Well, Our Three Bridge View from the Graduate Student Lounge Is Not at Its Best This Morning, Is It?
Well, our three bridge view from the Peixotto Graduate Student Lounge is not at its best this morning, is it?
That is a pity because the new first-year graduate students are arriving this morning...
This is what it is supposed to look like:
We here at Berkeley Economics are vastly underresourced relative to those institutions that we claim are our peer institutions. The interesting thing is that not only do we think we punch well above our weight, but so does the world as a whole:
(2015): Econ 101: Chicago? M.I.T.? Nope, Berkeley's on Top: "Which is the greatest university economics department of them all?...
...When I think of the economics department that has had the most influence on the profession in the past four decades, another candidate springs to mind: the University of California-Berkeley.... Researchers at Berkeley during the past four decades haven't just been prestigious and incisive, they have been different. Their research has taken economics in new directions, in terms of both methods and subject matter. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that the Chicago School has been replaced in prominence and influence by what I like to call the Berkeley Reformation....
Berkeley boasts Dan McFadden, who almost singlehandedly invented random utility discrete choice models.... David Card, who revolutionized the field of empirical economics with his use of natural experiments.... Some of Berkeley's heavy hitters have since moved on, but their legacy remains. The chief example is George Akerlof, whose pioneering insights into the economics of asymmetric information revolutionized the discipline in the 1970s, alerting economists to a huge class of ways that markets could fail and break down. Another star who did most of his work at Berkeley (he recently moved to Harvard) is Matt Rabin, one of the leading lights of behavioral economics....
Berkeley has done something similar to what the old Chicago School did -- it has changed the entire game.... The Chicago School was Panglossian in its belief that markets work well; the Berkeley Reformation showed deep, fundamental reasons that they break down. The Chicago School described the world in terms of perfectly rational agents; the Berkeley Reformation added the complexity of flawed decision-making. In the 1980s and 1990s, it could rightly be said that Chicago had conquered the economics world. But in the 2010s, the profession has pointed in Berkeley's direction.
The smart Joachim Voth thinks that it is (mostly) a university-wide phenomenon—that it is true not just of econ, but of most (or many) departments on campus.
I will say that 13-story Evans Hall needs nine elevators, was designed for six, five were built, and it is a good day when four are running:
Joachim Voth: Teachings from Berkeley: "'It’s amazing' those were the words of a renowned Swedish economics professor as he toured UC Berkeley...
...On clear days, the sun-soaked campus offers spectacular views over San Francisco Bay all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge. The visitor was then led through Evans Hall, which houses the Department of Economics. It is an ugly, 60’s-era concrete bunker-like structure with linoleum floors, windows that do not shut properly, and elevators that have not worked right in years–on a good day, two out of four are running. Again, he utters the same comment: “It’s amazing.” His host is becoming suspicious.... Evans Hall is anything but amazing.... When asked to clarify just what he found so amazing, his response came quickly: “It’s amazing how much you’ve done here with so little.”
Berkeley... 40,000 registered students.... In physics, chemistry, math, IT and economics, it regularly ranks among the top five; nearly every other department is in the top ten worldwide. No less than 92 Nobel Prize winners have studied or worked here. The Times Higher Education Ranking puts Berkeley in the eighth spot among universities worldwide – above Yale and just below Princeton....
Berkeley spends about 4.1 billion dollars per year, or about 105,000 dollars per student... far more than the school receives in tuition and fees (about 13,000 per student from California, 40,000 from out-of-state and foreign students).... However... Stanford... spends over 250,000 per student.... Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and other major private universities in the US all boast more funds per student.... State-run Berkeley is particularly efficient in converting financial means into academic excellence....
What can Europe learn from this? The first lesson is clear: money is not everything. Those who shrug their shoulders at the massive endowments of Harvard and Stanford, saying it is not worth even trying to compete, are giving up too easily. Efficient spending can help tax funds go a lot farther than one might expect, giving public universities the chance to keep up without becoming symbols of inefficiency.... The second lesson is: there are clear limits to efficiency. Berkeley spends only 40% of Stanford’s per-student budget, but that still amounts to 105,000 per year. At the University of Zurich, well equipped by European standards, per-student spending totals around CHF 32,000, while the University of Bonn lays out just €17,000...
