Friday, June 28, 2013

Article on "Academic Dogs" from http://www.freebanking.org/2013/06/27/academic-dogs/

Academic dogs

by Kurt SchulerJune 27th, 2013  10:35 pm
A link from Marginal Revolution took me to a paper called "An Empirical Guide to Hiring Assistant Professors in Economics." It is as interesting for what it doesn't say as for what it does. It concludes that "top 30" Ph.D. programs in economics, which accept a bunch of quite bright college graduates every year, do a terrible job in making those who graduate capable of publishing work that academic economists find sufficiently worthwhile to accept for publication in academic journals. From all the top 30 programs combined, the average number of economics Ph.D.s in the period the authors studied was 460. Only 143 (31 percent) had at least one publication in any academic journal ranked by the authors six years after graduating. Even at Harvard, Chicago, or Berkeley, the bottom half of the class essentially published nothing. The paper is talking about graduates, and is excluding students who didn't complete their degrees. Another finding: for graduates who were not at the top of their Ph.D. cohort, Princeton, Rochester, and the University of California-San Diego seem to have provided the best preparation for writing publishable academic papers.. . .

Another interesting thing the paper leaves unsaid is what Ph.D.s who don't write academic journal articles do. The Dutch economist Arjo Klamer once wrote an essay called "Academic Dogs." (It is in David Colander and Reuven Brenner, editors, Educating Economists, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992; I haven't found it online to give a link.) He compared academic publishing to a dog show. Owners spend a lot of time training their dogs to run through some paces to impress the judges at the dog show, but how useful is that outside the arena? Klamer decided that both he and his dog would be happier by staying out of dog shows. It is implausible to me that more than 300 Ph.D.s a year from the top 30 programs have nothing to say. Rather, I strongly suspect many of them have decided that the dog show of academic publishing does not interest them. Some prefer teaching students to publishing. Others go work in nonacademic settings--consulting firms, central banks, government agencies, banks, think tanks, international organizations, etc.--and write for audiences other than the dozen people in the world who care about some narrow academic topic and are unable to make anything come of it in the world.
For recent or future Ph.D.'s who like the academic dog show, fine: you will probably do well at it. A few of you will even do work that is truly important, that changes the world a little bit or at least changes what teachers of economics teach their students about the world. For those who don't like the dog show, take heart: you were wise to have studied for your Ph.D. in economics, not English, and you have many ways of using your knowledge in a worthwhile way outside of academia, at a good salary.
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From the Vanderbilt paper:

"Going further down this table, we see that one would be better off hiring a 95th percentile graduate of a typical non-top 30 department than the 70th percentile graduate of Harvard, Chicago, U. Penn,
Stanford or Yale, or an 80th percentile graduate of Berkeley, Michigan, NYU UCLA or Columbia."

From the Vanderbilt data, average rankings plus minus standard deviation:


Department Rankings based on Graduating Cohorts' Publication Performance (1986-2000) Red is 1-4th, Green is 5-10th, Yellow is 11-15

DepartmentCoupe RnkRankingatPercentile:
Percentile99th95th90th85th80th75th70th65th60th55th50th45th40thAv Rank     Stdev
Princeton1133122222111211.7692310.725011
Rochester19105331111223122.6923082.496151
MIT511213344666663.7692312.087816
UCSD26189664453332335.3076924.250189
Harvard12244586888811116.5384622.989297
CMU3015121176535555546.7692313.585941
Northwestern7967576777777971.080123
Yale844588911111011111088.4615382.633609
UBC25241613129786444458.9230775.978594
Stanford461091011119999109109.3846151.26085
Toronto2487121113141312111098710.384622.399252
Penn3711101312121010131314151411.846152.192645
Chicago21288910101213121517123012.923085.751254
Berkeley61715171617161616151413141215.230771.589227
Duke162517161415151515141212131915.538463.430631
Minnesota211313141514131414161618172615.615383.500916
Madison151618181816171717171719161316.846151.463224
Columbia101114151719181821222320302119.153854.705425
Cornell142223222221211918191915181819.769232.278664
Davis232022212022202019181816202820.307692.839736
UM92121201918192120202023212320.461541.450022
UCLA121419192120222222212226261720.846153.262058
Penn292924242423232523232422291623.769233.192539
Maryland182629252525242325252121192724.230772.681848
NYU131920232324262627272730272224.692313.172397
USC27530292731282828283025311525.769237.473886
UIUC222828262626252424262524283126.230772.047513
Ohio173127302929272726242628242527.153852.192645
Boston282326282828302929303129222427.461542.8465
Austin203025273127293131312827252027.846153.236411
Non-top302731313030313030292931232929.307692.213015