EconAir

Over this weekend (October 23-24), The Wall Street Journal had an article entitled “Putting a Price on Professors,” which you can read at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703735804575536322093520994.html As a reader of murder mysteries and a fan of the Sopranos, the title scared the hell out of me. After I calmed down, I realize they were talking about something more like economics (a non-violent major) – attempts at cost/benefit analysis. The main idea is that some states, especially Texas, are trying to determine which college professors, majors and programs make money and which lose money. The accounting methodology is a very primitive version of profit and loss statements, focusing primarily on salary costs. Excluded are revenue from grants and the cost of capital equipment, which makes analysis of the sciences particularly worthless. But at least it’s a crude attempt at accountability, in a financial sense, which is understandable since taxpayers pay for m...

I generally think management books are a waste of time. But occasionally I come across some advice I think is worthwhile. Such as this: Conscious organization is the great spiritual task of man. We speak of the “composition” of a picture; it is the way the artist has organized his material. The harmony of a piece of music depends on the way the musician has organized his material. The statesman organizes social facts into legislation and administration. The greater the statesman, the greater power he shows in just this capacity. It might be fun to try to do it in one’s own life, to say: “Here are the materials of my life. How would the artist arrange them in order to make the composition the most significant? How would he subordinate lesser values to higher values? How would he manage to give everything its fullest value? Or we might ask ourselves the craftsman’s question, “How can I make of my life a whole whose beauty and use shall be one?” Organization is what separate...