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<p>I don’t think it does, because it still does not speak to why the migration has to be asymmetric. I agree that an engineering degree is indeed more flexible than a B.Fin. degree, but at the end of the day, that doesn’t answer the question of why engineers feel that that must choose another career. </p>
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<p>And here is where we clearly disagree, because I believe - and I think there is clear evidence to show - that the engineers from the top schools such as MIT and Stanford are highly technically innovative. MIT and Stanford are lodestars in two of the world’s leading innovation based startup ecosystems. {One must ask yourself - why did Silicon Valley or Technology Highway not sprout up around Purdue or A&M?} </p>
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<p>See above. The real tangible impacts are gigantic. Every country in the world has been trying to replicate Silicon Valley or Tech Highway, with mixed success at best. </p>
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<p>Yet another response reminiscent of neoclassical economics, which presumes that markets always equilibrate efficiently. </p>
<p>Let me ask you a question. Last time you went to the store, was the store well stocked? Were there many things for sale? After you left the store, were there still many things for sale? Yes to all 3 questions? But why? If markets were always economically efficient, then markets should always perfectly clear, which means that stores should never have any inventory in stock. When you want into the store, the only items that should have been available on the shelves are precisely and only what you needed to buy, and nothing else. After all, that is precisely what it means for the markets to clear, right?</p>
<p>I have never once walked into a store where that has occurred. What that means is that the process of market clearing - if it happens at all - happens at a very slow rate. In other words, economies are inefficient, and probably always will be. </p>
<p>If anything, labor markets are even less efficient than product markets. Therefore, even if firms were to eventually stop recruiting at MIT because they can’t find enough engineering talent, that process will likely take years, perhaps even decades. Heck, perhaps it will never happen, as economic forces might change sometime in the future. </p>
<p>What that also means is that the market will remain inefficient for a very long time. Heck, I can imagine several sociological reasons for why companies would continue to recruit at MIT even if they never successfully hire anybody (for example, a manager can brag to his friends that his company is important enough to have a recruiting desk at MIT, and just simply gloss over the fact that they never actually hire anybody there). </p>
<p>Sociological constructs such as prestige and status, once embedded, are extraordinarily difficult and slow to change. Like I said before, venture capitalist assessing a business plan written by somebody at MIT and another written by somebody at Purdue, if he has to pick one, is probably going to pick the former. That’s not going to change anytime soon, probably not in our lifetimes.</p>