Customer Reviews

The Making of an Economist, Redux

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Roughly half the material here is available in related journal articles, but the transcripts of interviews with students aren't. That makes this book invaluable for prospective graduate students in economics who want to get a clearer picture of what they're getting into.

The Making of an Economist, Redux, provides an update to the surveys of Colander and Kramer's initial The Making of an Economist. It critiques the Phd programs at Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Chicago, Yale, Princeton and Columbia - schools widely considered the elite in Economics training.

The book serves multiple target audiences. Like volume 1, it can quickly turn into required reading. Another (perhaps less receptive?) audience is the providers of graduate economics education. The third audience (including the author) are lay readers interested in economics the field, and what goes into producing economists.

The books succeeds in providing a qualitative analysis of the macro trends of graduate education, and provides alternative views for the dysfunctions in the process. (Very few students or educators seem to agree that what's taught is right. Then again, this critical thinking could be a sign that the process is working. The mediocre always seem to have the most school spirit.)

This shouldn't be mandatory reading for anyone outside the graduation education process in economics, but it does provide insight into what creates a professional economist.