Choosing a PhD Advisor

Tyler Cowen has a discussion on how one cultivates PhD students and how PhD students choose an advisor. Bob Murphy in the comments section refers to this sort of discussion as "Inside Baseball" and he expresses his desire for more discussion along these lines.  Tyler's presentation, as in most of his discussions, is a model of "pithyness" and does present a simple theory.  I would hope we can keep to a simple theory, but also have a slightly more extended discussion.

The PhD process is at the center of the sociology of the profession.  Think of the labor market in broader terms and think of Mark Granoveter's work on Getting a Job, where he first developed his 'the strength of weak ties' thesis.  The central idea is that careers are made not through atomistic markets, but instead through loose connections which open doors.

Work on the labor market in economics, most notably Daniel Hamermesh, discusses how fundamental the role of the advisor is in the career path of an economist.  It is the rare situation where a freshly minted PhD has a career trajectory widely different from the one the advisor is able to orchestrate.  This becomes even more evident as we move down the academic pecking order where the ability to leap-frog the traditional prejudicies becomes essential for obtaining prestigious professional positions.

The single most important characteristic of the advisor is his/her creativity and energy as an economic thinker.  Your advisor has to be known professionally for something and the more positive that reputation the better you will be, the less positive the more obstacles you will have to overcome.

But holding that constant, lets agree on some parameters of the discussion.  Professional success is defined for the sake of this discussion as tenure in a top 20 department, and writing papers and books that say something of lasting value about economic theory and/or economic policy.  We don't want to just go to good schools and obtain good appointmens and say nothing of lasting value.  That is obtainable, be smart but boringly non-descript in your work.  The modal economist at a top 20 department fits this description.  Presumably the Austrian Economists blog spot is not the best place for that discussion, our discussion has to be about something else.

To achieve professional success and influence one must publish in top tier outlets (most important are general journals, but field journals can work in some instances) and top university presses.  One's work must be viewed as a productive input into the scholarly production process of others in order to get the citations which reflect influence. 

Again, lets never forget the content of what someone is saying matters for the way we want to frame the discussion.  Stealth strategy Austrianism DOES NOT WORK to do anything but perhaps advance an individual's career, but it doesn't advance professional influence.  But neither does hand in the sand Austrianism work to either advance an individuals career nor professional influence.  Like a religious movement that doesn't permit procreation, an intellectual movement that doesn't produce PhD students and professional success will die out within short order.  But we do have to remember that a religious movement that doesn't have content also dies out.  Science and religion, in this regard, are not that different as both are ultimately intellectual movements that exhibit strong sociological forces in their advancement and their decline.

So we can agree on the goal --- tenure in a top 20 department based on work that has been published and continues to be published in top journals and top univesity presses that advance the core ideas of market process economics and classical liberal political economy.  So how do we get people who can meet those goals within the tough competitive field of professional academic economics.

First, encourage people to go to the best PhD program they can go to that will pay their full way.  We can all agree on what the top 5 schools are: Princeton, Harvard, Chicago, MIT and Stanford. Go there and pick your advisor carefully.

Second, if you don't get into those schools, once you get outside of the top 20 it doesn't matter whether you go to the #25th ranked school or the #75th, you will need to do a lot of things to separate yourself from the crowd. Go the school you feel most intellectual comfortable with and find the most interesting faculty at given your interests.  You have to be even more careful in picking your advisor than at a top 5 program.  Also it makes sense if you specialize in the area that your school is known for and in fact become the best person in your class in the field as demonstrated by publications in the field journals.  It is very important that you are the top student on the market from that school than if you were at one of the top departments.

Third, recognize that as general rules you cannot get a job at a school that wouldn't hire your advisor, and that whatever general rank your department has professionally you should realistically got 50 knotches down on the conventional rankings before an appointment is feasible.  A product from #25 can perhaps expect to get hired at #75 (reluctantly), but a product from #40 will have a hard time getting hired at #50.  Every university has a bias toward the products from the top 20, so the market will often sort the the worst product from a top 20 department to a higher appointment than the top product from the 30th ranked department.

The farther outside of the top eschelon of the profession, the more important the advisor selection process becomes for career trajectory.  It is that professors network that you will be automatically tied into --- remember the Granoveter point.  It is not the strong ties of the professor that matters, but the weak ties that work.  So your professor needs to be connected beyond the immediate network of friends in the profession, but has a reputation that spreads wider. This will open up opportunities for summer fellowships, post-docs, seminar invites, symposium invites, and the chance to build your own professional reputation.

