Degrees of Utility
A bit about Wyoming discontinuing government funding of a Gender and Women's Studies program at the state university caught my eye the other day.
My first thought was, "who earns a living with a Gender Studies degree? The answer that then popped into my head was as immediate and as organic: The only way to make money in Gender Studies, I figure, is to teach other people Gender Studies.
In other words, it might be classified as either a Ponzi scheme or multi-level marketing. In other other words, a means of leaching potentially productive wealth out of the economy.
Are there places in the private sector where such a degree might be utile? Perhaps in the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion departments that big companies seem increasingly obligated to establish. Which, again, are a drain on productive capital.
Such 'drains' are part of the business landscape. Any form of government-mandated paperwork qualifies. Human Resources departments serve a vital purpose, but some of their functions are less vital than others, and given that they're often populated by cranky harridans. There are jobs (and employees) up and down every business food chain, large and small, that create friction and depletion rather than wealth…
But I digress.
FIRE, an organization that I believe does good work and have supported, takes issue with this move:
"By not funding and thereby shutting down" courses and activities related to gender studies, "the amendment functions as a curricular ban on that topic and would limit academic discussion of gender in any class."
Herein lies the problem. All education (public or not) inevitably runs into curricular push-pull problems. Everything that’s put on a curriculum is put there by somebody, and everything that is omitted is left out by somebody.
Who, then, is to be in charge of curricula in publicly-funded schools (whether it be primary, secondary, or university-level)?
As the adage goes, he who pays the piper calls the tune. Or, if you prefer, whoever has the gold makes the rules. Principles of representative government dictate it should be the taxpayers, via the people they elect to office.
Many who lust after Other People's Money, however, think it should be them, whether they be university administrators, education wonks and activists, teachers' union leaders, or random statists with opinions (i.e. all of them).
Them, exclusively, it turns out, with no input from the taxpayers' stewards (i.e. elected politicians)... or from the consumers of the product (i.e. students) or their stewards (i.e. parents).
Who's right? Who should have the ultimate say over what gets taught via public funds?
We could look to libertarian principles and declare that funding of education is not a legitimate function of government, nor a proper use of tax dollars, but that ship sailed long ago.
We can take one step back, but still remain on the libertarian platform, and argue that backpack funding, where schools (public and private) compete for enrollment and tax dollars travel with each student to his or her parents’ chosen school (that's included in the Nordic model that the Left loves in the abstract but not in the details), but that doesn't answer the university question very well.
There are many fields of study that are in the same boat as Gender Studies, i.e. not directly utile for wealth-producing careers. The classic liberal education was along the lines of "knowledge for knowledge's sake," with less eye to utility and more toward expanding both the individual mind and the body of human knowledge. Such used to be the province of the scions of the wealthy, whose careers were either defined or underwritten by "family business." That classism isn't around, any more, but the structures of that form of education are - in the private sector.
This suggests an answer: Public education and public universities should have narrower curricula. If taxpayers are footing the bill, then some "return on investment" in the form of human productivity seems appropriate. With a recent Fed report telling us that more than 40% of college grads are working jobs that don’t require their degree, having a conversation about what sorts of degrees public funds should pay for is not an outlier.
A parallel is public funding of the arts, something else that doesn't fit into a libertarian worldview. For most of history, art was underwritten by the wealthy, and it's rather obvious that there are vast troves of RPM (Rich People's Money) available today in that space. It’s nice to talk about public funding of the arts, but it’s not a core or even peripheral role of a limited government. It fails the libertarians’ taxation test: “Would you be willing to point a gun at someone to pay for X?”
If we are to have public funding for education, then either the parents of students should have their say, via backpack-funding school choice, or where such isn't as workable (i.e. at the college level), then the taxpayers' elected stewards should have more direct control. Yes, this can be problematic as well, but all publicly funded education is.
I'm wrong about career paths for Gender Studies majors, by the way. There is another option: activism. As Sonny Corleone might observe today,
there's a lot of money in that...
Whether it be legitimate spending of donors' cash, or self-serving misappropriation (as we've recently seen repeatedly in BLM-the-organization), activism is a growth industry, with much OPM to play with.
Therein lies the core of the Wyoming de-funding argument: that Gender Studies is about activism, not the nonpartisan expansion of human knowledge. It's valid to argue that government should not be funding efforts to lobby government, even though we know it happens all the time. A mess of spaghetti gets untangled one strand at a time.
As I understand things, European public university education is far more gate-kept than ours is. That's worth keeping in mind as the Democrats possibly make a last-ditch effort to either create a "free college" entitlement or cancel student debts (which, ironically, would most benefit the affluent) ahead of their near-certain loss of Congressional majorities this November.
Also worth noting: the long-running narrative that getting a degree means you'll earn more across your working life than not, a narrative peddled by those who call for "free college," collapses under a bit of scrutiny. Take out the STEM and other professional careers, and the narrative flips on its head. Better to become a tradesperson than to drop six figures and four unproductive years on a mostly-useless degree.
If you like this post, please share it far and wide. Scattering seeds is how we sow liberty.
If you like what I write, please subscribe (if you have already, thank you!), and please recommend the blog to your friends! While I share it as much as I can on social media, we all know those get filtered and you're not apt to see all shares.
If you really like The Roots of Liberty and want to help keep it rolling, please consider becoming a paying subscriber here at Substack, or at a lighter level as contributor to the blog via Patreon.
Thank you for your support!
Yours in liberty,
Peter.