 00:16:11.120
that are staffed by under-qualified faculty, that are uninspired curricula, and so on.

169
00:16:11.120 --> 00:16:15.320
Students attend college not because they think they're going to learn much of value, but

170
00:16:15.320 --> 00:16:22.160
because they see it, rightly or wrongly, as a necessary credential to get into the workforce.

171
00:16:22.160 --> 00:16:28.440
And even that credential may be less valuable going forward than it has been in the past.

172
00:16:28.440 --> 00:16:33.440
And of course students want to party and meet members of the opposite sex and go to sporting

173
00:16:33.440 --> 00:16:39.360
events and so on, but it's not clear that going to an established four-year college

174
00:16:39.360 --> 00:16:54.360
Peter Wood, who heads the National Association of Scholars, had an interesting piece last year.

175
00:16:54.360 --> 00:16:57.360
He described it this way. He said,

176
00:17:09.360 --> 00:17:11.240
and Self-Satisfaction.

177
00:17:11.240 --> 00:17:16.480
On most campuses, mediocrity can rightly pride itself on being a whole lot better than the

178
00:17:16.480 --> 00:17:22.560
conspicuous dreadfulness of a handful of professors who dedicate themselves variously to the nine

179
00:17:22.560 --> 00:17:25.040
muses of bad teaching.

180
00:17:25.040 --> 00:17:32.440
Boredom, mumbling, disorganization, confusion, forgetfulness, stridency, PowerPoint, textbook

181
00:17:32.440 --> 00:17:34.840
and vacuity.

182
00:17:34.840 --> 00:17:38.880
I see those around me every day at my university.

183
00:17:38.880 --> 00:17:43.680
He's actually talking more about, in this particular piece, he's complaining about or

184
00:17:43.680 --> 00:17:50.780
talking about the increasing use of sort of non-tenured adjunct temporary faculty at universities

185
00:17:50.780 --> 00:17:55.920
and colleges as a cheaper alternative to full-time tenured faculty.

186
00:17:55.920 --> 00:17:59.680
And many faculty are concerned that if this trend continues, eventually there won't be

187
00:17:59.680 --> 00:18:04.360
any need for full-time tenured big shot professors.

188
00:18:04.360 --> 00:18:10.400
Most of the teaching can be outsourced to lower cost, hired labor, maybe over the internet,

189
00:18:10.400 --> 00:18:13.640
from India or something like that.

190
00:18:13.640 --> 00:18:19.240
But don't universities at least challenge and enlighten students by exposing them to

191
00:18:19.240 --> 00:18:24.040
alternative points of view, by raising their consciousness and so on?

192
00:18:24.040 --> 00:18:30.240
Isn't education really all about diversity?

193
00:18:30.240 --> 00:18:51.240
So a lot of critics, critics on the right, have written a lot about problems with university ideology and, you know, but I want to, you may think that college campuses at the US are, you know, dominated by conformity and narrow rigid ideology, but I want to assure you that that's not true.

194
00:18:51.240 --> 00:18:59.440
You might think the typical professor is sort of a Birkenstock-wearing, bike-riding, Prius-driving,

195
00:18:59.440 --> 00:19:05.660
New York Review of Books reading, granola-type person, but I assure you that all professors

196
00:19:05.660 --> 00:19:09.040
are not sort of left-leaning social democrats.

197
00:19:09.040 --> 00:19:12.000
At our campus, that's certainly not the case.

198
00:19:12.000 --> 00:19:14.720
They do occasionally like to hear from the other side.

199
00:19:14.720 --> 00:19:17.520
They like to hear from the extremes.

200
00:19:17.520 --> 00:19:22.220
Last year I saw this announcement come across my desk that the chairman of the U.S. Communist

201
00:19:22.220 --> 00:19:26.920
Party was going to speak on campus, you know, thus exposing students to the other point

202
00:19:26.920 --> 00:19:27.920
of view.

203
00:19:27.920 --> 00:19:36.420
You have socialism at one extreme and communism at the other extreme, and the full range of

204
00:19:36.420 --> 00:19:38.880
opinion is covered.

