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Is Berkeley truly Elite? It might depend on one’s age and field of study. In the mid to late 1980’s both Stanford and Berkeley traded spots between number 1 and 4 in the world for undergraduate biological sciences. Either university will provide a serious bio-sci student with outstanding preparation for either impactful graduate work or a well positioned starting point in industry. That said,one should be aware of the following:It is helpful to be clear of what “elite” means to you. Unfortunately, elite has often been defined as “low acceptance rate”, when this does not necessarily mean that you will be better prepared to achieve your life goals by attending such an institution. Are you applying to a school because you crave the prestige of attending an historically elite institution, or are you more interested in equipping yourself with the depth of understanding required to be a future leader in your field?Once you’ve honestly addressed the above, you can determine how to pursue your version of elite academia. If learning is of greatest importance, you may want to choose a liberal arts college such as Pomona, Davidson, or Swarthmore. The advantages here are exclusive cohorts of truly brilliant students while being taught by world leaders who happen to actually be good at teaching. The dirty secret of all of the institutions you listed is that they draw students based on the published research of their professors. Okay, most everyone wants to attend a class by a Nobel Laureate, but this does not necessarily mean that you are actually getting a better education in your field of choice - in fact, it is often means that you aren’t. Typically, good researchers are lousy teachers. They just post and read their Powerpoints, and struggle to break down concepts in a way that the early learner can understand. Now don’t get me wrong, there are people who are gifted at both, but faculty are not hired to be good teachers - they are hired to be good researchers because the university gets money from their patents, and their name is used to increase the institution’s notoriety - which brings me to my third point:For many academic institutions the elite label is a marketing program. Now before you start to thinking that I am in some way anti-elite, I will add that I was a bay area kid and have attended Stanford, Berkeley, U.C. Davis and San Jose State (and enjoyed all of them). Also, my dad was a manager at IBM and recruited scientist from all of the institutions that you mentioned as well as the one’s I attended. One thing he noted was that the SJSU scientist were generally better innovators and produced the most patents for IBM. They had an industrial mindset and could readily translate theory into application. As such, they often became corporate leaders. The Stanford, MIT and Caltech guys on the other hand were more “lab rats”. They would often mosey down endless tributaries that didn’t lead to commercialization. Secondly, I’ve taken good classes at all four of my institutions and there were advantages to each. Thirdly, I’ve noticed that many institutions try to game the U.S. News system - and succeed. For example, I am an educator and as I advanced through my masters and doctorate in education, I looked at U.S. News to find the best programs. Early in my search, Harvard was nowhere on the list. Then one year, suddenly they were number one. It is not possible to advance that quickly, and I can tell you that Michigan State and Vanderbilt are better in many education fields. But if one understands how the rankings are calculated, it was possible for Harvard to have said, ”Hey, we’re supposed to be number one in everything. How did we miss that? Okay Joey - go contact the partner ranking institutions and put together a slam-dunk presentation on why we should be number one - with some perks of course.” So, with enough money and well placed connections, elite rankings can be manipulated to a degree. This results in more applications to a given institutions which again generates a lower acceptance rate since they are admitting the same number of students. This lower acceptance rate is often used as a metric for elite status when the only thing that has changed is the number of applicationsSo at the end of the day, it’s all about what you really want. If you want that prestigious name after your degree letters, then just go to U.S. News, pick the top school in your field and try to get in. Then, when recruiters see that you’re out of Oxford or Caltech many will be lining up to hire you. On the other hand if school culture, locale, alignment with your future profession and recommendations from your career counselor are valued, then a more sophisticated approach may be in order.My general recommendation is this: Find a good liberal arts school, enjoy a diverse and academically challenging 4 years, then apply to Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, USC or the like as a grad student. That way you build a top notch foundation through great teaching and academic breadth followed up by priceless experience working side by side with a cutting edge researcher in your niche. Berkeley is elite in this latter category, and in many ways surpasses the other schools you mentioned depending on your chosen field. You just may need to talk to other students enrolled in your program and get feedback from industry to determine the best course (pun intended).

Q. Is the Teachers College at Columbia University a good school?Yelp: an unorthodox rating of Teachers College - Columbia University from the students’ perspective, near unanimous voicing of disappointment and major problems. Unexpected for such a storied and renown institution, with distinguished alumni.Followed by two more conventional rankings/general info.Ranking: TCCU #7.Teachers College, Columbia UniversityColleges & Universities525 W 120th StNew York, NY 10027Phone number: (212) 678-3000Business website: tc.columbia.eduRecommended Reviews Teachers College - Columbia University.Dan T. New York, NY 1/2/2010 Listed in Awwww yeah: The Heights, Schools “Excellent educationally but much to improve--facilities/etc. should align with tuition to alleviate the faculty and student disillusionment for the cost of the education and services rendered.”Mike O. Brooklyn, NY 3/29/2014 One of the oldest and best ed schools in the country. Faculty are great. Students are bright and hardworking. Spent a year and a half here getting my M.A. as a Literacy Specialist and had a great, unforgettable experience.L L. New York, NY 8/7/2014 I know Yelp is not the greatest place to rate a school, but I have to say that I was totally disappointed by TC. First of all, if you just want Columbia on your degree paper, go for it, because TC is probably one of the easiest (and maybe the cheapest) ways to achieve this.Now I will talk about why I was disappointed. One of the common things people complain about is the faculty-student ratio. It's true. It matters because your advisor won't have that much time to try to guide you and even listen to you! It depends on people of course, but at least mine literally told me she didn't have time (during her office hours!!) to help me choose classes. Faculty-student ratio also matters because it is very hard to have in-depth discussions in a classroom with more than 50 people who are just trying to say something to show they are "participating".Their career services are also inadequate, and especially poor when it comes to international students who are already a large community at the school. No one even keeps a record of which employers would hire international students, because "it is not required by the US government". Since when an Ivy League school does not offer anything more than what is required by the US government?The quality of the peers is questionable. I am not sure how much the admissions threshold has been lowered within the last few years. All I know is that I got to see fewer and fewer people that are really competent. What bothered me the most is that some of its programs (including mine) are not academically rigorous at all. I've known people