clueless college students

Why would you pay an analyst a lot of money to use standard and basic methods? There is no difference between a low level analyst and a plumber.

[campbell]

Originally Posted by urbansombrero

It is true. The large majority of PhDs in Economics want to stay in academia and dont want to work in industry. Professors have it made: good pay, no supervision, flexible work schedule and good work environment. It is sweet.
The ones that couldnt find a tenure track job end up working in industry.

Yes, yes, profs at third (and fourth) tier schools are just rolling in the dough.

Would you like to quantify:
1. how many econ PhDs there are
2. how many tenure track positions are available that actually pay highly (and if you're at Podunk U, you're not going to be picking up huge consulting checks, either)

It's not just Econ where this is going on - all sorts of fields are such that you could get a PhD from a top school, get a load of desultory post-doc positions, and then your best shot at tenure is in North Dakota. I'm not saying that industry is necessarily better (obviously, tenure is not a possibility there), but making out that academics the world over have a sweet life because the few dozen at the top schools do is a bit of a stretch.

Mary, good point but have you looked into the academic job market for economics and business? It is much better than the science job market. Much much better.

By the way, alot of profs at podunk U do squat and only have to teach a few courses.
What is so bad about making 100k a year to teach 4 courses a year and serve on a few committees?

[alphatmw]

if a student graduates college and is unaware of what he was supposed to do to prepare for the next step, this is the colleges fault, PERIOD. where else is this information supposed to come from?

[The Miz]

Originally Posted by alphatmw

if a student graduates college and is unaware of what he was supposed to do to prepare for the next step, this is the colleges fault, PERIOD. where else is this information supposed to come from?

Average tuition at a decent school is something like 30k per year, 4 years, 120k... You would think the college should teach you something useful for all that money...

[JoshChicago]

I think a big difference is that in high school there are tons of people telling the kids what they should be doing to prepare for college. In college, there are few, if any, people telling kids what they should be doing to prepare for a career.

Also, in high school most students have a similar goal (college), and so they pass useful advice along to each other. In college, the future goals of students are many and varied, so there is less of this useful sharing of advice.

The economics departments publish placement records for their PhD program.

List of good Econ departments:

http://ideas.repec.org/top/top.econdept.html


Now have a look at the program placements for some of these departments:

Harvard: http://www.economics.harvard.edu/fil...-2010-2011.pdf

LSE: http://econ.lse.ac.uk/archive/phdc/1011/phdc/

NYU Stern (I couldnt get the Econ placement): http://www.stern.nyu.edu/programs-ad...ents/index.htm

MIt: http://econ-www.mit.edu/graduate/ph.d./career

Yale: http://www.econ.yale.edu/graduate/pl...t/outcomes.htm

Wisconsin: http://www.econ.wisc.edu/grad/placement.html

Maryland: http://www.econ.umd.edu/graduate/prospective/placement

Duke: http://econ.duke.edu/masters-program/placement

Boston College: http://fmwww.bc.edu/ec-c/docs/EC.placement.2006.php

Minnesota: http://www.econ.umn.edu/graduate/placement_archive.html

Toronto: http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/ind...uate/placement

hopkins: http://econ.jhu.edu/graduate/recent-placements/

If you look at B-school placement, it is even better.

[campbell]

Originally Posted by urbansombrero

Mary, good point but have you looked into the academic job market for economics and business? It is much better than the science job market. Much much better.

By the way, alot of profs at podunk U do squat and only have to teach a few courses.
What is so bad about making 100k a year to teach 4 courses a year and serve on a few committees?

No, they don't make 100K/yr at podunk U....and I'm talking about the "average" faculty member, not the 70-yr-old prof emeritus (of course, that was when I was looking at stats at TIAA-CREF back about 5 years ago)

But if you'd like to to some other evidence, I've got a open mind. T-C had a nice swathe of academia as its customers, but by no means the entire market. If you'd like to share stats from elsewhere, I'm willing to listen.

[campbell]

btw, urbansombrero - the results of a handful of ppl per year is not all that interesting to me. I'm asking about academic salary distributions.

Originally Posted by campbell

btw, urbansombrero - the results of a handful of ppl per year is not all that interesting to me. I'm asking about academic salary distributions.

I think the placement on the websites is the full list. You are asking for teh salary distribution for what position?