Wtf I'd never looked into class backgrounds for PhDs before and that's never a point of discussion for DEI initiatives. I'm not in economics, but I'm doing a PhD and realising that this is how the situation is might finally explain why the culture in higher education has always felt very off, foreign, adversarial almost to me (neither of my parents have education past high school)
I really like this discussion, 1. because it affirm what I already guessed and 2. because I can see some hope for academic profession especially around the 47:20 mark where you talk about trying to talk to people, instead of pulling data that was already done by who-know-what. While the talk is all about the economists, I felt that it applied to a majority of it apply to all social scientists. I grew up admiring that the west has an independent academic culture, that focus on finding truth and can debunk previously held belief. Nowadays, I felt quite disillusion with them. One quote from a Japanese manga "29 and JK" sum my feelings as followed: "Pseudo-Intellectuals Loved Stats" and everyone who brought up data as an argument tool against somebody' s subjective experience, already lost the argument. Stats are very important because they can be transparent, but they can also be collected by lazy or stupid people, just like the 2020 and 2016 election polls. When I talked to some old, cranky working-class men, some of whom probably never had a high school education and grew up in white trash households, I can learn a lot from them about their society, their values, and why they believe in the failures of progressives much more than listening to a lecture by an activist professor. It is a massive hurdle to convince people that their life experiences teach them the wrong lessons. If decades of experience tell them that clueless executives and managers went to fancy schools, how would you make them believe that your educated solution meant anything? You have to earn their respects. Your degrees and education meant nothing to them. They know their lives better than you do. Earning the respects of boomers and teach them how to do a task better than what they used to had been some of the proudest moments in my career. As far stats go, what I like is that it can tell a story which can be the truth, in 2016, Clinton because the Rust Belt turn red, examining closer, it was because blue voters chose to stay home. I think the same thing is happening across the country. Without the terrible attention-seeking face of Trump and his absurdly terrible handling of Covid19, I can' t see anything to unite the blue voters. I read an article from the left-leaning website "The Intercept" today about how leftists morons sabotaged their own causes better than the rightwing populists and rich donors can ever hope to. Not sure if I can post any links but the article is titled "Elephant in the Zoom: Meltdowns Have Brought Progressive Advocacy Groups to a Standstill at a Critical Moment in World History". Anyway, enough ranting, I' m going to settle on distracting myself on some other circus on youtube.
Economics isn't a life changing discipline with communities of color like business, nursing, social work, law, even teaching. It's a discipline with a thick glass ceiling. I am a second generation graduate student with 25 years of investment banking. I did not even consider economics because it has such a low success rate. So far me seminary working toward a Th.D seemed the better option towards teaching and research and serving others.
I had several mentors guide me to seminary and laid out a realistic pathway. No one in the economics discipline reached out. Medicine, law, education, and business graduate programs reached out. But not one economics program.
Wtf I'd never looked into class backgrounds for PhDs before and that's never a point of discussion for DEI initiatives. I'm not in economics, but I'm doing a PhD and realising that this is how the situation is might finally explain why the culture in higher education has always felt very off, foreign, adversarial almost to me (neither of my parents have education past high school)
great chat! she's doing important and insightful work
ty for another great talk
:)
Very interesting.
Here's some engagement.
Same
I really like this discussion, 1. because it affirm what I already guessed and 2. because I can see some hope for academic profession especially around the 47:20 mark where you talk about trying to talk to people, instead of pulling data that was already done by who-know-what. While the talk is all about the economists, I felt that it applied to a majority of it apply to all social scientists. I grew up admiring that the west has an independent academic culture, that focus on finding truth and can debunk previously held belief. Nowadays, I felt quite disillusion with them. One quote from a Japanese manga "29 and JK" sum my feelings as followed: "Pseudo-Intellectuals Loved Stats" and everyone who brought up data as an argument tool against somebody' s subjective experience, already lost the argument. Stats are very important because they can be transparent, but they can also be collected by lazy or stupid people, just like the 2020 and 2016 election polls.
When I talked to some old, cranky working-class men, some of whom probably never had a high school education and grew up in white trash households, I can learn a lot from them about their society, their values, and why they believe in the failures of progressives much more than listening to a lecture by an activist professor. It is a massive hurdle to convince people that their life experiences teach them the wrong lessons. If decades of experience tell them that clueless executives and managers went to fancy schools, how would you make them believe that your educated solution meant anything? You have to earn their respects. Your degrees and education meant nothing to them. They know their lives better than you do. Earning the respects of boomers and teach them how to do a task better than what they used to had been some of the proudest moments in my career.
As far stats go, what I like is that it can tell a story which can be the truth, in 2016, Clinton because the Rust Belt turn red, examining closer, it was because blue voters chose to stay home. I think the same thing is happening across the country. Without the terrible attention-seeking face of Trump and his absurdly terrible handling of Covid19, I can' t see anything to unite the blue voters. I read an article from the left-leaning website "The Intercept" today about how leftists morons sabotaged their own causes better than the rightwing populists and rich donors can ever hope to. Not sure if I can post any links but the article is titled "Elephant in the Zoom: Meltdowns Have Brought Progressive Advocacy Groups to a Standstill at a Critical Moment in World History". Anyway, enough ranting, I' m going to settle on distracting myself on some other circus on youtube.
Economics isn't a life changing discipline with communities of color like business, nursing, social work, law, even teaching. It's a discipline with a thick glass ceiling. I am a second generation graduate student with 25 years of investment banking. I did not even consider economics because it has such a low success rate. So far me seminary working toward a Th.D seemed the better option towards teaching and research and serving others.
I had several mentors guide me to seminary and laid out a realistic pathway. No one in the economics discipline reached out. Medicine, law, education, and business graduate programs reached out. But not one economics program.
Not sure why people say that economics lacks diversity of thought. I have a list of 35 disciplines within econ.
I found a new book for you. Its called "Reforming Capitalism for the Common Good: Essays in Institutional Post-Keynesian Economics" by Charles Whalen