who pretty much didn't do anything in a term-long group project and could easily get an A. I've known people who copied other people's homework and could easily pass. Sometimes the professors might not have known what was going on, but sometimes they knew and they didn't care.Again, different people come out of TC with totally different experiences. I had those bad ones because I happened to meet certain people, happened to work with certain people, and happened to take certain classes. However, I am definitely not the only person who felt much disappointed. Talk to as many current students or recent grads as you can before deciding to attend TC, get an insight of where TC is heading towards, think thoroughly what you want and see what and how TC can provide, otherwise you will regret spending your time and money there.Craig B. Philadelphia PA 10/1/2011 Just spend a week at Teacher's College and you'll have a decent handle on what's wrong with education in this country. Here you are smack in the center of the Hogwarts for teachers, but it's really just an opportunity to hand over A LOT of money to get Columbia University listed on your resume. It should be criminal because these are teachers that we are talking about. At least if Teachers College actually imparted something useful that can be used to improve the quality of education in this country, but this is just a pure money grab.- Most of your classes have a minimum of 30+ students. Some have more than 50. Go look on the TC web site to see the number of students enrolled in classes under "Class Schedule". This is hardly graduate education. You're just being given articles to read and papers to write. Little to no class discussion. In graduate school, you should expect classes that have a max of 15.- Most of what you get from these articles is pretty basic and things that you will learn after you have taught for about two years. In two years no one is going to care that you went to Columbia; they are going to care what type of teacher you are, and you won't get that at TC.A good number of classes are taught by graduate students and adjuncts, in some programs more than half. It's something of a bait and switch because you think that your classes, especially required classes, will be taught by faculty, but really they aren't. Do the math. At about $4,000 per class, TC takes in about $150,000 for some classes and pays the adjunct maybe $4,000 to teach it. For example, here is Professor Joanna Williams trying to claim that she teaches a class in Educational Psychology when, in fact, she never teaches a class in Educational Psychology: tc.columbia.edu/academic…In fact here she even says "I teach a master's-level course in educational psychology" (1:52) when, again, a grad student or adjunct teaches the class. It's just deceptive. The administration knows about this. They are too busy counting your money to care. tc.columbia.edu/hud/inde…Faculty+Interviews- If you do get a class with an actual professor, it's pretty much read to you from the same yellowed paper that the professor has used for decades. Not a lot of adaptation or creativity goes into the programs.- Also do the math: you are charged for three credit hours, but most classes only meet for for about two hours.- TC accepts a massive number of students for the MA programs and herds them through. You will not have a problem being accepted because pretty much every application is accepted. This is to help pay for the PhD students. But many of the PhD students can't get work.One of the few respected programs, and one actually with any real rigor, is Organizational Leadership. Yet TC is one of the most dysfunctional bureaucratic environments that you'll find yourself in. Try dealing with the registrar, paying a bill, or getting your e-mail set up. People refer you to someone else and that person will refer you back to the first person. I was in one class that had a janitorial closet in the back and janitors would walk in and through the classroom during class time with ladders and other pieces of heavy equipment. In one case I applied for and was granted an extension by the registrar. Then later the registrar came back and said that I had an issue because I had no extension. I showed the registrar her own letter, signed by her, that clearly stated the extension and the terms of the extension, and that still wasn't enough. She said that she needed to meet with a special committee. This is very common. Most students can tell you a story like this.In the end TC graduates teachers who are burdened under a massive amount of debt. Try to pay that off on a teachers salary. I'm sure some of the students believe that they got a decent education, but they don't really have something impressive to compare their TC experience to. They think that TC is normal. Hope that they don't emulate it in their own classrooms.I've written all of this because supporting teachers is very important, and two months after you start classes at TC this is what you are going to wish that someone had told you when you were looking at graduate programs.If gold will rust, what will iron do?Erin M. Manhattan, NY 3/14/2011 Wow. I realize it has a good reputation, but honestly, it shouldn't. This is by far the worst school I've ever attended. Overpriced. Zero support from faculty or the administration. In fact, not only will they not help you, but they will build roadblocks to prevent you from accomplishing what you need to do. Poor classes, most of which are taught by graduate students. Some of the graduate students are fine, but why am I paying so much for my fellow students to teach me? Getting my doctorate there managed to make me less marketable, and to make it even harder to find a job. Well, all in all, it was a horrible experience and I will never recommend it to anyone.Zuleika R. Clifton, NJ 12/14/2016 Way overpriced for the quality of education it provides. Will take forever to process things (fasfa, petsa video,etc). You never get a reply back from emails. Also, majority of PhD grad students teach MA students rather than real professors. You get all of this for a huge amount of debt. In my opinion, it will take your whole life to pay the debt of teachers college if u become a teacher. Nowadays jobs are very scarce and tough to get. So make a wise decision. My friend got in here with a 3.1 GPA so it's not competitive.Lindsay S. New York, NY 11/23/201425 check-ins Not amused by my program.Teachers College Columbia University leverages the RingCentral cloud communications platformMarina S. Staten Island, NY 10/6/2014 Expensive, but it's a private school in the US, just like any other. The PhD students got a lot of attention from a few professors, which was very noticeable to us, the MA students. Sometimes we felt a bit ignored. I give as much as 3/5, because I got a Master's degree and that helped me get a job which I couldn't get without it.The professors are very knowledgeable, on the most part. We had a problem only with one instructor who hadn't even had a Master's Degree and was teaching a lab course strictly from slides with no additional information. (We know how to use basic Word and Excel. but we spent a few weeks worth of classes reading slides about it).In general, I learned a lot and I really enjoyed the course work. My concentration was in Motor Learning and Control (Bio Behavioral Sciences). I also met many wonderful people who were in the same or in related MA and PhD programs.I just would have liked it more if we (MA students) got a bit more attention from the few important professors in the program.Katya R. New York, NY 6/30/2013 I did an orientation as was considering a Master's there.The teacher to student ratios are quite large and from all my research this is far from a rigorous program.It seems like a veritable diploma mill where the basis for the transaction is very expensive classes in return for a Columbia branded resume (with not what one would expect at a master's level in between). If you fail out of this program, it is because you never showed up for class or the tests, ever.The very high acceptance rate supports this. Columbia has turned a very needed