I was at Chicago from 2009-2015. In my experience, the modal PhD course (after the first year) revolved around working through a reading list of papers the professor had chosen. Students were supposed to read the papers ahead of time. In class either the professor would present the paper or a student would. Chicago was a very intellectually stimulating environment for me. But grad school was very hard, intellectually and emotionally. I was married and had three children during grad school. But to be honest, I’m not sure if I would have finished if I had been single. The transition from consuming research to producing research is very challenging.
I would add that in the last ten years, it has become common for undergraduates to do a post-doc or internship or Master’s degree for a couple of years before applying to PhD programs. And now it is becoming increasingly common for new PhD’s to do a post-doc as well. Combined with the increased length of the PhD itself (from 4-5 years to 6-7 years), I think there’s a real concern about the opportunity cost of the training, both to the student and to society. I also worry about selection: that we’re selecting for students with low opportunity costs.
My experiences were mixed. By odd chance, my cohort at Columbia was loaded with intellectually curious students (and the department thought us unusual). So outside of class, we made our own lively seminars at restaurants almost every week. And, fortuitously, some of the younger professors were regular participants in these pop-up salons. Yes, the classes were primarily aimed at conveying technique, but some of our professors also engaged us in stimulating discussions. Ned Phelps, Jagdish Bhagwati, Heraklis Polemarchakis, Martin Osborne, Donald Dewey, and others had lively discussions in their classes. (I drew and mass produced a class t-shirt featuring a helicopter dropping money on an island, and I believe Rudi Dornbusch bought one while attending a seminar.) The dissertation process, however, was horrible, and the professors negligent—with students vanishing off without degrees because professors were just too self-preoccupied to read dissertations. 15 years later, hearing that there was a sympathetic new dean, I went back and raised holy hell about my treatment. He agreed, readmitted me without charge or penalty. I rapidly assembled the greatest dissertation committee in PhD history and wrote a new one and defended in a very short time. All this said, I steered countless students away from getting PhDs in economics because, while I enjoyed a great deal about my studies, it is a hideously inefficient and risky way to begin a career. It wastes the most productive, energetic years of a career. And there is always a high risk that a negligent or malevolent dissertation chairman or committee member will ultimately prevent you from completing your degree.
The story about Samuelson's take on the young Gauss is wonderful. Readers: don't miss it because it is in the footnote. It seems to this non-economist that Samuelson and MIT were trying to scientize economics, i.e., obtain a degree of certainty that the subject matter did not permit, a failing typical of the social sciences of the 1920s and 1930s.
Mine was policy. I had not been able to understand "where all the money went" from my parents descriptions of the Great Depression and how that coud be prevented in the future and then later on afterward Peace Corps how countries could become rich.
I'm pleased with the results (maybe too pleased).
The first turned out to be easy; just have the central bank follow Friedman and never let inflation go hugely negative. After grad school (1966-70) I discovered that inflating > 4-5% for very long was also pretty bad and should be avoided.
The second was conceptually easy for a small country: run a rule of law country with minimal distortions between internal and external relative prices, but really hard to persuade elites to do that.
Sometimes the best part of a story is buried in a footnote.
“… At this point, Gauss started crying, realizing that he would end up having to eat all of his peas. Samuelson told the story this way: “Gauss did not like peas. His parents gave him peas, and he started crying.” Samuelson thought he had told the entire story..”
George Mason University's graduate program in economics is different from most other programs. It was different when I got my Ph.D. there back in 1992 and I have sufficient contact with current students and faculty to assert that it remains different today. Because it allows for intellectual curiosity and policy interests and is less mathy than most other programs are, if you get your Ph.D. there and want to be an academic, it imposes a ceiling on your ambitions. Probably you will never teach in any graduate economics program considered to be above George Mason itself in the conventional rankings., that is, the top 50-70 programs.
The unofficial Stanford motto, on many sweatshirts:
Work. Study. Get Rich.
Sounded good to me, and a Masters degree was clearly the best economic deal for joining a private company and doing well. In college in the 70s, startups weren’t talked about so much, Apple nor Microsoft hadn’t yet created many millionaires.
Tho I didn’t come to Slovakia to get rich (and I’m very successful at that), my wife urged me to get a PhD. For status. So the wonky ideas I have for improving incentives would be taken more seriously. But raising 4 kids was enough work, and doing a good dissertation is really a lot of work. And I don’t want to just do an easier, barely passable research.
