Benefits from alumni? Think again

Some faculty members or school administrators seem to think that it is enough to produce plenty of graduates to generate income and other benefits from alumni. This logic is flawed - you surely need alumni but they have to be happy to be from your school.
I can serve as an useful example. I'm pretty good student, I will most likely finish among the first in my cohort. My research, while not the best in the world, is well above average. I was even stupid enough to get funding for my mobility - something everyone is supposed to try to do yet nobody does. Even though I have encountered plenty of stupidity among the huge crowds of employees of CERGE-EI prior to my departure, it cannot be even compared what happened when I came back.
The school did not manage to get my entry card working, even after 6 weeks since I came back. I had a prior written agreement over my status for the next year. After I fulfilled my obligations, some people changed our agreement to something that had already cost me about $1500. When I came to a meeting with infamous Mr. Nemec to "negotiate", he told me "This is how it will be". I being discriminated by not getting a stipend when everybody else does - for reasons manufactured by "them". I will not continue, even though I could. It is a long list.
The point of this story is that when your graduates leave you angry and pissed off, they won't be very helpful for the school. I have graduated from Masaryk University and I have much, much better memories for that time. I will be glad to help them (In fact, I already am) whenever they ask. I will not for CERGE-EI. I hope this post does not prevent me from getting my degree, but as you can clearly see I am angry.

Working Papers at CERGE-EI

There is a plenty of rules for submission and evaluation of Working Papers at CERGE-EI. Most of them attempt to smooth the process and limit its length. It is all governed by one person I will not name, because this person changes and for another reason that will be obvious in a minute.
This person receives the paper, selects the referee from CERGE-EI faculty, usually based on suggestions provided by the author, sends them the paper, collects the reviews etc. The referees are supposed to be done in 3 weeks. There are no limits on how fast they need to be chosen. So check this:

This is a submission email:

Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 13:33:33 -0700

And this is an email send by that person to the referees:

Tue, 06 May 2008 12:51:54 +0200

Yes, it took him 2 weeks to send a 3 line email. Given our history, I guess it is personal...

Quality distribution

I just came back from a Micro Theory Lunch, which is a great thing here in SD. It is similar to Brown Bag seminars, expect the food is provided by school (and it is good - sandwiches, cookies, sodas). It has a regular schedule and it takes about an hour. The usual presenters are students, even though faculty members like to present, too. This time, the presentation was by my office mate Jim. He is a very smart and curious guy, but the presentation itself was, given my standards, bad. There was almost no structure, it was really hard to understand what is the main point, where is it all going. He also spent a lot of time on motivation but did not link its content with the theory he (very shortly) presented afterwards. It made me wonder what is the actual quality distribution of people (and their presentations) around the world. Maybe CERGE-EI is not that bad after all. Or at least, the good guys at CERGE-EI are better then the average elsewhere.

Presentation skills

Today, I finally had the opportunity to compare the quality of our (CERGE-EI) graduates to those of UCSD. Based on the small sample of one girl going to the job market and her first presentation, I would say we are roughly comparable. Her (empirical micro) paper was interesting, but the presentation itself was quite confusing and several problems were discover (and to many questions, she simply had no answers). Still, I admired her english. Much, much better than what we see at CERGE-EI.

Leaving CERGE-EI

Leaving CERGE-EI is a very funny and very "pleasant" process. First, you have to pay for your office-mates phone calls, even for time when you haven't been in that office. Second, you have to return the books, including those you bought from you own grant.
Finally, you have to acquire full page of signatures for other things. The beginning of that paper says "Dear Student, as you have decided to quit our program". Well, I'm not quitting the program, I'm going for a mobility and I managed to get my own funds to do so (as I was encouraged to do). This is my punishment for a good deed.
P.S. As it turned out, if you are patient and persuasive, you can keep your books and you don't have to pay for others phone calls.