Real Talk - the 19th

zitothebrave said:
No. I don't. People should be allowed to do what makes them happy as long as it doesn't actually hurt others. If having kids makes them happy great. If being homosexual make them happy. Great. I guess in your case you're pro gay marriage and gay adoption then
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I asked about society, not individual people
 
My department is in the middle of conducting a job search for someone to teach finance. A fairly technical field. Indeed, finance is categorized as a stem field. Historically, a male-dominated field.

The head of the search committee is a friend and I was discussing the results with her yesterday. The deadline for applications was last week. Almost 150 applicants. It's a lot of work for the search committee but nice. Because we have quality as well as quantity.

My friend was amazed at how strongly tilted the applicants were toward women and toward applicants with international backgrounds. As a woman, she has long gotten used to being the only or one of a very small number of females at various finance conferences and other similar events. She doesn't mind it at all. But she is gratified to see the world achangin'.

The search committee has narrowed the field to 30. Those will be interviewed remotely. And the top 3 will be brought in for in-person interviews and to present a paper. The process moves fast. The three early favorites: a woman from Vietnam, a woman from Estonia and a woman from South Africa. All are studying in this country and are not subject to these new visa rules (notably the $100,000 sponsorship fee). We are pleased we can get in this search without having to deal with that. This will allow us to get a significantly better candidate than would be the case under the new rules.
 
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I mean it is an interesting counterfactual. Women increasingly go into these more technical fields traditionally dominated by men. It has been a slow process. But it has been happening. There is a potentially interesting discussion about why the lag has been so long compared to other fields that women have moved into in much larger numbers. At the high end of computer science it is very similar. My daughter was a CS major. The male/female ratio was something like 30 to 1. And it continues to be like that. The research team she is a part of has 30 men and 2 women. It won't be like that in 20 or 30 years.
 
When I was high(ish) up in the tech organization at a major bank, the mandate was to hire more women software engineers to even it out

Not hard to get more women in a field when men aren't allowed
 
That might explain why so few American men applied to the finance job our department posted. It's a shame because we would give them fair consideration. Our criteria are pretty simple:

1) Good researchers whose research interests might lead to fruitful collaboration

2) A strong commitment to teaching

3) No assholes

I don't think any of the above work against American men.
 
Over the course of my 4 years there, not only did hiring of women engineers skyrocket, but application from male software engineers decreased each year.

I guess they got the memo
 
Some interesting data regarding finance Phds:

1) now about 40% female compared to about 15% a generation ago (as a personal aside my PhD class in economics in the 1980s had 25 men and 1 woman)

2) about 75% of finance Phds are now international students. A generation ago it was majority American

3) do the Venn diagram and it is easy to understand the surprisingly small presence of American men in our applicant pool

Americans (including American men) still love their MBAs and are well represented there. But the MBA is a very different animal from a PhD.

The cultural divide shouldn't be underestimated. An academic career has enormous prestige among international students and their families. American students have other fish to fry.

The last four years spent in an academic setting have deepened my appreciation of the contributions made by immigrants who came here as students and stuck around to teach the next two generations of Americans. It is very much a win-win situation for almost everyone involved.
 
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nsacpi said:
That might explain why so few American men applied to the finance job our department posted. It's a shame because we would give them fair consideration. Our criteria are pretty simple:

1) Good researchers whose research interests might lead to fruitful collaboration

2) A strong commitment to teaching

3) No assholes

I don't think any of the above work against American men.
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Who wants to teach finance when its much more fun to work in finance?
But the ones who aren't as good would certainly like to teach.
 
thethe said:
Who wants to teach finance when its much more fun to work in finance?
But the ones who aren't as good would certainly like to teach.
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That's the cultural divide for you. Pretty much everyone teaching finance could make more dough working in private industry. And being a practitioner in private industry is also fun and deeply fulfilling in its own way.

As for the quality of who teaches and who works in industry, I don't think the quality is higher in private industry. Academia more than holds its own when it comes to attracting the best. And of course there are plenty who go back and forth between academia and industry, which is generally good for the field.
 
nsacpi said:
That's the cultural divide for you. Pretty much everyone teaching finance could make more dough working in private industry. And being a practitioner in private industry is also fun and deeply fulfilling in its own way.

As for the quality of who teaches and who works in industry, I don't think the quality is higher in private industry. Academia more than holds its own when it comes to attracting the best. And of course there are plenty who go back and forth between academia and industry, which is generally good for the field.
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Thats because you're comparing the quality as a whole. Pareto principle applies to all corporate jobs but the high end 'doer' rarely will be educators becuase we just have way too much to fucking do.
 
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