<p>Thomas Sargent, a professor at NYU, and Christopher Sims, a professor at Princeton Universite, share this year's Nobel Prize in Economics. In 2003, another NYU professor, Rober Engle, was also awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics.</p>
<p>I have no doubts this will elicit the usual responses that having Nobel Prize faculty is irrelevant for undergraduate education. These are of course wrong for many reasons, one of which is that Nobel Prizes enhance the prestige and value of the undergraduate diplomas from the prize-winning universities. The CC audience, heavily focused on prestige, should appreciate this argument.</p>
Absolute poppycock! Are super elite hedge funds and investment firms going to start recruiting at NYU now if they didn’t before since one of the faculty members just won a Nobel Prize? Are the resumes of NYU Economics majors who seek to get a PhD in the field enhanced now that a professor who they may have glanced at once or twice while passing through the department wing won a Nobel? Is the fact that a NYU professor just won a Nobel Prize directly going to improve the selectivity of the institution and attract stronger students as a result of this occurrence?</p>
<p>The answer to all of the above is no. The Nobel Prizes are meant to reward phenominal breakthrough by individuals in their respective fields of study and not universities</p>
<p>If anything, the Rhodes and Marshall fellowship count enhances the profile of an undergraduate institution to at least a non-trivial degree since both these awards deal specifically with research and advising opportunities that are tied directly to the home institution of the winners.</p>
<p>The new Princeton Nobel Prize winning Economics professor could have conducted his breakthrough research anyway. He was recruited by Princeton early since he was a luminary in his field and he accepted the offer since Princeton is a the pinnacle of graduate prestige in the field of economics. There is nothing that Princeton specifically did that would justify them getting any praise as a result of Christopher Sims’ accomplishments.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the Rhodes scholarship winners which Princeton produces annually wouldn’t have won the fellowship without the stellar research opportunities, advising and academic environment that the university provides.</p>
<p>People’s insistence to link everything back to institutional prestige is incredibly tiresome.</p>
<p>The very fact that most Nobel prizes these days are going to teams of researchers and not to individuals, and that these researchers usually work at different universities, underscores the irrelevance of the universities themselves.</p>
<p>So a professor from Princeton and a professor from NYU won a Nobel prize together. What does that tell me? It tells me that these guys had to work with someone outside of their department to achieve a breakthrough, and that their achievement is theirs alone, and also that said breakthrough happened a long time ago, when one or both of them may have been working at a different university.</p>
<p>Congratulations to the econ majors at Princeton and NYU, who will now be able to brag about taking classes with a Nobel prize winner, but seriously, this doesn’t actually change anything for Princeton and NYU.</p>
<p>In other words, my school doesn’t have many Nobel Prize winners and will continue to be ranked “strong” instead of “distinguished” in academic circles.</p>
<p>The disparaging of Nobel Prizes by some CC members, bustazak and ghostt in particular, is simply breathtaking in both vehemence and incoherence. The answer to all the rhetorical questions in the first paragraph by bustazak i(#5) s actually yes. The fact that not just one, but two NYU professors were awarded Nobel Prizes in Economics in recent years (Robert Engle in 2003) is a clear sign of the great strength of the NYU Economics. The same applies to Princeton. Nobel prizewinners don’t operate in a vacuum. Their presence helps recruit other stellar faculty. This in turn attracts outstanding students, both graduate and undergraduate, who wish to study with some of the finest minds in Economics, and because the prestige of their diplomas and graduate degrees IS enhanced by the Nobel prizes to the faculty under whom they study.</p>
<p>Congrats to both of them. My only question is this? Do any of them have any clue about how to solve the global debt crisis, because so far, nobody seems to have the right answers including another famous Princeton Nobel Laureate in Economics. </p>
<p>lol. My school doesn’t “have” a single Nobel prize winner, nor is it “ranked” anywhere on that extremely scientific scale you just quoted. I do lose some sleep over that, I admit–the jealousy that grips me when I hear people refer to another school, like Stanford for example, as “distinguished” when I know they will only ever think of mine as a quirky has-been is sometimes hard to overcome–but I think I’ll live.</p>
<p>I do wish US News would rank us slightly higher, though, because rankings are so very important to my self-est–oh wait. I just remembered. I don’t go to Berkeley.</p>
<p>Well, now that you mention it, Harvard enjoyed a bumper crop of Nobel winners among its alumni this year. Harvard alums swept the Physics prize, swept the Economics prize, and were one each for the Medicine and Peace prizes - for a grand total of seven Harvard almuni taking home Nobels in 2011.</p>