University of Missouri-Columbia

Final stop: the University of Missouri, a.k.a. Mizzou. Before starting on my way back to the Netherlands, Naveed and I visited the Department of Philosophy here for two days. Our host was a friendly Kantian named Tom, who is himself a first year grad student here. We were having lively discussions of various philosophical topics within an hour of arriving, which I think all of us enjoyed.

At the department itself we talked to various professors and grad students. The most relevant professor for me would probably be Paul Weirich, with whom Naveed and I had lunch on Monday. He is mainly concerned with making decision-theoretic models more relevant by removing idealizations, while retaining their normative aspirations. He also informed us about the waitlist procedure. As it happens, Naveed is now first on the waitlist and I am second, meaning that if one person already offered funding says no, Naveed will get an offer, and me after that.

Another interesting figure for me would be Peter Vallentyne, who has an active interest in the Pasadena game, the topic of my bachelor’s dissertation and the paper that I co-authored with Jan which is forthcoming in Mind. We sat in on his seminar on political philosophy, in particular the issue of secession, which was outside my usual range of interests, but nonetheless very nice. The grad students were very engaged, leading to an interesting and lively debate.

If I were to get off the waitlist here, I would be offered a TA-ship. This entails teaching three or four sections each semester for tuition and a stipend of roughly $12,000. This stipend is considered to be somewhat low, but livable since Columbia is a relatively small, and hence cheap, college town. Tom also mentioned that a salary raise may be forthcoming for the TA’s.

As in other places, teaching duties are expected to take up about twenty hours per week. A difference with some other places would be the relatively few opportunities to get semesters off from teaching.

Grad students are expected to take courses the first two or three years, with distributionary requirements similar to those at other places. Mizzou does seem more likely than other places to allow you to transfer in credit from previous graduate level education, allowing either more time for research or a shorter time to degree. The average time to degree has been declining, from about six years to something closer to five.

Obtaining the master’s degree is an important step towards starting the dissertation. At Columbia, this involves defending two qualifying papers before a committee of faculty members (likely your future dissertation committee). For me, defending my master’s thesis from LSE instead could be an option. However, obtaining the master’s way ahead of schedule may lead to your funding guarantees being reduced as well.

The people at the department seem very friendly and helpful. All the grad students we met had time for at least a brief chat. We spent some time in the lounge that doubles as the office space for the first years. After the first year students get office space on the same hallway as the professors, sharing a windowless room with two or three other grad students.

Paul Weirich and Peter Vallentyne each have about three advisees and make sure they have enough time to spend with them. They don’t usually co-publish with their students, but publishing by grad students is generally encouraged.

There is funding available to support students presenting a paper at a conference. There are no exchange programs with other universities, although the prospect of setting something like this up met with some enthusiasm.

The faculty seem to get along well, and there are no “bad apples” as far as the grad students could tell. There are a few people doing continental philosophy who may be a bit isolated, but there is no animosity against them.

As in Madison, in Columbia some people have a fellowship awarded at the university-wide level that allows them to spend less time TA-ing. Unlike any other place I’ve been, Columbia also has a small (~$3,000 I think) support fellowship awarded by the department to its best third-year student. Professor Horisk ensured us that this does not lead to a very competitive atmosphere among the students.

At this moment I am on my way back to the Netherlands. During my three week tour, and especially when discussing my situation with Naveed on the way back to Indianapolis, I have written down a bunch of additional questions for the people I’ve met. I’ve got a bunch of emails to write, and then the great deliberation… Wish me luck!

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Thursday and Friday I visited another cold place, Madison WI. Thursday was actually rather nice, but on Friday we even had snow. Blegh.

On to the university itself though. The three professors here that are most relevant to my interests are Dan Hausman, Mike Titelbaum and Elliott Sober. Unfortunately, due to the Central APA meeting Professors Hausman and Titelbaum were both away. Professor Sober gave me an impression of what they work on though. He is interested in game theory from a biological/evolutionary point of view, Professor Hausman is interested in philosophy of economics and in particular the meaning of preferences. Professor Titelbaum is interested in rationality from a formal epistemology perspective. He would presumably be the person I’d be working with the most.

To my surprise I learned that not all of the visiting prospective students had had the same financial package offered to them. My package is worth about $14,000 per year. To earn this money I would in principle be teaching every semester, with a workload of about 20 hours per week. Thanks to money made available by the school (as opposed to the department) some people get a few semesters off from teaching and a little more money in those semesters as well.

One is required to take eleven philosophy courses, which should take two years and a bit to finish. The distributionary requirements are relatively mild, with two history courses, at least three courses in your main field and at least one course outside your main field (for me ethics, aesthetics, social or political philosophy), a logic requirement and a rather vague minor requirement. They are also setting up a proseminar starting this Fall, similar to what Michigan has.

