 So, this is meant to be a little bit of a different session. It's very informal, there's no speeches. It's more of a Q&A session semi-structured discussion about issues related to advanced study in Austrian economics or libertarian political theory or whatever academic discipline you might be interested in. You've been doing sessions like this for a number of years because many of you are either already in graduate school or applying to graduate school, maybe about to start this fall, or maybe even just thinking about graduate school as a possible option. All of you are here, you know, you're here at MisesU this week because you're really interested in these ideas. Most of you are very passionate about the kinds of things we've been talking about this week. And many of you would like to incorporate these kinds of dialogues, discussions, you know, into your long-term career plans, whether that means being a professor or a teacher or an entrepreneur or a journalist or an executive or a physician or whatever. You know, we think it's terrific that so many of you have so many different career options that you're thinking about. What we wanted to do was talk specifically about some educational and also career issues that face people who are interested in Austrian economics and related subjects. Because, you know, I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, Austrian economics does not at the moment completely dominate the established universities, nor are we the, you know, featured guests on every major news show and so on. You know, the day is coming, the revolution is just around the corner, but until that day, you know, we all face some special challenges, especially those of us interested in academia, you know, public outreach, journalism and so forth. And so what we have done is, I mean, asked myself and Lucas and Philip to talk to you a little bit about our own experiences and the way this is going to work is we're each going to give just a very short kind of opening statement and then turn the floor over to you for questions and answers and hopefully be able to address some issues that are particularly important to you guys. I'll start with the kind of opening statement. You know, if there's one lesson that I hope you'll take away from this discussion, it's that whatever are your long term plans, whether you want to be a professor or something else, you know, you should think strategically about the career you want to have and the steps that are required to get there. OK, you know, there used to be a time in the U.S. in the 1960s and 70s and sometimes you'll hear this from older professors that, you know, people went to graduate school because they didn't want to be drafted and go to Vietnam. OK, that's not a particularly strong reason to make the investment of time and energy and emotional, you know, emotion of trying to go to get a graduate degree. Going to graduate school is hard and if you do it, it should be for a good reason. And so we want to talk about what some of those reasons might be as well as give you some practical tips for how to navigate, you know, that mind field. But I want you to think about career issues more generally, you know, suppose that your life goal is to be a famous movie director, right? You want to be the next Spielberg or the next Ridley Scott or whatever. I mean, how do you do that? Most people don't just wake up one morning and say, oh, I want to be a movie director and the next day they have a $200 million Hollywood picture, you know, that they're working on. No, I mean, most successful film directors, not all importantly, but most go through a particular set of stages. There's kind of a standard path. I mean, either you went to maybe a film school. So guys like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, you know, they were graduates of film school at USC back in the 60s and 70s. And a lot of the sort of famous kind of new wave U.S. directors of the 70s were graduates of the USC film school. They also apprenticed with slightly older filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola. So most successful directors either went to film school and apprenticed with a famous director or they kind of worked their way up from a related movie job like some directors started out as cinematographers or set designers or casting people or even movie studio executives who kind of worked their way into the director's chair. There are exceptions. There are, you know, these sort of self made auteurs who came out of nowhere like Quentin Tarantino is maybe a good example who did not go through that path, did not go to film school and kind of buck the system and did his own thing. But most successful directors do not follow the Tarantino model. So the point is if you wanted to be the next George Lucas or the next Steven Spielberg, you can study what other successful directors have done. And maybe you would also want to look at people who tried to be directors but weren't successful and get a sense of what are, you know, what is the standard path or what are some of the standard paths that people take. So before you can get the big movie, first, you have to direct a smaller movie. And before you can direct a smaller movie, you have to maybe direct a student film in art school, in movie school, or you have to work on somebody else's larger film or whatever. You could draw a diagram, right, where you lay out the steps with little arrows indicating what steps, you know, proceed and follow which other steps. Maybe there's multiple paths where it's a complicated diagram. But you