Dr. Richard Vedder, Director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity and Professor Emeritus of Economics at Ohio University, wrote a tribute to the Founding Dean of George Mason University’s Law School, Henry Manne.
A giant in the field of law and economics, Henry Manne, died Saturday after a long battle with cancer. Henry was a lawyer with a very solid economics background, known best for his work on such issues of corporate governance as insider trading (which, contrary to conventional wisdom, Henry generally thought was fine). He looked at the relationship between stockholders and corporations in an altogether different way than the then-prevailing guru on the subject, Adolph Berle, had done so. He importantly advanced the field of law and economics.
But one of Manne’s most insightful contributions, made in an obscure essay in the 1970s, has largely gone unnoticed, and it is profoundly important to higher education. Henry thought most of the distinction between “for profit” and “not-for-profit” education was devoid of meaning. All universities, in some sense, sought profits, even though they were not legally, for tax and accounting purposes, counted as such. Even traditional private universities seek to gain more revenues relative to spending – they are profit-maximizers in a real sense.
Comments