[Clips] Rodney Dangerfield University

Fri Mar 31 06:08:48 PST 2006

Several well-known cypherpunks have been George Mason Alums.

Most joined while they were in school there.

Cheers,
RAH
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  Delivered-To: clips at philodox.com
  Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2006 08:21:10 -0500
  To: Philodox Clips List <clips at philodox.com>
  From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah at shipwright.com>
  Subject: [Clips] Rodney Dangerfield University
  Reply-To: rah at philodox.com
  Sender: clips-bounces at philodox.com

  <http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110008168>

  OpinionJournal

  WSJ Online

  DE GUSTIBUS

  Rodney Dangerfield University
  It's time that George Mason got a little respect.

  BY BRENDAN MINITER
  Friday, March 31, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

  "You've got to be kidding." That was the reaction of CBS sportscaster Billy
  Packer when George Mason University was invited to play in this year's NCAA
  men's basketball tournament. Mason has since defeated Michigan State, the
  University of North Carolina, Wichita State and the top-seeded University
  of Connecticut to advance to the Final Four this weekend.

  The Patriots basketball team is finding out what the rest of the university
  has long known. George Mason is the Rodney Dangerfield of universities--it
  just can't get any respect. The school has attracted Nobel economists,
  developed a top-notch law school and, through the writings of its scholars,
  affected public policy in major ways. But it is continually dismissed as a
  no-name state school--a mere convenience for commuters from northern
  Virginia.

  Allow me to take offense. When I enrolled at Mason in 1993, a condescending
  friend described the school to me as a "glorified community college with
  pretensions of being an elite university." At that point, young and naive,
  I worried he might be right. By the time I graduated I knew better.

  With some 28,000 students, GMU resembles many large state schools in that
  it provides an affordable education to a broad range of people. For state
  residents, tuition is about $3,000 a semester; for those out of state,
  $8,500. (These amounts roughly correspond to a few weeks of classroom time
  at nearby Georgetown.) The education it offers is intellectually
  rigorous--I can attest to the rigor, having suffered through plenty of
  annoyingly demanding tests, paper-writing assignments and required courses.
  But George Mason has no intentions of being an "elite" institution, and a
  good thing too.

  Mason began as an extension of the University of Virginia in 1957 and
  became independent 15 years later. Such relative youth is a clear
  advantage. The school came into its own after the 1960s generation passed
  through the halls of higher education. Student protest, and the effort to
  appease it, never became part of its culture.

  George W. Johnson, GMU's president from 1978 to 1996, exploited this
  advantage. He grounded the school in technology, computer science and
  economics, leaving to elite institutions the competition for hot (read:
  postmodern) humanities scholars. He also exploited the school's proximity
  to Washington, using it as a selling point to bring professors to the area
  and also pulling into the professorial ranks various policy analysts,
  intellectuals and former government officials.

  The recruited professors included James Buchanan, who joined the university
  in 1983 and soon after won a Nobel Prize in economics for his
  groundbreaking research, with Gordon Tullock, on what drives government
  bureaucracies to make seemingly irrational decisions. The economists showed
  that government, no less than private enterprise, responds to economic
  incentives (e.g., bigger budgets) more than high-minded legislative goals.
  This idea--known as "Public Choice Theory"--became part of the intellectual
  framework of the Reagan Revolution.

  Mr. Johnson also brought to George Mason the Institute for Humane Studies,
  a constellation of scholars devoted to teaching undergrads (both at GMU and
  elsewhere) classical economics. Soon after Mr. Johnson stepped down, the
  economist Vernon Smith and six colleagues migrated to Mason from the
  University of Arizona. Mr. Smith won a Nobel Prize for developing standards
  to "lab test" economic theories with small groups, often using real money.

  Mason's law school isn't even three decades old, but it has already climbed
  into the first tier of the U.S. News & World Report rankings and is a
  leader in the field of intellectual property. It is also home to the
  National Center for Technology and Law, which studies how existing
  laws--e.g., patents and copyrights--will need to adapt to the information
  economy. Even the law school's legal-aid program has a novel slant. As John
  Miller has noted in National Review, George Mason's law students, rather
  than suing police departments or petitioning for access to government
  programs, volunteer their time to help, among others, members of the
  military and their families.

  Even the school's name cuts against the grain of conventional pieties.
  George Mason is the Founding Father most Americans have never heard of. He
  was a key architect of the Constitution (he had written the influential
  Virginia Bill of Rights more than a decade before) but doomed himself to
  obscurity by becoming one of the three delegates to the Constitutional
  Convention who refused to sign the final document. It bothered him that it
  lacked a bill of rights.

  Whether or not George Mason University wins on the basketball court this
  weekend, it is still a great school. And no, Mr. Packer, I'm not kidding.

  --
  -----------------
  R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
  The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
  44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
  "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
  [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
  experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
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-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'