could do that. And if you were smart, you would do that and not simply say, well, I don't know how to be a director, but I'm going to do it. And I'm going to fumble and stumble around and poof. What's ironic or unfortunate is that many scholars, even though they may understand sort of, you know, strategic thinking in an academic sense, do not engage in this exercise. So I ask a lot of grad students that I know, why did you go to grad school? And some of them cannot articulate a very good answer. Well, I don't know. It seemed like it would be fun. I didn't really have another good job option. You know, Vietnam, whatever. I mean, that's probably not the first step to a very successful career. So what I would suggest is that you, you know, start by thinking about what you want to do and some possible options for you, medium term, long term, and then what do you need to do to get there? And use that in thinking about, should I go to grad school? Where should I go to grad school? If I'm already in grad school, what should I do while I'm in grad school? What do I do after grad school? And so on. Just to give you one more concrete example, suppose that your life goal is to be the next Walter Block. I don't know why that would be your goal, but suppose it is. You know, Walter has a very nice job. You know, he's an endowed professor, chaired professor at Loyola University in New Orleans, makes a good salary. He has a, you know, has a nice office, pretty campus, lives in a nice town. He has a modest teaching load where he has lots of opportunity to write and do research and come to conferences like this. Well, again, you know, you're not just going to wake up one day and all of a sudden you'll be have a position just like Walter Blocks. I mean, it took him a long time to get there. He had to do a lot of things. He had to work hard. He followed a sort of circuitous path. But my point is it's not too hard to find out what was the path by studying and reading and researching and asking people like Walter Block. How did you get here? I mean, before Walter was hired at Loyola as the worth endowed professor. You know, he was previously a junior, a more junior professor at some other schools. He spent several years teaching at Holy Cross as an assistant professor. He also taught at the University of Central Arkansas. And he sort of, you know, proved himself as a more junior level professor by teaching classes and doing well in teaching classes, by writing articles, doing the things that universities ask professors to do as they kind of move up the ranks. And he would not have been hired into his present position at Loyola if he had not previously proved himself in these other jobs. And, you know, there's some specific things in Walter's case, like, which I know from talking to him, Loyola is a Jesuit school. And they were looking for someone who sort of fit the Jesuit mold. And it so happened that not only had Walter taught at Holy Cross, but he had also written several articles on, you know, social justice. Now, most likely the hiring committee did not actually read any of Walter's articles on social justice. But based on a superficial look at his resume, they said, oh, this guy's perfect. You know, how did Walter get to be a junior professor at Holy Cross in these other places? Well, first he got a PhD from Columbia, and then he worked for a number of years at the Fraser Institute in Canada. So he had the credentials. He had the publication, you know, trail. He had the teaching experience and so on. Well, how did he get to have a PhD from Columbia? Well, first he had to apply to Columbia and be admitted. And then he had to pass all his classes and all his exams. And then he had to write a PhD dissertation and get that defended and approved and so on. So if you're a little undergraduate version of Walter Block and you see many years in the future, you know, this cushy professorship at Loyola, you got to do the next thing, break it down into pieces and figure out what's the next thing to do. So if you are currently an undergrad student, thinking about getting a graduate degree or you're already a grad student, maybe, you know, to know what to do, where to apply, what to choose as a research topic. Who should I work with as my advisor? What kind of papers do I want to write? Should I teach a class or not? These sorts of things. You should always be doing it with regard to trying to get on the kind of path that you want. Now, as a person who studies entrepreneurship, I would be remiss if I did not add some caveats, right? Of course, we live in a world of uncertainty. So it's not the case that you can make a plan like I'm describing and just follow it step by step by step by step. And boom, there you are. I mean, you don't always know whether your actions are going to bring about the results that you want. Maybe you want to diversify a little bit. So you have different options available to you and you also need to be creative and, you know, scan the environment for what you think might be potential opportunities to do something you weren't anticipating. You need to exercise good judgment and so forth. So if you talk to a lot of successful professors, many of them will say, you know, yes, I did the kind of thing that I was just talking about. But also, you know, I was doing one thing and all of a sudden the job opportunity presented itself that I wasn't expecting. And I sort of did the pivot as business schools say, you know, I changed my plans a little bit to take advantage of an opportunity that I didn't previously realize was going to be