The student offices are windowless, but they are somewhat more spacious than the ones at UPenn and Michigan, and they are in the same hallways the professors are in (unlike CMU). Students report that professors are usually generous with their time toward PhD students, although for the more busy ones setting up a meeting in advance may be required. Those who live outside town may not always be in the office. The department is by my estimate slightly smaller than Ann Arbor, with about 20 faculty and about 30 grad students.

There is some limited funding available to attend conferences. Spending time at other universities is possible if you find some way to fund it (which would be hard unless you’re on a fellowship semester).

Again professors here have mixed opinions on students publishing their work, but it’s becoming more common now, also due to the unfavorable job market. The Department does seem to be “more successful than those ranked equally high” in job placement, placing about half of its students on the market this year in good spots.

Graduate student Casey expressed his concern that single-author work is the norm and there is few collaboration on papers between students and faculty, and virtually none among students. This seems to be the case almost everywhere (except possibly CMU and maybe with Cristina at UPenn). My conclusion is that I should take initiatives in this direction myself wherever I end up.

The three prospectives that were at Madison when I was there (out of a total of twenty-something visiting over the last few weeks) were Jay, Josh and Hannah. We had good fun with the current grad students, going out for drinks with them both nights. They seem like a friendly and lively bunch.

All of this is not making my decision much easier. I would almost hope Missouri isn’t going to be as good…

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Sunday through Tuesday I was in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to visit the Department of Philosophy. According to the rankings, this is one of the top five departments in the English-speaking world, in addition to being of world class in the specific area of decision theory and rational choice. My visit consisted of a quiet Sunday afternoon that I used to walk around the place for a bit, a dinner party at Professor Tappenden’s house and then two densely scheduled days of lectures, seminars, one-on-ones with professors and hanging out with grad students.

In my area of interest, the two senior figures here are Jim Joyce and Allan Gibbard. My first meeting with Professor Gibbard, probably the most famous person I’m meeting on this tour, was at Professor Tappenden’s house on Sunday night. This turned into a fairly surreal experience as we only talked about sports without mentioning our common philosophical interests.

Jim and Allan were both very friendly and I would be very excited to work with them. Jim extensively complimented my own work and made it clear he would do everything in his power to get me off the waitlist for financial support. We talked quite extensively about his thoughts on imprecise credences and on expected utility theory. Regarding the latter, he tends to be of the opinion that most of the supposed counterexamples to EUT are actually bad experimental setups where the subjects’ beliefs about what is going on do not sufficiently match what the experimenters want them to believe to warrant the conclusions they draw. Most philosophers would disagree, I think, but it seems worthwhile to me to pursue this position and see where it leads us.

When asked about the other places I’m interested in, Jim made it clear he thinks highly of UPenn, LSE, Missouri-Columbia and CMU. A worry about CMU might be, according to him, that grad students often get towed into professors’ research projects to the extent where they find it hard or impossible to explore an interest outside a professor’s immediate project. A worry about UPenn and Mizzou would be that they have only one professor at each of these places that would be a natural dissertation adviser for me.

Jim also mentioned two or three junior professors who share my interests. I met one of them, Sarah Moss, who gave a special seminar on formal epistemology and a regular seminar on analytic philosophy that I both attended. She is easily among the best teachers of philosophy I have ever met. Gaining the opportunity to work with her would be a big attraction of this place.

This is the largest department on my tour so far (and I think overall as well) with faculty numbering in the upper twenties and grad students in the low thirties. As such all of the philosophical bases are covered in this department, and most of them excellently so. Out of all the places I’m considering, this one presumably has the best overall education in philosophy and the associated job market advantages.

Ann Arbor is a strong university in many areas. Through the Decision Consortium, an interdisciplinary research seminar organized weekly, I will be able to get in touch with other scientists interested in similar topics. For some reason, at this place these people will be from the psychology and medicine departments more often than the economics department. My overall impression is that UPenn scores at least as well in this regard.

Teaching requirements amount to about half of the total number of semesters one is expected to be in the program. This includes TA-ing and grading in the second and third year, and a chance to act as a lead instructor later on.

Course requirements take up most of the first two years, with two courses outside the department required, but outside courses generally can’t count for philosophy credit. Distribution requirements amount to one ancient and one modern history class, one ethics, two in distinct areas of M&E (metaphysics and epistemology) and one either in a further M&E topic or in a distinct area of ethics. In addition there is a logic requirement, the “cognate” (outside) requirements, a proseminar in the first year and a language requirement.

The funding package is upwards of $20,000 per year and was considered by grad students to be more than sufficient. In principle it is the same for everyone. One worry that was raised is that as an international student I might end up in a substantially higher tax bracket. This mystified me as I have heard nothing about this at any of the schools I have visited so far, despite taxes coming up explicitly at CMU when I asked about it.

