The Invisible College

J. Bradford DeLong (2006), "The Invisible College," Chronicle of Higher Education Review 52:47 (July 28, 2006):

The Chronicle: 7/28/2006: The Invisible College: Right now I'm looking out my office window, perched above the large, grassy, Frisbee-playing, picnicking, and sunbathing area that stretches through Berkeley's campus. I'm looking straight out at the Golden Gate Bridge. It's a view that I marvel at every day. I wonder why the chancellor hasn't confiscated such offices and rented them out to hedge funds to improve the university's finances.

I walk out my door and look around: at the offices of professors who know more about topics like the history of the international monetary system or the evolution of income distribution than any other human beings alive, and at graduate students hanging out in the lounge. It's a brilliant intellectual community, this little slice of the world that is our visible college. You run into people in the hall and the lounge, and you learn interesting things. Paradise. For an academic, at least.

But I am greedy. I want more. I would like a larger college, an invisible college, of more people to talk to, pointing me to more interesting things. People whose views and opinions I can react to, and who will react to my reasoned and well-thought-out opinions, and to my unreasoned and off-the-cuff ones as well. It would be really nice to have Paul Krugman three doors down, so I could bump into him occasionally and ask, "Hey, Paul, what do you think of .. ." Aggressive younger people interested in public policy and public finance would be excellent. Berkeley is deficient in not having enough right-wingers; a healthy college has a well-diversified intellectual portfolio. The political scientists are too far away to run into by accident — somebody like Dan Drezner would be nice to have around (even if he does get incidence wrong sometimes).

Over the past three years, with the arrival of Web logging, I have been able to add such people to those I bump into — in a virtual sense — every week. My invisible college is paradise squared, for an academic at least.

Plus, Web logging is an excellent procrastination tool. Don't feel like grading? Don't feel like writing that ad hoc committee report or completing the revisions demanded by clueless referee X? Write on your Web log and get the warm glow of having accomplished something.

Plus, every legitimate economist who has worked in government has left swearing to do everything possible to raise the level of debate and to communicate with a mass audience rather than merely an ivory-tower audience. That is true of those on the right as well as the left. Web logging is a promising way to do that.

Plus, there is the hope that someday, somehow, all of this will develop in a way to provide useful tools for teaching or marketing one's books, or something — that Web logging is a lottery ticket to something in the future, unknown but good.

Plus — and this is the biggest plus — it is a play in the intellectual influence game. My blog got about 20,000 page-views a day last month.

The hope of all of us who blog is that we will become smarter, do more useful work, be happier and more productive, and will also impress our deans so they will raise our salaries. The first three hopes are clearly true: Academics who blog think more profound thoughts, have a bigger influence on the world — both the academic and the broader worlds — and are happier for it. Are we more productive in an academic sense? Maybe. We will see when things settle down.

Are our deans impressed? Not so far, but they should be. A lot of a university's long-run success depends on attracting good undergraduates. Undergraduates and their parents are profoundly influenced by the public face of the university. And these days, a thoughtful, intelligent, well-informed Web logger like Juan Cole or Dan Drezner is an important part of a university's public face. Michigan gains in reputation and mindshare from having a Cole on its faculty. Yale loses from not having an equivalent.

A great university has faculty members who do a great many things — teaching undergraduates, teaching graduate students, the many things that are "research," public education, public service, and the turbocharging of the public sphere of information and debate that is a principal reason that governments finance and donors give to universities. Web logs may well be becoming an important part of that last university mission.

Comments

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Those of us who are no longer affiliated with a university in any formal way very much appreciate being invisible students.

[Brad]

Good post, Prof. DeLong.

I would like to add that Berkeley gains from having you on staff, but loses from having Prof. Yoo around.

[Bupa]

Brad, Many thanks to you for procrastinating in such a useful way. I'm also often procrastinating when I read your blog. Presumably the cumulative negative consequences of procrastination are offset by some of the things you cite, but the cost side of the equation should not be ignored.

[Esq.]

I'd like to second Tyrone Slothrop's comment!

[ken]

Speaking as one who has never before met an economist and perceived their usefulness limited to being the but-end of jokes I can say that being a regular reader of your blog has enlightened me on a few things.

