Principles of Professional Advancement --- Armen Alchian to Young Economists

|Peter Boettke|

Economics departments throughout the US are currently in the thick of the job market season. Campus visits, presentations, and departmental meetings to select those who will receive offers to join the faculty.  Having looked through hundreds of applications, twenty or so are selected to be interviewed at the AEA meetings, and then 3 or 4 are invited to campus for the interview process, and 1 will be selected.  That is the typical odds that an aspiring assistant professor faces.  Our job as advisers to these students to help them build a CV that will stand out from the crowd and teach them presentation skills so they can represent themselves as best as they can in their quest to find employment.  Most of the advise focuses on how to sell themselves to would-be employers.

But I want to also suggest that aspiring economist take time to look at Armen Alchian's 1996 paper on the principles of professional advancement in academic economics.  This advice is directed at assistant professors and focuses on what they want in terms of the environment to work in to give them the greatest opportunity for career advancement as economists.  He lists 5 principles: (1) have great students to learn with; (2) have had great teachers who taught you well; (3) be in the right place at the right time for your ideas; (4) have good co-authors who will keep you honest and on-track; and (5) have great colleagues who will challenge you and also encourage you.

Fortune favors those who follow those five principles.  Listen to a grand master of this discipline like Armen Alchian about how to succeed, and be smart in your choices about the environment you are going to work in as an economist.

Comments

[Charles K. Rowley]

If the odds truly were one to several hundred against a candidate securing an appointment, that would be heart-breaking indeed for graduate students aspiring to secure an academic appointment. However, it is important to note that each candidate typically applies to many universities and that some may expect to be called for as many as 20 interviews at the ASSA meetings. Furthermore, there are ways in which individual candidates are able significantly to reduce the odds. For example, applying only when one actually has the doctorate in hand is a big plus; applying when one has at least one paper accepted for publication in a good journal is a big plus; applying with excellent teaching evaluations is a plus (not as big as it should be, but still a plus); researching the institutions that one is interviewing with is also a big plus, and, in my experience, one that many candidates completely ignore, especially those who come from Ivy League institutions.

Still the odds remain tough in a tight market. But surely not impossibly high for a well-prepared candidate.

[Lucas M. Engelhardt]

Of course, one important point to remember is that nearly everyone on the Economics job market does find some kind of job. While it is true that hundreds of people apply for each position and that, ultimately, only one person can have the job, it's also true that some people (often from Ivy League Universities) end up being several schools' top choices and getting a number of offers - and they can only TAKE one job.

The bigger question is whether you'll get to choose choose the job or whether your job will choose you - and there all of these principles are certainly helpful.

[liberty]

It is nice how none of those 5 principles are something the economist has any control over - I wonder if he did that on purpose. "Learn from a genius, and be a genius!"

[Barkley Rosser]

liberty,

I would say that one ought to be able to have some control over at least #4.

[Mario Rizzo]

"be in the right place at the right time for your ideas"

The Fates control this one. Unless, of course, it is possible to CREATE the right time.

[liberty]

I wrote a series of 10 New Years resolutions a few years ago. Rather than trying to do something vague and "good" like "be a better person" or "stop feeling envy" or whatever people often do, I wrote out some precisely defined, achievable goals. I succeeded in achieving most of them in just a few months. The next year I did it again, and added things I thought were a bit more ambitious - I did not achieve any of them. So, I spent some time thinking about the two lists: it was not really that one list was harder than the other - it was that the first time I had chosen things that I had true control over, and did not depend on anyone else. They were specific and I had quantifiable, achievable, measurable results I could obtain.

When writing a list of suggestions for a student or young professor to follow, I would think a list of that sort would be more useful. Rather than his list, I might suggest:

He lists 5 principles: (1) try to learn from your students, by asking them questions, challenging them, inviting them to interrupt your lectures and disagree, encourage them to go beyond the minimum necessary for classwork, and be open to working with them on projects (2) as you need great teachers too, contact learned scholars in your field, whose work you have studied in depth, and reach out to them to collaborate, if possible, or at least go to hear them speak in person and then discuss their work with them (3) In order to "be in the right place at the right time," take advantage of opportunity wherever it might appear - be on the lookout for ideas, projects and chances to work with people you admire, even if they may work in a different field, or have come to different theoretical conclusions than you have (4) As you need to be challenged in each of your scholarly endeavors, seek out collaboration with others who you admire and who may disagree with you in some of your theories or approaches, and co-author with them (5) As you need to be both challenged and encouraged, try to surround yourself in your collaborations with scholars that can offer both - seek out and engage widely with both those who agree and those who disagree with you.