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The collapse of the econ PhD job market

chrisbrunet.com

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Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#231

Post by giardini »

kenjackson wrote: post #40

UCSD this year said they are not taking any new math PhD students due to the fiscal situation. The world of academia is in more flux than I've seen in recent memory.

We've been producing far more PhD graduates than we need for decades. Each year a relative few get jobs (e.g., university professor) appropriate to the training, while the rest are unceremoniously dumped by the railroad track to fend for themselves. Same for MS, BS, BA et al. Overall we have far more highly-trained people than we need for most all degree programs.

It's not like the USA needs a butt-load of "math PhD's".

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#232

Post by awesome_dude »

kelipso wrote: post #229
awesome_dude wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An anecdote describing feels is political. This is why i want hard facts.

It’s not feels when admin has grown massively in staff while other staff, faculty and students remain the same lol. It’s really not interesting talking to someone who actively and proudly places their head in the sand.

You literally presented an anecdote on the feelings of "someone you know"

1. It's not my head in the sand. 2. Do you have any actual hard, credible, facts?

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#233

Post by elevation »

pempem wrote: post #50
kenjackson wrote: post #40

UCSD this year said they are not taking any new math PhD students due to the fiscal situation. The world of academia is in more flux than I've seen in recent memory.

This is some long horizon impact. Really just wildly unfortunate to see a disruption that feels unique. It's not due to war, even if academics could 'flee' to another institution, its a discarding of the prioritization of knowledge generation. The thing humanity has been built on.

Oddly, the actual threat to knowledge generation? Institutions that absorb societal-scale science budgets while perpetuating systemic fraud.

Institutional administrators confiscate 50, 60, 70% of every research grant.

Institutions demand published work even when results do not warrant it, and demote professors honest enough to document a null result.

The peer review system then rubber stamps papers with no actual review or reproduction. Journals blacklist professors who withhold endorsement.

The result? 90%+ of academic science is fraud. But which 90%? We need to drastically reform this system.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#234

Post by kelipso »

awesome_dude wrote: post #232
kelipso wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not feels when admin has grown massively in staff while other staff, faculty and students remain the same lol. It’s really not interesting talking to someone who actively and proudly places their head in the sand.

You literally presented an anecdote on the feelings of "someone you know" 1. It's not my head in the sand. 2. Do you have any actual hard, credible, facts?

You don’t seem to be able to distinguish between an anecdote on feelings as opposed to anecdote on facts. That’s unfortunate but it’s not something I can help you with. So I will just leave you with your head in the sand.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#235

Post by aprilthird2021 »

array_key_first wrote: post #224
aprilthird2021 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In CS there's a long term payoff bc tech has the money to invest in R&D even in an economy like this one

The payout is very, very long term and honestly you probably don't come out ahead. Starting your career 10 years earlier (effectively) and immediately progressing in your career probably gets you further. Especially if you look towards management, which is where the money is (usually, million dollar AI research salaries is a new thing).

I don't think this is always true. AI research big payouts aren't even a new thing. It was common 10 years ago for big name professors to get hired by Google etc. and bring the whole lab with them.

Also a PHD is not 10 years long? You start your career 4-5 years after a typical BS in CS

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#236

Post by awesome_dude »

kelipso wrote: post #234
awesome_dude wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You literally presented an anecdote on the feelings of "someone you know" 1. It's not my head in the sand. 2. Do you have any actual hard, credible, facts?

You don’t seem to be able to distinguish between an anecdote on feelings as opposed to anecdote on facts. That’s unfortunate but it’s not something I can help you with. So I will just leave you with your head in the sand.

Please, stop posting false claims and anecdotes.

An anecdote is not data, not ever.

No matter how you try to spin things, your claim was worth less than the recycled electrons it rode in on.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#237

Post by Retric »

ls612 wrote: post #228
Retric wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Irrational isn’t the same thing as unpredictable. Biology was forced to deal with the insanity of biochemistry because that’s what is actually happening. Economics can’t get away from the innate complexity of actual humans if it wants to be actually useful for more than just propaganda.