program into a cash cow. This model has been playing out in many of the MS level classes at TC and at the university at large.This is the Harvard Extension School (being very, very kind here to Columbia by even offering that associative reference) equivalent in a teaching program.Buyer beware, and do your own due diligence before you apply (since the above is more or less common knowledge).Tiffany C. Manhattan, NY 12/1/2011 Updated review The school is great! With all the money they have they should be able to remodel the place a little. I love the vintage look, but some of the classrooms need to be re-done. the programs here are great and so are the professors. I wish it cost less money to go there, but i guess you have to pay for a good education. The area around is nice, definitely one of the quieter places in the city.Sam W. Hoboken, NJ 4/21/2012 Want an Ivy League degree barely worth the paper it's printed on? Then TC is for you.This place is an utter racket of criminally high tuition, mediocre to laughable instruction, flimsy joke degrees that will ensure our national education system is staffed by dim layabouts for a long time to come.I can't wait for the National Council on Teacher Quality to drill TC into the ground this fall.Tanya L. Boston, MA 4/10/2011 I really want to rate my graduate school higher. I am grateful the education graduate school of Columbia University admitted me with just a 3.3 undergraduate GPA and gave me the opportunity to get a Master's degree here.I am really appreciative I got a small minority scholarship for working on the academic journal, CICE (Current Issues in Comparative Education) at Teachers College. I would try and get my doctorate here, but the school does not fully fund doctoral students sadly.However, I thought the academic advising system was particularly bad in the department of International and Transcultural studies, as it is TC's policy to pair you up with a professor as your advisor. My former professor could care less about advising me. When she agreed to advise my thesis over the summer, she later flaked out on me when I got an impersonal, mass email from the department head mentioning that she was leaving to take another job in DC. My advisor couldn't even take 10 minutes to write a personal adieu to her advisees, or to say goodbye? Absolutely pathetic.Fortunately, this negative advisory experience was counteracted by a Teachers College faculty member who took me on last minute to help me graduate in 1 year time. In addition, I had several professors that were very good at teaching: Terosky and Hatch come to mind as great.However, I am disheartened by the school itself, because it doesn't seem to value hiring it's own alumni. I would love to work for TC, but I have not been one of the chosen ones. There are non-alumni working in its alumni affairs office and career services offices, and although I'm sure they do an decent jobs, there are alumni out there like me that would give our left arm to work for our alma mater and are not given interviews.Teachers College library itself is absolutely gorgeous: 3 floors of plush chairs and pretty wood desks. I found Teachers College to have enjoyable areas of study. The bookstore employees were always helpful, too.Another qualm I have is the career services center attitude that because I have a Columbia University degree that I will find full-time work soon. Au contraire: being Ivy League in this economy doesn't necessarily mean anything. You cannot advise Teachers College alumni to have hope through reliance on being affiliated with a well respected school. Furthermore, the alumni database the career center touts needs to be built up A LOT more because it is barely searchable as is.Diandra D. Pelham, NY 5/31/2011 I had the BEST time in graduate school ... to the point where I wish elementary, middle, high school and college could have been similar. I love the professors here. The buildings are clean, the classrooms well lit and ventilated. The surrounding neighborhood is perfect for students to let off steam or grab a drink after a grueling day of studying or attending lectures.I was fortunate to receive two strategically located student teacher placements, as well as an on-campus job, which made my intensive year program at TC manageable and enjoyable.My classmates and I typically didn't finish our last class until 10 pm (classes didn't start until 5 because all of us student taught during the day). Nonetheless, professors were always available to talk or answer questions whenever (and I do mean WHENEVER) we had them.We would frequently go to West End (before it became Havana Central- RIP) for drinks and food and stumble home discussing how we could use Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences to determine what alcohol said about our respective personalities. The good 'ol days ...I've gone back to the UWS sporadically to visit with some professors (one was even a guest at my wedding) and see the neighborhood, but truthfully, I'm due for another visit very soon.Elizabeth N. Irvine, CA 2/23/2013 The professors are great and so are the students! The Library and Thorndike are the newer or remodel places in comparison to Thompson, Grace Dodge, HM, and more that need some remodeling. I also love the dinning hall that seems so classic and fancy for a University cafeteria.A B. Boston, MA 6/26/2010 I LOVE TC. I know I am spending WAY too much money here and my loans are adding up, but I am getting a degree that will get me any job in the future (well not 'any' but, within reason). I think if you want to be just a regular education teacher you should not go here because of the expense. But if you are looking for a more specialized degree (special ed, ABA, speech pathology, etc) then this is a GREAT place to go.Paul W. Stamford, CT 3/20/2007 Since no teacher's college can teach a prospective teacher how to teach, either don't teach or find a less expensive way to get the same PC drivel elsewhere. Otherwise, great place to live, and lots of perks in the neighborhood. We lived for four years and I did two masters.Ashley D. Paris, France 4/22/2009 TC is expensive. The education programs are excellent from what I've heard. The psychology departments are good, but the large enrollment of the M.A. programs lend a "degree mill" sense I don't care for. Organizational psychology gets the best bang for the buck - I'm not sure the M.A. in clinical psych would be worth the price. I attend at a discount, but I would consider the cost (as well as living in NYC) very carefully before coming. That being said, I really enjoy my particular program (M.A. Organizational Psychology) and am very happy I have come.About TCABOUT TCACADEMICSADMISSION & AIDSTUDENTSFACULTY & RESEARCHAbout TC At a GlanceAbout TCTimelineA Legacy of InnovatorsDiversity & CommunityOffices and AdministrationOur Students, at a GlanceThere are 5023 students enrolled at Teachers College. Approximately 77 percent are women, and among US Citizens, 13.3 percent are African American, 14.6 percent are Asian American, 13.5 percent are Hispanic / Latino/a, and 3.5 percent have identified with two or more ethnicities. The student body is composed of 20.2 percent international students from eighty-four different countries and nearly 80 percent domestic students from all fifty states and the District of Columbia.College Profile 2016-2017Total enrollment: 5023New Degree Students: 17621398 Fall Enrollment364 Summer EnrollmentDegree LevelMasters: 3624 / 72.2%Doctoral: 1302 / 25.9%Non-degree: 97 / 1.9%StudentsFull-time: 1484 / 29.5%Part time: 3539 / 70.5%Gender Diversity of Matriculated StudentsFemale: 3868 / 77%Male: 1105 / 22%No Answer: 50 / 1%Among Domestic Students Only (Excludes International, Other and Unknown)African-American: 516 / 13.3%Asian-American: 564 / 14.6%Latino/a: 522 / 13.5%Native American: 7 / 0.2%Two or More: 134 / 3.5%Caucasian: 2121 / 54.9%Other & Unknonwn: 143 / 2.9%Among International Students Only (Excludes Other and Unknown)International students: 1016 / 20.2%Africa: 15 / 1.5%Asia: 780 / 76.8%Canada: 46 / 4.5%Europe: 57 / 5.6%Latin America & Caribbean: 82 / 8.1%Middle East & North Africa: 36 / 3.5%Median