But there is one thing that I don't get. I have read all the economist type blogs I can from all over the ideological spectrum and this layman still has a question:

Why do economist treat health care like any other good?

To me it clearly isn't.

People don't wait for a two for one sale when in need of heart valve repair, and get the second one thrown in for the heck of it.

When you are hungry you can dine on potatoes instead of oysters, but when you are sick you cannot substitute asperin for the right prescription drug.

You can chose a car based upon price but you cannot choose medical care that way. Either you need this or that medical treatment, or you don't. Price has nothing to do with it. If the price is cheap enough you might find yourself wanting a second car, and that wanting might lead to a decision to go out and purchase one, but no matter how cheaply an apectectomy is offered you are never going to actually want one.

So I really don't get it. I see economists all the time talking about health care as if it where just another choice people make as to how to spend their money. It is not.

And a related question to this, why don't economist talk about defense spending the same way they talk about other spending?

Where are the economic analysis of the comparitive advantages/disavantages of spending on the Air Force vs Marines vs Navy vs Army?

I see you guys talking all the time, much to my enlightenment, about Social Security, public vs private, how about turning some of that high voltage brainpower on the military? So many questions come to mind.

Does it make economic sense to buy more nuclear aircraft carriers or submarines? Should we eliminate the Air Force and just let each of the other services have it own air wing with joint training and one or two common aircraft?

As far as I can tell not a single economist has ever addressed this area in spite of the fact that so much money is actually spent there. Fertile fields for someone, I would think.

[andres]

"Those of us who are no longer affiliated with a university in any formal way very much appreciate being invisible students."

Very true, Tyrone, but you're not just a student. Most college lecture courses would grind to a screeching halt if their students commented as frequently as the comments in this blog. Before I get too sentimental, let me just add that I have learned a lot here not just from Brad, but from many other commenters--you know who you are.

And let me also point out Brad, that much of what's posted in this space is of better analytical content than much of what is submitted for publication in academic journals, whether or not it's published. It's too bad that assistant professors don't have blogging as a satisfactory alternative activity.

[tom s.]

I'll third Tyrone Slothstrop. I've been reading since the first post, and have learned huge amounts here. Hell, I've even changed my mind on some things. Many thanks.

[Buce]

I believe Bill Easterly, in Elusive Quest for Growth, has a nice recap of Learning by Just Hanging Out. Why, in retrospect, all this telecommuting is not such a great idea after all. Unless blogging can equalize the advantage.

[jerry]

A very good defense of Drezner, Cole, and faculty blogging. Blogging kept Drezner from achieving tenure, although tenure presumably exists so that academics can freely speak their minds. Yale was somehow afraid to hire Cole. If Cole had kept his damned mouth shut, Yale would have hired Cole, who then, with tenure, would have been free to teach his students any damned thing he wanted to.

Wisconsin has Ann Althouse, a tenured professor that hates having to blog about law or law and society, and spends most of her blog time blogging about reality shows and fashion. And apparently with the ads she sells, she does all of this for money.

Tenure is given on a very funny basis. The one professor here that needed tenure for the free speech free research aspects was denied it due to his speech. The one professor here that has tenure has nothing worthwhile to say and doesn't even attempt to say anything worthwhile anymore. At Haas when I was there, they were giving out tenure after only one year, not because any of the professors had anything wonderful but controversial to say, but just because it had become the ultimate d*ck size measuring stick. So good profs demanded it and the school caved in and everyone was corrupted and the taxpayer and students were fleeced.

(And frankly Brad, tenure has corrupted your values. I am certain that without tenure, you would be more of a fair trader than a free trader. :)

You have a wonderful view and I congratulate you on it, especially considering it is just a short walk to downtown Berkeley and to College and Telegraph. (But you didn't mention Strawberry Creek!) But if you want to see the view that I am surprised hasn't been sold to the Fortune 10, you have to visit LBNL up the hill from you. Oh my god, they have picture windows of the entire Bay Area.

[a different chris]

Ah, that explains the invisible degree I got in the mail the other day.

Unfortunately, I can't read it so I don't know what particular field it is in. I'll just have to fudge a bit on my resume.

