While students concentrate on schoolwork and spend free time with family and friends, an ongoing conflict of ideas without any geographical limits has engulfed the academic community. I am referring to the struggle between different schools of thought in the economic world.

At the moment, the Austrian, Neoclassical, and Keynesian schools of economics are all vying to win the hearts and minds of not just the American people but the world. A current hotspot between these doctrines is right here on Loyola’s campus.

Besides being a popular destination for music students and aspiring lawyers, every year Loyola attracts people to the business and social science schools looking to get an education in all economic viewpoints, including the Austrian school. Unlike most universities, Loyola utilizes a curriculum spanning a broad spectrum of theories and ideas.

A look at Professor Barnett’s syllabus for his Macroeconomics class reveals that his course will expose students to Irving Fisher’s Debt-Deflation Theory, a precursor to Keynesianism, but also to the Austrian Business Cycle Theory. Through these theories, Austrians have developed their own beliefs about the economy.

The unique aspect of Loyola’s economics department was the presence of many Austrian economists. Perhaps the strength of the faculty reached its peak in 2010, when enough support was mustered to propose a master’s degree in Austrian Economics and received support from over 330 students.

However, the Austrian tradition has been dismantled. Over the summer, famed Austrian professor Dan D’Amico left in order to take up a new position at Brown University. Then, a few weeks ago, Austrian finance teacher Stuart Wood vacated his position at Loyola for unclear reasons. For now, economics students must rely on the lectures of Professors Barnett, Block and Krasnozhon to gain any insights from the famous practitioners of the Austrian school.

Economics is the study of how humans satisfy wants from scarcity. As a subset of economics, Austrian economics is not merely a set of ideas but a way of looking at economic interactions. Austrians use praxeology, a deductive, step-by-step approach in order to form conclusions about how economies operate. While neoclassicals tend to agree with Austrians over the necessity of a free market, they apply quantitative methods in an effort to find structural issues within an economy.

Fortunately, the tradition up until recently at Loyola has been for students of economics to abide by praxeological standards rather than those of mathematics. In sciences such as physics it is feasible to arrive at constants since material objects behave in a predictable manner. But in the social sciences, in particular economics, math can’t precisely predict human action, merely give insight into the probability of what behavior may occur.

Methodology aside, Austrian economics has the potential to occupy a pertinent role within a Catholic institution like Loyola University. I would still argue that, based on the history of economic thought and our university’s own identity statement, there is a place for an Austrian doctrine in the friendly confines of Loyola.