<p>MIT has perhaps the best Economics program in the world. Why are you surprised beyphy? This thread should be moved to the Graduate Forum by CC moderators as it has no pertinence to undergraduate “College Search & Selection”.</p>
<p>AH. My mistake, this isn’t surprising at all actually. I forgot that John Forbes Nash was associated with MIT; I didn’t know that he published the Non-Cooperative Games when he was associated with it.</p>
<p>NYU Economics presently has three faculty members who were awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in recent years. Two of them, Thomas Sargent (2011) and Robert Engle (2003), were on the faculty of NYU when then won the Nobel prize. The third, A. Michael Spence (2001), came to NYU in 2010.</p>
<p>That’s nice, but it is completely irrelevant. If you want to judge a school on how many nobel laureates it has produced then you may as well be in kindergarten.</p>
<p>An 18 year old should be more interested in finding out who will be responsible for his or her education for the next four years -or five to six in some cases-- and how many chances he or she will have to meet the Nobelists, let alone be taught by one of them in a relevant discipline. </p>
<p>The fact that a Nobel prize winner leads the occasional seminar of an obsure subject is hardly relevant to one’s education. It does, however, make for good bar discussions, and for parental pride. And, for the occasional silly ranking on CC!</p>
<p>It is very relevant. At least some undergraduates, the best and the most ambitious, care about the quality and the reputation of the faculty who teaches them, in this case Economy. The presence of three Nobel laureates in NYU economics, attracts other top faculty, junior and senior, to the department; and all these faculty do teach at both undergraduate and graduate level. The students can do high-quality undergraduate research with such faculty, their recommendation letters will open doors to best graduate programs, … I hope you get the picture. Faculty matters.</p>
<p>If all this were irrelevant, then everyone could go a community college and take Economics and other courses there.</p>
<p>A bit of persecution complex, UCB? Why do you construe that all (my) statements about the delays in graduating are directed at Cal? /insert smile. </p>
<p>And, yes, the availability of credits earned in high school and the financial pressures placed on students at almost every school in the nation has contributed to reductions in graduation delays. </p>
<p>One ought to applaud the improvements. All the while, the continuing rhetoric might contribute to avoiding a recurrence of the old diseases.</p>
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<p>Seems to represent close to a windfall at the generous NYU.</p>
<ol>
<li>“/insert smile”</li>
<li>Because Berkeley is the only big public mentioned in this thread.</li>
<li>Because you were addressing me, and I’m affiliated with Berkeley.</li>
<li>Because I don’t think you assume the other schools listed could take a student 5-6 years to graduate.</li>
<li>Because you love to post about all things Cal.</li>
<li>Because all of your other points in that post were directly addressing/criticizing positive points I’ve mentioned about Cal’s Nobel Prize winners teaching undergrads.</li>
</ol>
<p>There was no /insert smile in my original post.</p>
<p>There are a LOT of assumptions above! Don’t you think that a post such as </p>
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<p>might apply to a pretty good number of colleges and universities in the country? Unless you happen to think that only Berkeley has a problem graduating its students in four years? Now, that comment about Nobelists teaching the occasional obscure seminar … might have hit closer to People’s Park or Red Square. I’ll have to concede that part!</p>
<p>Do you think it applies to “a pretty good number of colleges and universities” listed in Post #1 of this thread? As that list is the realm of context for this discussion.</p>
<p>Do “a pretty good number of colleges and universities in the country” have Nobel Prize winners in Economics?</p>
Why should it matter to an undergraduate if they do or not? The vast majority of schools with good reputations don’t have a single Nobel Laureate attached to their name yet their graduates go on to become productive and successful members of society.</p>
<p>Lets not forget that this forum is geared towards undergraduate education.</p>
<p>Ok, remove that six years comment … and you still have the salient point of my post. Just in case you might want to address what is important. The six years graduation is not; the “who will be teaching” is!</p>
<p>That’s what makes them merely good. The vast majority of universities probably don’t have fields medalists, or Turing award winners either. It would undoubtedly add to their reputations if they did though.</p>
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<p>This forum seems like it’s geared towards undergrads indirectly. It’s main focus is prestige and reputation, which are important to many undergrads in their college selection process.</p>
<p>Can the OP provide the sources for that information. To please our UC friends, why not count the purported 17 Nobelists that respond to that ever so loose affiliation definition. </p>
<p>I believe Cal has two remaining faculty with Nobel prizes in Economics.</p>