Bias in placements for Oxbridge, LSE?

[Karina 07]

It just occurred to me to look where people who do their Ph.D.s in the UK end up working (despite currently being in the UK, I didn't apply for any programs here).

And they seem to be doing better than you'd think based on their typical rankings.

True, data is very hard to find... I have the feeling that Oxbridge in particular might be trying to hide something or put themselves in a good light.

But, check out:
http://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/Jobs/destinations03.htm
http://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/prospect/phd/wherenow.html
http://econ.lse.ac.uk/archive/phdc/0506/phdc/

-- isn't this in general better than what you'd expect? (Esp. for Oxbridge, perhaps.)

[ekonomiks]

What typical rankings are you talking about? The econphd.net ranking is based on publications, not educational effectiveness. The NRC ranking doesn't included non-US programs. I don't know about you, but based on my own impression, the placements reported for those three programs seem right.

[economicus]

I think she means that they place their phd job candidates better than one would expect from these rankings (Oxbridge is for instance, placed rather low).

However, I am not sure about it.. these places are not really that top places...

[can_econ]

looks about right; it's pretty normal for schools to only list their better placements and it looks like at least Oxford does just that.

[guilty_conscience]

I think it represents the ranking based on placement quite well. however, besides one placement in chicago, I don't see much of a difference between the placements of lse and oxbridge.
In addition, it is interesting that people from cambridge seem to turn back to their home country. oxford probably only lists their strongest placements.

[Karina 07]

Hm, somehow I must've thought Oxford just had a very small class, nevermind on that front....

But still overall, looking at say Cambridge, it seemed to me like they only had maybe a couple of "bad" placements. Maybe I'm thinking that people who go to, say, the University of Urbino, Italy, chose it as a top choice because they're *from* Italy (name sounded Italian). But making modest assumptions like that, or that people who work at the IMF or in consulting wanted to work at the IMF or in consulting, it looks like almost everyone got something good.

Maybe it also seemed overwhelmingly good to me since I know Berkeley has not been doing well on that front the past couple of years . I love it, but it worries me: http://emlab.berkeley.edu/econ/grad/placement.shtml . Imho, there you see a lot more "not so good academic and not excusable for reasons of geography" placements, but it's hard to tell.

The econphd.net ranking places Oxbridge in the 30s, LSE much better, but I guess I was thinking if you compare those placements with other schools in the 30s.... Well, let's see (here are just some I quickly found, I hope this isn't accidentally biased, it's just the easier-to-find ones):
http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/ind...uate/placement
http://www.msu.edu/~ec/students/04-05%20Job%20Market%20Placements.pdf

Maybe it's just that I know those North American places better so I have a better sense of what's not very good....

Edit: Actually, maybe Cambridge is skewing theirs, too... "recent selection"... hm. And then LSE would just be doing well, but they're generally probably better anyway.... Now I'll go look at others around LSE's spot.

[ekonomiks]

If some school's placement record seems better than its position on the econphd.net ranking indicates, does that mean there's bias in the placement record or bias in the ranking? Possibly both, but I think the latter bias is stronger. Part of the reason is that the econphd.net ranking is never meant to measure educational effectiveness, which is what determines placement history. Indeed, there's something counterintuitive about a ranking that puts Caltech at the 43rd and Johns Hopkins at the 51st position. I doubt that anybody would turn down Caltech (43) for Michigan State (33), or Johns Hopkins (51) for UNC-CH (41).

[buckykatt]

In theory, placements measure the school's performance in educating researchers/teachers, while the econphd.net rankings measure research output of the faculty. We'd expect those to be correlated, but not identical...

[Karina 07]

So where, relatively speaking, would you all put these places?

I wish that places were much more transparent about their placements. It's nigh impossible for someone to figure out which places train people well, especially when one then refers back to hiring in a particular country (what I mean is that we've seen that the U.S. prefers North American schools, the UK prefers British schools, Canada prefers... not sure...).

[ekonomiks]

I would put LSE and Oxbridge in the top 20.