MORE ON CERTIFICATION U? The Calico Cat, clearly neither a regular reader of several widely read, frequently heard, or wide-ranging University of Chicago-based weblogs nor a college football fan, reacts to this installment of the Certification U posts. But how many fallacies can you spot in this: "This is the standard argument one would expect from a university faculty member who is defending his job's very existence. While there is nothing wrong with loving learning, most taxpayers would probably prefer doing something else than their current job, so it doesn't seem fair that their tax dollars should be spent to enable other people to do something they love." It's not the economists who suffer when the humanities programs close down. It's not evident to me that academicians as a class like their work more than other sorts of workers do, and it is the economists who refer to something called a "compensating differential" as a way of quantifying those preferences.

Careful readers will note it is with Calico Cat's reasoning that I disagree, not his impressions about the failure of universities (heck, the education establishment in toto) to develop human capital in their graduates. My dad observed some 20 years ago that his children knew more basic electrical engineering than the trainees at his firm, all from well-known colleges of engineering, did.