there. So we're not saying everything is rigid and in lockstep. You want to be creative, be flexible, take things as they come, look for opportunities to change your strategy, but have a strategy and think about strategy. That's the that's the general lesson that I think is most important from these discussions. I'm going to take a little bit different approach and just kind of kind of tell my own story of like how did I get here to where I am now? Maybe bring some advice that I was given and often didn't follow. Maybe you should have more. The first thing I'll say, right, think of where I could have been if I'd actually listened to you 10 years ago. So my own story, the first thing, whenever somebody comes to my office and says, I'm thinking about going to grad school, about 90 percent of the time, the first thing I say to them is don't because if me saying don't makes you seriously reconsider your decision, you should probably seriously reconsider your decision, right? They're going to be more significant barriers as you go through graduate school. You're going to get passed than just some professor your respect saying you shouldn't do that, right? So you really need to think about it and be sure this is the path you want to go down. I think Pete Betke did a really good job several years ago. He posted on a blog and said, if you're an economics major and you're thinking about going to graduate school, you want to think about where you want to be five years after graduation, right? Do you want to be, say, processing mortgage applications, doing analysis for a bank, making about $70,000 a year, which is fairly typical if you follow that path, or would you rather make $50,000 a year teaching at a community college because you got your PhD? If, like me, you say I'd rather make the $50,000 teaching at a community college, then graduate school is probably right for you, right? No, that's not saying that's typical, but it is certainly a possibility and it's a possibility that's actually not far from where I ended up. I'm teaching a very heavy load. I'm very happy doing it. That's why I went into graduate school. So how did I make that decision? It's my first semester at Grove City College. I was taking principles of microeconomics. And at the time I was an economics major, pre-law was the program I was in. I planned to go to graduate school, which shows that I have very poor foresight, but I had planned to go to graduate school, but in law school specifically. But then I realized I had this business law class, which was fine, it was a good professor, it was somewhat entertaining. It wasn't that bad of a class, but I absolutely loved my microeconomics class. So at the end of the day, I said, how do I want to spend my life? Do I want to spend my life doing something I absolutely love or something that I kind of like? And I think really this motivation kind of runs through a lot of the decisions that I've made about graduate school and my career. And so I decided I wanted to get my PhD in economics. I go to my advisor, who happened to also be the person that taught that microeconomics class, said, I've decided I want to go to graduate school in economics. He said, take more math. So I added a math minor on and prior to college, I never liked math. I thought it was easy. It wasn't hard, but it was just boring. But I had great math professors. I really enjoyed the math minor, which I think is kind of a good sign for where I ended up going down the road. And so I finally get toward graduation. I had made my plans and applying to various schools and I had heard a professor at Mises U by the name of Peter Klein giving a session about going to graduate school. And he suggested at that point in time that what you should do is apply to the top 10 schools in economics and then go wherever you get funding. And so I looked at the top 10 schools in economics. I decided about three of them looked tolerable. I didn't want to live in the People's Republic of California as that rules out places like Stanford, Berkeley and the like. Chicago looked pretty good. They're generally on the right side of things. I didn't mind New England. So Harvard, Yale, I went ahead and applied there as well. Apparently those People's Republics don't bother me as much. I'm more used to the bad weather, I guess, than why you'd get in California. So I applied to those three of the top 10 was rejected from every single one of them. But fortunately, I did leave more options open. I also applied to some state schools from around where I am. I'm in Ohio, so I applied to Ohio State, which is a very good graduate program. I applied to University of Michigan, which if you know Ohio makes me something of a trader to apply to the school up north. But I did. It's also a very good program. It's not top 10, but it's normally like 11 or 12. Very, very good program. I applied to Penn State, also a very good program and right next door to Ohio. So yeah, the last one was George Mason for obvious reasons. If you want to study Austrian economics in graduate school within the United States, George Mason is like one of the very few options available at the time. I think it was probably the only option where you there was actually an active Austrian program. So I applied to George Mason as well and got in there. And so it came down to George Mason or Ohio State. And I tortured myself over the decision quite a bit. But the way I ended up making the choice was really thinking about my visits to each of these schools. I went to George Mason. I sat in on one of Pete Betke's classes. It was very