Fourth, all of this talk is irrelevant if your happiness as an individual is tied to other considerations than professional success and influence.  For example, strong geographic preferences. Or a desire to teach undergraduates. Or a desire to write for audience beyond one's professional peers.  What we cannot do, however, is confuse these choices with professional success and influence.  You can be happy and have a very rewarding career, but that is different from where we started the discussion.  The career path for "success" and "influence" in economics is pretty well defined.

Fifth, you can take a longer term view in your role as a teacher.  Get an appointment in a solid liberal arts college or mid-level state university, teach bright students, and get them excited about economics and then steer them toward professional success and influence.  You can be influential professionally, or you can be an influential teacher.

All of this requires a blunt assessment of one's comparative advantage professionally and a ruthless calculations on the margin.

And it is always helpful to find an advisor who will be honest with you, work with you, and work for you. My main advice, don't delude yourself and instead go in with your eyes wide open about the entire business and what is required to succeed.

Good luck in your search for school, advisor, carer, and happiness. 

Comments

[Steve Horwitz]

Pete wrote:

"Every university has a bias toward the products from the top 20, so the market will often sort the the worst product from a top 20 department to a higher appointment than the top product from the 30th ranked department."

When I arrived at SLU, that was exactly the bias we tended to have and I argued for years that it was a HUGE mistake. (It was easier for me to argue it was a mistake after I'd been there for a few years and had a track record that falsified the implicit hypothesis of that strategy!)

I think my perspective eventually won the day. My department currently is much less impressed by pedigree than by accomplishment. I think we generally agree that we'd rather hire the best student from the 50th ranked program than the bottom of Harvard's class. That's especially true if the person has already demonstrated the mix of teaching and scholarship that we seek to hire and tenure.

So let me echo Pete's advice that the best strategy you can adopt if you are outside the top 20 is to be the *best damn* graduate student there. If you want a job in a research-oriented school, publish your butt off in grad school and in the best journals you can. If you want a top 50 liberal arts college, you don't need as many or as high-quality publications, but a couple in grad school would be ideal, along with, of course, a broad teaching portfolio and excellent evals.

For LACs, you also should have a clear understanding of the mission of such places: don't interview like you're being hired to publish in the JPE. Interview like you're going to be teaching 5 or 6 courses to undergraduates per year, like you're going to publish an article or two per year minimum in good field or general journals, and that you understand that you'll be part of community to which you will have service obligations.

My two cents.

[Paul]

My Hayekesque two cents.

I think the advice you give is sound, but it seems almost pointless since it only applies to such a small subset of students and they are already doing what you suggest. If they were not they wouldn't be where they are already. You also could have just said "do what Markowitz did."

[Vedran]

Pete,

While I agree that this is a good prescription for success and influence in academia. I don't necessarily see this translating to success and influence in the real world. These suggestions seem very career specific instead of whole movement specific.

In short, you answer what a student must do to get tenure. But it does not answer what a student should do to create the greatest difference possible in the world.

In my opinion, there are two types of graduate students out there. Ones who want to be tenured professors and ones who simply want to be agents of change for the freedom movement? You answer the path for the first but offer little for the second. I was hoping you would comment more on this.

[Steve Horwitz]

We all know that tenured professors at top schools will have no role in being agents of change for the freedom movement, eh Vedran? :)

More seriously, why assume there are two types that you seem to suggest are mutually exclusive? I think that 20 years ago, Pete, Dave, and I would have never thought of those as two separate categories. For me, and I think for all three of us, the path to success in the economics profession was the same path to being agents of change in the freedom movement. Yes, we might be at a higher stage of production than other kinds of jobs, but the goal remains the same.

I think all three of thought one of our most important goals was to have a scholarly book of ours listed in the Laissez-Faire Books catalog. I know seeing my first book there was a very happy moment for me. Why? Because it represented both a scholarly and a freedom movement achievement, and how inseparable they were in my mind.

In the long run, I would suggest that the people who *have historically* been the greatest agents of change have been academics who were very successful in their professions, either at top schools and/or by publishing a lot of good scholarship.

(Rand being the one obvious exception.)

[Peter Boettke]

Vedran,

I actually (for good or bad) think the advise is one and the same. Note that I argued not just for tenure --- so both Paul and your comments gloss over the point about substantive content that I make --- and instead focus on being both successful and influential from a market process and classical liberal perspective.

On the point you make, I may be wrong but that would focus on why Hayek's "Intellectuals and Socialism" is wrong as a meta-point.

