Most US professors are trained at same few elite universities • Hacker News Board

Re: Most US professors are trained at same few elite universities

#31

Post by Animats » Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 9:38 PM UTC

mrkeen wrote: post #13

psKama wrote: post #7

Not sure in what context the word "elite" is used when it comes to claiming there is a hiring bias. It may be thought that those schools have very high fees to attend but I would argue/claim (with no data in my hand) if it was looked deeper into their background, it is very likely that majority of those professors attended those schools via a sort of scholarship to start with as a result of their success prior to uni…

> it is very likely that majority of those professors attended those schools via a sort of scholarship to start with as a result of their success prior to universities they got accepted. When it comes to admissions to elite schools, money can all but guarantee access to those who can afford it https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/13/rich-kids-top-college-admissions

That's what the Ivy League is for. It's difficult to flunk out of Harvard. 98% of those admitted graduate.

Re: Most US professors are trained at same few elite universities

#32

Post by bo1024 » Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 9:46 PM UTC

setgree wrote: post #5

> “Accepting that prestige is a good measure of excellence means that we’re not looking into the history of how things became prestigious,” Gonzales says. The founding of elite US universities is “intertwined with exclusion”, she adds. For instance, many institutions have a history of seizing land from Indigenous groups, or originally derived their wealth from or supported their infrastructure with the labour of ensl…

They’re definitely sequiturs, maybe not to the issues you want to discuss. You seem focused on how much academia is a meritocracy. There is an important and different question of how diverse and accessible academia is.

For example certain Olympic sports like dressage (horse jumping) are meritocracies, but very exclusionary (or at least non diverse, non accessible).

Re: Most US professors are trained at same few elite universities

#33

Post by nickysielicki » Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 9:49 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #4

The headline didn't surprise me, but the five universities named actually did. I'd expected Harvard to be there but there's a few mid prestige schools in the list. I'd have thought the list would be dominated by the same old famous institutions such as Ivies and MIT rather than large state universities.

It’s Harvard, Stanford, UCBerkeley, UMich, and UWMadison. Which ones surprised you? UMich and UW-Madison are mid tier?

Re: Most US professors are trained at same few elite universities

#34

Post by cycomanic » Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 9:50 PM UTC

setgree wrote: post #17

pessimizer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The research question isn't about whether "prestige is a good measure of excellence." That's the question that you ask after you discover that people are being hired based on prestige, if you don't automatically assume that's either a bad or a good thing. If prestige is definitely driven by quality, it's not bad that professors are being hired because of the prestige of the schools they attended. But accepting that p…

Sure, I think it’s good to both first get the data on which scholars come from which schools, and I also think unpacking the social and political construction of prestige is a great research agenda. But to assess whether prestige is a source of bias in the hiring process, you have to separate prestige from other markers of quality. Otherwise, you have a big confounding variable problem. This author, and also the quot…

Have you been on a university hiring committee? My anecdotal evidence is that yes prestige very strongly matters and coming from a very prestigious university often outweights other factors such as publication record.

I haven't read the original article yet but one can easily test if e.g. the publication record of a graduate student from a non-and prestigious uni differ to the extend that is indicated by the hiring.

Re: Most US professors are trained at same few elite universities

#35

Post by msackler1 » Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 9:50 PM UTC

mrkeen wrote: post #13

psKama wrote: post #7

Not sure in what context the word "elite" is used when it comes to claiming there is a hiring bias. It may be thought that those schools have very high fees to attend but I would argue/claim (with no data in my hand) if it was looked deeper into their background, it is very likely that majority of those professors attended those schools via a sort of scholarship to start with as a result of their success prior to uni…

> it is very likely that majority of those professors attended those schools via a sort of scholarship to start with as a result of their success prior to universities they got accepted. When it comes to admissions to elite schools, money can all but guarantee access to those who can afford it https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/13/rich-kids-top-college-admissions

No post body was provided.

Re: Most US professors are trained at same few elite universities

#36

Post by yCombLinks » Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 9:50 PM UTC

setgree wrote: post #20

pessimizer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Professor-level pay is not acceptable for people who attend the Ivies and MIT.