Most Central Europe colleges are still far more demanding of their students than the avg. Cal State colleges or even UC San Diego good college level.
Arnold, one thing you write about is the increasing tendency of economics to slip into the realm of sociology. I wonder, as someone from outside econ, if there are some programmatic and pedagogical differences in departments that produce these kinds of PhDs?
I get the sentiment behind this post, but my sense is that this is very much an outdated view of what an economics PhD entails. Mathematical economics is very much a minority pursuit for recent graduates. Instead, plenty of PhD students and economists interact with tech and policy folks. In addition, economics still provides some of the best training for how to learn from data, which is useful in a variety of fields.
I think the bigger question is whether economics research provides value to the world. Often it doesn’t, and this makes the writing of a thesis a bit of a cargo cult pursuit for many. But this depends on the research and the person doing it.
I was at MIT from 1989 to 1993. My experience was similar in some ways to yours - lots of chalk and talk, lots of faculty who didn't put much effort into teaching (the best was the class "cotaught" by two faculty who clearly didn't like each other and so the second came in and told us to forget everything the first one had done, that we'd have to go really fast because the first one refused to learn new stuff, and that he controlled our grades so the midterm given by the first one was irrelevant). Perhaps the best was the macro professor who was disappointed in our class's performance and so made us come by individually to get our exams and grades so he could glare at us. (I'd been a lawyer before coming to grad school, so being glared at by a professor I thought had been a very poor teacher didn't intimidate me much, but some of my classmates were very upset by the experience). But there were some who did - Hank Farber was a standout. His Labor Economics was where I learned quantitative methods. Mike Piore was a gifted teacher (and a tolerant dissertation advisor). Bob Gibbons, Jean Tirole, and Paul Joskow were all superb teachers and talked about ideas not just theory. But there were many similar experiences to yours - a class in which the professor responded to a question by telling us there were 2 kinds of economists, the kind that ask that sort of question and the kind that get invited back to testify again before congressional committees, and MIT trained the latter type. Or the announcement from the department that times to completion were slipping so they had adopted what they called the "Tiennamen Square solution" of cutting off support after 4 years rather the humane one of applying a new rule going forward but not to existing students. There was little economic history (I took mine at Harvard) and little history of thought (outside of 2 classes taught by Piore and Lance Taylor, who later left for the New School. Taylor's alternative macro class had just a couple of us in it plus a couple of outside students from other Boston area schools. He often asked us what we had done in macro that day and then made fun of it. I really enjoyed his class. All in all, however, I got what I came for in some respects. The degree has been valuable and I lucked into the Institute for Humane Studies my 2nd year. They invited me to a program in California, where I encountered Hayek for the first time. From then on, much of my learning came via IHS, Liberty Fund, etc. and haunting used book stores in Cambridge for works to help me understand the history of economic thought.
My econ Ph.D. (Duke) was a result of damn-fool stubbornness more than intellect. If I had not finished it, I would have regretted it all my life. But it was a miserable experience, with (mostly) uncaring faculty members negligent in their work.
My advice: go to grad school ONLY if you could not live with yourself if you don't.
And if you're at less than a top-10 undergrad program and a professor suggests you go to grad school, he/she probably wants to a good TA and doesn't give a $#$%^! about your life.
Not having earned a PhD in economics or other subject for that matter, I have often wondered what I missed out on. So perhaps I should take comfort from your warning. On the other hand, curiosity has driven me to read and reread many classics in economics. I can't remember anything about the micro and macro textbooks I used as an undergrad and in my undistinguished master's program in public policy. Nor do I remember my welfare economics textbook.
I did however become entranced by Anthony Downs in grad school and read and reread several of his works. Law school was where I really got interested in economics particularly Posner's Law and Economics and Epstein on Torts. Took a couple decades to outgrow law and economics but did so mainly by reading one or two economists thoroughly each year. This year has been Turgot and Charles Lindblom. If there was such a thing as an economics degree you could get from simply reading and analyzing written work that might have been a good option for me but the idea of doing econometrics and mathematical models certainly doesn't appeal to my curiosity.