Pete

[Vedran]

Steve,

Of course academia makes a contribution to the freedom movement. But I'm not certain that the contribution is as a great as one would think. Also, I didn't say that they have to be mutually exclusive.

Ultimately, academia runs into the same information problems as any government run operation. It is not controlled by profit and loss considerations. The production of knowledge from academia runs into the same problems as the Soviet Union deciding whether to produce shirts, pants, belts and of which color or style.

I'm simply asking whether there is a better way to promote change. Here are two questions I would like to hear answers to:

1. If academia is so important to diffusing knowledge, why are we not living in a communist society? We've won the intellectual fight in economics in general but just as important is history, sociology, public policy, political science, etc where we have been completely routed. Academia is extremely left. Society is not. Why not especially if academia has so much influence?

2. Think tanks and lobbying groups do not spend millions on writing academic publications. If academic publication is a way to promote change, why do profit/loss companies in the business of cultural and policy change not engage writing in the same publications?

Sorry for attacking everyone's sacred cow here. But I think this is an important question to ask.

Of course Steve, Pete, et al are doing something for the freedom movement. But my question is whether you could have more of an impact in some other profession while utilizing your insights and abilities. There is no doubt you're doing good work for the movement but to put it in math econ terms, are you at a local maximum or a global one? I believe tenured-professor at a top 20 school is a local maximum for a highly talented individual wishing to create change. I'm not convinced that it is the global maximum.

[Vedran]

One more thing Steve. Yes some of the biggest people to have produced change were in the academic field. But I think it's foolish to base a career on what one or two people did but instead base a career on what the average person in the profession does.

If I based my decisions on the few, I would go become a Hollywood actor. But the reality is that only a few people become millionaires in Hollywood and the rest largely waste their time. Similarly, a few become Hayek or Milton Friedman but that's no reason to base career decisions on the achievements of the top .01% of the profession. The real question is what can an average academic achieve compared to an average think tanker and an average lobbyist or average guy in the Department of Treasury.

[Steve Horwitz]

Vedran,

I don't disagree with the idea that there are comparative advantages. Clearly there are. And the structure of production for "freedom" has multiple stages. *You* pointed to "two types" of graduate students, which suggests mutual exclusivity. If you'd said "graduate students are combinations of two different sorts of preferences in different degrees..." that'd be different.

Also - the choice of career should not be seen solely as "what can I do for freedom?" We all have families and other preferences that we might wish to satisfy. If "professional notoriety and advancing freedom" were my only two goals, I might have more actively looked for another job. It so happens that I really like other aspects of my life/career combo that have nothing to do with professional glory and advancing freedom, cf: why Prychitko is a Yooper.

[Vedran]

Steve,

The mutual exclusive thing is just a side point. I'm sorry that my original post was confusing. I hope you understand my clarified position does not mean mutual exclusiveness.

On the other part, I agree. There is a lot of fun to being an academic probably vastly much more so in comparison to private market activities. In a sense, academia is a rent-seeking activity detracting individuals from the most socially beneficial roles to society.

This is the exact point that I was trying to make. If your main goal is to become a tenured professor for whatever reasons, then Pete has laid out a good path. But if your goal is advancing freedom, then I don't think the suggestion is the best.

I assume Pete views professorship as a means to liberty. I don't think he particularly values students becoming tenured professors for no reason. You don't need to be an Austrian for that. Isn't the goal to increase liberty not produce tenured professors? So this logically makes me inquire....are tenured professors the best route to liberty. As you suggest and I certainly agree, maybe not. Maybe another profession does a better job of liberty production if not personal utility production.

[Steve Horwitz]

Tenured professors don't have to be the "best" route to liberty, only a "good" one. I think the production process has many stages that involve complementary human capital. None of them can be "best" because none can work without the other.

I need John Stossel to get ideas out, but he needs me to have the ideas to get out. Complementary human capital in the structure of production of liberty.

I don't get why you want to make an "or" out of an "and."

[Vedran]

Steve,

No offense, but I would actually argue Stossel doesn't need you. We've already got Hayek, Mises, Kirzner. I just don't feel a whole lot is being added from academic pursuits right now. If you read just a handful of Hayek/Mises works as a writer, you're pretty much good for the rest of your career and will have unlimited insights compared to other writers. Austrian economics is not rocket science.

And actually there are best routes. Sure one form of human capital works well with another. This doesn't mean that we can't discern the best route.

For example say I have a 100 million dollar factory but only one worker. The marginal gain from an additional worker is most likely way higher than the marginal gain from expanding the factory further. It's pretty obvious what would be the best route to take.