205
00:19:38.880 --> 00:19:46.480
Now actually what I'm more interested in today is not so much the ideological issues, but

206
00:19:46.480 --> 00:19:52.840
But more kind of the structural issues, how higher education institutions are organized

207
00:19:52.840 --> 00:19:58.960
and governed, their size and shape and scope and mission and so on.

208
00:19:58.960 --> 00:20:05.560
Fortunately we have a lot of, we have many new entrants into the game, in teaching and

209
00:20:05.560 --> 00:20:13.920
in research, you know, we have things like wikiversity for example, which is a Wikipedia

210
00:20:13.920 --> 00:20:20.760
style online instructional resource with materials and readings and lectures and so on.

211
00:20:20.760 --> 00:20:27.880
We have Academic Earth as a portal to online courses offered at established major universities.

212
00:20:27.880 --> 00:20:28.880
Of course you have TED.

213
00:20:28.880 --> 00:20:33.800
Many of you are familiar with the TED Talks.

214
00:20:33.800 --> 00:20:39.520
There was a very nice piece in the magazine Fast Company last month on TED essentially

215
00:20:39.520 --> 00:20:43.200
She's saying, you know, if you were going to start a top university today, what would

216
00:20:43.200 --> 00:20:44.200
you do?

217
00:20:44.200 --> 00:20:49.240
You'd bring in the best minds to speak on topics in which they are experts.

218
00:20:49.240 --> 00:20:51.360
You would deliver it online at low cost.

219
00:20:51.360 --> 00:20:55.880
In other words, it would look nothing like Harvard or Princeton or, you know, the University

220
00:20:55.880 --> 00:20:56.880
of Michigan or whatever.

221
00:20:56.880 --> 00:20:59.360
It would look like TED, right?

222
00:20:59.360 --> 00:21:05.400
And here at the Mises Institute, we have developed our own alternative teaching platform.

223
00:21:05.400 --> 00:21:10.280
Besides our regular student conferences, in particular the Mises University, we also have

224
00:21:10.280 --> 00:21:18.400
the Mises Academy, which Doug mentioned, where students can sign up for online short courses

225
00:21:18.400 --> 00:21:24.840
on a variety of subjects in economics and political theory and so on.

226
00:21:24.840 --> 00:21:29.520
Short courses, longer courses, these are not degree-oriented.

227
00:21:29.520 --> 00:21:32.520
It's not a degree-oriented curriculum, at least not yet.

228
00:21:32.520 --> 00:21:39.200
And it doesn't try to present, to duplicate, the standard four-year curriculum at a mainstream

229
00:21:39.200 --> 00:21:43.120
college or university, and why would it?

230
00:21:43.120 --> 00:21:47.260
In fact, if you think about these entrants, potential and actual entrants to the academic

231
00:21:47.260 --> 00:21:55.780
marketplace, one thing that characterizes them is variety or heterogeneity or real diversity.

232
00:21:55.780 --> 00:22:03.180
Not ideological diversity, but organizational and structure and managerial diversity.

233
00:22:03.180 --> 00:22:10.900
Why should every academic program have the core curriculum and stretch out over four

234
00:22:10.900 --> 00:22:16.800
years and a certain number of hours per course and a certain kind of examination and so on?

235
00:22:16.800 --> 00:22:20.060
Why must we have conformity within academia?

236
00:22:20.060 --> 00:22:21.060
Academia.

237
00:22:21.060 --> 00:22:26.180
In fact, you would expect in a free market to have a lot of experimentation, a lot of

238
00:22:26.180 --> 00:22:34.260
variety, as entrepreneurs seek to create and discover new techniques, new models for content,

239
00:22:34.260 --> 00:22:37.060
for delivery, for distribution, and so on.

240
00:22:37.060 --> 00:22:43.200
I mean, you know, part of the challenge in discussing education is that most people think

241
00:22:43.200 --> 00:22:47.320
of education as sort of a homogeneous blob, right?

242
00:22:47.320 --> 00:22:51.120
Everyone has a right to education.

243
00:22:51.120 --> 00:22:52.120
What does that mean?

