The Economy
Of Scarcity
Now here, in this earlier post, UD noted how long-suffering Brown University’s students are, as they routinely encounter multiple course cancellations at the beginning of each semester.
The Brown history department, for instance, recently cancelled thirteen courses (because of a “wealth of research opportunities,” its chair boasts). Political science, economics, and a number of other departments, while not as successful in pursuing research opportunities, also turned out impressive numbers of faculty dropouts.
But the University of Virginia goes Brown one better, boasting not only large numbers of professors who disappear from courses at the last minute, but an entire department – economics – in which no one teaches more than three courses a year.
So this semester, for instance, in the economics department, “two faculty members retired and seven other full professors announced their intention to go on research leave at the same time.”
Which meant cancelled courses, or courses taught by adjuncts.
But on top of that:
To lure and retain economics faculty members, the University has begun to offer additional benefits [to this department] not available to the faculty at large… . One such change includes cutting the teaching load from four courses a year to three because professors are attracted to the opportunity to do more research. Cutting teacher course loads creates an additional strain on the number of students who are able to take economics classes. In order to make up for fewer classes taught by full-time faculty, the University has adapted by bringing in adjunct professors… .
Three courses a year being the maximum course load for economics at U Va, some professors will certainly teach fewer than that. If they can whittle it down to two, for instance, in the same semester, they’ve won a semester’s leave every year.
Let us deconstruct this very postmodern phenomenon.
You’re proud of attending U Va because it has a world-class, famous economics department.
But almost all of its economists of stature are absent.
Hence you may boast that X and Y teach at your school. You just can’t learn anything from them.