[P.M.Lawrence]

This Invisible College sounds a bit like Terry Pratchett's Unseen University.

[Just a yob journalist]

Here's looking at you, Brad. I disagree with much of what you write about the press,but I've learned scads from you and the other commenters here. If your mission is to raise the level of discourse, you've succeeded brilliantly and I hope you keep at it for many years more.

[wcw]

Bitter though I am about a recent comments-thread ad-hominem being deleted by our host (ad hominem though it was, cryptoracists deserve occasional, vituperative public attack as reminder of their thinking's pariah status), I do appreciate this blog.

Two notes:
- the hedge fund cottage industry has no interest in west-facing offices on high floors in Evans (the best views at Cal) and lesser equivalents. plot asset bases geographically and think three seconds about network effects, and this will tend to make sense to you. empirically, price out bay-view office space in downtown Oakland. it's effectively worthless compared to the right parts of Manhattan and Greenwich. when the market speaks, listen.
- the political scientists I know don't like economists, at least not in the aggregate. It likely is a sour-grapes bitterness due to the latter's employability at fancy salary outside academe and the former's relegation to mid-salary think-tank work, but nevertheless my sample size is coincidentally large and I believe my result would stand up to a real analysis

As for Cal, a good economist would be able to explain why, during my undergrad sojourn there lo those many moons ago, larg class size tended to correlate negatively with office-hours visitors.

Any taker?

[marsha]

Now that I think about it I use my blog as a way to procastinate or at least avoid those tasks I didn't want to do any way. On the upside, blogging has given me the opportunity to meet a tremendous amount of people from around the world.

[dennisS]

Maybe its procrastinating or maybe its engaging your brain differently when the problem at hand won't yield to the impressive thinking you're throwing at it. A few minutes later after a blog-breather clarification sets in and the problem appears different and solvable. Or, that's my excuse anyway.

[Movie Guy]

Nice, well reasoned post.

[wmac]

I am not an academic, I have only a high school education. Due to an accident of birth, I couldn't afford it. I do, however have a mind, and unlike Mr. DeLong, have no one that I can bump into at work that I can learn from, or be inspired by. Thank you Brad and Juan, and all the others that are part of this community. You are not an extension of my intellectual world, you are all of it.

[dryfly]

Just my luck - I'd still get C's even in the invisible college.

Oh well at least I can drink beer in class (of course I also did that on occasion back in my youth at my alma mater, midwestern mega-state university... which in part is why I got Cs there). Hmmmmm.

****

Seriously - I had this same discussion with my sister last weekend - how important blogs have become, especially academic based ones like your own that bring the theory to the people & the people back in to the theory.

I specifically mentioned yours as one she should check out. She is a fund raiser at Michigan and doesn't have any idea how significant what you do - or their own Juan Cole for that matter.

She will retire next year and happily return to the land of 'dead trees'.

[save the rustbelt]

Well said.

For those of us who do not do economics or politics for a living, this is a quick and useful way to keep informed well beyond the daily media available to us (in a reasonable time, I should say, I could read 100 newspapers day day via the Internet, if I quit working).

PS: academia is sooo resistant to change, even when the business profs are writing books about the necessity of embracing change

[Delicious Pundit]

I love invisible college & am more ready for it than I was for real college. And in some ways I feel I know our host better than I did my thesis advisers, even.

Anyway, here is my nomination for mascot of invisible college (from another of my favorite blogs):

http://www.deadspin.com/sports/mascots/can-one-costumed-beer-keg-mascot-make-a-difference-yes-he-can-169663.php

[Bill]

What a pleasant post. Maybe we should all take a minute to enjoy the view from our windows and appreciate all that is well in our lives before we go about the business of pulverizing the points-of-view of those with whom we disagree.

[Brian Boru]

A bunch of years ago I chaired an academic professional association's committee on computer affairs; one of the big issues then was getting scholarly or academic credit for computer activities. Things have moved along: I myself got bonus points in recent years for an online encyclopedia article and an online scholarly article, a faculty member at a different university got tenure based in part on her Pompeii web site, and others elsewhere have crashed the barrier. The old hidebounds will remain old hidebounds (it's no accident the the marvelous site Perseus is now housed at Tufts), but academia is keeping up with the times.

