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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

#291

Post by notmyjob »

erxam wrote: post #285
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…

Economists always do this shit. They talk about the unimpeded free market being some sort of saintly state of being, convince governments to implode themselves, everything goes to shit and… guess what? Apparently the economists had nothing to do with any of it? Also, just calling the majority of economists 'Republican' doesn't explain it completely. The truth is that the Austrian School of Economics (Mises, Friedman,…

Friedman was not an Austrian. You are ignorant of basic facts. Austrians are fringe and have almost no influence within mainstream econ, and beyond that Austrians are closer to Chomsky than Burke.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#292

Post by sarchertech »

monkeyelite wrote: post #273
sarchertech wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The PhD student segregation was blatant even going back a few decades, but it was based on country of origin not race. You’d have a Chinese professor and all his students were Chinese, an Indian professor and all hers were Indian etc… The American born professors tended to have mostly American born students, but it was a bit more mixed. It’s hard to know whether this was based on the professor’s preference or the stu…

Of course the intent is not malicious. As a student you want someone who speaks your language and someone who understands you. And similarly for professors. The absurdity is Americans assuming people won’t express in-group preference.

The intent doesn’t have to be malicious for the outcome to be harmful or outright illegal in this case.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#293

Post by verteu »

giardini wrote: post #278
lvl155 wrote: post #61

I know this is controversial but there are so many foreign students in the PhD programs across the country. Some programs actually favor non-US students. Some professors quite explicitly pick their own race despite that being highly illegal. I think higher ed in the US became a major scam.

This has probably been true forever. I considered applying for an internship at a medical center back in the 80's. My adviser laughed and told me it was a slot created by an Indian professor and was intended to be filled by an Indian student.

"true forever" to what extent?

In 1979, 14% of PhDs went to non-citizens. In 2024, it's 38%.

(Table 1-6 in https://ncses.nsf.gov/surveys/earned-doctorates/2024#data )

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#294

Post by erxam »

notmyjob wrote: post #291
erxam wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economists always do this shit. They talk about the unimpeded free market being some sort of saintly state of being, convince governments to implode themselves, everything goes to shit and… guess what? Apparently the economists had nothing to do with any of it? Also, just calling the majority of economists 'Republican' doesn't explain it completely. The truth is that the Austrian School of Economics (Mises, Friedman,…

Friedman was not an Austrian. You are ignorant of basic facts. Austrians are fringe and have almost no influence within mainstream econ, and beyond that Austrians are closer to Chomsky than Burke.

If they have no influence, then why are they found in every single right-wing government as the architects of the new economic model?

Is Javier Milei not influential? Who or what is influential, then?

> Friedman was not an Austrian

Yeah, ok, he was from the Chicago school. Same shit to me. Whatever mental masturbation they dedicated themselves to is irrelevant to me. What is relevant is which policies they championed, influenced and implemented.

And they seem pretty indistinguishable from each other. At the end of the day, they all loved the holy and sanctimonious free market like a harsh but fair deity who would grind all the undeserving and the rabble into dust.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#295

Post by awesome_dude »

kelipso wrote: post #253
awesome_dude wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Now you’re backing up to false claims lol. Seems to me you are clinging on to a hot take that you will do anything to defend. No point in a discussion with you.

Your false claim is that somehow I have my head in the sand for daring to point out that you are providing anecdotes which are feelings based (there are zero hard facts in your claim, no numbers, no examples, just "looks like more people")

The pointlessness of your claims is upsetting you, because you've been found out. I get it, you thought that you could get away with BS, but you got called out instead.

If you have hard facts, that are credible and verifiable, you can post them at any time.

You don't have those, that's why you resorted to insults.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#296

Post by corimaith »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #250
corimaith wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've asking multiple posters to give a specific policy example to critique and so far all of you have been unable to do so, instead dancing around and critiquing vague notions of a possibility of bias without giving concrete examples. Very postmodern, but this is why actual policymakers don't listen to critique like this.

