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I’m hearing stories of how some pre-doc positions in econ are now as competitive as getting into a top PhD program. So what started as a way to get unprepared undergrads to upskill for the PhD has now devolved into shutting out those very students themselves? #EconTwitter
As long as predoc assignments are at the hands of individual professors, this market will be a race to the bottom: much more selection than treatment, and at worse working conditions (since student is under the mercy of one or two people with no real peer/institutional support)
And if selection is all they do, what are predocs even achieving? Raising the standard of grad school research? Smoothing the profession’s transition into an applied, big data heavy, collaborative model?
Or worsening our field’s notorious reputation for only rewarding those already “in the right networks”? Excluding those who didn’t go to top schools/internationals? And add two unnecessary years to the ever-increasing length of training a PhD?
At the very least, we need more coordination in RA hiring, like we do with PhD hiring, AP hiring. Coordination on hiring timelines, a clear way to evaluate all options (such as we do with visit days for PhDs and APs). This way, jobs will compete more to be better for RAs
I think the same market forces that increased the effective length of the PhD (from 4 to 5 and now 6) created the pre-doc program. If we are serious about inclusion in economics, we had better understand that increasing the cost of doing a PhD will not get
low income or international students. Their opportunity cost (going to work in finance or consulting or tech or b school) only becomes higher. If predocs are here to stay, we had better design them to actually benefit the students. End of thread.