[bad Jim]

Although we, the invisible freshmen, weep, moan, kick and scream, the eternally professorly drag us up.

[Nathan]

As a student at Cal in the major that Prof Delong chairs, International Political Economy, I have to admit that I spend a little more time reading academic blogs than I do with my course work.

Often in class it seems that a professor will hold back an opinion in the hopes of facilitating a classroom conversation. Yet on a web log there generally is not that hesitation. The professor says what he means and defends it in comments and in response to other bloggers.

Daily, I read a number of blogs that have definitely given me the edge in classroom discussions and civil discussions. It has helped me to understand debates and issues in much greater detail and context. It's nice to read a post from an expert which one can usually determine bias.

Especially from this blog, I have seen first rate examples of how journalists use 'weasel' words and strategies to misrepresent objectivity. This is a skill I don't think I would have learned in class- at least as an undergraduate.

What I find myself learning in class is the framework/ theoretical basis for understanding the world. What I read on the academic blogs is how the real world is broken down to be fit into social science theory.

The online academic blogosphere has helped me to quench my thirst for knowledge by providing too much of it. One cannot simply drink every cup. One must taste and choose what works best for themselves.

[failingeconomist]

Pratchett’s Unseen University: yes, it really is rather like that. Err, the undergraduates are something that get in the way of Professors being Professors? (/joke)

Here, Cafe Hayek, MR, Jane Galt, Dean Baker’s Beat The Press, add a few more. I’ve certainly learnt more economics in the past three years reading around the web than I did in my three years at the London School of Ecnomics those decades ago. Very much more divergent views as well which is good, seeing the same thing have different arguments applied to it.

[Jon Fernquest]

You have taught me how to procrastinate in an efficient manner. Thanks.

[Bill Gardner]

Thanks for the wonderful writing.

[Daraius Dubash]

Brad,

I really appreciate you sharing your wisdom and opinion on this blog. I graduated two years ago and I miss the late-night discussions on politics, economics, and current-affairs that college life makes one take for granted.

I work for a Fortune 500 company and let me just say that the thinking and opinions that abound aren't terribly robust.

[Auros]

Tyrone's motion is carried by acclamation!

[Lord]

I imagine you could select some posts, do some editing, and turn out books readily. While the interplay of ideas can be enlightening, I wonder if it will eventually lead to consensus positions with less novelty.

[Davis X. Machina]

Time spent watching someone who knows what they're doing doing what they know is always well spent.

It works best now with people who juggle ideas.

I'd like to see a YouTube with nothing but mechanics, cooks, artists, fly-tiers, musicians....

[Alex Tolley]

Reading blogs is not necessarily a paradise for us "virtuals." There is often too little supporting evidence for stated opinions. Even "duelling economists" that the WSJ puts on is of little real help. What would be paradise for me, is a site that sets up discussions on topics with data and opinions shown openly and traceably. For example, the issues of poor median wage growth vs. GDP growth, the "unemployment rate conundrum", social security fundings etc could be layed out, the relevant data shown and the participants explaining why their opinion is correct and countering other arguments. Too often I get annoyed by some opinion based on cherry-picking a few pieces of data, when the full data would show how wrong the opinion was.

OK, I'll admit I was trained as a scientist, but I feel that public discourse, and "wider education of non-specialists" would be improved if we could move beyond statements of opinions.

Having said that, Prof. DeLong often does a creditable job of providing data to support an opinion, although I cannot tell for certain if the data is the best or most relevant data.

[Warren]

Jn Cl s nt n th sm clss s Brd Dlng. Dn't thnk h s jst bcs y smtms gr wth hm. Fr xmpl, td's clmn 'Prblms wth srl Mltr Prfrmnc' s ll crpng nd sggsts n crrctv ctn. Ths s bcs Jn Cl knws lss bt th Mddl st nd th cndct f mltr prtns thn Brd Dlng ds bt cnmcs nd gvrnmnt. Nt n th sm clss.

[bogmunds]

I liked everything until you praised Juan Cole. That man is a jackass.

