For the most part I believe education, in the general sense of grade school, high school, college and beyond, is overrated and not worth the investment. However, I don’t believe I would have that opinion without myself going through the steps and attending George Mason University for college.
At the time of my decision I had no idea where I was going. No idea how to communicate with the ideas in my head. I was in need of a tool to translate the thoughts in my head into actualities. That tool ended up being Austrian Economics. It took what I had been thinking and created concrete examples of how to apply my thought process.
I was following the sheep. I was told by everyone (friends, family, guidance counselors, society, etc) that the next stop after high school is college, and that’s what I did. My only requirement was to get out of New England because that’s where I was born and raised and felt I needed a change. My parents then gave me a budget and I went to find schools. I ended up applying, and getting accepted, to three: University of Louisville, Temple University, and George Mason University. None of these were decisions based on some vision. They were schools within the budget, that I knew a bit about because of sports, and were in cities outside of New England.
Choosing Economics as a major was also happenstance. I had taken a couple basic courses in Economics in high school, which looking back on it, were nothing close to the Austrian education I received, but to me it seemed interesting and it sounded more fun than a business major like finance, accounting or marketing.
My first class of micro-economics, with Dr. Thomas Rustici, was the on switch. My brain started firing on all cylinders. The dots, nodes, in my brain were connecting at lightning speed. Comparative advantage, principle-agent, supply and demand, water-diamond paradox, broken glass fallacy, opportunity cost and so-on and so-forth took over my mind. These are the lessons that taught me how to think and something I use now on a daily basis in work, life and everything I do. It gave me the lens to see the world.
There are possible paths I could’ve taken to lead me to where I am today but I have no regrets accumulating student loans in the pursuit of shaping my mind. I could’ve tried to be a self-taught Austrian Economic thinker. I could’ve found books by Menger, Hayek, Mises, Rothbard, Coase, Kirzner on my own, but probably not in the timely manner that I did stumbling into college. Although I’d encourage others to have an open-mind about next steps in education, I myself am indebted to the education I received. George Mason economics was the light I needed yet didn’t know was there.