Ok, cutting taxes to the very rich while raising them on middle and lower classes and cutting services. This was part of the big beautiful bill. This is 'logical' from the point of view of the billionaire class, but in terms of the economy that everyone else lives in, things will be worse for them.

>Ok, cutting taxes to the very rich while raising them on middle and lower classes and cutting services. This was part of the big beautiful bill. This is 'logical' from the point of view of the billionaire class

Deciding who benefits or not from legislation is not a Economist's domain, their work is descriptive, not normative. You're critiquing politicians here for prioritizing GDP, but that is divorced from your critique of economics. The economist will only tell you what they think will happen with regard to the economy if you pass a bill or not given the goals you've outlined to them.

https://taxfoundation.org/blog/big-beautiful-bill-impact-def...

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61387

Well you look at analysis here, do you then disagree with the predictions of the bill and the methodology used, and if so, what is your better analysis here with supposedly more refined epistemic assumptions?

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#297

Post by oscaracso »

wasabi991011 wrote: post #252
Retric wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Matter is not continuous and yet we don’t need atoms to predict how a metal sheet will bend. At sufficient detail atomic structure has a huge impact on how a metal sheet bends. Metallurgy seriously investigates at this level. Hand waving details is fine when discussing with friends, it’s not a sound foundation for serious academic research. Also, the degree to which the weather is unpredictable 2+ weeks out is some…

> Hand waving details is fine when discussing with friends, it’s not a sound foundation for serious academic research. It's how physics worked for hundreds of years. Make a handwavy model, find out it works on some cases but breaks down on others, then make a slightly less handwavy model the next time. Metallurgy considering atomic structure is a very new concept, and was not needed for the first millenias of metalwo…

The history of physics is the exact opposite of what you say. Models were subject to considerable criticism and refinement on theoretical, philosophical, and aesthetic grounds. Newton did not discover universal gravitation because Kepler's laws broke down. Maxwell did not discover his correction because Ampère's laws broke down. Einstein did not discover relativity because Newtonian mechanics broke down. Investigation proceeded along different lines altogether and was accompanied by a degree of scrutiny not to be characterized as 'handwavy'.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#298

Post by monkeyelite »

sarchertech wrote: post #292
monkeyelite wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course the intent is not malicious. As a student you want someone who speaks your language and someone who understands you. And similarly for professors. The absurdity is Americans assuming people won’t express in-group preference.

The intent doesn’t have to be malicious for the outcome to be harmful or outright illegal in this case.

I agree, we should use policy to prevent bad outcomes.

Re: The collapse of the econ PhD job market

#299

Post by araes »

kenjackson wrote: post #188
kadushka wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this fact is well-known and has been widely discussed. The first two google search results provide the stats: https://students.bowdoin.edu/bowdoin-review/features/death-b... https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulweinstein/2023/08/28/admini...

The numbers are alarming, but I feel like seeing more details would be really helpful. For example MIT and CalTech both have numbers that indicate something like 7x more non-faculty staff than faculty. That sounds crazy, but is it? I'd love to know more detail about the distribution of people to those non-faculty roles. I feel like this is an example where we can get almost everyone behind reducing costs at college b…

There's some examples in the first link, with the implication they're representative (unknown whether they are, yet, "detail about the distribution")

> Purdue administrator: a “$172,000 per year associate vice provost had been hired to oversee the work of committees charged with considering a change in the academic calendar” who defended their role to a Bloomberg reporter by stating “‘[my] job is to make sure these seven or eight committees are aware of what’s going on in the other committees.’”

> serve primarily as liaisons between bureaucratic arms. “Health Promotion Specialist”, “Student Success Manager,” and “Senior Coordinator, Student Accountability” are all positions currently available on higheredjobs.com. A Harvard Crimson article considered the university’s recent Faculty of Arts and Science (FAS) “Task Force on Visual Culture and Signage”, a 24 member-strong committee including 9 administrators.

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