 Welcome to our student program session. Today I have with me Mr. Joe Becker, who is the provost of our Mises graduate school. I have Mr. Alex Voss, who is a current student in our Mises graduate program, and then I also have Mr. Anthony Cesario, and he is a current summer fellow, and then last but not least, I'm Felicia as you know throughout the week, and I help with our student programs. I am both the student faculty coordinator and the registrar and student services director of our Mises graduate program. Today we're just gonna give you like brief descriptions of our programs and tell you how to apply for them. And both of our students here are going to share their experiences so that you get hyped up and because I wanna see these applications. So to start with our most important week of the year, Mises University. I hope all of you have had a fantastic week. The biggest highlight of this week is that we bring in our faculty and the students from across the world where you get this one-on-one individualized attention and where you get to learn from the foremost Austrian scholars of our generation. I hope that this week for each of you students has been phenomenal and that you are able to go home with a much more in-depth knowledge than you came here with. Another highlight of Mises University and I hope that each of you go home with is you made some friends. Within libertarianism, it can be a little lonely. Sometimes back at home, we may not have other people that share our values and our intellectual journey, but each one of you here, you guys are in the same boat. And so make some friends, get to know each other and take advantage of this vast alumni network. So the second program that we have is Rothbard Graduate Seminar. This program is specifically tailored to graduate students where you get to learn from, again, our faculty but study the masterworks of Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard. You will focus specifically on books such as Human Action, Man-Economy State, Economic Controversies and more. Throughout the week, if you come for RGS, you'll benefit from lectures and in-depth discussions. Next, we have our summer fellowship program. This program is tailored for students who are in PhD programs or in law school who essentially are graduate students that want to come to the Mises Institute and conduct your own research but then also benefit from our in-house faculty, Dr. Salerno and Dr. Thornton. And one of the highlights of the summer fellowship is you get free housing and a stipend and you get this really fantastic one-on-one attention from the academic vice president, the Dr. Salerno. And another highlight of the fellowship is the camaraderie among fellows. You know, you guys as fellows are, I mean, you're the big dogs, right? And you are able to hang out with each other all summer and really build those close relationships. And so that's Mises University, the Rothbard Graduate Seminar and our fellowship and residence program but throughout the year, we also have other Mises Institute events where we offer student scholarships to attend. Generally, they're admission scholarships so just submit that application and we'd love to have you attend. Next are just the whole application process. Those of you who are here, as you know, you submit, you fill out the form, you submit an unofficial transcript, letter of recommendation. So for most of our student applications, that's the process. And so it's, yeah, super easy and we wanna see these applications. And so finally, just in general, we want you guys to come back. Stay connected with the Mises Institute. Yeah, I know we all really love coming here for David Gordon's jokes, but more than that, I would say that as an institution, as Dr. Newman spoke in our commencement speech yesterday, we want to embrace truth. We want to seek it out and speak it and be unwavering about it. So if that's what you want, keep coming back and stay connected with us. So next is Mr. Anthony Cesario. All right, so I've had an amazing week here. I've tried really, really hard to get to meet every single one of you. I'm hoping I've done a pretty good job of that. As you can tell, kind of right off the bat, one of the biggest benefits of Mises University is I'm losing my voice and that's because I've been having so many conversations with so many different people, both here at the event and elsewhere. The one thing I always try to start, because Felicia mentioned Mises University first, the one thing that I always start telling people when they start thinking about Mises U is that even though the whole week is centered around the lectures and it's all about the lectures, they really are a small percentage of the overall experience. Really what you're coming here for, because you could watch the videos online, what you're coming here for are meeting not just the faculty, but the other students. It's really, really amazing to not just have the time after the events, but even the sessions in between the events, those little 15-minute segments, you really have a lot of great opportunities to talk and meet other people. And it's just an amazing experience, as Felicia was saying, to develop those friendships, not just in the present, but also further out, you can stay connected, you can talk after Mises U, come back next year and talk about other stuff like that. In addition to Mises U, I've tried to do it all. I've been to the AERC that they've done. I've done their fellowship in residence, which I'm doing right now over the summer. I've also, because I was a fellow, I was able to do the Rothbard Graduate Seminar. All of these experiences are absolutely amazing. The one thing that I love the