The Associate Dean just informed me that my Business Associations class next semester is full and has 20 students on the waiting list. She's going to make me move to a bigger room and take the students off the waiting list. (Why she didn't make me do that in the fall when the class was also over-subscribed is something of a mystery, but I don't ask obnoxious questions of a lady with the power to make me teach at 8 am!)
But hold on a minute. Via Marginal Revolution, we learn of this amusing story:
Jay Wilson, a second-year law student at New York University, was desperate to register for a popular course in constitutional law.
Unfortunately for him, the course, taught by the youthful Daryl Levinson, was completely booked for the upcoming spring semester. Fortunately, Mr. Wilson had some money to spare. In a posting on an online bulletin board at the law school, Mr. Wilson offered $300 to any student willing to drop the course to make room for him...
Students interviewed at the law school said the practice of exchanging course spots is common at the school. As a kind gesture, some cash-strapped students have promised to bake cookies for willing traders or pass them invitations to exclusive parties.
Mr. Wilson, they said, took things to a new level: a no-nonsense business deal, the sort of financial transaction that they expect to deal with only after graduation. (Link)
Marginal Revolutionary Alex Tabarrok goes on to observe:
Of course, the authorities soon moved to quash such deals. The dean, however, did not explain why paying to get into a class is wrong but paying to get into law school is good. Hmmm....perhaps Mr. Wilson would have had better luck had he offered to pay the dean rather than another student.
So why shouldn't the Associate Dean let me auction off, say, 10 spaces to the students on the waiting list? I'd go halfsies with her. Heck, I'd even make a donation to the law school's annual fund.
Larry Ribstein has a somewhat more serious (and sensible) take on the matter:
I have a follow-up suggestion: limit enrollment of every course to some minimum required to offer the course, then let students bid, and evaluate professors based on the bids. For this purpose, it doesn't have to be real money -- just offer the students a set amount of "class cash" so they have to ration their resources. [ProfB: Hey! Wait just a darn minute. I like cold cash better than "class cash."]
... If we are going to have students evaluate teachers, let's do it in a meaningful way, with markets.
You say this is not nuanced enough -- we don't know why students are bidding high for a course and it might be for bad reasons? But students have a lot at stake in their legal education, and they are entitled to the assumption that they're mature, responsible adults. No reason not to trust the market in this case.
