Paternalism on Campus

Professor Mankiw emailed me:

"I have no recollection of the events you recount. One thing I am sure
about is that I have always encouraged motivated undergraduates to take
the 2010 sequence. (I took the equivalent courses when I was an
undergraduate at Princeton.) It is possible that a student who
refused to do problem sets, etc., would seem insufficiently motivated to
me. But I cannot recall ever ejecting, or even trying to eject, an
undergraduate on those grounds.

On libertarianism and paternalism: I think there are some situations in
which paternalism is called for. Indeed, when students come to Harvard,
they are voluntarily subjecting themselves to the rules set by the Harvard
faculty. If I did not impose some rules as a faculty member, I would
not be doing my job.

There are schools with fewer rules--that is, less paternalism. Brown
comes to mind. Harvard has more rules. My guess is that you knew that
when you chose to come to Harvard. By coming, you agreed to a particular
set of rule, and we agreed to impose them. So paternalism within the
university is just our living up to a voluntarily agreed contract. The
same argument does not apply to governments, especially centralized
governments. (You might apply the argument to local governments, as it
is easy to move from town to town.)

Greg

PS Feel free to post this if you wish."

I totally agree with Professor Mankiw's thinking about competing groups. People voluntary join groups that impose rules, and have the option to join some other group with an alternate set of rules. For example, I chose to become a grad student at the Univ of Chicago instead of a grad student at Harvard.

But I guess we remember 1989 a little differently.

Father Mankiw

I read today how Professor Mankiw will not share his lecture notes with finalsclub.org because "he didn’t want to make it easier for students to cut class. 'Listening to lectures and taking your own notes is part of the educational process.'"

That reminds me of my own enrollment in his Ec2010c course in Autumn 1989: he tried to expel me! Ec2010c is a graduate course, and I was the only undergraduate there. Early on I learned about structure of the course, grading, etc., and determined that I did not need to complete all of the problem sets, should not participate in any of the "study groups," and might even skip a lecture or two (not many -- attending was quite productive). I would hone in on the material in December and early January, in preparation for the mid-January exam (and perhaps along the way object to some of the dubious conclusions of New Keynesian economics).

Professor Mankiw knew nothing about me, but decided that my approach (whispered to him by then TA Susanto Basu) was harmful to me and perhaps even the other students, so that for the common good I should be expelled from the course.

His reaction always puzzled me, because he's a friendly person and usually appears to be libertarian. But now I see that he does take a paternalistic role toward the students.

By the way, I was not expelled from the course because the other TA (Xavier Sala-i-Martin) and the other Prof (Barro) requested that I be allowed to remain. Among about 50 grad students, I got the second highest grade on the final (and only) exam in the course. Since 1989, it has been more common for a couple of eager undergrads each year to enroll in 2010c.

[please also see Professor Mankiw's reaction]