I was at Chicago from 2009-2015. In my experience, the modal PhD course (after the first year) revolved around working through a reading list of papers the professor had chosen. Students were supposed to read the papers ahead of time. In class either the professor would present the paper or a student would. Chicago was a very intellectually stimulating environment for me. But grad school was very hard, intellectually and emotionally. I was married and had three children during grad school. But to be honest, I’m not sure if I would have finished if I had been single. The transition from consuming research to producing research is very challenging.
I would add that in the last ten years, it has become common for undergraduates to do a post-doc or internship or Master’s degree for a couple of years before applying to PhD programs. And now it is becoming increasingly common for new PhD’s to do a post-doc as well. Combined with the increased length of the PhD itself (from 4-5 years to 6-7 years), I think there’s a real concern about the opportunity cost of the training, both to the student and to society. I also worry about selection: that we’re selecting for students with low opportunity costs.
My experiences were mixed. By odd chance, my cohort at Columbia was loaded with intellectually curious students (and the department thought us unusual). So outside of class, we made our own lively seminars at restaurants almost every week. And, fortuitously, some of the younger professors were regular participants in these pop-up salons. Yes, the classes were primarily aimed at conveying technique, but some of our professors also engaged us in stimulating discussions. Ned Phelps, Jagdish Bhagwati, Heraklis Polemarchakis, Martin Osborne, Donald Dewey, and others had lively discussions in their classes. (I drew and mass produced a class t-shirt featuring a helicopter dropping money on an island, and I believe Rudi Dornbusch bought one while attending a seminar.) The dissertation process, however, was horrible, and the professors negligent—with students vanishing off without degrees because professors were just too self-preoccupied to read dissertations. 15 years later, hearing that there was a sympathetic new dean, I went back and raised holy hell about my treatment. He agreed, readmitted me without charge or penalty. I rapidly assembled the greatest dissertation committee in PhD history and wrote a new one and defended in a very short time. All this said, I steered countless students away from getting PhDs in economics because, while I enjoyed a great deal about my studies, it is a hideously inefficient and risky way to begin a career. It wastes the most productive, energetic years of a career. And there is always a high risk that a negligent or malevolent dissertation chairman or committee member will ultimately prevent you from completing your degree.
The story about Samuelson's take on the young Gauss is wonderful. Readers: don't miss it because it is in the footnote. It seems to this non-economist that Samuelson and MIT were trying to scientize economics, i.e., obtain a degree of certainty that the subject matter did not permit, a failing typical of the social sciences of the 1920s and 1930s.
Mine was policy. I had not been able to understand "where all the money went" from my parents descriptions of the Great Depression and how that coud be prevented in the future and then later on afterward Peace Corps how countries could become rich.
I'm pleased with the results (maybe too pleased).
The first turned out to be easy; just have the central bank follow Friedman and never let inflation go hugely negative. After grad school (1966-70) I discovered that inflating > 4-5% for very long was also pretty bad and should be avoided.
The second was conceptually easy for a small country: run a rule of law country with minimal distortions between internal and external relative prices, but really hard to persuade elites to do that.
Sometimes the best part of a story is buried in a footnote.
“… At this point, Gauss started crying, realizing that he would end up having to eat all of his peas. Samuelson told the story this way: “Gauss did not like peas. His parents gave him peas, and he started crying.” Samuelson thought he had told the entire story..”
Your reminiscence of econ grad school matches mine. Sad, isn't it?
Funny title! Thanks for the laugh.
George Mason University's graduate program in economics is different from most other programs. It was different when I got my Ph.D. there back in 1992 and I have sufficient contact with current students and faculty to assert that it remains different today. Because it allows for intellectual curiosity and policy interests and is less mathy than most other programs are, if you get your Ph.D. there and want to be an academic, it imposes a ceiling on your ambitions. Probably you will never teach in any graduate economics program considered to be above George Mason itself in the conventional rankings., that is, the top 50-70 programs.
The unofficial Stanford motto, on many sweatshirts:
Work. Study. Get Rich.
Sounded good to me, and a Masters degree was clearly the best economic deal for joining a private company and doing well. In college in the 70s, startups weren’t talked about so much, Apple nor Microsoft hadn’t yet created many millionaires.
Tho I didn’t come to Slovakia to get rich (and I’m very successful at that), my wife urged me to get a PhD. For status. So the wonky ideas I have for improving incentives would be taken more seriously. But raising 4 kids was enough work, and doing a good dissertation is really a lot of work. And I don’t want to just do an easier, barely passable research.