[JackNYC]

First Thank you Brad for the blogging. It is invaluable to me. I can think of no more productive way to ‘procrastinate’.

On the issue of tenure, the disappointment many of us feel for the disservices done to Cole and Drezner is a result of reality intruding (yet again) on idealism. As with the 'fourth estate', the hype about academia being a bastion of enlightenment and truth is a veneer.
It is about control of dissent.

My idealism lives on though, fed by your postings here (as well as many of the comments) and the writings of Cole, Drezner and others.

[Ralph]

IMHO not many university professors have the wide intellectual interests that you have, Brad. Berkeley itself may be exceptional in having such a galaxy of intellectual talent although most professors like elsewhere are happy within their specialized niches. Many have concluded probably correctly that sticking to their specialties is the better way to preserve their academic status.

[wjd123]

I have a bone to pick with Professor DeLong, and this article on blogging and academia affords me an opportunity. That is, it might afford me an opportunity if my comments aren't removed. You see I've been band from this sight and it is only lately that some of my comments have been left up. Perhaps I should leave well enough alone, but the thought of this slight nags at me.

I've been banned not because I use profane language, or call people names, I've been banned because Professor DeLong considers me a troll. Since I was banned after my first few posts I was left to believe that the Professor had extraordinary troll spotting powers. This may be. I'm still not exactly sure what the Professor's definition of a troll is. If it's feeling more passionately about some things than others, I'm guilty.

I don't like it when I believe that a subject is being deliberately handled dishonestly. Again and again I read articles on immigration that don't make the distinction between legal and illegal. I made a comment on one such post on this site about the effect of immigration on unemployment and wages where no distinction was made. My remark was that since these studies were being used to used by congress to influence the debate on what to do with illegals it was dishonest not to make the distinction. I argued that those who didn't make the distinction were diliberately conflating the two. I concluded by saying that there wasn't much difference from what they were doing than what Bush was doing when he conflated Iraq with 9/11 to sell a war.

(Here is some anecdotal evidence that the difference counts even in economics. Cheap illegal labor can run people who hire legally out of business. Here in NYC if you want to know where the illegals are working get five bids for a new roof. In my experience low bids mean illegal labor. According to my wife who speaks fluent Spanish those who worked around here were making $100 cash a day for a 12 hour day.)

Is the remark about conflating what got me into trouble with the Professor? I don't know. Perhaps it really was some trollish connotation that comes through in my post.

I've never been thrown off a site before, although in fairness, I have to admit that during my Army day's I was thrown out of Austria. That incident has never nagged at me because I knew exactly why I was being escorted to the border, even though, I believe the police wildly overreacted to a minor incident.

That's not the case with the Professor's actions. I've never been clear on why I was thrown out off this site. Hence it nags at me. And since it is a site run by a Stanford academic the question of tolerance in higher learning has also nagged at me. How far is academia looking for different takes on subjects?

When you are banned for unclear reasons it like having someone say, "You have nothing useful to say or add to the conversation, so you're dismissed."

I've picked that bone clean. I'll post this and see how long it remains up.

[andres]

Not that it will be of any comfort to you, but Brad also deleted some of the bad-tempered posts that I wrote in reply to you and the other anti-immigration zealots. Perhaps Brad did it because you seem to be unable to get something straight: no one is in favor of illegal immigration, but a substantial number of commenters, possibly a majority and including Brad, believes that trying to stop illegal immigration through a quasi-militaristic stricter enforcement policy that doesn't address the causes of immigration is both laughably naive and lamentably counterproductive. If you don't want your comments deleted, then perhaps you should accord more respect to this opposing view even if you disagree with it.

[slink]

"to communicate with a mass audience rather than merely an ivory-tower audience"

the best bloggers
even though not
perhaps as self styled
bizzy celeb as thou
get down into
the comment pit and slug it out

so where are you
mistah boy blue ???

u run a one way pipe line gig here
a trickle down
from post to comments

except for the really obscene
and quite unusual
use of
"bwacketted interthessions "
all too purple for most folks
but just right
for a spritz from
an august sprite

[Nathan Morton]

I would have to agree. :)

[Sabul Rumah Tumpangan]

Another great and inspiring post written by a great blogger..Thanks ;)