In this same line of thought, we have certain workers, certain human capital in the movement. Based on the current human capital that we do have.....should we acquire one more free market reporter or one more professor to maximize the liberty movement's production function???

I would argue that we're in a situation similar to the previous example. We have this huge 100 million dollar pile of human capital (mostly achieved by Hayek and Mises) with almost no workers out on the front lines. As mentioned in the Milton Friedman post earlier, we have the intellectual debate down; but we've lost the ability to apply it. It seems silly to invest another million into capital that no one is utilizing.

I make this argument because the only thing that I ever hear on this blog is publish academic works in mainstream journals and get tenure.

I think a lot of Austrian graduate students would be far more effective for the movement if they were pushed toward actual policy and hands on work. (Especially with GMU so close to D.C.)

[Vedran]

Actually, it goes beyond this blog. It's the exact same thing that I've from Loyola University of New Orleans and the Mises Institute.

I'm arguing that not only are there other routes for the liberty movement to take that should be encouraged by they are also in fact better.

(just a side note, the Koch Associate program is doing something of the sort and I encourage more of the same)

[Vedran]

sorry I meant "It's the exact same thing that I've heard from Loyola University of New Orleans and the Mises Institute.

[Peter Boettke]

Vedran,

You are steering the conversation in a different direction than what was originally raised in Tyler's post which I linked to. The question was about how PhD advisors cultivate students.

Now on another issue, the reason why this blog emphasizes the academic route is because this blog is supposed to be about Austrian economics as an academic research and teaching program. None of the writers on this blog deny that there is a division of labor in the broader intellectual movement for political and economic liberty. But we are not writing with that purpose in mind.

My complaints about the blogosphere are related to trying to cultivate this academic project, not to the blogosphere in general. My complaints about laymen pretending to be scientific contributors in economic THEORY is not an indictment of laymen, but of the idea that laymen can contribute to the scientific realm of economic discourse.

I agree with your position -- not all students should try to be academics. But I do believe that (a) we need lots of professors to teach these students and steer them to career paths other than academcs, and (b) these professors will work with better students and do a better job advancing students the stronger their professional reputation and the more prestigious their position. So even to satisfy your strategy, we will need professors.

Many different ways to skin a cat, Vedran, but it is a lot harder with a spoon than with a knife. This doesn't deny that spoons are useful instruments, just that for the purpose of skinning a cat they might not be the best tool.

Pete

[Vedran]

I agree Pete, but if we're talking about cultivating Ph.D. students, then we should consider multiple directions as a Ph.D. student can do many different things. The type of cultivation is going to be different for different career goals.

If you had said "cultivate future college professors", then there is no problem at all with the post.

It would be great if you posted some time on what other areas specifically Austrians should be entering. I would like to hear your insights and inputs.

Might I also add, the current crisis has shown that we do need more Austrian Professors in the macro realm. We're really lacking there. I think we can all agree to that.

On the role of professors that you mention, I completely agree. I would like to see a scenario where we're pushing for more students to get involved in policy. Some Austrians consider even the suggestion of working in D.C. as a sin. I don't know what your opinion is on this matter but certainly folks at Mises Institute don't look on it too kindly.

[Sukrit]

I agree with Steve. People like John Stossel need libertarian academics to be at the cutting edge of intellectual thought, so they can transmit those ideas to the general public. There is a lot of innovative work being done. We need more Austrian professors.

I am most interested in foreign policy, and I think there are many ways to extend the Rothbardian analysis of American history. For example, Tom Woods, John Denson and others have done good revisionist accounts helping us understand how liberty was lost. Robert Higgs is magnificent in his Crisis and Leviathan, etc.

One question I have is: when did you guys publish your first peer-reviewed article (at what age)?

[Vedran]

Sukrit,

Do you mean Austrian professors or people with Ph.D.s? Because ironically all the people you just mentioned are not currently working in academia which would kind of be backing my point actually. I agree that we should get high degrees. I don't agree we should all become professors at colleges

[Vedran]

Also If Steve was an employee at CATO or something, I'm sure he could give the same advice to Stossel should he need it.

[Sukrit]

Vedran, you mentioned that lobby groups don't need to write academic papers. Well, that's obvious isn't it? Lobby groups try and suck off the taxpayer teat. They have a STRONG incentive to spend millions so they can get even bigger returns down the line.

