Sometimes I forget that the reason I'm here is not just to explore the great city of London, but to take a class. (Don't worry, Mom and Dad, I'm still working hard.)
The class I am taking is Development Economics, an interesting look at various factors that affect growth and poverty in the developing world. Each day, we have a three hour lecture in the morning that provides background information, theory, and models on the topic for the day. Some of the topics we've covered so far are human capital accumulation (both formal and informal education), property rights and land distribution (how control, or lack thereof, of one's own land and resources motivates them to produce differently), and leadership changes (whether leaders really influence economic growth). My professor for the lecture is an incredibly smart professor and graduate of LSE who teaches at Cambridge during the school year and at LSE during the summer.
In the afternoon, we have a discussion class where we analyze the day's reading. Each reading comes from a major Economics journal, looks at a different factor that affects growth, and is often written by a professor right here at LSE. This class is the first time I've had a TA for a teacher, since my college does not have a graduate program, and it definitely defies any negative stereotypes that correspond with such a situation. My teacher is a Dutch Ph.D candidate writing about the military's effects on economic growth, and he is one of the most intelligent people I have ever encountered.
I really enjoy discussing the theoretical framework for the topics we cover, but I do not get quite as excited about looking at the econometrics behind the theory. Analyzing regression analysis requires a lot of time looking at very small numbers on a big table and deciphering their meaning and significance, but I know that doing so is essential to talking about the theory in any kind of respectable way. Without well-run regressions, the theories are nothing more than guesses about how people and markets behave.
Studying among such an international group of students has also been interesting. In my afternoon discussion class, for example, there are about twelve students. Two are Americans, three are Indian, one is Dutch, one is Brazilian, one is Japanese, and I'm not totally sure about the rest. But, although we are in London, not a single one is actually British. There are a couple of English students in my larger lecture section, but not a sizable number.
Studying with this variety of people is basically the same as studying anywhere, except for one tangible difference: American students tend to work less hard and take their studies less seriously than their peers from many other countries. I consider myself a quite hard worker, but I am not as thorough as many students from say, India or Eastern Europe. I can only imagine that this general trend is the result of educational opportunities being fairly commonplace for the majority of Americans, so that "getting through" college is more important than really learning from it. It might also be due to the fact that many Americans view college as a fun, beer-filled stop on the way to earning more degrees so that they can find a decent job. That's what I imagine, but I guess I'd need to run a couple of regressions, and beware of the inherent endogenity in the relationship, to really say for sure.
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