Mises Institute for is every single one of their events has student scholarships. Even the supporter summits, where it's like a VIP party for all of the awesome donors, they let students come to that as well. And they have scholarships for you to attend. And the way I think about it is, it doesn't seem like there's enough people who apply or who really know about it. And they're missing out on these incredible opportunities to go travel and meet some of these amazing people. So what I love about the Mises Institute is they really do a good job of taking care of students, of inspiring you guys, of really trying to get you involved in the movement, get you guys connected with the network that we have. And it's just an absolutely amazing experience. I highly recommend coming back. And yeah, it's just, it's absolutely amazing. All right. Some of you may be afraid to apply to these things because you're worried about Felicia, but let me assure you that she's much tougher as a judge in the elevator pitch competition than she is in evaluating some of these applications that come in. She does a great job as our director of student services and as our registrar. And she's working directly with the professors. But let me talk a little bit about the graduate school. I went to my first Mises U back in the late 80s and went on to do other things. But I'm very happy to be working as a provost with this new graduate program. And I'll tell you some of the reasons why I think it's, it's very good. And what sets the program apart from other schools you may, for some foolish reason, think about attending. It's purely Austrian. It's the first and only program in the United States where you get a purely Austrian perspective on every area that we teach. You know, I went to UNLV and I still, you know, with Murray and Hans, but I still had to take quantitative micro and macro with a non-Austrian. Here, everything's Austrian. Another thing is, is that if you want monetary with Dr. Salerno or you want micro with one of the clients, you don't have to move from, you know, you don't have to move from one place to another. The program's entirely online. It's asynchronous. So, you know, even if you're living on the other side of the world, some of you are, but I believe this is being live broadcast. So, for those people, you don't have to get up at three in the morning to attend a lecture. You can do the program completely asynchronously. Even the office hours have a component that'll allow you to participate in office hours asynchronously, even if you're on the other side of the world. So, it's purely Austrian. You're studying with the specialists in each of the Austrian areas. So, monetary with Dr. Salerno, micro with one of the doctors Klein. And never not having to move all around the country to do that like you would if you were in, you know, some traditional graduate school. One of the main benefits, although we don't think it's a main selling point, but it definitely helps, is that the program is heavily supported by some of the same donors that Anthony was talking about. We had to transfer a student from a competing school that charged $900 per credit hour. So, the master's degree was about $30,000, plus books and fees. This program, because of donor support, is less than $5,000 for the entire master's program, and that does include books. It includes all the fees. So, it's a great bargain. Another, somebody see this as a disadvantage, but I was reminded again yesterday why this is an advantage is we don't participate in any of the federal Department of Education stuff. I sat through a two hour continuing legal education class yesterday about the Biden administration's new, what do they call it, borrowed defense rule. This is a rule that's been in existence for a while. I think this is an interesting topic. It's a little bit of a side light, but it definitely relates to what we're doing. Because we don't participate in these programs, we're not subject to regulations that would interfere with what we think is the best way to educate blooming economists. The borrowed defense rule is a rule that allows students who feel like, they took out a federally guaranteed student loan and they feel like they didn't get their money's worth, which should really be a lot of people from a lot of schools to say, I don't wanna pay back my student loan and here's why. But the new rule is really just a way, it turns out, of allowing Biden to sort of get his student loan forgiveness program passed without, through rule making, rather through legislation, because the rules are so one sided against schools that a lot of schools are gonna have a problem, maybe even staying in existence because they no longer have any kind of due process rights under this new proposed rule to even defend themselves against the student's loans being forgiven and then the government comes after the school. And as you can probably imagine, the schools after which the federal government will be coming will not be the harbors and the state schools, it'll be the private schools, the schools that are teaching the things that the federal government doesn't really want you to know. So this is just one simple example that I learned of yesterday for two hours as I try and stay on top of this stuff that we don't have to worry about and you as students don't have to worry about that the school's gonna be shut down by the government because that's their hook into these schools is some of the financing. I guess I can talk a little bit about what we want in students and I probably should just have one of those shirts that says this is what we're looking for in a student and you'll meet Alex here in a second. You know, he's