I’ve been a technical guy for most my life. I’ve almost done everything imaginable with computers from networking, programming, building, troubleshooting, etc. So when it came time to choose a major, I decided upon Computer Engineering Tech. However, I began a self-study in philosophy several years ago that led me to become a Rothbardian by the end of my junior year in high school.
According to this personality test I took, I’m an INTP so basically I live in my head and have it easy when it comes to highly theoretical subjects. When I first found Rothbard, I instantly devoured FaNL and went onto MES and HA. Recently, I’ve been getting very bored with all my technical classes I’m taking, even though I’m pulling almost a 4.0 GPA overall. I’m thinking about transferring out of my local CC and doing econ somewhere but its a very blurry path to me. Theres the fear of failure that creeps in and has kept me away from taking any humanities classes. I had to take classes in HS about history and government and they were all statist and had a very faulty methodology. I scored high on the tests, but never did the homework.
Therefore, what I’m wondering, what is like for an Austrian to go through an economics major? Do you often have to keep yourself out of debates for the sake of pulling off a good grade? What prospects do you have for the future? I know it can sometimes be hard for students of social sciences to find jobs; I have many friends who were history or philosophy majors and are back at school doing technical subjects. Any advice for me? Your experiences would be greatly appreciated.
Well, look at most Austrians currently publishing in the field; they all hold degrees in economics on the BS, MS or PhD level. You also need a degree in economics to teach it and that would mostly serve as your dayjob if you will.
Agreed. If you want to teach Econ at a college level or be accepted as an economist in the academic world you’re going to need a PhD.
As for college experiences, I’m an undergrad econ major now and it’s a mixed bag. For the most part I don’t really try to start confrontations with teachers. In my Money and Banking class last year, my teacher would go on endless rants about how great the Fed was and how it was needed to restrain the greed of free markets or whatever. I’d raise my hand occasionally and ask pointed questions (mostly related to the moral hazard issues related to the Bear Stearns bailout) but he’d largely shrug them off. I didn’t see a point in being directly confrontational about it though.
On the other hand, I met a professor who’s rather sympathetic to Austrian views and is overall a pretty free market guy. He’s advising me on an independent study on contemporary Austrian vs Mainstream business cycle theory next semester.
I guess it really depends on who you meet. Overall, professors seem to be happy that I’m interested enough in economics to do as much outside reading and learning as I do, but most teachers will shrug off any Austrian points I bring up without giving good reasons why.
I haven’t had any classes where I’ve had to write much yet, so far it’s just been a matter of taking notes on what they say in class and spitting it back out on tests, so that’s what I do. Once i get to classes where I’m expected to write extensively on Economics, you can be sure I’ll be bringing Austrian viewpoints to the table and hopefully I won’t be penalized for it.
I’m in a similar boat. So far I have been staying away from all Poli classes, Econ, and sociology because of the fear of running into Obamunists, marxists, fascists, socialists, and neoconservatives. My approach is to study more from the great Austrian economists, and read more of Aristotle, Nietze, Rand, Locke, and Kant to prepare myself for the inevitable clashes with tenured professors.
Diminishing returns. We don’t need another MS in economics, all that prepares you for is doing statistics for a government bureau. We don’t need to be publishing in the field - the Mises institute has a bigger audience than all the academic journals together.
If you want a day job, you should stick with computers. It pays much better and you can use it to launch other businesses.
Fair enough, I don’t really have an answer to that, other than the fact that if government is allowed to run unchecked headlong into another depression, I think the academics will be feeling the hurt too.
New argument: the more Austrians that get PhDs, the more Austrians will be teaching students. The more Austrians teaching students, the less non-Austrians teaching students. This’ll give us a chance to spread our ideas farther.
You don’t need a PhD to teach students, you just need a good website.
A PhD gives you the right to apply for tenured professorship, and you will be competing with hordes of other PhDs who have no problem kissing the government’s ass to earn their paychecks from the government.
I’m willing to compete. I think there’s a bit of a difference between reaching people over the internet and reaching people through the classroom. Different people learn different ways. I see nothing wrong with people teaching both ways. I’m certainly planning on it.
Ugh. I’ve just decided on an econ major and signed up for my classes for next semester, but now I’m starting to really doubt that it will be worth the effort and money.
What about the argument that to truly understand your position you must fully understand your opponent? Mises could not have been as great as he was without his understanding of socialism.
yes we exaggerated, the real stats is actually around 96% of professors in America selling out [:|]
any intelligent first-rate thinker knows by now the dismal and anti-truth state of Academia in the Western world today, in almost every field the credo is, “thou shalt not think, thou shalt block Reality as much as possible”
Again completely false. My program has quite a few libertarians or at least libertarian sympathizers in it. The professors are of course not all Austrians, but they hold open minds and are in the business of ideas and not of holding opinions. I reccommend doing research before choosing a school.
I found studying economics mostly unproductive, but I enjoyed writing a thesis. I decided partway through college that I wasn’t interested in institutional teaching, though, so I didn’t go to graduate school. It really does depend on what you want to do. (I am a stay-at-home mom, which is quite a different career path than the ones you are probably considering at this time).
That said, the onus is on the Austrians, as the minority, to be able to speak the language of the institutional economists. Some of it is quite arcane (and even idiotic, but that’s another story). Econometrics may be useless, but you have to be able to DO them to argue such, in the world of professional economists. INTJs are generally good at self-study, and you will have no problem with the computer modeling stuff, but if you want to reach people you need to be able to WRITE. Clearly, and for the lay reader. Allow young children to really develop critical thinking skills, and they will learn to distinguish the wheat from the chaff. Most of them won’t be reading technical journals like the JoAE, though, so I think the key is to get your writing out into world.