interesting. At the end of the day, I was very tired and just wanted to go back to my hotel room and fall asleep. That was basically the way that visit went. Then I went to Ohio State. I visited lots of people there. I met various people. One person who is retired now, but was very familiar with the Austrian school, was actually introduced to economics by reading Rothbard, which is very encouraging to me. It wasn't going to be totally unknown if I went there. And at the end of the day, just emotionally, I was very excited. I was excited about thinking about the future and what this would be like. And I wanted to tell my parents all about all the little details about these weird people that I met and all their idiosyncrasies and that. So when I finally came down about a month after these visits to making the decision, I had to call these schools decide whether I was going to enroll or not. I just again said, at the end of the day, how do I want to feel about the day? Do I want to be tired and ready to go to bed? Or do I want to be excited about what I did? So I ended up going to Ohio State, which is a very mainstream program, heavily mathematical. If you're thinking about going to the mainstream path, I obviously wouldn't advise necessarily against that. There are good benefits to that, but you need to prepare yourself for the math. You also need to prepare yourself for not really studying much true economics in the Austrian sense. But it's something that I enjoyed because I had learned in college that I actually kind of like math problems and doing these proofs. And it's kind of like solving pseudocoupuzzles, which is something I do in my free time. So here I get to do it in graduate school. It's kind of the same sort of structure in solving these logic problems. And so it was something that I found enjoyable, though the reason I say don't is that a lot of my classmates did not find this enjoyable. It was five years of torture for them having to suffer through this math, hoping that it's going to end up with a career they're actually not going to hate. Whereas I knew because I had interacted with students as a tutor. I knew that I liked interacting with students. I liked teaching. That's what I wanted to do. If I wanted to teach in a college in economics, you have to have the PhD in effect. So I knew that I needed the PhD and I also enjoyed the process along the way. So I think that's really where I ended up. Just making these decisions, really thinking about how I would enjoy my life or not. And I will say now where I teach, it's a branch campus for Kent State University. I teach a 4-4 load. Talking to Walter Bluck. He thinks I'm crazy because you need to get out of there so you can do some more research. But I love it. I love teaching. I love interacting with students. I don't have much time for research, but it's OK. I do research because it fills in the time that I'm not interacting with students. But interacting students is what I want to do. And that's what I'm able to do. OK, thank you. I would also I would take another approach distant from the two. I will start with the proposition, a priori proposition. Maybe the axiom that the best thing in life for you to do is study also economics in depth, under guidance. Doesn't matter for consumption purposes, like just you're interested in understanding the world better. This might be a reason, another reason might be if you want to become a journalist or if you want to work in the financial sector or if you want to become a professor, doesn't matter. I think, yeah, I will start with axiom. That's the best thing to do, what you can do. If you follow me from there, I will tell you the options that I know of, which I consider which I know quite well. The one is our master program in Austrian economics, that shameless promotion, I know. But our master program in Austrian economics at in Madrid. It's until now it's the only worldwide master program in Austrian economics. It's only Austrian economics. So if you are, if you are Sudoku fanatic, shouldn't go there. If you're really interested in math problems, you should not go there because there will be no math. It's pure Austrian economics. So. You will know some of the professors, what Jesus Waterisoto, David Hauden, myself. So we are all Austrian professors. We have like subjects are one one classes. The defense market and private production of security. But this is not one lecture like it misses you. This is the who's who's semester. Austrian economics and the public sector. They're all public policies are analyzed. Banking and money, the awesome business cycle theory is one class. I teach Austrian methodology. So it's not two or three classes by David Gordon, but it's also who's semester. History of economic thought is another class. This is the whole year, the masters one year. There the textbook is, of course, Rothbard's history of economic thought. So you see. It's all it's all like 12 different classes. It's purely purely Austrian, no mass, no econometrics, just interested in understanding society. Just interested in understanding how the real world works. So if you are interested in this, I think it's a good option. It's four thousand euros cost. So it's not really expensive expensive either. There's a mass. You have to write a master's thesis and it gives you then the option to do the PhD afterwards. So it's also a PhD program. Program. The only downside maybe is that well, I think it's actually upside. The classes are in Spanish, but all but all readings are available in English. You can do the exams, the essays. You