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…