The Attack on Higher Education Heats up from Simmer toward Boil
by Neil H. Buchanan Pending legislation in Florida would, if enacted, make it illegal to teach Economics in the state's universities. It is not being described that way, of course, but what else could one conclude about a bill that prohibits the state's colleges and universities from offering general education courses "with a curriculum based on unproven, theoretical or exploratory content"? If that sounds like snark, it is. It is also true even on its own terms, however, because even the most true-believer orthodox economists -- the ones who insist that theirs is the only true science outside of the STEM curriculum, making the field in which I earned most of my advanced degrees "the queen of the social sciences" -- would certainly embrace the idea that economics as they understand it is both theoretical and exploratory. Many of the rest of us know that it is also unproven (and unprovable), but even setting that aside, the people who glory in the idea ...