Unfortunately, there is no comparable incentive for people to be free. At least, it's not that strong. Maybe if the USA starts shoving people into slave labour camps, yes. But otherwise, there is no natural urge to complain about gradual encroachments on liberty, which are equally insidous. In other words, libertarianism is primarily an intellectual pursuit. Ergo, we need academics to make arguments that appeal to reason, because there is an IN-BUILT BIAS against liberty in human nature.

This video explains what I'm talking about. People don't stand up for economic or social liberty until it's too late.

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=kuecEUUnnck

[Vedran]

Sukrit,

I know that lobbyists in general are demonized. But they are either for or against particular regulations. Not every lobbyist out there is trying to get push for more regulation and more protectionism. Many are trying to reduce these problems.

Further, there are plenty of non-profit groups pushing for all kinds of things in Congress. Look no further than the environmental movement for a successful example.

There's plenty of financial incentives and plenty of opportunity to make a difference.

[Bob Murphy]

Pete,

I will repeat what I asked Tyler. :) Can you (or Steve) comment on what things are like from the advisor's POV? Like, do you not want to be the dissertation chair of someone you think will publish "bad" papers, however we define "bad"? And if a real hotshot comes in the first year, do some professors fight over him/her to be advisor?

[matthew mueller]

I read this as basically saying: If you want a good academic appointment that will frequently give you sabbaticals and 1-1 teaching loads, then by all means play by the rules and re-phrase arguments that have already been made. I would hate to become this sort of professor, e.g., a professor who waits to get the sabbatical, a professor who dislikes teaching (and curious students with little knowledge of economics), and a professor who does not like to explore the ENTIRE literature in economic theory. My impression is that these students typically select a very narrow field in which to conduct their research, and spend their entire careers doing boring work.

My advice: Embrace pluralism and learn everything you can in economics. Go to UMKC, New School, UMASS-Amherst, American U., etc. --- i.e. heterodox schools. You will learn standard price theory in these schools, but you will also be introduced to alternative schools of economics. This is what makes learning fun --- comparing the thoughts of different thinkers.

[Dave Prychitko]

I recall several weeks ago insisting "Don't invest in your professor. Invest in your major."

I do not recall whether I stated that this is my advice for the undergrad who's deciding what to major in. Chances are his undergrad profs will be long gone afterward, or, friends but with little influence by the time you enter the job market.

Do invest in your graduate dissertation advisor, for all the reasons Pete states above.

[Peter Boettke]

Matthew,

Like in many of these blog "conversations" you mischaracterize my position so wildly that it is unrecognizable. Please read my point about the substantive content of the argument. And why do you have such strong opinions about UMKC and the New School, and also negative opinions about GMU, when you have never spent any time (as far as I know) at any of these places discussing ideas with the professors, etc. At GMU there is an amazing amount of methodological pluralism, it is unclear from your various comments that you appreciate this.

Bob,

Yes, the competition among students to attract the attention of the most significant faculty is real. I think the professors are more or less worried about their own work, and students gravitate to professors. But professors do worry about the reputation effect of student work on them --- both in terms of quality of research and appointment. Professors whose students write low quality papers and get low tier appointments will not find many students gravitating toward them; professors who have high quality student output and higher tier appointments will find more students outside their door than they have the time and energy to work with, holding other things constant.

Professors want to work with the best students, and the students want to work with the best professors --- it is a mutually reinforcing process. If you find yourself alone in academics, something has gone wrong.

Pete

[Eric Sundwall]

The priesthood of knowledge should be coming to an end in the next few decades. Be prepared.

[dissertation help]

I just spoke with my consultant regarding my dissertation. I think that this will be a beneficial relationship. dissertation-help.co.uk is great! I think I will use them for the rest of my project. I am really excited and motivated for the first time - dissertation-help.co.uk thank you for your service.
______________________________

http://www.dissertation-help.co.uk/

[Writing Help]

I personally like your post; you have shared good insights and experiences. This post will really help beginners, although it is basic but, it will help others in great deal in future. Keep it up.

[Dissertation Help]

Hi,
You obviously put a lot of work into that post and it’s very interesting to see the thought process that you went through to come up with those conclusion. Thanks for sharing your deep thoughts.

[Dissertation Service]

Hi,
Really it provided me some information and sure I accept that in reading blogs helps us to gather some good information for all the topics which improves our knowledge. Thank you.

[GCSE coursework]

Hi,
It was a very nice post! Just want to say thank you for the information you have shared. Just continue writing this kind of post. Thanks.

[Essay Help]

Hi,
This is really great work. Thank you for sharing such a useful piece of information here in the blog.

[Term Paper Help]

What a great site and informative posts! I will bookmark this page. Thanks