OP here.... good info here. The school isn't brought up too often, so this was helpful!
Indiana University (Bloomington)-opinons?
(38 posts) (1 voice)-
Posted 2 months ago #
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PSJR's quality has marginally improved lately. What's happening? OP, if Middle East, South or SE Asia is what you want to do, go to IU if that's your best offer. If an R1 job's in your radar, you still have to publish out. That's the reality of the market.
Posted 2 months ago # -
^^ and ^
The point of "the city issue" (shades of the 1960s Urban Crisis!), is NOT that you need a city to attract good grad students. Clearly, grad students will go where the reputation, funding and profs they they think they want to work with are found.We are talking about FACULTY. Indiana is or isn't a good dept for students b/c of who is teaching there. Because of social change (two-career couples) the location hurts them more than it used to. 40 years ago the wife would tag along with her Mr. Man wherever. Maybe she'd get some job around the university when the kids were older or teach K-12 or something. Sure, she'd rather be in a city or some place with good weather, but Bob's career was the main thing for the family, so if Bloomington or Iowa City was best for that, OK.
Fast forward to today: Now she has more of her own career. If she is a professional she wants to be somewhere she can work. If she is an academic too then if she can't get a job at Bloomington it's not good b/c it's not like being in Boston or DC or other cities where there are lots of nearby colleges and universities. And sometimes the wife is the star academic and all of this is true of the husband. And all this stuff goes for same-sex couples too. So it's a problem for the Indianas, the Iowas, the PSUs and the Texas A&Ms going forward. One way they cope is making a ton of spousal hires. That's a good coping strategy, but it only goes so far and has obvious problems.
Posted 2 months ago # -
^^ and ^ should be further up of course!
Posted 2 months ago # -
^^Those hires can also result in Vincent and Elinor Ostroms
Posted 2 months ago # -
Two career academic couples are making a huge career mistake when they get together. They know it, but who can blame them? Life is about more than jobs. On the other hand, you might not both get jobs. And places such as Bloomington rock when it comes to living your life on a daily basis.
Posted 2 months ago # -
If you are a serious quantoid, you won't be taking stats classes in polisci anyway. IU has lots of solid quant offerings through sociology, econ, business, stats, etc. You could do a lot worse than to learn SNA from Stan Wasserman, or categorical DV from Scott Long. You can definitely find advisors that will back a quant research agenda there. I mean, you don't *have* to put Kasza on your damn committee!
Placement concerns are legitimate though. People from IU get jobs, but not via pedigree.
Posted 2 months ago # -
B Fraga is now there. Amazing mentor and scholar
Posted 2 months ago #