a great student. You met another student yesterday perhaps at graduation. Another very enthusiastic student but what we're looking for in the way of students is those who have ample undergraduate or even graduate courses in economics so they can be conversant in economics, terminology and concepts. The price is low but more important to us is finding people who have a particularized interest in the Austrian school. The donors who support the program wanna know that the students have a plan for what they're gonna do with the education once they get it. We aren't really looking for hobbyists or someone who's just gonna hang a trophy on the wall. Equally important is we're looking for students who understand that this is a commitment. It's about two years the way it works out a little bit less for the overzealous folks or perhaps just zealous folks you saw yesterday but it's 16, 19 hours a week of work. I mean, he may do it unless he'll tell you but it's a time commitment and it's a work commitment so we do want people who are gonna be committed to it. I think what we prepare people for in this program is a lot of different things. I mean, Austrian economics is rigorous analytical thinking that I think prepares people for a lot of things. When I went to law school, for example, after I did the graduate work in economics, some of the upperclassmen told me, well, most people come here to learn to think like lawyers, all you already learned that from your economics program, all you have to do now is memorize the law and I think even memorizing law was much easier having some yardstick by which to measure whether laws were, I could say good laws or bad laws but I might say beneficial to society or not so I had a sort of a yardstick by which to measure and I think that a reference point which made it easier to memorize the law so far so good on the bar exams but the things we think we can prepare people to do is teach, I mean, we have people in the program who are either already teaching or want to be better at teaching high school community colleges, four-year colleges because it is a graduate degree. Policy work, we have someone in the program who is a Hill staffer in Washington DC and helping the legislator for whom he works to be mindful of these kind of policy insights. Entrepreneurs, I guess I'll put in a quick plug for the economics for business program which the Institute has started as a separate project to help entrepreneurs be beneficial or make beneficial use of Austrian principles and thus we're building a network of entrepreneurs and business people who are very interested in what we're creating in the way of the graduate school that's the tie-in. Financial planners, finance investors, estate planning attorneys, public interest attorneys which is what I did, almost every legal argument I made in the constitutional law arena had to do with why I thought, or why not only I but why the constitution had to be interpreted in a free market Austrian style although not by name, you know, in a free market way. So it's a lot of work, it's a challenge, it's rigorous, it's not, you know, when I went to UNLV I thought, oh, they'll be so happy to have like-minded people there that, you know, I'll get good grades just for being there. Well, it didn't work out there with Marion Hans but this program is the same way. It's not enough to just be like-minded, you have to do the work. And I think someone who can test, well, two people can attest to that. Elias worked very hard, got through the program and worked so hard he didn't make it today. If you noticed him on your schedule. But we have Alex who's I think been in the program for, you're about at least halfway through I think, isn't that right? Why don't you share your insights and correct me if I lie to these people? Yeah, so at this point I've just completed my fifth term out of I guess 10 total terms, so about halfway done. I would say at the outset I'm an unabashed advocate of the program, I think it's been great in just about every way for myself. Maybe the way I'll start is just telling you a little bit about what the courses look like and how they work, the structure of them. So there are a couple of exceptions with writing a thesis or Rothbard graduate seminar, but the majority of the coursework is in eight week terms. These are micro, macro, monetary, all of these types of topics. The eight weeks are usually, each week I would say you're probably reading about 150 pages of Rothbard, Mises, DeSoto, things like that. You'll probably get a couple papers from your professor in that class, commenting on some of these topics. You'll probably also have something to submit each week. Five of the eight weeks is generally a discussion post. Those are the I guess relatively lighter weeks but it is a serious product that you have to produce. 500 or 1,000 words, you have to respond to a couple other people and these aren't, in my opinion, very superficial discussion boards that you might have seen in the past. These are very intellectual discussion boards. In addition, you'll take two exams, one in week four usually and one in week eight and then you'll also write a term paper usually 15 to 20 pages. So it really is quite a rigorous amount of work, both in reading but also then analyzing and being able to then produce a product, taking that information and producing it yourself. One of the things I have to admit coming in I was skeptical of is the discussion boards. They've historically not been very helpful in my educational background. I have to say I don't think that's true in this program. It helps you keep pace each week with making sure you can really synthesize what is the key point that Mises is