Student Age30 yearsTeachers College, Columbia UniversityGrad SchoolAll Graduate School RankingsOverviewEducation Admissions Academics Ranking Student Body Cost Teacher PreparationScienceSocial Sciences & HumanitiesHealthU.S. News Education School CompassExpanded School ProfilesAverage GRE ScoresCertification Statistics#7 Best Education Schools2017 Quick StatsAddress525 W. 120th StreetNew York, NY 10027Students1,713 enrolled (full-time)3,207 enrolled (part-time)Tuition$1,454 per credit (full-time)$1,454 per credit (part-time)Education School OverviewThe education school at Teachers College, Columbia University has a rolling application deadline. The application fee for the education program at Teachers College, Columbia University is $65. Its tuition is full-time: $1,454 per credit and part-time: $1,454 per credit. The Teachers College, Columbia University graduate education program has 150 full-time faculty on staff with a 4.6:1 ratio of full-time equivalent doctoral students to full-time faculty.Programs and Specialties#2 Tie Curriculum and Instruction#5 Education Policy#6 Educational Administration and Supervision, in Educational Psychology#2 Elementary Teacher Education, in Higher Education Administration#6 Secondary Teacher Education, in Special EducationAdmissionsApplication deadline rollingApplication fee $65Director of Admissions David EstrellaTOEFL and/or IELTS required for international studentsAcademicsFull-time faculty (tenured or tenure-track) 150Student-faculty ratio 4.6:1Degree programs offeredPrograms/courses offered inStudent BodyTotal enrollment (full-time) 1,713Gender distribution (full-time) Male (23.1%) Female (76.9%)CostTuition full-time: $1,454 per credit part-time: $1,454 per creditRequired fees $856 per yearTeacher PreparationStudents who took an assessment to become a certified or licensed teacher during 2014-2015 216Education School Overview details based on 2015 dataAlumniMuhammad Fadhel al-Jamali, Prime Minister of Iraq (17 September 1953 – 29 April 1954)Charles Alston (1931), artistHafizullah Amin, President of AfghanistanNahas Gideon Angula (MA, EdM), Prime Minister of NamibiaMary Antin (1902), author of the immigrant experienceMichael Apple, professor of Educational Policy Studies, University of WisconsinWilliam Ayers, elementary education theorist, founder of Weather Underground, and professor at University of Illinois, ChicagoSarah Bavly, nutrition education pioneer in IsraelAbby Barry Bergman, science educator, author, school administratorJohn Seiler Brubacher, educational philosopher; professor at YaleDonald Byrd, jazz and fusion trumpet player; music educatorBetty Castor, politician and President of the University of South FloridaChiang Menglin President, Peking University, Minister of Education, Republic of ChinaShirley Chisholm, first African American woman elected to Congress, and former US Presidential candidateNorman Cousins, editor, peace activistElla Cara Deloria (1915), Yankton Sioux ethnologistEdward C. Elliott, educational researcher and president of Purdue UniversityAlbert Ellis, cognitive behavioral therapistEdward Fitzpatrick, president of Mount Mary College and noted expert on conscription during World War I and World War IIClarence Gaines (M.A. 1950), Hall of Fame basketball coach, Winston-Salem State UniversityGordon Gee (Ed.D. 1972), President of Ohio State UniversityTsuruko Haraguchi (Ph.D. 1912), psychologistAndy Holt (Ph.D. 1937), president of University of TennesseeSeymour Itzkoff, Professor Emeritus of Education and Child Study, Smith CollegeGeorge Ivany (M.A. 1962), President of the University of SaskatchewanThomas Kean (M.A. 1963), former Governor of New JerseyMaude Kerns (M.A. 1906), pioneering abstract artist and teacher[32]H. S. S. Lawrence (M.A. 1950, Ed.D. 1950), Indian educationistLee Huan, former Minister of Education and Premier of the Republic of ChinaMosei Lin (Ph.D. 1929), Taiwanese academic and educator; first Taiwanese to receive a Ph.D. degreeJohn C. McAdams, associate professor of political science at Marquette UniversityAgnes Martin (B.A. 1942), artistRollo May, existential psychologistChester Earl Merrow, educator, U.S. Representative from New HampshireRichard P. Mills, former Commissioner of Education for both Vermont and New York StatesJerome T. Murphy, Dean Emeritus at the Harvard Graduate School of EducationGeorgia O'Keeffe, American artistThomas S. Popkewitz (M.A. 1964), professor of Curriculum Theory at the University of Wisconsin-MadisonNeil Postman (M.A. 1955, Ed.D. 1958), cultural criticCaroline Pratt (educator), progressive educator, founder of City and Country School (Bachelor of Pedagogy, 1894)Thomas Granville Pullen Jr. President University of Baltimore, Maryland State Superintendent of EducationRobert Bruce Raup (Ph.D. 1926), Professor Emeritus, Philosophy of Education, and critic of the American Education systemHenrietta Rodman (1904), teacher, feminist activistCarl Rogers (M.A. 1928, Ph.D. 1931), psychologistMartha E. Rogers (M.A. in public health nursing 1945), nursing theorist, creator of Science of unitary human beingsMiriam Roth, Israeli writer and scholar of children's books, kindergarten teacher, and educatorAdolph Rupp, Hall of Fame basketball coach, University of KentuckyWilliam Schuman (B.S. 1935, M.A. 1937), composer, former president of the Juilliard School of Music and of Lincoln Center for the Performing ArtsJames Monroe Smith, president of Louisiana State University, 1930–1939Karl Struss (B.A. 1912), photographer and cinematographer; pioneer in 3D filmsBobby Susser (M.A. 1987), children's songwriter, record producer, performerTao Xingzhi, Chinese educator and political activistEdward Thorndike, psychologistRobert L. Thorndike (M.A. 1932, Ph.D. 1935), psychologistMerryl Tisch, educator, Chancellor, New York State Board of RegentsMinnie Vautrin, (M.A. 1919), educator and missionary.Ruth Westheimer (Ed.D. 1970), sex therapistFloyd Wilcox (M.A. 1920), third president of Shimer CollegeJohn Davis Williams, Chancellor of the University of Mississippi (1946 to 1968)Zhang Boling (1917), Founder and president, National Nankai University, Tianjin, ChinaBest Education SchoolsRanked in 2016 | Best Education Schools Rankings MethodologyA teacher must first be a student, and graduate education program rankings can help you find the right classroom. With the U.S. News rankings of the top education schools, narrow your search by location, tuition, school size and test scores.Rank School name Tuition Total enrollment#1 Stanford University Stanford, CA $45,729 per year (FT) 373#2 Tie Harvard University Cambridge, MA $43,280 per year (FT) 891#2 Tie Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, MD $1,000 per credit (FT) 2,161#4 University of Wisconsin—​Madison Madison, WI$11,870 per year (in-state, FT); $25,197 per year (out-of-state, FT) 1,030#5 Vanderbilt University (Peabody) Nashville, TN $1,818 per credit (FT) 908#6 University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA $47,364 per year (FT) 1,140#7 Teachers College, Columbia University New York, NY $1,454 per credit (FT) 4,920#8 Tie Northwestern University Evanston, IL $48,624 per year (FT) 318#8 Tie University of Washington Seattle, WA$16,536 per year (in-state, FT); $29,742 per year (out-of-state, FT) 938#10 University of Texas—​Austin Austin, TX $8,402 per year (in-state, FT); $16,338 per year (out-of-state, FT) 1,025#11 University of California—​Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA$11,220 per year (in-state, FT); $26,322 per year (out-of-state, FT) 686#12 Tie University of Michigan—​Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI$21,040 per year (in-state, FT); $42,530 per year (out-of-state,FT) 524#12 Tie University of Oregon Eugene, OR$16,032 per year (in-state, FT); $22,752 per year (out-of-state,FT) 592#14 Arizona State University Phoenix, AZ$10,610 per year (in-state,FT); $27,086 per year (out-of-state,FT) 2,627#15 Tie Michigan State University East Lansing, MI$705 per credit (in-state, FT); $1,353 per credit (out-of-state, FT) 1,862#15 Tie New York University (Steinhardt) New York, NY $36,912 per year (FT) 3,117#15 Tie University of Kansas Lawrence, KS$378 per credit (in-state, FT); $881 per credit (out-of-state, FT) 1,209#18 Tie Ohio State University Columbus, OH$11,560 per year (in-state, FT); $31,032 per year (out-of-state, FT) 989#18 Tie University of California—​Berkeley Berkeley, CA$11,220 per year (in-state, FT); $26,322 per credit (out-of-state, FT) 343#20 University of Minnesota—​Twin Cities Minneapolis, MN$15,844 per year (in-state, full-time); $24,508 per year (out-of-state, full-time) 1,861#21 Tie University of Southern California (Rossier) Los Angeles, CA$1,666 per credit (full-time) 1,866#21 Tie University of Virginia (Curry) Charlottesville, VA$14,856 per year (in-state, FT); $24,288 per year (out-of-state, FT) 937#23 Tie Boston College (Lynch) Chestnut Hill, MA $1,310 per credit (FT) 793#23 Tie University of Illinois—​Urbana-​Champaign Champaign, IL$12,060 per year (in-state, FT); $26,058 per year (out-of-state, FT) 792#25 University of California—​Irvine Irvine, CA$11,220 per year (in-state, FT); $26,322 per year (out-of-state, FT) 274