You might be surprised by what faculty at the professional schools (and their near-equivalents, like Econ departments) make — think starting salaries in the 180-250k range at high-ranking R1 schools.

That's high but not impressively high. I make that without a degree in software.

Re: Most US professors are trained at same few elite universities

#37

Post by mmmmpancakes » Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 9:51 PM UTC

Ancalagon wrote: post #15

This is pretty much why I left physics, any worthwhile research career was over before it even started since I went to a lower-tier state university. Not saying that's indicative of all fields considering the difficulty of physics and few number of faculty and lab positions available for such skillsets, but that was my experience. I looked around at my professors in undergrad and virtually all had come from Ivies or…

Same here but for math. I did a survey of who was getting the TT jobs I wanted in the cities I wanted to live in and the trend was that they all went to Harvard / Princeton with a few exceptions. Seeing how strongly those profile elements, which I don't have, correlated with success getting into TT, and how few positions there are, it was easy to decide to leave.

Other factors include pay for TT professors in high CoL cities not keeping up well enough with inflation over the last 10 years. Those salaries look much worse now than they did when I entered grad school. For the level of education it is underpay for overwork.

Doing science in industry pays substantially better, has better WL balance (really anything will compared to academia), has more job openings in more cities, and there are plenty of challenging problems to work on. Moreover, research skills that STEM phds and academics have are highly valued, at least by some companies.

In the end things seem to have worked out for me. I was warned about all this back when I entered grad school but didn't listen because I really wanted to do math. Following that passion was a good instinct after all even if I wasn't able to achieve the original goals exactly as I planned. I'd 100% do it again.

Re: Most US professors are trained at same few elite universities

#38

Post by throwaway0asd » Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 9:53 PM UTC

setgree wrote: post #5

> “Accepting that prestige is a good measure of excellence means that we’re not looking into the history of how things became prestigious,” Gonzales says. The founding of elite US universities is “intertwined with exclusion”, she adds. For instance, many institutions have a history of seizing land from Indigenous groups, or originally derived their wealth from or supported their infrastructure with the labour of ensl…

The presence of bias is purely numerical and is allowed to thrive due to the lack of controls. Prestige is an unrelated red herring masking the very human behaviors that account for social gravity in many walks of life. This is commonly referred to as implicit bias and is generally the most common cause of various forms of selection bias, including racial discrimination from both the majority and minorities alike.

Re: Most US professors are trained at same few elite universities

#39

Post by drewcoo » Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 9:54 PM UTC

setgree wrote: post #5

> “Accepting that prestige is a good measure of excellence means that we’re not looking into the history of how things became prestigious,” Gonzales says. The founding of elite US universities is “intertwined with exclusion”, she adds. For instance, many institutions have a history of seizing land from Indigenous groups, or originally derived their wealth from or supported their infrastructure with the labour of ensl…

> non-sequiturs

if prestige is a good measure

  -> how did it get that way?

    -> exclusion

      -> examples of exclusion

You might claim the point is not germane for other reasons but clearly this shows a clear sequence of thought so the claim "non-sequitur" doesn't hold. "It's too hard to measure" also doesn't mean "not germane," though.

Re: Most US professors are trained at same few elite universities

#40

Post by iudqnolq » Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 9:54 PM UTC

Nimitz14 wrote: post #25

iudqnolq wrote: post #3

Universities are efficient, they create many potential professors with a small number of professors. So every class of potential professors will have many who can't get jobs where they studied, and will apply to less desirable places. This was very disheartening to realize in college. It was too late for me to attempt to become any of the role models physically in front of me.

I personally like it that not anyone can become a professor, it should be an elite position imo.

I agree! Just saying it wasn't super fun to realize (completely fairly) that I wouldn't be able to become a professor.

And I have a lot of sympathy for my classmates who only realized that when they graduated and tried to get a job. Universities have significant incentives to prevent their students from realizing there are a lot of people out there smarter (and more privileged) than them and the implications that flow from that.

Universities should continue to be selective, but they should accurately communicate the implications of that selectivity to their students.