Monday, July 20, 2009
Ph.D. or Postdoc?
I emailed Bryan Caplan and Peter Boettke at George Mason University about getting my Ph.D. in economics there. Boettke suggested postdoc work instead, but Caplan thinks an economics Ph.D. is the best thing in the world. Certainly, after reading his post, I agree. What I need to find out, though, is the benefits of each. And I need to find this out before I start taking the undergrad classes needed to get into the Ph.D. program.
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2 comments:
What do you intend to do with a PhD in economics? Teach? Work for a bank? Is George Mason U the only place you would consider for a PhD in economics?
I thought about it once and talked to someone with a PhD in economics and he said it mattered very much where you got your PhD.
Sounds neat, but another PhD is a lot of time and effort. The decision deserves a lot of thought.
As always, I wish you the best in your endeavors.
There are many things one can do with a degree in economics. Teaching being only one of them. Bryan Caplan, who happens to be at GMU, argues that having a Ph.D. in economics is great, because you can literally work on anything you want, so long as you call it economics. Not a bad gig.
I am thinking about GMU because it has a huge number of classes that I think would be beneficial to me. More, they have far, far, far less concentration on math, which I consider to be one of the least important things to know if you want to really understand the economy as a whole. They also allow you to specialize in Austrian economics, which is what I'd do. Peter Boettke is their Austrian there. GMU also has 2 Nobel Prize winners, which isn't too shabby. Plus Walter Williams.
Of course, one can't put all one's eggs in one basket. So GMU won't be the only place I apply to.
In the end, though, the Ph.D. in Humanities isn't getting me any jobs at all. A man's got to earn a living to support his family. And there's many more opportunities, inside and outside academia, in economics.
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