244
00:22:52.120 --> 00:22:54.640
Does that mean primary school only?

245
00:22:54.640 --> 00:22:56.640
Does it mean primary and secondary school?

246
00:22:56.640 --> 00:22:58.120
Does it mean college?

247
00:22:58.120 --> 00:23:00.860
Does it mean a four-year college education?

248
00:23:00.860 --> 00:23:02.720
What about a two-year education?

249
00:23:02.720 --> 00:23:09.640
Does it mean Greek and Latin and the humanities, or should it be more vocationally oriented?

250
00:23:09.640 --> 00:23:11.360
Should it be easier or harder?

251
00:23:11.360 --> 00:23:13.320
Should it be longer or shorter?

252
00:23:13.320 --> 00:23:19.160
Should it be standardized or should it be up to the students to design their own curriculum?

253
00:23:19.160 --> 00:23:20.960
Who knows, right?

254
00:23:20.960 --> 00:23:26.200
Ex-ante, we have no way of saying what the model would be and we certainly wouldn't expect

255
00:23:26.200 --> 00:23:31.360
there to be only one model if we had a genuine free market for education.

256
00:23:31.360 --> 00:23:37.300
My guess is, my intuition is, we would have many, many different types of institutions

257
00:23:37.300 --> 00:23:42.380
with different shapes, colors, sizes, you know, and smells, right?

258
00:23:42.380 --> 00:23:47.460
And that's exactly the way it should be, just as we find with automobiles or computers or

259
00:23:47.460 --> 00:23:48.460
whatever.

260
00:23:48.460 --> 00:23:50.220
We don't have simply one product.

261
00:23:50.220 --> 00:23:52.160
We have a variety of products.

262
00:23:52.160 --> 00:23:59.660
One of the challenges in thinking this through is that the typical mindset within the establishment

263
00:23:59.660 --> 00:24:05.700
is one in which education is one thing and it's done one way with one set of outcomes

264
00:24:05.700 --> 00:24:07.380
and metrics and so on.

265
00:24:07.380 --> 00:24:13.240
There was a very influential piece in 2007 in the New York Times, almost, it was pitched

266
00:24:13.240 --> 00:24:19.100
as sort of an expose of the University of Phoenix and for-profit educational institutions

267
00:24:19.100 --> 00:24:20.300
more generally.

268
00:24:20.300 --> 00:24:24.020
Even the Times headline gave you a pretty good hint of where they were going.

269
00:24:24.020 --> 00:24:31.620
The headline was, Troubles Grow for a University Built on Profits.

270
00:24:31.620 --> 00:24:34.240
That's sort of per se suspicious.

271
00:24:34.240 --> 00:24:37.760
This was right around the time, shortly after the New York Times was in all kinds of trouble

272
00:24:37.760 --> 00:24:42.500
for, you remember the Judith Miller scandal, you know, I was thinking about, you know,

273
00:24:42.500 --> 00:24:46.200
what about a headline, you know, troubles grow for a newspaper built on profits, you

274
00:24:46.200 --> 00:24:49.820
know, you don't see many of those in the stories about the New York Times.

275
00:24:49.820 --> 00:24:54.200
But what was interesting about this article is not so much the conclusion, which predictably

276
00:24:54.200 --> 00:25:01.320
denounced online for-profit education and Phoenix in particular, but what the Times

277
00:25:01.320 --> 00:25:02.900
thought was wrong with it.

278
00:25:02.900 --> 00:25:07.900
And the article really didn't discuss the content of the courses as much as the structure

279
00:25:07.900 --> 00:25:10.060
of the university, right?

280
00:25:10.060 --> 00:25:14.340
So the specific complaints about the University of Phoenix that were listed in this article

281
00:25:14.340 --> 00:25:20.540
include that it, one, relies on part-time contract faculty, two, uses an accelerated

282
00:25:20.540 --> 00:25:27.300
schedule in which students graduate in about half the time as traditional programs, three,

283
00:25:27.300 --> 00:25:33.360
that it does not have an expensive campuses, but locates in suburban office buildings near

284
00:25:33.360 --> 00:25:34.360
highways.

