Dr. Richard Vedderin the n
The publisher of the Cape May County Herald referenced a Wall Street Journal column by Dr. Richard Vedder, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Economics at Ohio University, in a column headlined “In Education, the Hard Workers Get the Rewards.”
When I was in college in the 1960s, one of my economics professors made the statement: “Education is a strange commodity – the less you give the student, the happier he is.” I repeated that statement to one of my colleagues who graduated from college several years ago, and she told me, “Whenever one of my classes was canceled, and they were canceled frequently, I’d smile, pump my fists in the air and say, ‘Woo Hoo!’” Her sentiments mirrored to a tee the adage my professor quoted.
Why are we like that? Clearly, a certain lazy streak runs through most of us. While we know that at some point in the future we’ll be glad to know as much as possible, at present, however, we’re happy that life just got a little easier.
Because Americans haven’t been demanding consumers of the higher-education establishment, the education community turned flabby on us, to a degree. Richard Vedder, who teaches economics at Ohio University, spells out the ways in an opinion piece in the April 11, 2019, Wall Street Journal.
Comments