21–30 of 73 posts
Wow. Looks like Harvard's Class of 1906-ish was expected to understand and operate parts of the real-world economy. In America. How times have changed!
> How times have changed! Have they? What's changed, specifically, in Harvard's various programs in the last 118 years that lead you to your implied conclusion that their business and economics curricula have worsened?
Wow. Looks like Harvard's Class of 1906-ish was expected to understand and operate parts of the real-world economy. In America. How times have changed!
The snark is uncalled for, especially because Harvard does have a (fairly decent) engineering program at the undergrad level, as well as the fact that the 2 most popular concentrations are Econ and CS. Nor does this kind of snark actually add any value to the discussion in HN and clearly breaks multiple rules of HN [0] [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
"The majority — 58 percent — of Harvard’s graduating class will immediately enter the workforce, and more than half will take jobs in finance, tech, or consulting..." - https://features.thecrimson.com/2024/senior-survey/after-har...
And look at their current Economics electives -
https://economics.harvard.edu/sites/hwpi.harvard.edu/files/e...
- which, if you're going into finance, consulting, public policy, or political ideology, look great. But if you want to understand or manage a real-physical-world company? Maybe Econ 1745 - "Corporate Finance" would be useful?
And Harvard's own numbers here - https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/05/harvard-award... - suggest that that "fairly decent" engineering program is a puny fraction of the undergraduate population. And maybe has a pretty poor RoI on its Harvard-sized tuition, given that Harvard feels the need to argue that prospective applicants shouldn't just ignore it, in favor of well-known engineering programs, because "community and location": https://college.harvard.edu/student-life/student-stories/why...
Wow. Looks like Harvard's Class of 1906-ish was expected to understand and operate parts of the real-world economy. In America. How times have changed!
[1] https://drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu/research-papers
[2] https://drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu/sites/scholar.harvard.ed...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you disagree? I understand the scolding and you may consider it irrelevant to answer my question but I am curious about the intentions of those who push back in this way.
> Do you disagree? I understand the scolding and you may consider it irrelevant to answer my question but I am curious about the intentions of those who push back in this way. Meta-question on the emphasis above: are you (uoaei) and bell-cot the same user?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you disagree? I understand the scolding and you may consider it irrelevant to answer my question but I am curious about the intentions of those who push back in this way.
> Do you disagree Read the first paragraph > about the intentions of those who push back in this way Follow the HN guidelines (I myself have fallen foul of them on occasion). Low quality snark is not the kind of discourse that has value on this forum. And eaganist brings up a good point.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The snark is uncalled for, especially because Harvard does have a (fairly decent) engineering program at the undergrad level, as well as the fact that the 2 most popular concentrations are Econ and CS. Nor does this kind of snark actually add any value to the discussion in HN and clearly breaks multiple rules of HN [0] [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
"Like previous graduates, most seniors plan to hold jobs in the finance, consulting, and technology sectors..." - https://features.thecrimson.com/2021/senior-survey/after-har... "The majority — 58 percent — of Harvard’s graduating class will immediately enter the workforce, and more than half will take jobs in finance, tech, or consulting..." - https://features.thecrimson.com/2024/senior-survey/after-har... And look…
> which, if you're going into finance, consulting, public policy, or political ideology, look great. But if you want to understand or manage a real-physical-world company? Maybe Econ 1745 - "Corporate Finance" would be useful?
Are you saying that the "Railroad Practice" elective is directly comparable to the "Corporate Finance" elective of today?
If anything, I'd say that Railroad Practice is best compared to "Using Big Data to Solve Economic and Social Problems" in that they're both focused on some of the biggest economic facilitators of their respective days, rail and data science. And Harvard's other electives seem similarly tailored, allowing people to get a grasp of fields of practice that can yield them a substantial advantage in practice, e.g in leveraging globalization or serving underserved markets.
Your other points aren't comparative to the Harvard of the day but rather speculative ("a puny fraction" and its suggested impact), so there's not much I can do to speak to them.
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Tangent: it'd be an interesting analytic exercise to compare courses and curricula year by year and see what percentage of electives have generalized, what percentage have specialized, and to get a better grasp of how a school's programs are both adapting to and anticipating current and future economics landscapes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Do you disagree? I understand the scolding and you may consider it irrelevant to answer my question but I am curious about the intentions of those who push back in this way. Meta-question on the emphasis above: are you (uoaei) and bell-cot the same user?
I think this was a confusing use of "this".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Do you disagree Read the first paragraph > about the intentions of those who push back in this way Follow the HN guidelines (I myself have fallen foul of them on occasion). Low quality snark is not the kind of discourse that has value on this forum. And eaganist brings up a good point.
And of course you feel like it's your job to tell others what has value and what not? Why do you feel the entitlement to this?
It's in poor form to do citizen-policing pretty much anywhere let alone an internet forum, but I won't begrudge the user their frustrations over something that's undeniably a problem.
Heh.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The snark is uncalled for, especially because Harvard does have a (fairly decent) engineering program at the undergrad level, as well as the fact that the 2 most popular concentrations are Econ and CS. Nor does this kind of snark actually add any value to the discussion in HN and clearly breaks multiple rules of HN [0] [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
"Like previous graduates, most seniors plan to hold jobs in the finance, consulting, and technology sectors..." - https://features.thecrimson.com/2021/senior-survey/after-har... "The majority — 58 percent — of Harvard’s graduating class will immediately enter the workforce, and more than half will take jobs in finance, tech, or consulting..." - https://features.thecrimson.com/2024/senior-survey/after-har... And look…
A pure Econ degree doesn't put you on management or leadership tracks in most companies.
Most are practitioners who were sponsored by their employer to attend an MBA, or were recruited out of college for an LDP (eg. Abbvie and UIUC CS/Biotech, Danaher and CMU MechE, P&G and CMU/UMich/OSU/UIUC ChemE/MechE).
The employment stats you provided aren't anymore different from similar peer programs with an Engineering bias like UC Berkeley [0], UCLA [1], or UW [2].
Finance, High Tech, and Consulting are always the trifecta for high paying white collar jobs no matter which program you attend.
I think you have this weird notion or stereotype that it's only "HAHVAD" grad that run the world like an evil cabal. In reality, there are plenty of equally selective public schools with similar outcomes and that have a similar impact (eg. The ones I listed above).
[0] - https://career.berkeley.edu/employers/learn-about-the-campus...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Like previous graduates, most seniors plan to hold jobs in the finance, consulting, and technology sectors..." - https://features.thecrimson.com/2021/senior-survey/after-har... "The majority — 58 percent — of Harvard’s graduating class will immediately enter the workforce, and more than half will take jobs in finance, tech, or consulting..." - https://features.thecrimson.com/2024/senior-survey/after-har... And look…
> https://economics.harvard.edu/sites/hwpi.harvard.edu/files/e... > which, if you're going into finance, consulting, public policy, or political ideology, look great. But if you want to understand or manage a real-physical-world company? Maybe Econ 1745 - "Corporate Finance" would be useful? Are you saying that the "Railroad Practice" elective is directly comparable to the "Corporate Finance" elective of today? If an…
It's a good course (I had mentees who took it)