Schleifer too.
By the time Scheinkman joined Goldman as VP, I had already left GSB.
From the grapevine I heard in those days Sandy Grossman was a very smart guy but did not get along with the political powerful at Department of Economics. He left soon after I joined GSB, It looks like he has been running a hedge fund since 1988.
Andrei Shleifer taught in GSB but it was after my time and only for a few years.
Thought Shleifer was in econ. But could be misremembering.
From what I heard, Grossman took rudeness to a whole new level (and that’s no small feat at Chicago). He also terrified the first years. I think it was “good riddance” all around.
I work in an investment firm, and our Chief Investment Officer hires finance professors as consultants. I no longer remember the two we tried to get from UChicago over the years, but I remember they were already “taken” by the competition.
My sources tell me that even Hanson and Lucas have been paid by Wall St. Lucas was also invited to the Vatican to discuss economic policy with JPII. It might not be on their vitae but these guys get around.
@JBFlying @hebegebe I stand corrected then. I didn’t know that even Lucas was paid by Wall Street firms. Rational expectation by the mass would be the last thing Wall Street believes in 
Not necessarily. Sure, the quants make money by building a better mouse trap (or vacuum cleaner might be the better analogy - to suck in all the nickels), but guessing that Wall Streeters who believe that folks don’t generally operate based on rational expectations don’t last too long. Also, Wall St. is as interested as anyone else about things like monetary policy, interest rates, and inflation.
Latest Update:
Quoted:
“The faculty’s College Council will vote today on a proposal to create an undergraduate business economics major.”
Here is my $.02: there are likely 400 Econ majors per class. So there are over 1,600 Econ majors at The College. At some point everyone will come to realization that scarcely half of these students will go on to get their PhD in Economics. So they (i.e., the College Council) may as well throw in a more practical degree in hope that a few of these graduates will become hedge fund billionaire and donate generously back to school someday.
Deans Boyer and Nondorf are ex officio members of The College Council. I am quite sure that they wouldn’t vote yes if they think the new major will be detrimental to their ideal of a U of C undergrad education. But whether that is YOUR ideal is another story .
I love the idea of a Business Econ major - and so does my son.
“the introduction of a pre-professional business major would attract applicants who view their education primarily as a preparation for lucrative careers…and that the new major would be “less academically rigorous and intellectually stimulating” than current options.”
So, are hopes for a lucrative career and an intellectually stimulating education mutually exclusive? I would hope that after graduation my son would be able to make enough money to live on his own, be a productive member of society, and someday support a family. My son didn’t apply to UChicago to take the “easy” way out, he applied to a top school to explore his varied intellectual interests, with thoughts of his future career goals, AND earning potential…
This isn’t exactly a nail in the coffin of the old, weird University of Chicago, because the nail was driven in years ago. Students have been jerry-rigging business/finance-oriented paths through the Econ major like this for years, and using it as a preprofessional major. This essentially acknowledges what’s going on, and improves the product considerably. It should attract a bunch of new applicants – kids who want Wharton with a Core. They may not exactly be the kind of applicants @marlowe1 dreams about, but apparently they are a pool of applicants the University wants to tap.
Nowhere near half of Econ majors will go on to get a PhD, in Economics or anything else. Until very recently, the Economics Department recommended that prospective Economics PhD students pursue a B.S. in Math With A Specialization in Economics rather than Economics. So it’s not that clear that ANY straight Economics majors were going into PhD programs (although I suspect there have been lots of Math/Econ double majors). The Economics Department’s recommendation has changed somewhat, and it looks now like it is recommending a major in Computational and Applied Mathematics. (They don’t say that. They just say that prospective PhD applicants should take 90% of the courses required for that major.) (I note that, if I were a student, and if I cared about math, I would be having an awfully hard time distinguishing between the Computational and Applied Mathematics major and the Applied Math / Math With Specialization track through the Math Department. Choices are good, but too many choices without explaining their differences is a bad idea. It’s hard to believe all the advisors grasp all of the subtleties here.)
My question is, what with Math With Specialization and Computational and Applied Math and Public Policy and now Business Economics, how many of those 400 Economics majors per class will be left majoring in Economics as a primary major?
https://www.chicagomaroon.com/article/2018/2/13/faculty-college-council-delays-vote-business-econ/
So the vote will be postponed to next month. Obviously, there is a sizable opposition and so it takes time for a consensus to form. My more cynical self will say that now it will need more strong arming to force the Core defenders to yield 
Wow - victory - if at least temporary - for the naysayers. Clearly that anonymous source in the College Council was able to sway some of the deciders.