trying to make in this chapter. So I think that those are actually quite helpful. I would say it is a very, you do have to be a bit of an independent minded person. You have to be very self-motivated. You are going to do most of the work by yourself which is probably the right way to do it. You have to read and you have to really think about this stuff. That said, there's absolutely opportunities to collaborate both with instructors as well as your classmates. I know from watching and observing the signal chat you all have no problem communicating with each other electronically. So I think you'll do just fine. And then with instructors, they usually do provide certain time slots that they're available for office hours. They're also available anytime. I've never waited more than a couple of days for a response back and those are usually over the weekends. So you quickly get feedback. You quickly say, we can hop on a call whenever it works for you. The asynchronous thing also helps in my view. I live a reasonably busy life and travel a fair amount but I can download the PDFs of man economy and state and human action on my PDF and I can read it while I'm on a three hour flight across the country. So there are ways to remain productive through the course and they do a really good job of making sure you have everything. You write at your fingertips if you want it and physical you can get it if you want it. Electronic that's also quite easily accessible. I do agree with all of the professions you said it would be helpful for the one in particular that I think it's really equipped to help with is entrepreneurship. I think that really to me is one of the main differentiators about Austrian economics is the emphasis on the entrepreneur. And I think my interest in Austrian economics has really made me more focused on becoming an entrepreneur. And so I actually do have a little bit of a business and now two of the people that I've met just within the last year that are in my cohort in the program I actually work with now in my business. So I think that's another thing to be aware of that when you're starting a program like this you can absolutely you start a business and work with some of your cohort or they do and they wanna bring you on board. In terms of course instruction it's not a surprise to any of you all you've been here learning from many of the same professors that we have. I had Dr. Peter Klein in micro, Dr. Solano in monetary. I had Dr. Jonathan Newman in macro and then actually just finished up history of economic thought with Dr. Thornton. So you're getting elite instruction in every sense of the word and they're all extremely available as necessary. That said, if you understand everything it's not unnecessary that you spend busy time showing that you understand the material it'll show up in your discussion boards in your work product. So it's one of those things where they're as accessible as you need them to be. I think just the last couple of comments that I'd make is it is an intensive program but it's not challenging in the way you know I went to University of Chicago for undergrad and you'd sometimes get an economics problem set and you just look at it and say I have no idea how to do at least half of this. You won't be in that situation. It's not, it is very challenging but it's not that you just can't get it. It's if you're willing to put in the time, effort and energy for it you can absolutely come away from every course having understood all of it. Thank you and we have a little bit of time left. So if there aren't any questions, please raise your hand. I'm gonna start with Calvin. Okay, so when I came here I had my expectations. So I'm a bio chem major. I made an exercise science communication. So clearly it's diverse in this room. I love Austrian economics. I didn't know much about it. I had a great experience. I learned a lot but for those who are not super into econ and don't wanna do the graduate program is there any way that you suggest for us to get involved if we don't wanna do the graduate program? I would say one of the best ways to get involved and stay involved is keep coming to our Mises Institute events. Like I said, we do have student scholarships but even if you just stay connected you'll never know who you're gonna meet at these events and you very well could meet someone who is well connected in the Liberty Movement who may have a job opportunity. So I would just say take advantage of the connections that you make both here this week but also at different events. And you'll have to be careful because if you keep coming you might eventually become an economist. Yeah. Do you know if there's gonna be like a movement to try to get also a PhD program as well as a master's program? The only thing I would say about that so far is that it's being talked about. So for the graduate program are economic students or graduate students preferred over like a legal, you know, somebody studying law? I can reply that. I studied law in my country. I graduated as a bachelor's in law. I applied for law school in the special program but it's not like law school itself is a master's in law. So that doesn't really mean students are going to be preferred. Econ students are going to be preferred over law students. It just means that the majority of the people who apply to the fellowship are either econ or business students. There are very few law students who apply. But yeah, they're not discriminated by any means. That comment came from our other summer fellow who's helping with the mic. You go. And I would also like to add that what we're really looking for in summer fellowship applications are those that really want to study Austrian