Inflation of Economists – Why Does No One Care?

I am listening to a morning show on my favorite radio (despite everything, it is still a one hundred and one) and a discussion about the summer school of the Faculty of Economics. Listeners, as listeners do, confirm the old thesis – two Croats, at least three different opinions. Which is perfectly fine. One thinks that the exams ‘earned’ in the summer school should not be recognized, another believes that only the elite who devised such a master plan for profit (Mr. Tipurić) should be held accountable, while a third thinks that no one should touch anything, because the students, you know, did study over the summer. I do not know how much they really learned for two thousand kuna.

One day, the business figures of the companies that employ them will show that. But I am surprised by something else. No one, absolutely no one, has latched onto the interesting figure that stands out from the whole story – five thousand students enrolled in the summer school! Five thousand! To repeat – five thousand! For heaven’s sake, which eminent, super-successful, highly profitable domestic companies will employ so many economists? What will this poor country, which can count its export companies on the fingers of one hand, (even fewer successful ones) do with so many economic ‘experts’? Where will all of them find employment? Even if less than half graduate from the faculty. This will not succeed even for Uncle Luka, even if he rapidly networks all state companies overnight. And beyond.

About the knowledge acquired at pre-summer, summer, post-summer, or some fourth school/faculty on some other occasion. OK, maybe just one ‘snapshot’ from practice. In a struggling company that the new Management is pulling out of the mud (it is not Podravka!) the new leadership requested the now former management to provide a daily liquidity report. The former management collectively ‘gawked’ with rolled eyes. And question marks above their heads. Only after several long seconds did they catch their breath and finally uttered shamefully: ‘What??’ Yet they all graduated from our Faculty of Economics. And that was at a time when ‘entrepreneurial’ ideas about summer schools had not yet been born.

But let us return to the case of the scale, that is, the relationship between the number of economics students and the actual needs of companies. How is it possible that no one in this country knows what we need and how much? It is possible. Because it requires targeted thinking. And for such a type of thinking, we need a good foundation – a long-term strategy, a plan, any evidence that we can see beyond our noses. I understand that such things will not come to the authorities’ minds on their own. The authorities deal with power and governance, not with thinking about the economy. That is why employers should endlessly ride this topic. Who better than them knows what they need and how much in production, trade, tourism, export, management…really? So why don’t they ‘ride’? I don’t know. But I do know that I no longer want to listen to their complaints about how the kuna exchange rate has taken away the value of an entire factory over the past 10 years.

Well, surely they are capable of finding one economist who knows how to hedge currency risk! At least one out of five thousand! And at least one more who knows what a daily report is, who knows what liquidity is, and who is capable of connecting those two things into one. As it stands, with the inflation of economists, we have thousands of future (well-paid!) managers at all levels, but we do not have enough of those who, for example, know how to screw in a door. Or unscrew a regular light bulb. Or work with some machine. Or… I am exaggerating, of course. But that does not diminish the problem. All of this together, the surplus of economists, the shortage of ‘workers’, does not increase the number of successful companies. And that should worry someone. Unfortunately, in this country, everyone drives in their own lane.

The state in one lane, employers in another, politics in a third, science and faculties in a fourth. Not even the most capable cowboy could lasso them. It is logical that we do not know who employers are looking for in the labor market. Do they need another economist or perhaps a good craftsman who knows the soul of the machine? Do they need an economist or perhaps a reliable builder? An economist or an IT ‘freak’? In fact, maybe it is better this way. Who knows what kind of chaos would arise if everyone found themselves on the same path. We do not know how to drive that way. We are used to driving each in our own world of chaos. At the expense of future generations!