285
00:25:34.360 --> 00:25:40.020
Four, that it exploits economies of scale by centralizing course design using a standard

286
00:25:40.020 --> 00:25:42.820
syllabus for each course at all campuses.

287
00:25:42.820 --> 00:25:47.980
And five, that it relies heavily on online instruction with reduced in-class interaction

288
00:25:47.980 --> 00:25:50.780
between students and professors.

289
00:25:50.780 --> 00:25:57.780
Now, none of this strikes an organizational or managerial scholar as in any way odd or suspicious.

290
00:25:57.780 --> 00:26:02.780
Right? I mean, why not experiment with those alternatives?

291
00:26:02.780 --> 00:26:06.780
Right? Maybe that's a better structure than the dominant one.

292
00:26:06.780 --> 00:26:12.780
But in other words, you know, economists always, mainstream economists, always very worried about monopoly.

293
00:26:12.780 --> 00:26:17.780
Okay? And it's important to have, you know, free and open competition in a level playing field,

294
00:26:17.780 --> 00:26:22.580
and let the little guys in to compete with the big guys when they're talking about industry.

295
00:26:22.580 --> 00:26:30.580
But when it comes to education, oh my goodness, heaven forbid that a smaller guy should come in and try to build a better mousetrap.

296
00:26:30.580 --> 00:26:33.380
Try to do it a different way from the establishment.

297
00:26:33.380 --> 00:26:41.380
Now, it's true that the University of Phoenix in particular and some other for-profit institutions are certainly not above working the system.

298
00:26:41.380 --> 00:26:45.100
There's been a lot of complaints that they sort of manipulate the financial aid

299
00:26:45.100 --> 00:26:47.940
establishment to get government grants for their students.

300
00:26:47.940 --> 00:26:50.100
I certainly wouldn't condone anything like that.

301
00:26:50.100 --> 00:26:53.420
And I'm not making a statement about the University of Phoenix per se,

302
00:26:53.420 --> 00:26:56.700
that specific institution, but more about the model, right?

303
00:26:56.700 --> 00:27:03.500
I mean, in short, one of the professors quoted in the New York Times piece,

304
00:27:03.500 --> 00:27:07.900
Columbia University education professor was complaining about their business degree.

305
00:27:07.900 --> 00:27:11.420
He said their business degree is an MBA light.

306
00:27:11.420 --> 00:27:15.900
You know, you can imagine sort of saying this with a sneer to the New York Times reporter.

307
00:27:15.900 --> 00:27:20.660
He says, I've looked at their course materials, it's a very low level of instruction.

308
00:27:20.660 --> 00:27:25.660
Well, I mean, compared to Columbia University, yeah, it probably is a low level of instruction.

309
00:27:25.660 --> 00:27:31.580
You know, a Toyota Corolla is not the same thing as a 7 Series BMW.

310
00:27:31.580 --> 00:27:37.380
Okay, but so what? I mean, does everyone have to drive a BMW or go without a car?

311
00:27:37.380 --> 00:27:50.380
To conclude, let me leave you with... Oh, well, sorry, I forgot to plug my book. Heaven forbid I should forget that.

312
00:27:50.380 --> 00:27:57.380
No, I did want to mention briefly some alternative sort of research and publication institutions.

313
00:27:57.380 --> 00:28:02.380
The Mises Institute, as you know, not only publishes academic journals and distributes academic articles,

314
00:28:02.380 --> 00:28:08.380
Publishes a number of original scholarly books, like my recent book, The Capitalist and the Entrepreneur.

315
00:28:08.380 --> 00:28:11.380
Republishes many older works that have gone out of print.

316
00:28:11.380 --> 00:28:15.380
Lew mentioned The Law, Bastiat's The Law, which has been reprinted.

317
00:28:15.380 --> 00:28:25.380
And you can find, of course, thousands of full-text important contributions to the scholarly literature on Mises.org, available online for free.

