University of Virginia Library

Intellectual Failure Of New Leftists

By David Friedman

Last year, my student
government considered a plan
under which it would one
professor, to be selected by a majority
vote of the student body.
This was advanced as a way to
expand the university beyond "consensus
scholarship."

Such a proposal exemplifies the
intellectual failure of the new left.
The objective of decentralizing academic
power in order to allow
controversy and diversity is an admirable
one. The means proposed,
the choosing of faculty by majority
vote, is actually inimical to that
objective. "Democratic" decision
making is a means for finding and
implementing the will of the majority;
it has no other function. It
serves, not to encourage diversity,
but to prevent it.

The new left must be aware of
the futility of this proposal; perhaps
such realization is the reason
that its members are usually reluctant
to describe how a society
should work. They have not
grasped, emotionally or intellectually,
the concept of noncoercive cooperation, of a society that
lets everyone get what he wants.

Free Market

Before discussing how one solution,
a free market "university,"
would work, we must first realize
what is essentially wrong with the
present system. The lack of student
power which the new left deplores
is a direct result of the success of
one of the pet schemes of the old
left - heavily subsidized schooling.
Students in public universities, and
to a lesser extent in private universities,
do not pay the whole cost of
what they get. As a result, the
university does not need the students;
it can always get more. Like
a landlord under rent control the
university can afford to ignore the
wishes, and the convenience, of its
customers.

Educational Subsidies

In this brief article, I shall not
consider stopping the subsidy, but
only altering its form. If all subsidies,
both the government subsidies
which are paid to students in
public universities, and the subsidies
which take the form of contributions
to private universities,
are in the form of scholarships
awarded to students, so that the
university gets all of the money
from the students, the university is
in the position of a merchant selling
his goods at their market price, and
is thus constrained to sell what his
customers most want to buy.

Rented Classrooms

A university of the present sort,
even if financed entirely from tuition,
would still be a centralized,
organization. A free
market "university," on the other
hand, would replace the present
university with a number of separate
organizations, cooperating in
their mutual interest, through the
normal processes of the market
place. These would include one or
more business renting out the use
of classrooms, and a large number
of teachers, each paying for the use
of a classroom and
students who wished to take his
course whatever price was mutually
agreeable. The system would thus
be ultimately supported by students,
each choosing his courses
according to what he wanted to
study, the reputation of the
teacher, and the price he charges.

A number of other organizations
might coexist with these.
There might be one that nothing
but give examinations in various
subjects, and grant degrees to
those that passed; presumable,
teachers would be hired to spend
part of their time writing and
grading such examinations. Another
might perform clerical functions,
printing a course catalogue listing
courses that were being offered,
and their prices, or compiling transcripts
for those students who
wanted them and were willing to
pay for them. There might be
groups publishing and selling evaluations
of teachers and courses, like
the "Confidential Guide" compiled
by the Harvard Crimson.

Research Groups

There might be research groups,
working in the same community in
order to allow their researchers to
supplement by reaching,
and in order to use students as
inexpensive research assistants.
Some members of the community
might be simultaneously teaching
elementary courses in a subject and
paying other members for advanced
instruction. There might be companies
providing privately run dormitories,
for those students who
wished to live in them.

The essential characteristic of
this scheme is that, like any market
system, it produces what the consumer
wants. To the extent that the
students, even with the assistance
of professional "counselors" and
written evaluations of courses,
less competent to judge what they
are getting than are the people who
now hire and fire teachers, this may
be a disadvantage. But it does
guarantee that it is the students'
interest, not the interest of the
university, as judged by the university,
that determines what teachers
are employed.

Under this sort of market system
I have described, a majority of
students, even a large majority, can
have only a positive, not a negative,
effect on what is taught. They can
guarantee that something will be
that something will
not be. As long as there are enough
students interested in a subject so
that a teacher can make money
teaching it, that subject will be
taught, however much
students dislike it. The market
system accomplishes the objective
of the new left's proposal.