can do it in English. That put it mildly this way. We had some some some graduates who were not really native speaker of Spanish. So you can do it without, but of course you can profit much more from the program if you understand Spanish. I say it's upside because it's a great opportunity to learn Spanish. It's to learn another language is fantastic. And we we have examples. We have we have people who arrived in Madrid with a basic or no knowledge of Spanish. And after the year, they don't do not only have a master in Austrian economics, but they also understand and speak, can defend themselves in Spanish. So here, some people are also here. We have here at Mises, you know, Tyler, for example, for Chinese, it's even more difficult. But now he he speaks Spanish. So so this this is our program. And then two friends of mine, one was also a summer fellow his name is Henry Cagedon. He they they are starting a master in Austrian economics next year in Berlin, Berlin. And this will be in English and this will be not one year, but two years, two years master program. If you want to become an entrepreneur or investor working in the financial sector, this might be also interesting for you. So this is totally new. I might actually also teach there may be a class we will see. But this is also an option. If you don't want to learn another language, I mean, you can do the master in Madrid without learning really Spanish, but you don't want profit as much from it. I mean, I knew the master in Madrid. It's like Mises University, not for one week, but for a whole year. Because they're also only we have only students who go there because they actually want to study also economics. Many of them have already a good knowledge of of it. And they are highly motivated and they talk with with the other with each other, not only during class time, but also afterwards do do stuff in the free time together. So it's a fantastic experience. And the master in master in Berlin, well, it will be in English. It will be in English. It will be two years. It's at the BITS. It's a BITS. What's his name? University of Business Leadership. It's a private private school. You cannot do the PhD there. But this may be the downside, but you get an also a two year education and also economics. We only have till 1045. So rather than us talk more, why don't we let you guys ask questions about things that you're particularly interested in? Maybe things we haven't addressed. Yes, please. Why don't I just give another perspective of the private side or the non teaching side? No, but I don't mind, but if you could keep it brief only because the video will not pick up your voice unless we kind of repeat what you say. So just make it short. Yeah, because I've done a lot of the hiring committees for like economist jobs. And they actually what I'm surprised with is for every one economics degree we hire, we do a finance one or a geologist or specialized things like that. Who do you hire for? I mean, the state of Alaska. OK, so in the same thing with analysts, that's kind of the private side of an economist group. They like specialized things like that. And the other thing is everyone has a degree that comes in. The thing that's such a part is your work experience. So internships, I've seen is a lot more valuable than the school that you went to. The point is that a lot of organizations, public in this case and private as well, hire people not only based on the degree, but also based on experience and that they're you know, for certain kind of jobs that relate to economic things, having an advanced degree in a complementary subject like finance or as other social science can be useful to me. One thing I just did that just elaborate on what you said, I mean, just like capital is heterogeneous, you know, grad school is a very heterogeneous thing. So of course, there are master's degrees and there are doctoral degrees. There are degrees in economics or degrees in philosophy and management and so forth. There's a European PhD and an American style PhD European style and they're very different. I mean, I just listening to Phillips description of the program at Madrid. I mean, I'm thinking, when do I sign up? I mean, I want to pay you the enrollment fee right now. But, you know, I think that the kind of degree that Philip is describing and the kind of, you know, on a PhD from Ohio State, these are compliments, not substitutes. These are not two different versions of the same thing. These are two different things and which thing you want and which thing you need depends on your circumstances. Somebody was in the front first. Yeah. And then we'll go back. So as someone who's an undergrad and starting to look at graduate schools, I want to be able to put something concrete is, hey, I know somewhat what research is. I know somewhat, you know, what publishing is. So do you then take the logically consistent leap of, do you look at doing some empirical research for an easy, hey, I've done this before. Do you think that's a necessary part or a part that you should take? Or would you say no publishing or try to publish in something like a quarter way Austrian? Well, not necessarily that prestigious, but you know what I mean, I think. Can you hear the questions? OK, so we will not repeat. So just make sure I understand the questions as an undergraduate student to to have a better chance of getting into the graduate school of your choice. You're asking should you publish? What should you publish? Where should you? Yeah, like I have professors asking me, hey, I'm doing this undergraduate