318
00:28:25.380 --> 00:28:31.040
I actually have another, this book came out late spring early summer and it

319
00:28:31.040 --> 00:28:37.340
retails downstairs. The list price is $15 but it may be on sale. If you want to, if

320
00:28:37.340 --> 00:28:41.300
you buy one this weekend I might be able to get you an autograph. I know some

321
00:28:41.300 --> 00:28:47.460
people. I have another book that has just come out, an edited volume called

322
00:28:47.460 --> 00:28:52.180
The Elgar Companion to Transaction Cost Economics, published by Edward Elgar

323
00:28:52.180 --> 00:28:58.260
Elgar, which does a number of scholarly books in economics and business, and it's about

324
00:28:58.260 --> 00:29:05.900
the same size as the capitalist and the entrepreneur, and Elgar has priced it at $185.

325
00:29:05.900 --> 00:29:10.260
So the capitalist and the entrepreneur, you can not only get it for $15 or less, you can

326
00:29:10.260 --> 00:29:18.660
actually read the whole thing online for free as a PDF on Mises.org or at the Scribd site.

327
00:29:18.660 --> 00:29:22.780
It's a different model for dissemination, right?

328
00:29:22.780 --> 00:29:26.700
It's very much like the discussions about intellectual property that we've been having.

329
00:29:26.700 --> 00:29:31.460
Getting out the word is more important to me than any royalties that I might make on

330
00:29:31.460 --> 00:29:33.220
a $185 book.

331
00:29:33.220 --> 00:29:36.900
And once I buy one and a couple of libraries buy one and my mother buys one, that's going

332
00:29:36.900 --> 00:29:43.740
to be pretty much it on the sales of the Elgar Companion.

333
00:29:43.740 --> 00:29:49.020
The journals tend to serve a sort of a gatekeeper function.

334
00:29:49.020 --> 00:29:53.460
The prestigious academic journals, you know, getting an article accepted by the journal

335
00:29:53.460 --> 00:29:56.340
is kind of a stamp of approval for the article.

336
00:29:56.340 --> 00:30:01.500
But that gatekeeper function, like so much else, thanks to the web, is becoming increasingly

337
00:30:01.500 --> 00:30:02.500
democratized.

338
00:30:02.500 --> 00:30:03.500
Right?

339
00:30:03.500 --> 00:30:10.420
There are so many more ways to get both scholarly and popular communication out that the role

340
00:30:10.420 --> 00:30:16.820
All of the gatekeepers may, it's not clear, but may become less important, that scholars

341
00:30:16.820 --> 00:30:22.180
and students are just as likely to take seriously and read something that appears in a blog

342
00:30:22.180 --> 00:30:28.940
or a wiki or a non-peer-reviewed article than they do something that is in sort of the peer-reviewed

343
00:30:28.940 --> 00:30:33.100
scientific literature.

344
00:30:33.100 --> 00:30:38.500
To conclude, I just want to refer you to Murray Rothbard's writings on strategy, which are

345
00:30:38.500 --> 00:30:39.920
are extremely important.

346
00:30:39.920 --> 00:30:42.720
Rothbard talked about the importance

347
00:30:42.720 --> 00:30:47.100
of having both research and teaching programs,

348
00:30:47.100 --> 00:30:51.800
not only to educate those who are hearing

349
00:30:51.800 --> 00:30:56.000
the ideas for the first time, not only to spread new ideas,

350
00:30:56.000 --> 00:30:58.720
but also to encourage and to develop

351
00:30:58.720 --> 00:31:02.360
the sort of hardcore of the movement itself.

352
00:31:02.360 --> 00:31:06.120
And these kinds of activities, research

353
00:31:06.120 --> 00:31:12.480
in the development of new ideas, education of various strata of society, including members

354
00:31:12.480 --> 00:31:19.580
of sort of the hardcore movement themselves, along with fellow travelers and the curious.

355
00:31:19.580 --> 00:31:24.940
That is an essential part of the educational mission at the Mises Institute and other organizations

356
00:31:24.940 --> 00:31:25.940
like it.

357
00:31:25.940 --> 00:31:30.640
And that's why we're so grateful to you, our supporters, for providing the resources

358
00:31:30.640 --> 00:31:34.160
that allow these alternative institutions to proceed.

359
00:31:34.160 --> 00:31:35.160
Thank you very much.