Anarcho-syndicalism is the idea that private property is a bad idea, and we should get rid of both it and the institutions that prop it up (including government) in favor of a system where workers manage their own workplaces. There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s get to it. But before I do, here’s the Monty Python clip that gives a quick summary on one way of making it work:I. Private Property“Private property” is a concept that lies at the heart of capitalism. The basic idea is that there are things that allow people to produce stuff: food, clothing, paper clips, whatever. These things, such as land and machinery, are more technically called “the means of production.” In many economic systems, most notably capitalism, the means of production are owned by specific people. These people dictate what can and cannot be done with the means of production, and who can use them.So, for example, let’s say you are one of these owners, and you own forty square miles of farmland. Without your permission, nobody can do anything with those forty square miles of land. If you’d like, you can try to farm it all yourself, and then collapse and die of exhaustion. Alternatively, you can do absolutely nothing with a large chunk of that land, which is a massive waste. As another option, you could give people permission to farm small parcels of that land in exchange for regular payments in an arrangement commonly called “renting.” And as yet another option, you could pay people to show up, do some farming for you, and then give you all the results of their work — we call this “employing people.”Now, in an ideal system, those people who are either renting your land or who are working on your farm can save up their money, purchase their own share of the means of production, and then start making decisions of ownership themselves. And if you’re a complete disaster of an owner, eventually you’ll have to sell your ownership of the means of production in order to get by. By this theory, capitalism is a system where hard workers rise up, and bad owners fall down. And this does happen — Andrew Carnegie started with practically nothing and ended his life as one of the wealthiest men in America. By contrast, his contemporary, Cornelius Vanderbilt, built a $100 million fortune[1] which is no longer in his family.But that’s the ideal system, and real life doesn’t live up to that. There are far more people over the years who started with nothing, worked just as hard as did Carnegie, and died in poverty and squalor. On the other hand, J. Paul Getty’s son, John Paul Getty, Jr., was a heroin addict who threw away a job in his father’s oil company, and yet still remained a fabulously wealthy man until his death. Private property and capitalism are supposed to be meritocratic systems, but they fail in that regard extremely frequently.There are other issues. Let’s go back to the farmland, and let’s say you rent it out. That’s a nice profit for you, but what value are you adding to this system? Your tenants are farming the land and producing value, but what benefit is there to anyone besides yourself for that rent check? You owning that land doesn’t make it more fruitful, it just means the person doing the work and who is making sure that the land isn’t just lying fallow doesn’t get to keep all the results of their labor.For that matter, how did you come to be the owner of the land? Sure, it could be that you worked really hard, saved up, and bought it. Cool. But how did the person you bought it from get it? Go back far enough, and you’ll find that land was stolen. Could have been that some rich aristocrats fenced in some public land five hundred years ago and nobody else in the area was strong enough to tell them to shove it.[2] Could be a bunch of people from somewhere else came in, murdered the local population and divvied up the land. But somewhere along the line, a whole lot of land went from not being owned to being owned, and the transition from the one state of affairs to the other happened without the consent of a whole lot of people. What this means is that property ownership, at least from one perspective, comes out to being the receiver of stolen goods.There’s a reason that Pierre-Joseph Proudhon said about this state of affairs that “La propriété, c'est le vol!” — “Property is Theft!”[3]Private property started out because powerful people used their power to get an unfair advantage — your grandparents being friends with the king meant you had a private army that nobody could complain when you jacked public land. But ownership means more power to the owner, which means more power to use — which means more power to abuse. And let’s be really clear: there was, and is, a hell of a lot of abuse of power stemming from ownership.II. The Conditions of the Working ClassThe second half of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century saw tremendous upheaval in society, first in Britain, then in the rest of the West. This was because of the First Industrial Revolution, which saw a large of industries become mechanized. There were good aspects to this: one person’s labor could be multiplied several times over by the new machines, which meant that the cost of producing an item went down, which meant the cost of those items also went down. Because of this, many things that were previously extravagances or luxuries were now affordable for everyone.Most of these machines, however, were quite expensive. What this meant was that only wealthy people could really afford to purchase them. Most people could not afford the machines. Indeed, most people couldn’t afford any of the means of production.In the last section, we looked at what you can do if you own more of the means of production than you can work yourself. But what do you do if you have none of the means of production and you don’t live in a society where everyone is simply provided with their basic necessities free of charge? Well, you have to sell something in order to get the money you need to buy those necessities. For most people, the thing they sell is their time. Most people will enter some sort of contract wherein they will agree to follow someone else’s orders for some period of time, in exchange for which, they will be given money. For example, a cotton mill worker might show up for an eight hour shift, work the machine, and give all of the resulting cloth to the factory owner, and in exchange, they’ll be given money.What this means is that there’s a large marketplace for people’s time, or more accurately, their labor. Now, with skilled jobs, there are going to be a few potential suppliers of labor, which means that the price of that labor — wages — are going to be reasonably high. But the whole point of mechanization is that it takes a lot of the work that was being done by hand and shifts it to a machine, which means a lower-skilled job, which means more potential suppliers of labor. This means lower wages.OK, so if wages get too low, people just won’t take the jobs, right? Well, no. Remember, people are only selling their time in the first place because if they don’t, they’ll die: starvation, exposure, that