The grad student offices are a large room in the same hallway that all the professors are in. The workspaces themselves are cubicles within that room. The Department is located at the front of a nice large building called Angell Hall (see picture). Almost all of the grad students live within a twenty minute walk in this relatively small university town (~100,000 pop).

Jim and Allan have about three and about six students that they are advising respectively. They can get rather busy, but are always willing to make an appointment if you email them, or so the grad students tell me. The relations among the faculty seem to be quite good in general.

As at Penn, there was some ambiguity about publications. Apparently the bigger schools in the US tend not to view publishing your work as hugely important and even potentially disadvantageous for grad students (when you publish something “immaturely” it might “haunt” you later on). Some students therefore only publish (parts of) their dissertation after graduating.

Expense accounts are available for visiting conferences, and students generally attend a few conferences per year. When you’re on fellowship (i.e. no teaching) you are also free to spend more substantial amounts of time elsewhere.

That concludes my notes on Ann Arbor. Let’s see what Wisconsin-Madison has to offer.

University of Pennsylvania

From Wednesday to Saturday I visited the city of Philadelphia and in particular the Department of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. I was lucky to have planned for a relatively long stay here, as the city and the department are both great.

I spent Wednesday just checking out the city, including a visit to its Museum of Arts at the recommendation of my first host Chris, and I attended a lecture on social norms by Professor Bicchieri. Thursday was rather hectic, as I met a number of professors, current graduate students and prospective, at the same time was making appointments for Friday with professors outside the department that I was recommended to, and after dinner moved to my second host Reed. Friday brought more meetings, including an almost two hour discussion with Professor Cristina Bicchieri, who would most likely be my adviser here. There was also a guest lecture by Professor Patricia Churchland, a famous philosopher of science, a little (prospective) grad student party and a move to my third host Lindsey. Saturday I found some time to meet with Jack, whom I studied with at the LSE and who lives near Philadelphia.

Professor Bicchieri made it clear that if I were to come here, I would primarily be helping her work out the theoretical foundations of a universal utility function that can be used to describe and predict behavior in experiments. This work would be done in close cooperation with professors at UPenn’s excellent Department of Economics and its business school, Wharton. As the head of the PPE program, Cristina has close ties with these people and I met two of them, Professors Dillenberger and Kimbaugh. I also met with the friendly neighborhood logician Professor Scott Weinstein and with Professor Michael Weisberg, an enthusiastic and talkative guy interested in the model-world relation, in particular in philosophy of biology.

To my surprise, Cristina spent some time criticizing her former department: Carnegie Mellon. Most relevant for me are her claims that the only person there willing to work with me on decision theory is Horacio and that they are virtually unable to place grad students in philosophy departments. I hope to learn more about these claims by communicating some more with the people at CMU and a friend of Cristina’s who was also formerly at CMU, Peter Vanderschraaf.

The financial package seems more than adequate at $24,000, although this is also the most expensive city I’m visiting. Grad students tell me it’s more than sufficient though. Everyone receives the same package so this is no cause for rivalries. There is also the possibility to earn free housing if you are prepared to live in undergrad dorms and serve as counsel to them a few hours per week. Chris is using this option.

Office space is again far from optimal. The grad students are packed into windowless rooms, and first years don’t even get their own desk, instead claiming some space in the nice little library that is part of the department.

The course load of the program seems reasonable. One must take at least twelve courses, about ten of which should be done during the first two years. Distributionary requirements will force me to take at least three history of philosophy and two ethics courses. Potential disadvantages here are the restriction on taking courses outside the department for credit (maximum three) and the lack of breadth of subjects among the faculty (e.g. no metaphysics). Michigan has a much larger faculty, while Carnegie Mellon has the Pitt Philosophy and Pitt HPS departments to draw from.

These considerations are only important if I want to get a tenure track position at a philosophy department after my PhD and if I want to have some of these missing fields as areas of specialization/competence. Unfortunately I have no idea about this. I guess philosophy of science and logic would be more straightforward AOCs for me than metaphysics though.

The teaching load I think is rather light at UPenn. One is expected to TA a course only in the second and third year, and then teach as a lead instructor for one semester in the fifth year. I’m expecting the teaching load to be heavier at the three schools I have yet to visit, as they are public rather than private universities, but we’ll see.

My two most likely advisers, Professors Bicchieri and Weinstein, both don’t have any graduate students currently. This is a blessing and a curse, as they will certainly have enough time to work with me, but it’s also likely that I will not be able to have in-depth conversations about my work with the other grad students (unless Hanna decides to come here).

It looks like there will be enough room to attend conferences and get some of the expenses paid for that (although I can’t remember whom I asked this). My question about spending time at another university met with some surprise. This is clearly not common here, but it should be possible, in particular in the fourth year, and they did not seem actively opposed to the idea.

