Professor Mankiw's Advise to First Years

It is not for nothing that I follow a number of famous professors of economic, not least of whom is Gregory Mankiw. That he is a highly capable economist is not in doubt and I often find that his textbooks provides sound ongoing education for me. In this week's piece in the NYT, he has some advise to students joining colleges during this summer.

While I think that he is perfectly placed to offer that advise because he is a professor, the quality of the advise astounds me. he does not only stress the need for students to seek to appreciate the subject of economics but goes ahead to explain why that is indeed important. Added to that is the injunction to learn some facility with numbers in the form of statistics and probability theory while being alive to the fact that psychology would supplement a fuller understanding of human behavior. In perfect humility that is rare among accomplished professors and best selling author, he is alive to the variety of advise that first year students will be bombarded with. Accordingly, he tells them to ignore advise as they judge fit. that too is true but I hope that they all cut out or mark this page and read it as they start the exciting academic journey.

If I could add to that list, it would be that every student should try and understand principles of a natural scientific discipline and some course in logic. Given the ubiquity of information of varying veracity, ignorance is not virtue and very thin specialization makes people myopic.