The collapse of the econ PhD job market

Post by ActorNightly » Sat, Oct 04, 2025, 5:29 PM UTC

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #48

ActorNightly wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its C. the market doesn't follow traditional models anymore. The whole profession was basically centered around putting a dollar amount on risk. For example, lets say I give you a chance of either taking $1k now, or playing a game where you have 1 in 10 chance to win $200k. What would you do? The right answer is "sell" the risk to someone. For example, on the average, if I "buy" the game from 10 people, at a price of…

To the extent that a single person can cause economists' predictions to be off, those predictions were never good in the first place. We will always have unstable people in power, it's just human nature. If your predictions can't hold up in the face of that, then you need to refine them.

Post by monkeyelite » Sat, Oct 04, 2025, 5:56 PM UTC

lkrubner wrote: post #256

"Ordinary people—who watched their rent, groceries, and gas bills skyrocket—saw a profession more invested in protecting Democratic policy narratives than in telling the truth. The result is a self-inflicted torching of trust." This post is ridiculously partisan. The head of the Fed was Republican, the majority of the Fed has always been Republican, the money-printing response to the Covid-19 pandemic began in 2020 w…

Post by giardini » Sat, Oct 04, 2025, 6:02 PM UTC

searine wrote: post #261

giardini wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

Having an excess PhD level citizens is every free countries wet dream. Its bonkers that people think it is somehow a negative. It is a recipe for innovation. Most of those people want to do things with their knowledge, not teach classes. Most go to business who use that knowledge to innovate and increase profit. Businesses literally get an excess of highly educated workers for (almost) free, and for some reason the M…

Post by monkeyelite » Sat, Oct 04, 2025, 6:18 PM UTC

elevation wrote: post #233

pempem wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rev…

Post by oscaracso » Sat, Oct 04, 2025, 6:18 PM UTC

dotnet00 wrote: post #251

gbacon wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a broad overgeneralization unless you believe zero fat in grad schools is available for trimming.

PhDs are probably the leanest degree for a research school to support. They don't attend classes after ~2 years, mostly operate independently besides consulting with their advisor, don't take anywhere near a professor's salary, teach or TA classes, act as lab technicians, and bring in money through grants. The costs are mostly upfront in the form of providing the necessary research facilities to attract research-orie…