There are no majors or electives at Thomas Aquinas College. The reason I wrote the bit about knowledge and my year there were because they read lots of the works of Aristotle, whose writings, by the way, are a big part of the basis of the Austrian school. They study classics there, and though I don’t agree with everything about the school - it’s a specialized place - it’s a good place. Unlike virtually all Americans with diplomas, they know what education is and what it isn’t.
Many graduates of this college, if prodded, forced, or somehow persuaded to give their honest opinions, would say that Paul Krugman isn’t educated - and certainly not liberally educated. It’s an acknowledged fact that professors from Harvard don’t have a clue as to what education is. I’d take it a step further and say that Krugman’s just a prestigious thug with credentials. I’d bet many students of the Austrians would agree wholeheartedly. So, I propose: Paul Krugman is a thug committing fraud; it just wouldn’t be capable of prosecution in a modern court.
People want ‘educations’ to look good, to winnow, because it’s our culture, or because it’s what is done in America, but they don’t know what education is.
Bush went to Yale and Harvard, and smarties knows his intelligence is not very high. What good is the stamp of Yale and Harvard? Bush, Krugman, and a host of other lightweights dilute the value of the stamp.
Gary North has a similar idea - get a Bachelor’s degree by the time that one is 18, and do it for less than $15,000. I’m proud of having gone to Thomas Aquinas College for a year. They know what knowledge is and what it isn’t. They know what they don’t know. Probably all of Gary North’s graduates won’t. So, if one doesn’t intend to get a liberal education - to read the classics, and not claptrap about race, “psychology”, “business administration” and the rest of the ludicrous pseudo-subjects, why not learn something lucrative, like engineering, “finance”, or nursing? There’s nothing wrong with not being a scholar.
Don’t just consider Gary North or Thomas Aquinas College, an obscure place. The British prior to the Reform Act of 1832 had a similar idea. Either you got a liberal education, reading the classics, or you weren’t a scholar. They never would have awarded degrees in “Business Administration”, and perhaps not even Bachelor’s of Chemistry, despite the fact that they might have studied Chemistry. They gave a lot of respect to a man who was 18 who, being from a respected family, was commissioned a 2nd Lt. in the army. Yes, America rebelled against the British of that age; please don’t misunderstand me, which would be extremely easy, given the great nuance of my views and the slowness with which I type. Irrespective of your opinion of those British, their culture was relatively rich, elevated, and moral compared to our current culture, and they were successful, for whatever its worth, at bossing much of the world for a while.
The British were not alone in this idea. Guess from whence it came.
Both groups, viz, this college and the old British, looked ultimately to the ancient Greeks, who considered economics to be a matter analogous to accounting - emphatically not a difficult or complicated subject in a just world. (Yes, our world is not just.) They thought economics was mainly a matter of counting: this one has $2 trillion of credit; this one OOOOH has $14.2 trillion of debt. The creditor is RICH! The debtor is POOR! It isn’t rocket science - or as tough as understanding the nuances of Aristotle.
The Chinese are beating us because their costs are lower. If a young man can cut six years of time out of his time twiddling his thumbs in school and ask employers for a much lower salary in the meantime, he’ll be doing something like what the Chinese do - lower costs would make him more competitive. Today’s employers are concerned about costs.
Obviously, an I-bank isn’t going to hire a 16-year old with any kind of diploma, but a law firm might hire him as a secretary, particularly if he has, say, one or two years experience in menial work/shopkeeping, etc. From there, he could become a secretary in the financial markets, then an officer, a trader, whatever. Alternatively, he could work in a retail bank for a couple of years. If he’s constantly discussing the Austrian theory of the business cycle with bank VPs who may not have finished college majors in ludicrous subjects, they’ll think he’s nerdy - not a bad qual for getting into Wall Street or I-banking.
Point is, smart employers can look at a young man who knows a lot about the markets, has an independent mind, is well-motivated, and so forth, to do a good job, rather than some nobody out of college who doesn’t know something, or worse, some moron-tyrant with an MBA. A bachelor’s degree in psychology, sociology, African studies, etc. is junk - a “diploma mill” D. Econ. that actually indicates exceedingly useful knowledge would be preferable if I were the one doing the hiring for a broad variety of jobs - just about everything except mathematical/scientific work and Hollywood/entertainment. Does this “diploma mill” D. Econ. deserve honor in America? The answer is yes. The difficulty is overcoming ignorance, bitterness, etc.
ADDENDA - Wall Street is corrupt, the British were corrupt, and a man with a “diploma mill” D. Econ. would still have quite a scramble getting a job today in America. I condemn the bailouts and those who work for companies receiving them. Ideally the capital markets wouldn’t be in bed with Washington and the Fed.