Selection bias

We tend to focus on evidence that supports our inclinations and filter out the rest. Knowing that is perhaps why this news gives me mixed feelings about my decision over Penn.

Four years ago, the once-formidable economic department at Columbia University was stuck in a rut. Its stars were aging—Columbia had more tenured faculty members over 70 than under 50—and the few first-rate faculty still in their prime faced a constant pull from rival schools. Even junior faculty would jump ship at the first opportunity. Worse, Columbia was bottoming out at a time when economics was becoming a very hot field.

The department had traditionally gone after high-profile economists like development guru Jeffrey Sachs or Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz. (Both are nominally at Columbia but have little day-to-day involvement with the department.) In 1998, Columbia had stuck with that model, going after Harvard’s Robert Barro, an economics star who writes regularly for BusinessWeek and the Wall Street Journal and occasionally opines on television. “Especially in a place like New York, there is a big temptation to go for assembling people who will be on Charlie Rose, get written up in The New Yorker,” says David Card, who’s credited with helping rejuvenate Berkeley’s economics department. “But that has nothing to do with younger people doing research”—the true measure of a top program.

Though I’m not sure if this is entirely relevant to the value-add in my intended major (or of the issue of a college education as a whole), I suppose I’m glad to be on (what looks like) an uptrend but it would be nice to come in a little further on. Looks like I’ll be getting to know these guys and maybe these guys too.

Sometimes I think I shall always be in doubt about the road not taken. Oh Michelle, to be as brave as you are.