From a paper presented at the American Economic Association meetings last week:
Comparing four cohorts of economics Ph.D.s by year graduated (from 1997 through 2011), the study found that while a majority of those who are employed as economists still enter academe, that share is going down. And while salaries for those in business and industry exceeded those in academe throughout the period studied, the time span saw salaries in government grow such that they too now exceed those in academe.
and
Marriage, the research finds, benefits men and hurts women – if one judges by salary. Men who are married at the time they earn their doctorates see a 15 percent salary boost during the first five years of employment, compared to single men. And men who get married during that period see a 25 percent boost.
The picture is different for women. For them, getting married is associated with a 23 percent penalty in salary growth, compared to single women. The paper speculates that this reflects “compromises incurred in a two-career search.”
This is, in my view, a significant development and underscores the need for Higher Ed institutions to start to become more flexible in the operational definition of “faculty”. More specifically, Universities should start to consider industry/private enterprise “affiliate” faculty. Such faculty could teach courses, offer ON line supplements, and be able to supervise students. Academic purists will, of course, gasp at this concept because, after all, faculty are special and privileged and we should not extend those rights to the private sector world.
Of course, that is precisely the attitude that will lead to the extinction (by market forces) of some Universities (particularly public ones).
So suppose there is some hot shit economist out there at, oh I don’t know, Goldman-Sachs, who has developed a set of economic models for the evolution of global economic power out to the year 2050. I would think a) that person could teach a really interesting class and b) students would benefit from working on this model and c) most importantly, said person might actually be interested in broadening their portfolio to include an academic appointment. Wise schools would grab this resource and make them an affiliated faculty.
I like dogs view. We should be offering courses in new and expanding fields (like the economics of the internet and search) and economists at facebook or amazon with both enjoy teaching for the experience and to attract new talent.
It also suggests if universities don’t respond to outside markets, we’ll lose to talent to institutions other than universities.
Sadly, dog and flyonawall seem unable to think outside of the envelope of a capitalist economy. Such an economy, based on never-ending growth, is already making major parts of the world unlivable. When dog and flyonawall find an industrial economist with interesting models for a steady-state economy, they should bring her/him around for a look-see.
My post had nothing to do with continued growth, lack of sustainability and the like and there is no reason interpret it that way. As self-evident by Old Man’s post, Universities need to open up new areas of intellectual inquiry and that isn’t going to happen with extant staid (ossified) faculty.
Dear dog. Sorry. I was thrown off track by your “Universities should start to consider industry/private enterprise “affiliate” faculty.” I assumed, apparently with inadequate thought, that “industry/private enterprise” would be unlikely to harbor the economists that are so badly needed.
my point is that Universities need to evolve their concept of “faculty” in order to broaden their teaching mission. Old dogs can’t learn new tricks, students need to learn new tricks, old dogs should not be teaching students …
I don’t know, dog, in what was their old age (for their time), Beethoven and Bach did pretty well. Verdi too. Ninth Symphony anyone, Mass in B Minor?
I’m told that Galileo completed and published his greatest work in his 70’s, while under house arrest.
Seems to me those “old dogs” did pretty well.
Sophocles did pretty well in his old age too. Hey, dog, no need for the age discrimination.
UO presently has a type of position known as “Professor of Practice” for people from outside academia. There are several departments which have people in this kind of position. I believe that UO picks up part of the tab, outside the regular departmental budget line.
Maybe Ben Bernanke would be interested? George Shultz? Both of them even ex-academics but cleansed by years in the practical world, decades in the case of Shultz.
The latter is 93 so perhaps too much of an “old dog” for some people.
I am quite familiar with the Professor of Practice category. I am arguing that it should be significantly ramped up . The budget process for this, however, needs to be much better formalized.
In some cases, these are courtesy appointments, in others, there is funding attached but its unclear where that funding comes from.
Despite all the needling about “age” – there is a serious issue here involving how we should be training our students in the year 2014+. Should we continue the tradition going back all the way to the University of Bologna or should we wake up and recognize that the world is a lot more complex than it was just 20 years ago when the bulk of UO faculty were “trained” in their respective disciplines (which are now vanishing or blurring or merging with other areas).
Universities, like everything else, need to evolve. I am simply proposing an evolutionary pathway which I think would improve the University, create new curriculum opportunities, and help establish a more functional model on how we educate and attract students.
In ramping up the Professor of Practice and considering the economics, we must also be clear about the value we are getting. The only Professor of Practice I am aware of is paid a considerable sum to teach a course or two. i don’t see how that model, whether it’s one or 30, really has a net positive impact on the University. Sure, it’s great for those students and maybe for departmental name recognition but how does it really contribute to the overall scholarship of the university?
To anon
Universities are by in large structured on departmental based disciplines. This served the world quite well, but the world is now quite blurry in this regard. Scholarship is improved when you
add competence and experience in these emerging areas of
interdisciplinary inquiry and problem solving that the traditional disciplines are not well equipped to deal with (although faculty in those traditional departments will argue until the end of time that this is not the case).
And the sentiment “sure its great for students” … “but how does it really contribute to overall scholarship …? Teaching and training our students in relevant emerging areas is contributing to overall scholarship – or are traditional faculty the sole gatekeepers of scholarship?
dog
In your response, you should quote me correctly….I didn’t say “sure it’s great for students…”, I said “sure its great for those students”. In the case I was referring to, the PoP is a “fly-in”, teaching one or two classes to ~35-40 students, making a nice chunk of change because that PoP is a “name”. I maintain that I don’t see how that use of the PoP elevates our “overall” scholarship.
No doubt, as you state, we need to move beyond disciplinary silos….but we’ve been having that argument for decades and I’m not convinced our current vision of the PoP will help that much.
Maybe it will change as others find ways to bring in these PoP’s in different ways but I suspect we will always struggle with having them really integrated into teaching and research as full-time faculty are. Plus, they aren’t faculty because they do quite well financially outside the walls of academia which means we often have to pay them more.
Maybe we should find ways to make full-time faculty PoP’s – maybe we need to export more not import more.
I don’t know about Bologna, but if Galileo is still available at Pisa — or is it Padua? — I think UO should make him an offer!
The UO Econ department has Tim Duy as a full-time Professor of Practice. He has a UO PhD, teaches, runs the Oregon Economic Forum, prepares monthly forecasts of Oregon economic growth, and is regularly quoted in the state and national press on macroeconomic policy. (e.g. in the NYT, a few weeks ago.) He’s an excellent part of our department.