economics and benefit from the expertise of our faculty. If you come here for a summer, we have so many resources for you. We have our Massey library with just a fantastic collection of libertarian books and something that you're not gonna find at your university's library. So I think for the fellowship, really the focus is how are you gonna apply Austrian economics to your research, whether you are an econ or whether you're in law. In the case of Hugo, I'm gonna brag on him for a sec. He has written several Misesweyer articles as well as his own research this summer just because he's so passionate about Austrian econ. So any other questions? Home with me? No, I don't think, it's not allowed. Anthony's also gonna add to the last question. Yeah, so just to add as well, it's definitely a very diverse group of people for the fellowship. It was honestly kind of surprising to see how many people were not actually studying economics specifically, but we had a couple of people doing history law and then a couple of other topics as well. So I found that very, very interesting. But as Felicia had mentioned, the biggest thing is being able to come here, you're surrounded by the best library ever. One of the coolest things about being a fellow is we have offices up on the second level where we're doors down from Joseph Solerno, from Mark Thornton, and from Joe Becker, all right next to us all day long. They've got open door policies. We can talk to them, ask questions about our research. It makes us feel spoiled. And it's a great experience like that. And then as Felicia had mentioned earlier, the scholarship aspect of it is amazing. And then there's also a whole other element of being able to build that network and be able to branch out from that with all the camaraderie and all the friendships and everything that you develop as well. So I highly recommend it. The one of the ways I think about the Mises Institute is they kind of get you here, you come for the lectures, you come here for the Austrian econ, but you stay for the community. They do a really good job of building a great community here for everyone. We have time for one more. So for the more business oriented students here, what are kind of the pros and cons of going to this master's program instead of an MBA? Since Austrian economics is probably my response to that. Really, you just have to think about what you want to do and then match the school that's best suited. And then I guess I'll say it this way, choose the vehicle that's best suited to get you where it is that you want to go. This sort of ties in the last question as well. I think half a dozen of us who studied with Hans at UNLV all became lawyers. He comments about that. Why did all my students become lawyers? But it's a very interdisciplinary school where it's useful in a lot of different things. I really think there are a lot of MBA programs and a lot of MBA graduates. And I think you can sort of separate yourself from that crowd with Austrian economics or even economics generally. You have to look at where you want to work and what you want to do and then weigh whether an MBA is, whether you want to compete against all those other MBA students for the job or what have you. I just think economics is a more rigorous discipline and it makes you stand out. I mean, do you have any comment about this, Alex? I would say, first of all, I do have another master's degree in finance. That was very much practitioner oriented if you wanted to go into investment banking or mutual fund management, hedge fund management. That was very much tailored for that. I would also say that the level of rigorous thinking is orders of magnitude lower in that type of program than in an Austrian economics program. So I think it sort of matters about exactly what you'd like to get out of it. If you want the stamp of approval that you're a practitioner in finance, maybe that is a better option, but it's going to be a way more expensive. It's going to come with a big opportunity cost as well. Most of them, unless you're going to do the evenings or the weekend program, which my understanding, and then I would say it parallels my experience, is that more or less the reason to go get an MBA is they'll teach you how to be a practitioner and then you network with a bunch of other people that are also making a major investment. And there can be benefits to that, but I think there's a lot more considered thinking a much lower cost and a much lower opportunity cost to trying this program. I also just want to add and maybe end on this note is that your time is scarce, right? As you've learned in the Austrian core this week that we don't have unlimited time. And so whether you want to pursue your educational goals, whether it be at another institution or with our Mises graduate program, or whether you're spending your summers working, however you spend your time, it is scarce. And we hope that you would consider us a great resource and hopefully even more than that, the place to learn about Austrian economics. I think that's something that I can safely brag about, which is we are unique and as an institution and I mean, we are where you're gonna come for the foremost scholars. So definitely take advantage of what, of all these different programs, Mises University, Rothbard Graduate Seminar, our fellowships, our graduate school because they are so important and because our donors want you here, right? They have spent their hard-earned dollars to finance these programs because they believe in everything, they believe in you and they believe that each one of you here, you are the next generation of libertarian and Austrian economists and that is so precious. So thank you.