Students rarely hear the moral case for markets.
Teaching libertarian principles at universities is often considered heterodox by those who shape mainstream academic discourse. Of course, many important ideas from the Austrian school of economics have been incorporated into curricula, among them the subjective theory of value, boom and bust cycles, and diminishing marginal utility. But liberty-oriented economic ideas, those that promote economic liberty over government intervention, are generally overlooked.
In their paper Groupthink in Academia: Majoritarian Departmental Politics and the Professional Pyramid, Daniel B. Klein and Charlotta Stern discuss how classical liberal viewpoints among professors in the humanities and social sciences are relatively absent, while social democratic ideas prevail. They suggest that academics inclined toward social democratic worldviews project images of their critics, oversimplified stereotypes that broadly label them as “right-wing” or “conservative”—and therefore problematic.
Economist and professor Donald J. Boudreaux notes in an article for CapX that even in high school, he was taught a particular economic narrative: that the Great Depression was caused by capitalism and that Keynesianism saved the day (a narrative he later recognized as flawed and oversimplified). His reflection sheds light on how one-sided economic narratives and myths about markets have become entrenched in American education.
In my coursework at Yale (in the ethics, politics, & economics major, which is comparable to a social sciences program), I find it undeniably true that social democratic ideas are emphasized more than classical liberal ones. This doesn’t mean I haven’t read The Wealth of Nations in my classes. However, I have never been exposed to readings by Hayek, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, in my economics and political philosophy courses. This seems worth questioning. The Use of Knowledge has over 20,000 citations. The Road to Serfdom, which warns of the dangers of central economic planning, is a foundational text of modern political thought. It has been referenced throughout history by key figures like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, who cited it as an intellectual justification for rolling back the welfare state. So it seems strange that Hayek’s contributions would be excluded from the political economy curriculum at a university.
Perhaps this is because economics as a discipline has transitioned its emphasis from economic history to abstract economic concepts (such as rational choice and equilibrium) alongside quantitative modeling and data analysis. Or perhaps there are other institutional factors at play as well.
Some on the right argue that the American left has succeeded in a full ideological capture of humanities and social sciences education, particularly in elite institutions. I find criticisms that portray Ivy League students as out-of-touch socialists to be somewhat unfair, or at least lacking in nuance. First of all, a significant portion of students immediately go into corporate careers, so it simply seems implausible that campuses are truly committed to anti-capitalist ideas, even if progressive thought dominates in the classroom. Yale’s “First Destination summary,” created by the Office of Career Strategy, shows the postgraduate plans of Yale College graduates six months after graduation. For the Class of 2024, finance and consulting were the top two career paths, making up approximately 30.2% of the class.
Secondly, it seems that a fair proportion of students recognize that campuses lean left, which has led to genuine efforts to protect free speech and civil discourse. Yale’s commitment to institutional neutrality reflects an effort to “help protect free speech and a culture of open inquiry on campus,” as noted by Michael Strambler, an Associate Professor at the Yale School of Medicine.
Although less than 3% of Yale’s faculty members are registered as Republicans, 12% of Yale’s undergraduate population are members of the Buckley Institute, a campus organization that promotes intellectual diversity. Even though 12% may not seem like an overwhelming figure, in the context of the student body’s ideological tilt, it’s surprising and encouraging that this many students care about the issue of free speech. Despite what some might think about the homogeneity of political opinions at elite institutions, a decent portion of our campuses at least believe in the importance of learning from perspectives outside of the left-leaning status quo.
But the academic environment nonetheless remains tilted toward left-leaning ideas, especially when it comes to economics. I asked Lawrence Reed, former president of FEE, why free-market ideas receive less attention than more interventionist ideas in today’s universities. He cited Thomas Sowell, who once wrote, “The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.” Sowell discusses how academic Marxists are unaffected by the blatant failures of socialism in the real world, claiming that professors can produce whatever content they want as long as the topic is ideologically fashionable enough. He concludes that leftists concentrate in places where it doesn’t matter whether or not their ideas “stand the test of performance,” leading many of them to be drawn to academia.
Echoing this sentiment, lawyer and former university professor Allen Mendenhall told me that most of “our people” (referring to those who are committed to the cause of promoting liberty and free markets around the world) are more often concentrated in public policy think tanks than in universities. It may be because professors, at least at public universities, are government employees and are more likely to be in favor of Keynesianism over libertarian economics.
Or it may be that there is something to be said about the relationship between the university and activism. Although I disagree with the broad sentiment that the academy creates socialists, it seems possible that it encourages the idea that activism is more noble than enterprise, and state intervention is more virtuous than free-market solutions. Klein and Stern suggest that there are certain claims which, despite being plausible and testable, would lead academics to fail on the job market. I think this is particularly true of the first two claims they discuss: that “social justice” is an incoherent idea and that it functions as a moral atavism (as argued by Hayek). In the academy, moral seriousness is assumed to reside on the side of redistribution or state action, casting skepticism toward market-oriented approaches as complicit in “injustice”—however loosely the term might be defined.
Whatever the cause, the marginalization of libertarian ideas has consequences. Christian Houghton, a fellow intern at FEE, gave a presentation on school choice at an academic conference while pursuing a master’s in education policy at Suffolk University. “I was shut down by a professor who claimed that the idea of school choice is racist and bigoted,” he said. “Most other professors I encountered would probably have agreed with that one.” Christian claimed that the university should be a place that encourages freedom in intellectual beliefs, and that academics are often unwilling to be challenged.
I’ve learned from speaking with people in the liberty movement that many of them became passionate about economic liberty after seeking out information outside of the classroom. This is why organizations like FEE play such a crucial role. Without being exposed to free-market ideas, how can young people decide if they’re worth listening to?