kind of thing. So if your choice is between starving and working a terrible job for very little money, well, it’s not a really a choice. What this means is that, while technically, there’s contract negotiation, in actuality, one side has far more power than the other side in the negotiation, and there is an element of coercion in place.If nobody takes a job with that low a wage, though, then the owners of the means of production — the “capitalist class” — have to raise wages, right? Well, yes, this is true, but it requires organization on the part of the people selling their labor — the “proletariat.” There are several different terms we use for such organizations, but the most common are probably “union” and “syndicate.” These proletariat organizations exist to balance out the power structure a little bit.However, syndicates aren’t always legal. Even when they are, they might find more forces than just factory owners arrayed against them. The history of the nineteenth century in labor relations mostly is about labor attempting to organize, and the capitalist class kicking the crap out of them, both directly and through government action.And even when measures existed to keep people from starving, they weren’t necessarily pleasant. Britain had a system called the workhouses where people could go if they couldn’t find employment elsewhere. The standards of living among the working class were lousy to begin with,[4] but the conditions at the workhouse were even worse, and even more thoroughly dehumanizing. They had to be: if the conditions at the workhouses were better than the ones to be found working for private industry, everyone would have gone to the workhouses. And that wouldn’t have done at all in the minds of the electorate… who all met a property requirement and were therefore almost all of the capitalist class.[5]I’ve been using the past tense in this section, but let’s be clear, all of this stuff is still going on in some form or another. The United States may not have a property requirement for voting, but since it adheres to a policy that you can spend as much as you’d like to back a candidate in an election, the interests of the wealthy count for more. New Zealand generally allows labor unions, but bans them for film workers — a state of affairs that came to be during pre-production of The Hobbit films two days AFTER the actors’ union had come to an agreement with the studio. Sure, liberal democracy’s a more representative system than monarchy, but that doesn’t mean it’s not set up to benefit a specific class. And just because many of the abuses of capitalism were legislated away doesn’t mean they don’t still happen, or that the system isn’t inherently exploitative.The system of private property makes the capitalist class a lot of money. However, they make this money not by doing work, but by selling the results of other people’s work and transmitting a fairly small chunk of the profits. The capitalist class’ interests are in keeping labor prices low and consumer goods prices high, while the proletariat’s interests run exactly the opposite direction. This fundamental disconnect between the interests of the two classes is called “class struggle.”“Hang on,” you might be saying, “this sounds like a whole heap of Marxism.”Hold on to that thought.III. Workers of the World, Disperse!So with the cities becoming squalid hellholes for the vast majority of their populations, with tenement living being a horrifying norm,[6] a whole lot of people started asking why the system was lousy for so many people, and if there was a better way of going about things.A lot of these people are still famous: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, Henry George, and Robert Owen were all highly influential political philosophers, and the idea they all gravitated to was a simple one: private ownership of the means of production was a bad idea. What it meant was that some people had a lot of power, and other people had virtually none, and that in such a system, abuse was the inevitable result.[7] Many of these people used similar terminology to each other, which is why the terminology of the previous section probably gave you flashbacks to high school history and whatever brief overview of Marxism you may have gotten from it.[8]By 1864, these ideas had enough momentum behind them that the International Workingmen’s Association (the IWA, but frequently called “the First International”) was formed. With a peak membership of at least five million people, it was a massive collection of left wing groups representing proletariat interests. This included socialists, communists, and anarchists — all of whom were on pretty much the same page with regards to capitalism (it’s exploitative and sucks), private property (it’s exploitative and sucks), and where both should go (history’s dustbin).These groups, however, disagreed on a lot of the finer points of what needed to be done and what had to be done to get there. The two biggest positions represented in the IWA were Marxism and anarchism. The former, you probably have at least a passing familiarity with. Marxism says that the class struggle will eventually be resolved by the proletariat rising up and throwing the capitalist class out of power, to be replaced with a government of the proletariat.[9] Marxists believe that this government is a transitional stage, and at some point will wither away in favor of a system where there is no government at all, people organize themselves to get all necessary work done, and everyone’s happy. This is Marx’s end of history.[10]Anarchists, on the other hand, argue that Marx’s transitional period is unnecessary, and that even having that transitional state means that Marx’s endpoint cannot and will not come to pass, because there is no reason or mechanism for the government of the proletariat to disappear beyond being nice, and when you give people a choice between having power and being nice, that latter option is not the popular pick.This brings us to a major difference between the Marxists and the anarchists: the Marxists of the IWA felt that engagement in the political process as it existed was a worthwhile thing to do, because government power can be used to good end, and eventually, a government can just go away. The anarchists vehemently disagreed with this, arguing that engaging in the political process only strengthened it and made the eventual creation of a classless society far less likely or possible.A lot of this was theoretical discussion, and as such, the groups could to some extent agree to disagree. By 1872, however, the discussion was no longer theoretical at all, because radical leftist revolutions were now something actually occurring and encountering some (limited and short-lived) success. After Napoleon III’s government collapsed during the Franco-Prussian War, the people of Paris organized themselves and defended the city from Prussian forces themselves. The city eventually surrendered, but refused to disarm in favor of the Third French Republic. The result was the short-lived Paris Commune, which was mostly what the Marxists and the anarchists wanted in social organization.The Paris Commune survived for all of two months before the French Third Republic’s army crushed it in the so-called “semaine sanglante” (Bloody Week). By 1872, everyone had their theories on why the Paris Commune hadn’t survived. Marx’s theories, unsurprisingly, mostly went along the lines that, while the Paris Commune had been mostly right, it hadn’t survived because it hadn’t instituted a more authoritarian government. The anarchists, on the other hand, maintained their position that, even if the authoritarian government scheme had kept the polity of the Paris Commune alive, the Commune’s spirit would have been dead then and there, and there wouldn’t have been any point to the exercise at all.With the failure of the Paris Commune, arguments regarding abstractions had become arguments regarding practicalities, and everything became more bitter for it. At the 1872 Hague Congress of the IWA, Marx and his followers expelled Mikhail Bakunin, the leader of the anarchist faction, effectively splitting the organization in two.IV. Anarcho-CommunismThis isn’t to say the anarchists were all in agreement with each other. They weren’t. Anarchists are generally united by a strong dislike and distrust of hierarchy, believing it to be mostly unjustified,[11] but do disagree on numerous points on how best to achieve the eradication of unjustifiable hierarchy.