Professor Domoltor made a curious remark in saying that only about 30% of grad students have a publication to their name when they are defending their dissertation. They do usually publish parts of their dissertation later, and the professor may have had a long timeframe in mind, but still. Reed found this hard to believe and so did I. I forgot to ask Michael or Cristina about this. Perhaps an email is in order here. Cristina does seem to publish a lot with (former) students and other co-authors. I wonder if she is in favor of single-author publications by grad students. I guess I should ask her this, too.

The faculty apparently get along reasonably well. I heard some rumors about a rivalry between two faculty members, but neither of them I’m likely to work with so that won’t affect me. In order to recreate something like the lively academic climate in Pittsburgh, I think I may need to be a little more proactive, attending PPE seminars and the like.

During my visit I met all of the first year grad students and many of the older ones as well. All of them were great, and we had a lot of fun together. The first years were a bit stressed about a logic exam on Friday morning, but they more than made up for that the rest of that day, and I feel like I really clicked with them. It would be great to be working with them for the next five years or so.

All of this is not making my choice much easier. Still, I’m looking forward to see what Ann Arbor has to offer.

University of Pittsburgh

Next stop: the History and Philosophy of Science Department at the University of Pittsburgh. I was shown around by Jonah Schupbach, a grad student I’d met in Konstanz last September. Coincidentally we were both there to present a paper we co-authored with Jan, my BA supervisor. Jonah kindly showed me around at the department, introduced me to a number of other grad students and Bryan, Peter, him and me went out for lunch together and had a nice discussion about Kevin Zollman’s paper at the grad student conference this weekend.

Unlike CMU, HPS does not have people working on topics that are directly related to my research interests so far (decision / rational choice theory). John Norton and Jim Woodward might be pretty good matches, with interests in philosophy of probability, general philosophy of science and philosophy of social science (unfortunately neither of them were around when I visited). If I were to come here, I would get a very broad education in history and philosophy of science and presumably branch into new research interests (in addition, perhaps, to satisfying some of my rational choice interests at CMU). Although I’m sure this would be great fun, I tentatively view this as a pretty big disadvantage of coming to Pitt.

Which is a shame, as this place scores nearly perfectly on any other criterion I can think of. I really liked the grad students I met (nearly half of the total population) as well as the faculty I spoke to. Although the student:faculty ratio is much higher here (3:1) than at CMU (1:1), I understand that most of the faculty members are around and available most of the time.

As I mentioned in my previous entry, the academic climate here in Pittsburgh is outstanding, with interesting stuff going on all the time between Pitt HPS, Pitt Philosophy, the Center for Philosophy of Science and CMU. As Jonah put it: “if you take some initiative to mingle with the CMU and Pitt Philosophy students and faculty, it really feels like one big department”. Note to self: it would be interesting to compare the size of this combined department to for instance the size of Ann Arbor’s department.

The funding package is very generous, in the vicinity of $24,000 plus most of your conference and reading expenses. Given that Pittsburgh is one of the cheapest cities in the US this should be more than sufficient. Although I probably won’t know for certain until a few days before the April 15 deadline, in recent years they have been able to offer funding to all waitlisted students eventually.

The course load is apparently quite heavy, with students taking courses for three or four years. Unlike at CMU, “courses” that are really research time don’t seem to exist. On the other hand, the teaching load is guaranteed to be light (as opposed to CMU, where it’s somewhat heavy in principle, with lots of possibilities to make it lighter). In your first five years (apparently most people end up taking six years) you have two teaching years and three “fellowship years”, usually the first, third and fifth, in which you have no obligations other than your own courses/research.

The facilities for PhD students are excellent, with office space on the 9^th floor of the Cathedral of Learning (see picture), all of which have an amazing view. There is also a nice common room where the students seem to hang out quite a lot. The grad students all feel confident of landing a good job, as excellent support from the department has enabled them to maintain a 100% placement record for years. Both students and faculty also felt confident claiming that this is the best department in the world for philosophy and history of science.

Grad students report receiving ample opportunity and money to attend conferences and even to spend significant time at other universities. For instance, Jonah spent nine months at TiLPS in Tilburg, Bryan spent a semester at the University of California, Irvine, and Katherine is spending a year in Berlin.

Students are encouraged to publish on their own (as in this case there can be no doubt about intellectual ownership), but co-authoring with faculty also happens. An important part of the requirements for the PhD at Pitt are the comprehensive papers. These are two single author papers, one on history and one on philosophy of science, that should be of publishable quality, written at the end of the second year.

The faculty seem to get along well. By the grad students’ account there are no factions or animosities either intra-faculty or between Pitt HPS, Pitt Philosophy and CMU. The grad students also seem to have a collaborative atmosphere going on, sharing their work for instance in the well-attended weekly Work in Progress talks.

That concludes my notes on Pitt HPS. Next up: UPenn.