research conference. You want to be a part of it, but obviously it's all empirical or data and that sort of stuff. So I mean, we can so my cynical answer is for the places where I have been employed and where I did my own graduate work, that would basically matter zero on the margin. What matters is your GRE scores, your grades. I mean, obviously no one's going to think it's a bad thing that you sure participated in undergraduate research, but it would not substitute the margin for your GRE scores, in particular, your math GRE for more mainstream programs. I just I would emphasize that there's nothing to be lost from seizing these opportunities. Right. Knowing how to use data is a potentially useful thing. Yeah, but again, I don't know of any graduate school that in their rejection letters to me said, it looks like you didn't do enough empirical research and undergrad. I don't think they were really that interested in the research that I did an undergrad, apart from the fact that I showed some initiative in doing independent studies. I don't think they particularly cared what happened inside that independent study. So yeah, that's in the back and then here. So my undergrad was in economics of public administration and I'm looking at doing masters in public policy. That's what my plan is right now and then going on the PhD route after that. I would like to work in Austrian economics, so kind of away from all the math and obviously public policy is a little bit more theoretical, maybe, than a lot of applied economics degrees. Would a PhD in public policy eliminate opportunities in Austrian economics because it's not a PhD in economics? I can address that. I think no, absolutely not, depending on what you mean by opportunities in Austrian economics. Publishing in the journal. Yeah. Oh, no, no, not at all. I mean, people who are participants in the research and teaching program of the Austrian school broadly defined have all kinds of credentials and a PhD is not really required and a PhD in economics is certainly not required. You know, if you want to be an economics professor at Ohio State, then a PhD in public policy is probably not going to be a sufficient credential. But if you want to do research and publish and be able to teach at Mises U or whatever, that wouldn't be an issue at all. I don't know. Phil, do you want to say anything about kind of in Europe if you wanted to be a professor? You need also a PhD. But right now it's quite difficult because of austerity measures. There are no new professors hired at Ray Juan Carlos. So... austerity, man. So you have to look for other options at private universities. No. I think, I'm sorry, this gentleman was next and then here. Do selection committee's care about grades? I mean, ours does, but grades are less lower weight is placed on GPA than GRE score. Selection for the graduate studies? Yeah. I think we have always accepted all students. Our students who wanted to come to our program were very interested in Austrian economics and very interested, very motivated. So, yeah. And we accept also people who did undergraduate studies in history or law. The important thing is being interested in this thing. My interest for economics started a little late in college. So I didn't prepare myself to go to grad school. Since I passed out of math in college, I never took a single math course in college. And I'm about to graduate. Like, I don't have, I don't have like an option to, well, now I want to take one or two. So what's the question? Can you still apply to grad school right now? So what would be my challenges and how could I overcome those challenges by not having like a lot of like the math class? Because I know I can, because I had a really good program in high school. So I'm pretty excited. It's probably better than my school offers. But he doesn't show me my, you know, my college transcript that I took those math courses. Actually, Lucas, before you answer, just, in general, I mean, these are great questions, but, you know, we're going to run out of time before we can answer all of them. You know, a question like this, you can easily answer for yourself by, you know, call the admissions office of some school that you're interested in. You know, probably on the webpage of most graduate programs and economics that you might be interested in, probably have detailed requirements on their webpage. They'll tell you what the prerequisites are, what classes you need, and if you haven't had those, you will have to take them somehow before you can get in, you know, take them over the summer or whatever. But, I mean, all of these kinds of very specific questions with a little bit of searching online, you can probably get the answer with just a few clicks. Because applying, some schools are very explicit, you need to have this set of math classes, and it's usually a list of about four, Calc 1, 2, 3, and linear algebra being kind of the foremost common, but there are schools that don't. I think of George Mason in particular, they pride themselves on not being as mathematical. I don't think they have any math requirement as far as that goes. So, if you're selective in where you apply, then I think we can easily get around any requirements there. I'm used to see that. Yeah, right. And most mainstream Econ PhD programs do not require an undergraduate degree in Econ. In fact, probably the top 20 schools, most of the PhD students were not economics majors. They were math majors or stat majors or whatever, physics majors. We're back in there. No, right there. Yeah, so Bob Murphy, I went to New York