"The new major involves opening up the College’s most popular, visible, influential, and well-endowed department to a robust collaboration with Booth, a professional school that has more than earned a reputation for using its financial position and standing to act independently of the central administration (to say nothing of the recent imbroglio),” the source wrote. “Will Booth now have a financial stake in the College? Will this affect admissions?”
- From today's Maroon article
This is someone who is protesting the Bannon visit, methinks. Probably a humanities prof. given the correct usage of the word “imbroglio”.
Not at all concerned that the addition of a business major will affect UChicago in any negative sense of the word. We’re talking about UChicago!
Some kids who already excel in academics all across the board will also be interested in pursuing business as a career. I don’t think this will be a negative thing, as UChicago is taking advantage of one of its many strengths, in what is the economics department, and building on it.
Learning theory is cornerstone, but maybe adding an extra dimension of implementation skills, and having the ability to execute them in new and creative ways rather than in a run-of-the-mill operational/vocational/technical fashion could be beneficial for people of the world down the road, as these kids are our future leaders and captains of industry. Perhaps they can avert a financial meltdown that has affected so many people in recent and past times, who knows?
Imagine the already-superintelligent kids applying their smarts in the business sector. UChicago would be sending kids to wall street equipped with skills and qualities (humanities, sciences, articulation, etc.) more than only finance and accounting (and it’ll be intimidating as h*ll, lol.)
Although, I’d be concerned if my S spent all his time in school learning how to read financial statements and balance sheets instead of getting an all-around education and overall academic prowess. If they started watering down the integrity of their academics, yeah, I’d be concerned—not for the school’s reputation because that’s already established, but for my child’s education. As a parent, I’m watching you, UChicago.
Excuse all the run-on sentences… thinking out loud, lol.
Some of the parents on here seem to have very romanticized views of the university. The most prominent policies of the admin currently are a drive to move everyone into megadorms, a scorched earth campaign against the graduate students, lots of pontificating about free speech, and deep across the board cuts to the departments. Unsurprisingly, the administration is somewhere between “deeply” and “universally” unpopular among the more academically oriented students. The new business econ major proposal, which went from whispered rumor to the College Council in like a week, is largely seen along those lines. The life of the mind stuff you all like isn’t entirely a sham, but the business econ major is part of a pattern of actions by the university which is widely interpreted as abandoning it in practice, if not in marketing materials.
I admit to being of two minds about this development, as about the entire sequence of developments over the last twenty or so years culminating in the College as it is today. A part of me wants to stand athwart this history and cry stop. But that would be a futile and quixotic gesture not in keeping with the spirit of realistic analysis that has also always been a part of the ethos of the University of Chicago. The idea of the College has always been a work in progress, one seeking its proper form in a fractious institution of many spirited minds embedded in a pluralistic society. You could think of this in Hegelian terms as the progressive manifestation of an idea - the purist idea of the old College - as it comes in contact with reality and both modifies that reality and is modified by it. I am happy that there appears to be spirited resistance to this undergraduate business major, but, as @JHS and others have said, the present proposal is largely a rationalization of what was happening without the name. The people on this board with a foot in the business world are some of the more lively and interesting commenters. So it should be in the College: there ought to be room in that mansion of many rooms for kids who see school as leading to a credential to make money in the real world, just as for those who see it as a place to postpone that engagement in order to figure out the meaning of things. The latter kids will also in due course have to figure out the same things as the former ones. The former ones need to be knocked off their too-soon chosen paths. It will do both sets of kids a lot of good to exchange thoughts, stories and dreams, become friends and perhaps lovers and spouses. There may be more overlap between these categories than we imagine. St. Thomas, if not St. Valentine, might have had something to say about that proposition.
The old College had many virtues, but it was a bit monochrome. I say this as a passionate advocate for the spirit of the old place. Let the debate go forward. I can live with either result.
“The new business econ major proposal, which went from whispered rumor to the College Council in like a week, is largely seen along those lines.”
Given that Nondorf was announcing it last spring, it’s been more like 10 months. Guessing that when you add development to the length of time, we are looking at least one year.
“The life of the mind stuff you all like isn’t entirely a sham, but the business econ major is part of a pattern of actions by the university which is widely interpreted as abandoning it in practice, if not in marketing materials.”
- Silly. The College - like any college - has continually changed and updated its curriculum and major offerings since its founding. Also, your assertion that "life of the mind" wouldn't exist via the connection with Booth is contradicted by reality. The Nobel Committee, among others, would happen to disagree with you.
