"Amherst was pivotal in my broad intellectual development; MIT in my development as a professional economist"
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Stiglitz draws a bright line between learning how to think and learning how to function. Amherst, with its liberal-arts mandate, is cast as the place where the mind widens: a training ground in argument, history, moral reasoning, and the habit of treating any “given” as negotiable. MIT, by contrast, is where that widened mind gets fitted with tools sharp enough to cut into real economies: models, metrics, institutional literacy, and the discipline of being wrong in public via proofs, seminars, and referee reports.
The phrasing is deliberate. “Broad intellectual development” signals a refusal to treat economics as mere technique; it hints at Stiglitz’s lifelong impatience with economists who mistake elegance for truth. “Professional economist” carries a cooler, guild-like feel: MIT as the credentialing machine, the place that teaches what counts as rigor, what kinds of questions are fundable, publishable, legible to power. It’s a subtle acknowledgement that expertise is partly socialization.
The subtext is also a quiet argument about education at scale. A small college can cultivate intellectual range and ethical imagination; an elite research university can professionalize that imagination into a career that moves policy and wins prizes. Coming from a Nobel laureate known for challenging market fundamentalism, the line reads like a personal origin story for dissent: first, learn the world is complicated; then, learn the language that lets you prove it to people who prefer it simple.
The phrasing is deliberate. “Broad intellectual development” signals a refusal to treat economics as mere technique; it hints at Stiglitz’s lifelong impatience with economists who mistake elegance for truth. “Professional economist” carries a cooler, guild-like feel: MIT as the credentialing machine, the place that teaches what counts as rigor, what kinds of questions are fundable, publishable, legible to power. It’s a subtle acknowledgement that expertise is partly socialization.
The subtext is also a quiet argument about education at scale. A small college can cultivate intellectual range and ethical imagination; an elite research university can professionalize that imagination into a career that moves policy and wins prizes. Coming from a Nobel laureate known for challenging market fundamentalism, the line reads like a personal origin story for dissent: first, learn the world is complicated; then, learn the language that lets you prove it to people who prefer it simple.
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| Topic | Learning |
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