[12] Bakunin, for example, put forth the “anarcho-collectivist” position, which says that, in the future, the workers would control the means of production, and within a given industry, would decide who got what amount of salary.[13]Anarcho-collectivism isn’t a mainstream position even within anarchist circles these days. This is in no small part thanks to the work of Pyotr Kropotkin, who argued that even anarcho-collectivism wasn’t going far enough to distance itself from the existing capitalist system, and that rather than apportioning goods through the market, we should use a system of “to each according to their need.” Kropotkin’s formulation is called “anarcho-communism,” and its basic theory is to do Marxism without the transitional step and without asserting whatever comes next is definitely the last word in how society ought to be run.At this point, you may be wondering how on earth anything gets done in an anarcho-communist society. If everyone takes what they need, aren’t people going to be jerks and take more than they need? And how do we get people to do the jobs that need to be done? Isn’t everyone just a free rider in such a situation and we end up with the tragedy of the commons?To answer this question, let’s look at how capitalism solves these problems. In capitalism, people constantly take more than they need, and leave very little for others. It’s the normal state of affairs: there are over 2000 billionaires globally, and the top eight of them control as much wealth as the bottom 50% of the global population. In the meanwhile, about a sixth of the world’s population lives on $1.90 a day or less.[14] So the current solution to keeping people from hoovering up more than they need and leaving less for everyone else is to- hey look, a massive distraction right behind you![15] In other words, the question of how to avoid people taking more than they need is frequently — not always, but frequently — asked in bad faith.The more rhetorically-inclined among you will notice that I just engaged in some pretty shameless whataboutism: just because capitalism has a problem and certain capitalist critiques of anarcho-communism aren’t the most honest things you’ll find doesn’t mean that those critiques are wrong. So let’s answer the question with another question: why do people take more than they need? Why become a billionaire?It’s because that doing so gives you a massive amount of power. Do you want to impose your will on reality? Better have some coercive power! But if everyone has what they need and will continue to have what they need regardless of what you offer them, then what good is that extra money? So what’s the incentive to take more?The other critique isn’t quite so heinous. Under the current system, we get people to work by telling them that if they don’t, they will starve to death and we’re all cool with that. Therefore, your options are to either get a job or starve.[16] Which means that, yes, you’ll have successfully motivated someone to work, but only hard enough to not get fired (and therefore, only hard enough to not go hungry).This isn’t a great system of motivating people to work. It’s effective to an extent, but then again, so’s “work hard enough to avoid the whip,” a system we all at least nominally agree is bad. So yeah, saying “work or starve” — a system that the radical left labels “wage slavery” — will get people to be productive, but it’s significantly less effective at getting people to be productive than it is to have people doing work they want to do.You might think that this is impossible in some cases. For example, the United States is heavily reliant on undocumented workers for agricultural production because getting American citizens to do fruit picking is pretty much a non-starter. However, fruit picking is an awful job because it pays nothing, because otherwise, there aren’t any profits to be had in owning an orchard. It’s not an awful job because of anything specific to the work itself — which we know because every fall, it’s really easy to find New Yorkers leaving the city to go to pay orchard owners to let them pick apples. The problem isn’t the work, the problem is the job, and the job is the problem because owners need to make a profit. This turns out to be true in a lot of cases, which explains why a lot of people don’t do the jobs that correspond to the work they’d actually like to do: if being a high school teacher means working full days and then also needing to work a shift or three at Wal-Mart per week just to put food on the table (hi Oklahoma!), forget it.Obviously, these are all massive oversimplifications, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. If you’d like a better explanation, check out Kropotkin’s works themselves — The Conquest of Bread and Mutual Aid are still highly readable. But something I haven’t dealt with in this section is how we get to this state of affairs.This is what anarcho-syndicalism is about. Anarcho-syndicalism says that syndicates can just take up management of the means of production and call it a day. Democratically-run — and I mean direct democracy, not representative democracy — labor unions can run the show, and we end up with anarcho-communism doing what needs to be done.[17]But, uh, this has been a whole lot of theory. Does it work?V. YesAs a political position, anarchism hasn’t had too many opportunities at the big time. Its most famous time in the sun came in Spain in the 1930’s.The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) was founded in 1910. It was, and remains, an anarcho-syndicalist labor union. It is a formation of workers that uses direct democracy to organize itself. It includes worker collectives (where the workers own the means of production, but those means are still private property because this is a capitalist system) but also workers employed in more standard shops. It generally doesn’t engage with the government.However, in 1936, this changed. The Second Spanish Republic spent most of the 1930’s lurching from crisis to crisis, culminating in a revolt of the army in 1936. This was the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, and the Second Spanish Republic was caught pretty much completely flat-footed. Had it simply come down to the Republic, the far right in Spain (the “Nationalists”) would have come to power in 1936 and that would have been that.That’s not what happened. Instead, the CNT (and other labor unions), knowing full well that their very lives were at stake, armed and mobilized themselves to stop the fascists. The government eventually distributed weaponry to the unions and their militias, thus keeping the major cities (including Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia) out of Nationalist hands. Nominally, Catalonia (of which Barcelona is the capital) remained in Republican hands.In any real sense, the unions were running the show — in particular, the CNT. The result of this was the collectivization of agriculture (mostly, but not entirely, voluntary) as well as every other industry. Self-management of workplaces became the norm, with direct democracy being used to keep everything running. And it worked: not only did productivity in Catalonia not go down, it actually increased. Food production went up by more than 30%. Similarly, the region held off the Nationalist threat.