
How Stanford Took on the Giants of Economics - SimplyUseless
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/upshot/how-stanford-took-on-the-giants-of-economics.html
======
ClintEhrlich
I like Stanford, but as I read this article I couldn't shake the feeling that
all of these gigantic academic dinosaurs are headed for extinction and simply
don't realize it yet.

The very force that has fueled Stanford's prestige — the dynamism of Silicon
Valley entrepreneurs — may ultimately strike the fatal blow against the
existing university system. Anyone who bothers to look can recognize the gross
waste and inefficiency in the existing arrangement that the federal government
subsidizes through student loans: Education is more expensive than ever, and
there are cheaper and cheaper alternative sources of information.

We have already reached the point at which you can educate yourself outside of
the legacy institutions. In the future, someone smart will devise a better way
to demonstrate the existence of the relevant skills to employers. The residual
prestige of schools like Stanford or Harvard may seem durable, but it could
evaporate overnight if suddenly all of the smartest kids in the country
realized that ____ education startup was providing them a better opportunity
for future advancement.

I predict that once this cultural phase shift occurs, the field of economics
will also begin to decline, because so much mainstream economics research
offers zero actionable insight for private actors. The parts that thrive will
presumably be those with practical applications, like finance.

~~~
w1ntermute
You're conflating the educational and research objectives of universities.
Much of the tech industry's disdain for academia stems from negative personal
experiences with taking courses at top universities, typically due to a lack
of caring on the part of instructors, who are more interested in working on
their research (that disdain is then compounded by experiencing the rapid
social/economic impact software engineering in the tech industry can have,
particularly when compared to the slow progress of academic research). This
perspective is understandable, and top universities should hire dedicated
instructional faculty for all the lower-level undergrad classes, and leave the
researchers to their own devices.

In any case, the presence of undergrad students on campuses has surprisingly
little to do with the goings-on of academic research, although they may occur
in the same geographic locales and have some common actors. The widespread
success of MOOCs (which now seems quite unlikely) would have a negligible
impact on academic research.

------
bachmeier
It's not like Stanford had a sub-100 program and then started recruiting the
best faculty. Some might even argue that Chicago (including its business
school) has been just as influential as either Harvard or MIT. The top
programs are Stanford, Chicago, Princeton, Harvard, and MIT. Penn, Berkeley,
Yale and a few others are also in the conversation. Good for Stanford that
they made a couple of senior hires, as they've strengthened one of their
fields, but this isn't big news. Stanford has never been an underdog.

~~~
peloton
This might be a little off topic but I heard on the other hand that Stanford's
business school was an underdog pre 1990s. Do you know if there's any truth to
that?

~~~
larrys
In the early 80's when I graduated Wharton, Stanford wasn't even on the radar
at all at least from my recollection.

Stanford picked up steam post Internet because of it's relation and proximity
to Silicon Valley.

If that wasn't the case, they wouldn't have to raid to attract talent now. You
don't see Harvard or MIT raiding anyone in the fields that they are dominant
in after all.

------
hugh4
Newspapers only know how to tell a few different narratives, so they feel the
need to hammer everything into one of them.

In this case it's "plucky underdog takes on established titans", which you
have trouble hammering into the narrative when your "plucky underdog" is
Stanford.

~~~
aet
Are you saying there is no story here?

