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Comment by bell-cot | Hacker News Reader

High-level theory is nice. Ditto public policy savvy. And quite a few of the other questions on the 1906 exam reflect that.

But back at the coal face -

Rail yards were a very important and expensive part of a ~1906 railroad's infrastructure - both to build, and to operate. And the efficiency differences between a well-designed and poorly-designed yard were huge. A prospective RR manager who can't quickly map out a good rail yard is someone who simply does not understand the at-scale operation of a railroad.

Similarly, waybills were the core document for moving individual customer's loads around on an RR. If (fake name) EconoAir's manager at your local airport did not understand Flight Plans well enough to quickly draw one up - would you want to own EconoAir's stock, or fly on their airplanes?

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The issue seems to be one of terminology. The questions on the exam (and thus topic of the course) appear to be about technical competence at a handful of skills highly specific to the railroad industry. That's fine and valuable, but its not what most people would describe as "economics". I wouldn't expect the skills taught in an "economics" class to be concerned with the specific price of shipping a very particular bill of goods on a very specific line on a very particular railroad. I wouldn't expect "economics" to mean the fine grain details of the practical engineering challenges in laying out track. I would expect "economics" to mean some sort of underlying analysis of railroad pricing and capital expenditure practices.

A notable and interesting example I remember of "economics" being used to refer to practical skills is in "Home Economics"[0], which actually has nothing to do with home prices or underlying theories about spending in households. It's practical skills in social care, meal prep, and basic maintenance relevant to on-the-ground families.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_economics

> If (fake name) EconoAir's manager at your local airport did not understand Flight Plans well enough to quickly draw one up - would you want to own EconoAir's stock, or fly on their airplanes?

So since universities obviously do not focus on teaching that material, do you suppose that people in positions of authority at airlines don't understand flight plans?

Universities are institutions of higher learning, you can acquire the industry-specific mundane details on the job.

If you used Scheme in your CS program, you can figure out whatever tech stack your company is using. It's really not any different.

There certainly are both bachelor and master programs for airline management, air traffic control, cargo management, airline safety, etc.

https://www.vaughn.edu/degrees-programs/bachelors-degrees/ai...

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