University, and those schools are higher ranked and doing master's in political science now thinking about those kinds of schools. So, how about, like what kind of, how do they get into those schools and what kind of, publications are not that important, but GRE sports are important. So, you have anything to say about that, like in terms of, in other schools also, in the U.S. that you know about, which have sympathetic equals, let me try to answer by not exactly answering your question. We're just talking about political, these candidate debates. That's a great question, but let me say this. There are two different general strategies that many people have used to address the kind of question that you're asking. I mean, Lucas mentioned the advice of, just apply to a bunch of different schools and go to the highest ranked program that will take you. But that's, you know, another strategy is kind of what you're getting at is, okay, what are the schools where there are some, you know, there's some sympathetic professors. They're pros and cons of both of those strategies, right, so the drawback of just applying to Ivy League schools and some lower ranked schools and go to the best place that you can get into or that offers you a scholarship or whatever. You might be very unhappy there, you might be unfulfilled, you might be frustrated, et cetera. On the other hand, if you say, well, if I answered your question the way you want me to and say, well, here are five universities that have at least one Austrian on the faculty, and you say, oh, wow, that's so awesome, great. And you apply there and the day before you start school, you realize that Professor X left, right, or you get there and you realize that Professor X, whose writings you greatly admire, turns out to be a total jerk and, you know, a bad teacher and you wouldn't want this person to be your advisor. You know, unless, you know, if you go to Madrid for your masters, you know, there's a whole culture in that program, as Philip described it, that even if Philip Bagus were to leave and become a professor at Harvard, the program would still not change all that much. But if you go to some other school and there's one person that's, you know, that you like, if that person could leave or, you know, you don't get along with that person. So, you know, I'm not going to give you the list, because you can just Google search and get the list that you want. I mean, I can tell you offline what I think about Duke or what I think about NYU, but I would ask myself, do I want to take the risk of going to a place based on just one or even two specific people that are there, or would I rather go to a place where there's insurance, there's a variety, for whatever reason, it's desirable, but I'm not dependent on some specific people. Except for not answering. The only thing that I'd add to that is that if you have some specific people in mind, it doesn't hurt to email them. I just send an email to Mike Munger, say, hey, I really like your work, what would it take for me to come to graduate school and study with you, perhaps in an advising capacity? And that would also perhaps give you a signal that they plan to stay there. If they're planning to leave soon, they'll probably end up advising you toward not coming to that school, assuming again that they're not a total jerk. Which if they are, you don't want to study under them. So there we go. That's what I would advise, if you have people in mind, go ahead and contact them. At worst, they'll delete the email. Most professors are happy to receive those kinds of inquiries. I don't know how the research world works, but I'm going to a very non-Austrian school. But I'm interested, especially after this week, in doing some sort of, at least on a very minute level, research. So can you just email a professor, say I'm sort of interested in topics you're interested in, can I help out even though I'm not in any sort of, I don't know how that worked. I mean, you can. It's not that common if it's just a blind email and the person doesn't know you. But there are probably opportunities even at your school to get some practice doing research on an Austrian topic. Even if you don't have an Austrian advisor, you can still write about business cycle theory or private law or whatever it is that interests you from this week and get some guidance from an experienced mentor who knows how to write a paper, even if they don't know so much about the specific approach you're taking. So I have a quick question. Being a business major over at the College of Business at Ohio State. So my mother's also. The Ohio State University. I've often talked to both my parents about pursuing graduate school as I'm approaching my undergrad. My mother's actually an entrepreneur. She's a private physician and she suggested no, don't go for grad school immediately after undergrad. What you want to do is enter the workforce and then come back. What insight do you have on that? Yeah, to me the question is like studying what? What's your ultimate goal? Right? So if you're talking about an MBA, then I would definitely agree with that. Any student that comes to me says, oh, I think I want to go get my MBA next. I say, no, go work for somebody. One reason is that often, especially if you work for a large corporation, they'll often at least pay part of the cost for your MBA. If you go straight out without a job, you're probably not, you're not going to pay for it yourself. So for talking MBA, I would say definitely wait. If your goal is to become an academic, then I don't necessarily know