Last Friday, I spoke at my sons’ school’s Career Day about what’s it’s like to be an economics professor. I think I told the unvarnished truth, but please judge for yourself.
P.S. I feared this “How to Become an Econ Prof” flow chart would go over the 4th-graders’ heads, but they seemed to get the gist of it.
Mar 27 2013
In the comments, Thomas Boyle fears that the marriage premium could become an excuse for bad policies: Years ago we heard that homeownership was positively associated with all sorts of socially desirable outcomes. Now we know that public policy to promote homeownership...
Mar 26 2013
In the last few months here in the U.S. we've had a tax increase followed by a sequester. Tax hikes coupled with slower spending growth: Here on the internet, we call that "austerity." But for decades, much of the American Right boldly proclaimed that this kind of austerity was nigh-impossible. People didn't...
Mar 26 2013
Last Friday, I spoke at my sons' school's Career Day about what's it's like to be an economics professor. I think I told the unvarnished truth, but please judge for yourself.P.S. I feared this "How to Become an Econ Prof" flow chart would go over the 4th-graders' heads, but they seemed to get the gist of it.
READER COMMENTS
Martin
Mar 26 2013 at 12:07am
You use a lot of pictures of men and use “his” đ
Doug
Mar 26 2013 at 1:46am
Cute.
But I don’t think I can give you full marks for telling the unvarnished truth.
I think you should have at least hinted at how academic researchers frequently are more interested in signaling their intelligence and technical acumen than uncompromised truth-seeking. Which isn’t to say that truth-discovery doesn’t occur from the process, but rather than it frequently takes a backseat to empire building, subtle data manipulation, and mental gymnastics for their own sake.
It’s an important lesson that’s dramatically neglected among kids that age. Learning about the severe shortfalls that exist in conventional academic research is quite important for youngsters.
JLV
Mar 26 2013 at 2:30am
A real economist, of course, would have made his career day presentation in Beamer.
(A real economist, of course, will also get that joke.)
Brad D
Mar 26 2013 at 6:48am
Did you bring copies of your new book – The Case Against Education and pass them out to the students, teachers, and administrators?
Brad Hobbs
Mar 26 2013 at 7:51am
The PPT is worth going through just for the last line.
Phil
Mar 26 2013 at 11:28am
What I’m always thinking when I hear students/teachers complain at my heavily government-subsidized school.
Jack P.
Mar 26 2013 at 12:36pm
I think you should have tried to explain that in most fields, there is a real chance of not getting a tenure-track job, and that tenured or TT professors are not representative of all PhD paths. Many fail to complete a PhD, many others complete it but have no good jobs, etc.
Economics is a good field to do a PhD in, but it is not typical.
Clay
Mar 26 2013 at 4:02pm
Bryan is my hero. Except I am disappointed he is a point and click PowerPointer. LaTeX ftw!
Richard O. Hammer
Mar 26 2013 at 8:01pm
Sometime I’d like to learn Bryan’s biographical story — especially the part where he became libertarian. Given what I know, I would not expect a libertarian to come out of Berkeley and Princeton. So was there a conversion process? Or did Bryan grow up in a family with libertarian values?
Patriot
Mar 27 2013 at 3:41am
Richard:
Based on what Dr. Caplan said in a lecture, I believe his father is an engineer from California and a fairly partisan Democrat. May anecdotally evidence the StraussâHowe theory on generational cycles?
Comments are closed.