It seems not a week goes by that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t expose her economic illiteracy. She’s been caught assuming that NY’s offering “tax credits” to Amazon was the same as handing the mega outfit billions of dollars upfront.

Then there’s AOC’s plan to eliminate air travel, even though LaGuardia Airport is centered in her congressional district. The airport is either directly or indirectly responsible for over 63,000 jobs and $6.1 billion in wages and salaries.

Ocasio-Cortez was even hammered at Al Sharpton’s latest pay homage to me or else event. Tracy Maitland, the head of Advent Capital and Management, said, “The people campaigning against the Amazon campus are financially illiterate.” He later continued, “I partially blame AOC for the loss of Amazon. She doesn’t know what she doesn’t know…We have to make sure she’s better educated or vote her out…”

But by academia’s standards Alexandria was very well educated. She majored in economics graduating cum laude in 2011 from Boston University. Yet somehow the approximately “back then”, $200,000 price tag for tuition, room, and board served her poorly in her chosen field, in the real world.

Ocasio-Cortez’s one attempt at entrepreneurship failed miserably. Shortly after graduation, AOC founded a company aimed at publishing children’s books. In spite of being NYC subsidized the enterprise flopped; producing not a single book. The effort did, however, manage to earn a warrant served by NYS on July 6, 2017, notifying “The Boss” she owed $1,870.36 in unpaid corporate taxes.

THE CURRICULUM NEEDS CHANGING

If this is the best honors economics major from a major university can do, the curriculum needs changing. So here’s an out-of-the-box idea, with a big nod to the driving force of American small businesses (27 million of them generating about 50% of our GDP), that might prevent future graduates from earning an impractical, AOC-style degree.

How about colleges offering very substantial economics course credits to undergraduates willing to brave the real world of free enterprise? Set up a 4-year program for courageous entrepreneurs willing to chose that path. As freshmen and sophomores, students could be offered core courses in areas covering business law, bookkeeping, corporation formation, tax laws, etc. During that time they should also be decided, with guidance from pragmatic faculty advisors, which of their passions they’d like to develop into a business.

The financing? Instead of paying $60,000-$70,000 a year towards unnecessary classes, allow the budding entrepreneur to use those dollars as start-up capital. The students should have all the same options afforded to them via regular tuition/room and board payments. They can pay, or get loans, scholarships, and grants. Maybe they’d even do well enough to graduate with less debt, no debt, or even a few bucks in their pockets.

These gutsy undergrads, willingly divorcing themselves from macro-economic, all too often socialist, theorist ivory towers, would have real-life skin in the game. They’d have a chance to work hard, and join tens of millions of fellow small businessmen and women creating jobs making money, and living the American Dream.

Why not give something like this a shot?