[18]But since Catalonia is no longer organized along anarcho-syndicalist lines, what went wrong?The Nationalists were getting a large chunk of help from the Italians, the Germans, and the Portuguese. The Republicans saw help from fewer quarters — the Mexicans and the Soviets sent some aid, but not to the same extent. Soviet aid came with significant strings attached. In particular, the Soviets desired the end of the revolutionary project in Catalonia, because it was making western European countries nervous, and that wasn’t helping Soviet foreign policy.As such, the Republic started moving against the revolutionaries. The POUM, an anti-Stalin Marxist party, was crushed during the “May Days” of 1936, an event described in George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, and the Second Spanish Republic took back control of the area with the backing of the Soviet Union. Capitalism was quickly re-established, ironically by the PCE — the Communist Party of Spain.This is generally what happens with anarchist experiments: they’re founded in the midst of a war, they do a decent job of running the show,[19] and then they get crushed because everyone else attacks them. This also happened in Ukraine in the Free Territory, which survived from 1918 to 1921 before being crushed by the Soviet Union. As it turns out, when you create a functioning and productive society based on the principle of equality and the destruction of hierarchy, the people at the top of existing hierarchies aren’t going to like you. And since that’s practically every existing society, yeah, the lack of allies is a problem.But the thing is, when everyone doesn’t attack it, anarcho-syndicalism works.[1] Late nineteenth century money here. Some estimates place that as upwards of $200 billion in today’s money.[2] Stealing the public land and having the government legitimize the theft was a big thing five hundred years ago — the process was called “enclosure.”[3] Proudhon coined this phrase in an 1840 book called What is Property? The translation I read — in the series of “Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought” — was a squidge dry, but worth checking out.[4] Check out Friedrich Engels’ The Condition of the Working Class in England for a full report on that. There are a few problems with Engels’ text — he did get a few things wrong in his reportage, and he tends to idealize the pre-industrial period — but it’s still well worth the read.[5] Not that the workhouse system got all that much better with the reform of the electorate: George Orwell describes his experience with them in the 1930’s in Down and Out in Paris and London, and views it as a mindlessly punitive system.[6] If you’d like pictures of this, check out Jacob Riis’ 1890 photojournalism classic, How the Other Half Lives, which documented the slums of New York City of the time. Riis used many racial slurs, so if you just want to skip the text and look at the pictures, I wouldn’t blame you for it.[7] Subsequent behavioral economics experiments have borne this one out but good. There’s an experiment called “the dictator game” where two people have a pot of money, one person chooses how the money is to be distributed between the two of them, and then it is distributed, and that’s it.Unsurprisingly, the money does not get distributed evenly, or even close to it. The complete cynics in the audience, however, may be surprised to hear that the dictator rarely took all the money. Turns out, people have difficulty thinking of themselves as good people if they take all the money, and people also derive some utility from thinking of themselves as good people.[8] Unless, of course, you grew up in a Marxist-Leninist country, at which point, it gave you flashbacks to some very lengthy discussions on these topics.[9] Marx’s actually terminology here is “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Marx himself did not believe a literal dictatorship was required to make the whole shebang work, which is why I’m not using the terminology here — but as we’ll see, it’s not entirely misleading.[10] A concept stolen wholesale from Hegel. The basic idea is that at this point, the argument regarding how people ought to best govern themselves will have been resolved, so while stuff will continue to happen, history as a rhetorical process will be done.To see an example of why declaring any state of affairs to be the end of history is a really stupid idea, I recommend Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man, where Fukuyama argues that, after the fall of the Soviet Union, we all came to the conclusion that democracy and capitalism were definitely the way to go with regards to organizing societies. In the twenty-six years since Fukuyama’s self-congratulatory (I apologize for the use of the following, generally overused, word) neoliberal idiocy got published, we’ve learned that, no, we are totally not at the end of history, and the debate is far from settled.(This is to say that I don’t actually recommend reading Fukuyama, unless you like reading boring people being wrong. Which, to be fair, may explain, like, half the people reading this answer.)[11] OK, this isn’t true of all political philosophies that label themselves anarchist. Anarcho-capitalists are pretty well completely in love with the concept, and national anarchism is a flavor of Nazism and therefore also big on hierarchy, and also on being completely nonsensical. Of course, these are right-wing positions that generally are not viewed as anarchist by anyone except themselves.[12] Anarchists accept that some form of hierarchy is necessary. To quote Bakunin:Does it follow that I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult the architect or the engineer. For such special knowledge I apply to such a "savant." But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the "savant" to impose his authority on me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure. I do not content myself with consulting a single authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions and choose that which seems to me soundest. But I recognize no infallable authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, the tool of other people's will and interests.[13] Important to note: this isn’t Bakunin’s terminology at all, and I’m massively simplifying. Bakunin actually advocated the abolition of money — a system that primarily exists to make capitalist purchases possible — in favor of labor vouchers that could be used to purchase personal property, like clothes, food, that sort of thing.[14] It is at this point that I must point out that the rates of extreme poverty worldwide have, in fact, been dropping, and that while it used to be that well over 90% of the world’s population used to live in extreme poverty, we’re now down to under 20%. What this means is that fewer people are having as much difficulty as they used to in procuring their basic needs. I would argue this has far less to do with any “success” of capitalism than it has to do with colonialism being something people increasingly agree is a bad thing to do.[15] Some people will argue that the way we deal with this issue is to set up sweatshops for a few generations, let wealth eventually accrue to the countries where the sweatshops are set up, and eventually everyone gets out of poverty. I recently read this charming position, which is charmingly totally okay with human misery now so long as it could potentially end at some point in the indeterminate future, in the pop economics book The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford, who I’m sure would view sweatshops as a good and necessary construct even if he didn’t have a job with the Financial Times and instead did piecework in one of those factories.[16] Unless, of course, you’re one of those people who was born into wealth, at which point, free ride away![17] If you’re only going to read one book that I’ve recommended, go with Rudolf Rocker’s Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice. Anarcho-Syndicalism | AK Press[18] Because I do not want to give the impression that things were paradisical, they were decidedly not. This was also the time of what historians call “the Red Terror,” when left-wing militias murdered thousands of right-wingers.[19] I do not mean to attempt to trivialize the Red Terror with such a statement. Murder is awful. It is also something that every side in the Spanish Civil War did. By normal human standards, the murders were horrifying and despicable. By the standards of the Spanish Civil War, they were par for the course — the White Terror was the Nationalist equivalent.