Most Central Europe colleges are still far more demanding of their students than the avg. Cal State colleges or even UC San Diego good college level.
There are some terrible teachers (and institutions!) who have excellent ideas and curriculum. Suffer through it.
Arnold, one thing you write about is the increasing tendency of economics to slip into the realm of sociology. I wonder, as someone from outside econ, if there are some programmatic and pedagogical differences in departments that produce these kinds of PhDs?
The description in Dornbusch’s class is hilarious and familiar.
I get the sentiment behind this post, but my sense is that this is very much an outdated view of what an economics PhD entails. Mathematical economics is very much a minority pursuit for recent graduates. Instead, plenty of PhD students and economists interact with tech and policy folks. In addition, economics still provides some of the best training for how to learn from data, which is useful in a variety of fields.
I think the bigger question is whether economics research provides value to the world. Often it doesn’t, and this makes the writing of a thesis a bit of a cargo cult pursuit for many. But this depends on the research and the person doing it.
I was at MIT from 1989 to 1993. My experience was similar in some ways to yours - lots of chalk and talk, lots of faculty who didn't put much effort into teaching (the best was the class "cotaught" by two faculty who clearly didn't like each other and so the second came in and told us to forget everything the first one had done, that we'd have to go really fast because the first one refused to learn new stuff, and that he controlled our grades so the midterm given by the first one was irrelevant). Perhaps the best was the macro professor who was disappointed in our class's performance and so made us come by individually to get our exams and grades so he could glare at us. (I'd been a lawyer before coming to grad school, so being glared at by a professor I thought had been a very poor teacher didn't intimidate me much, but some of my classmates were very upset by the experience). But there were some who did - Hank Farber was a standout. His Labor Economics was where I learned quantitative methods. Mike Piore was a gifted teacher (and a tolerant dissertation advisor). Bob Gibbons, Jean Tirole, and Paul Joskow were all superb teachers and talked about ideas not just theory. But there were many similar experiences to yours - a class in which the professor responded to a question by telling us there were 2 kinds of economists, the kind that ask that sort of question and the kind that get invited back to testify again before congressional committees, and MIT trained the latter type. Or the announcement from the department that times to completion were slipping so they had adopted what they called the "Tiennamen Square solution" of cutting off support after 4 years rather the humane one of applying a new rule going forward but not to existing students. There was little economic history (I took mine at Harvard) and little history of thought (outside of 2 classes taught by Piore and Lance Taylor, who later left for the New School. Taylor's alternative macro class had just a couple of us in it plus a couple of outside students from other Boston area schools. He often asked us what we had done in macro that day and then made fun of it. I really enjoyed his class. All in all, however, I got what I came for in some respects. The degree has been valuable and I lucked into the Institute for Humane Studies my 2nd year. They invited me to a program in California, where I encountered Hayek for the first time. From then on, much of my learning came via IHS, Liberty Fund, etc. and haunting used book stores in Cambridge for works to help me understand the history of economic thought.
My econ Ph.D. (Duke) was a result of damn-fool stubbornness more than intellect. If I had not finished it, I would have regretted it all my life. But it was a miserable experience, with (mostly) uncaring faculty members negligent in their work.
My advice: go to grad school ONLY if you could not live with yourself if you don't.
And if you're at less than a top-10 undergrad program and a professor suggests you go to grad school, he/she probably wants to a good TA and doesn't give a $#$%^! about your life.
Not having earned a PhD in economics or other subject for that matter, I have often wondered what I missed out on. So perhaps I should take comfort from your warning. On the other hand, curiosity has driven me to read and reread many classics in economics. I can't remember anything about the micro and macro textbooks I used as an undergrad and in my undistinguished master's program in public policy. Nor do I remember my welfare economics textbook.
I did however become entranced by Anthony Downs in grad school and read and reread several of his works. Law school was where I really got interested in economics particularly Posner's Law and Economics and Epstein on Torts. Took a couple decades to outgrow law and economics but did so mainly by reading one or two economists thoroughly each year. This year has been Turgot and Charles Lindblom. If there was such a thing as an economics degree you could get from simply reading and analyzing written work that might have been a good option for me but the idea of doing econometrics and mathematical models certainly doesn't appeal to my curiosity.