The Nobel Committee doesn’t give a hoot about “Life of the Mind.”
Seriously, it has been an article of faith at the University of Chicago that undergraduate education should not be “practical,” in the sense of teaching skills that were specific to identifiable skilled positions in the market economy. It was, of course, also an article of faith – and a strong one – that the more general, methodological skills taught at the University, together with a thorough grounding in the mainstream of Western culture, had value in the real world, and would help graduates perform well – and better than well – in skilled positions in the market economy.
Despite its use of the dreaded “E” word, nothing about Molecular Engineering as a major was inconsistent with that. But “Business Economics” more or less sticks a hunting knife in its gut, slices upward to the sternum, and starts to flay it alive.
Maybe (probably) it’s largely unavoidable, and maybe (probably) it’s an improvement on the invisible erosion of the ideal that’s been going on for a while. But it’s not exactly a moment to celebrate (unless you happen to have a big part of your bonus tied to increasing applications for admission and increasing the yield of those offered admission).
The delay is interesting, because no doubt Nondorf would have wanted to publicize the new major before the RD acceptances go out, and that won’t happen now. It may get approved before the final RD return date, though. I do think that if it gets approved, it will spark a spike in applications next year, and probably a meaningful increase in RD yield.
Nondorf mentioning it is an example of a rumor, a mention in an admissions talk is hardly confirmation. The first time students or non-econ/Booth faculty heard anything concrete was the end of January. They’ve delayed the vote because the faculty felt the process was too rushed.
@JHS - true - they just give out Nobels to those who have changed the field. There’s probably a positive correlation between changing the field and living the life of the mind.
@phoenix1616 - You are suggesting that the administration is guilty of spreading rumors? Pretty sure they are a lot more tight-lipped than the students and the Maroon, but you could have a point. If Nondorf mentioned it, it might have been mostly a done deal at the time and simply needed to come up to a vote. The reasons for the postponement may be several, including faculty holding Anthony Bannon hostage LOL.
The biggest criticism I’ve read seems to be that this Business Econ program would be ‘pre-professional’ - as if following a Pre-Med or Pre-Law track at an LAC were, somehow, NOT ‘pre-professional’. A BA is a liberal arts degree. Of COURSE it’s “pre-professional”. As distinct from “professional”: BS.Bus, B.Eng, B.Nurs, etc.
The vast majority of BA’s at Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Yale and, yes, UChicago, will go to Business, Law or Med for their grad work. That’s just a fact. Another fact is that the Econ major itself is one of the most - if not THE most - popular social science major on campus anywhere. Typically, it’s one of the most popular overall unless a business school is on campus. The reasons are manyfold and not the purpose of this thread. But the trend isn’t going to change anytime soon.
Most likely, other top liberal arts programs are offering the same course options as UChicago would be via this new major. The main difference here is that UChicago is actually bundling it as a major and Nondorf will continue to talk it up. Most likely, it will result in more applications to the College (but not necessarily more acceptances). Finally, most likely it’ll take some of the current pressure off the economics department.
The proposal does seem like an intelligent way to allocate the limited financial and personnel resources of the College, while allowing other, less popular but still essential, departments to continue to exist due to the financial subsidization that the College provides the university as a whole. The history department, for instance, has 49 full-time faculty (not including emeritus) in addition to several more affiliates, researchers, post-docs, etc. 179 majors and 20 minors last spring (including double majors, etc. and HIPS). Contrast to Econ: about 34 full-time faculty (not including emeritus), eight lecturers, and two research associates, and 1,031 majors (including double, etc. ) and no minors (can’t minor in Econ). Obviously there will be pay differentials and those might be significant. When looked at in terms of personnel, it’s pretty clear that Econ is contributing at least six-times as much as History to the resources of the College - and that’s a conservative estimate. No one wants the history department to go away, but without the heavy subsidization from Econ., they wouldn’t be able to enjoy the-almost 50% increase in full-time faculty that they currently do.
(Interestingly, both departments have a much more similar number of grad students - 162 history vs. 187 Econ/Fin.Econ.- in the PhD program. History probably enjoys their students for a longer period of time, based on the differential numbers of those graduating from both departments last spring. So guessing the Econ. PhD students get more stipend than History, but that’s just a guess).
Seems that these other departments should be supporting this proposal, not fighting it - unless they want their funding cut further. Money doesn’t grow on trees but they just don’t seem to get that. Hey, perhaps they should take a class in Economics!