there's a really strong reason to wait. I guess you could make an argument if you're more in the business fields and a more academic field like economics that the work experience may provide some grounds for research that you could do in graduate school. But that's kind of my thought on that. Yeah. I agree and just in my experience, in my programs in economics, students who are a little bit more seasoned, a little bit more mature, have had some life experience have tended to do better on average than those who were just straight out of their bachelor's program. But as Lucas says, the top MBA programs won't take you without work experience. And PhD programs in entrepreneurship and management, most of the students already have considerable work experience before they go to grad school. It's not full-time now, but it's not filling enough for me for the cause of liberty for the lack of a better term. And I'm just considering a lot of options, whether it's to be like a lawyer part-time in that sense or to actually go get a PhD in each. But how practical are some of those things to do with a full-time job? And you're especially the professor. Philip, the senior professor in your university actually has another job on the side, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's... That's true. Yeah. But he's also a special case. Because he can outsource many things that normal people have to do themselves. And he has a normal kind of energy. He once told me that his trick is also the siesta. So in my work, if you do a siesta after your one job, you do the siesta and then you do your academic work as he does. But I couldn't do it. I certainly couldn't do it. You say that you have all three specifically like in your motherly and mainstream programs for economics. So what are the positive and negative points for someone who wants to graduate in economics in the mainstream approach with regard to career success or intellectual contribution? Yeah, both. Both in career and intellectual contribution because there's a difference between a lot of water block and still more mainstream economics and probably in more Austrian program approach. I mean, on average having a mainstream degree from a highly ranked program to a better job and being able to do the things that mainstream scholars do and publish in mainstream journals will get you on the career path and get you promoted and get you the fancy professorship on average not in every case, but you might hate it. You know, you might be more likely to be greatly fulfilled intellectually and spiritually and so forth by not doing that. So I think you should be aware of these kinds of trade-offs. I mean, the academic job market is very hard. It's very credential oriented, very prestige oriented, very hierarchical. You can't get a job at a top school without a degree from a top program and so forth. But some people don't want to play that game and they want to go their own way and they may be just as successful or more successful by their own criteria. But how you approach it depends on what's important to you and your skills and so on. Yeah, I agree. The key point is of course what means a better job. If it means more income or more prestige in the world of neoclassical economics then there's one thing, but if you want to research in arts and economics and do what you think is right then in the end I think you should go to Austrian program. I mean I'm quite happy with my job. It's not I paid the salary of a Spanish state employee so you can imagine what that means but I have total liberty with the classes also. In my undergraduate classes I can teach Austrian economics so this is invaluable for me. There's always a trade off I mean how much do you play the game in the career? I have to do it also because in order to get promotion accreditation to be able to direct PhD thesis they want publications journals and of course in economics for them it doesn't count so you may have to do some or I do some research that I would not have done or would not do if the incentives would be different then always is the case anyone has to decide for himself where's your limit? My limit is that I would not write an article that employs math or econometrics of course I don't subscribe to the methodology I cannot make compromises there but I can compromise maybe with the topics so I research on business ethics because journals of business ethics are high ranked and there you can get into them without math, econometrics or entrepreneurship would be another case where you don't have to compromise on the methodology so everyone has to know his own limits the problem is of course once you start with compromises somehow it's also hard to stop okay you say I will be the undercover economist and then at some point when I have reached everything I will come out of the closet and say I'm an economist but this is really difficult because then you get the first promotion then second and then you get certain kind of social relationships with other professors so it's a difficult decision of course and everyone has to know where is the limit yeah I personally prefer not to make many compromises I think that's a good note to end on because we're out of time but not only us but all of the professors here at MisesU would be more than happy to have these kinds of conversations with you and to answer these kinds of questions so please take advantage of that opportunity not only today and tomorrow but also later on on email or social media or whatever we would all enjoy giving you any suggestions that we can so thanks for coming