You misunderstand the difficulty. We don't have (and likely won't ever have) the ability to read people's thoughts and say what they were thinking when they made their choices. In order to do any analysis of human choices you must impose assumptions on the process because otherwise you can say that "they were thinking xyz" and there is no way to falsify that. Economics chooses to impose assumptions that peoples obser…

Rationality isn’t an option because it’s wrong. There’s literally zero reason to invest any time into models using it whatsoever when the opportunity to look for something that actually works exists.

You don’t need to read people’s minds to predict their behavior at sufficient granularity to be useful. Economics is blessed with plenty of opportunities to collect high quality real world data without needing to conduct arbitrary experiments.

How much gas will this specific gas station sell on date X. Build whatever models you want at whatever scale is relevant and they face the brutal truth of a knowable answer to judge them. That’s how science progresses not arbitrary assumptions to make modeling easier.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#238

Post by ls612 »

Retric wrote: post #237
ls612 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misunderstand the difficulty. We don't have (and likely won't ever have) the ability to read people's thoughts and say what they were thinking when they made their choices. In order to do any analysis of human choices you must impose assumptions on the process because otherwise you can say that "they were thinking xyz" and there is no way to falsify that. Economics chooses to impose assumptions that peoples obser…

Rationality isn’t an option because it’s wrong. There’s literally zero reason to invest any time into models using it whatsoever when the opportunity to look for something that actually works exists. You don’t need to read people’s minds to predict their behavior at sufficient granularity to be useful. Economics is blessed with plenty of opportunities to collect high quality real world data without needing to conduct…

"Newtonian mechanics isn't an option because it is wrong. There’s literally zero reason to invest any time into models using it whatsoever when the opportunity to look for something that actually works exists."

Do you see the issue here when I frame it this way? The core microeconomic assumption of people having preferences which are complete, reflexive and transitive (these are formal mathematical definitions! They don't require a whole lot to hold!) has been incredibly useful in the 20th and 21st centuries much like understanding Newtonian mechanics was in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Besides this, you are still not engaging with the philosophy of science point that I am making. Because of the fact that humans have this pesky thing called free will, unless we impose some assumptions on their thinking nothing we study about causality in the behavior of humans is falsifiable. Maybe you eat because you feel hungry. Maybe you eat because you worship bread as a god. I fundamentally can't say either way without making assumptions that you likely find unobjectionable.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#239

Post by Retric »

ls612 wrote: post #238
Retric wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rationality isn’t an option because it’s wrong. There’s literally zero reason to invest any time into models using it whatsoever when the opportunity to look for something that actually works exists. You don’t need to read people’s minds to predict their behavior at sufficient granularity to be useful. Economics is blessed with plenty of opportunities to collect high quality real world data without needing to conduct…

"Newtonian mechanics isn't an option because it is wrong. There’s literally zero reason to invest any time into models using it whatsoever when the opportunity to look for something that actually works exists." Do you see the issue here when I frame it this way? The core microeconomic assumption of people having preferences which are complete, reflexive and transitive (these are formal mathematical definitions! They…

> Do you see the issue here when I frame it this way?

Honestly no.

Newton mechanics can be accurate to 20 decimal places, that’s currently indistinguishable from reality in relevant and well understood contexts. Making Newtonian Mechanics actually useful.

The core microeconomic assumption is never anywhere close to that accurate. It works except XYZ which doesn’t apply is acceptable, it never works isn’t.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#240

Post by quantumgarbage »

corimaith wrote: post #226
array_key_first wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economic theory in western nations is so hilariously skewed towards free market capitalist think that obvious models are just straight up missed, or sometimes obviously wrong conclusions are drawn. Most economics start with the understanding that the answer or cause is something about free market forces, and then work backwards. For example, when talking about the economics of healthcare (or anything else, but lets s…

>But, economists will just assume it is, because they assume everything is a free market, and then apply free market dynamics. Basically, they skip step 1, and go to step 1000. Which economist are you referring to here? It's hard to even see what specific policy conclusions you're critiquing here, beyond a vague strawman against "free market assumptions".

That isn't a vague strawman, that's a great point. Economists work from assumptions, which can be flawed in two ways: they can be blatantly wrong (see the work Kahneman and Tversky did on the rational individual hypothesis) and they can be unfalsifiable (you can't always gather data about the assumption itself). There is a good essay on this from Tirole (yet a very mainstream economist) here: https://www.tse-fr.eu/sites/default/files/TSE/documents/doc/...
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