Hillsdale College now has a Laffer Center. Maybe Art Laffer himself endowed it. This is splendid good news. They put together a whole eight-episode lesson series, with Art Laffer, to describe “supply side economics,” the branch of economics we practice here.
I haven’t watched it yet. But, the books that Laffer, Steve Moore, Larry Kudlow and Brian Domitrovic have done over the years have been very good, so there is no reason to expect otherwise here.
Watch the eight-episode series on Supply-Side Economics, with Art Laffer.
I still hope that Hillsdale College will branch out and start some new colleges, in the Hillsdale Model — at least, the curriculum. They should make an effort to slim down their operational model, more in line with Thales College.
September 6, 2020: Build Your Own College #14: Hillsdale College
Hillsdale has now become quite competitive. I think that only about 20% of applicants are accepted. This means that they have enough applicants to fill four other Hillsdale Colleges. They could just do a joint application. Students would apply, and then Hillsdale would tell them which of five colleges, in descending order of competitiveness, they qualify for — a little like General Motors’ car model lineup of the 1950s. The most qualified students would go to “Cadillac,” and the least-qualified students, but still interested in getting a Hillsdale-style education, would go to “Chevrolet.”
You can buy a college campus these days for almost nothing — maybe less than $5 million, for a campus that could cost $100m to build new, in construction costs alone. A professor from Hillsdale told me that they have been offered college campuses basically for free, if they would take it over. He said that they have trouble finding qualified professors. I believe him, but nevertheless, there are so many professors these days that would like to work somewhere else, that it should not be too hard to find a few that share Hillsdale’s values and expertise.
