Fortunately the prestige and social currency among Ivies and "elite" universities is rapidly turning to a stigma among a large portion of the population.
Most US professors are trained at same few elite universities
81–90 of 207 posts
Re: Most US professors are trained at same few elite universities
#82The 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.
I agree!
Alas, there are a lot of comments nearby (not necessarily children of yours) from people who didn't notice this, and are working out their elitism thing. (Those damn elite professors who went to grad school in Madison!)
These are all really big schools (Cal, UMich, UW), so in retrospect, I get it. Classic "how do you normalize" thing (https://xkcd.com/1138/).
Re: Most US professors are trained at same few elite universities
#83I'm hoping the research has more detail than the article, because the article seems to make the illogical conclusion that having 80% of professors come from just 20% of schools is in and of itself a bias towards "elitism".
Or, it could just be that those 20 prestigious schools are harder to get into (which is pretty provably true based on acceptance rates), and could thus have higher standards than other universities.
I've become tired of the argument that any distribution that doesn't follow the distribution of an underlying population is by itself evidence of bias, without any specific evidence of bias. Not saying this is always the case, but it's an extremely lazy argument that is easily disputed if people are actually being honest.
Re: Most US professors are trained at same few elite universities
#84I don’t know why this is a problem or even surprising. There are few academic positions. Getting in and making it through the top schools is competitive and difficult. So why wouldn’t the best and brightest and most motivated and best networked beat everyone else out? I’ve been to every kind of level of school (public, private, non-elite, elite). Whenever I’ve had someone from an elite background teaching at a non-el…
Something something...those who can, do; those who can't, teach.
The fact is, the best and brightest typically enter the private sector, not academia. Agree about lowering the common denominator, but I don't think that has anything to do with the way tenure is handed out if we're being honest. For instance, diversity of thought is your enemy in academia. Research universities seem to reward parrots.
Re: Most US professors are trained at same few elite universities
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have worked as a researcher in one of the most prestigious labs in Switzerland and the world, and I have not seen any correlation at all between how bright are people and where they studied. We had visiting researchers from anywhere and I failed to see any correlation between the two things in years. I can tell you none of the brightest came from cambridge uk or harvard us but universities you never heard of in sou…
I can only speak to my experience, and experienced just about every major kind of environment (private elite small, public large, community college, regional state schools, elite universities). I’ve met great people everywhere, but in heavily uneven distribution. And in the less great environments, having a culture of either apathy, non-excellence, or simply not having so many great peers does little to motivate ones…
First: "So why wouldn’t the best and brightest and most motivated and best networked beat everyone else out?"
Second: "Your peers are a well establish major factor in determining your trajectory in life."
Ok, so can we ditch "best and brightest and most motivated" and just go with "best networked"?
> I don’t know why this is a problem
The problem is the best networked part.
Re: Most US professors are trained at same few elite universities
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have worked as a researcher in one of the most prestigious labs in Switzerland and the world, and I have not seen any correlation at all between how bright are people and where they studied. We had visiting researchers from anywhere and I failed to see any correlation between the two things in years. I can tell you none of the brightest came from cambridge uk or harvard us but universities you never heard of in sou…
I can only speak to my experience, and experienced just about every major kind of environment (private elite small, public large, community college, regional state schools, elite universities). I’ve met great people everywhere, but in heavily uneven distribution. And in the less great environments, having a culture of either apathy, non-excellence, or simply not having so many great peers does little to motivate ones…
I think you are way overblowing this whole idea.
Sure, peers matter, and yes, probably competitive people may tend to aggregate in some places but that does not lead to the implications and numbers you drive. It's mostly about bias and network.
> people who went to MIT were in a culture that pushed them the entire time, so they’ll have maximized their talent
It's funny you mention a university which publishes their own tests. I'd like to see a comparison with similar tests from less prestigious university. Calculus/analysis tests seem quite standard, where's the unusual push?
You seem to regurgitate university ads.
It's also funny how the article points how prestige...is much less of a factor for STEM than economics or law...maybe because stem needs results besides prestige?
Re: Most US professors are trained at same few elite universities
#87Since when did "one in eight" qualify for "most"?
Re: Most US professors are trained at same few elite universities
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why it has become normal to do 3-7 years of postdoc research positions before being considered for a tenure-track faculty position, even for those from elite universities.
Only in fields where there’s no demand for their skills outside academia, like English literature or History, or vastly more supply than demand, like most of the sciences. Fields like Economics or Computer Science have post docs but they’re not normative. Most people who end up with tenure track jobs never do one.
So only in the vast majority of fields, then.
Re: Most US professors are trained at same few elite universities
#89The 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.
I agree! Alas, there are a lot of comments nearby (not necessarily children of yours) from people who didn't notice this, and are working out their elitism thing. (Those damn elite professors who went to grad school in Madison!) These are all really big schools (Cal, UMich, UW), so in retrospect, I get it. Classic "how do you normalize" thing ( https://xkcd.com/1138/ ).
> Those damn elite professors who went to grad school in Madison!
This is underrating the University of Wisconsin. "Among the 1,070 departments that are ranked top-10 in any field, 248 (23.2%) top-10 slots are occupied by departments at just five universities—UC Berkeley, Harvard, Stanford, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Columbia; fully 252 universities (64%) have zero top-10 departments." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05222-x
See also my comment with numerical data about doctorate production at schools: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32945639
Re: Most US professors are trained at same few elite universities
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can only speak to my experience, and experienced just about every major kind of environment (private elite small, public large, community college, regional state schools, elite universities). I’ve met great people everywhere, but in heavily uneven distribution. And in the less great environments, having a culture of either apathy, non-excellence, or simply not having so many great peers does little to motivate ones…
I think you are way overblowing this whole idea. Sure, peers matter, and yes, probably competitive people may tend to aggregate in some places but that does not lead to the implications and numbers you drive. It's mostly about bias and network. > people who went to MIT were in a culture that pushed them the entire time, so they’ll have maximized their talent It's funny you mention a university which publishes their o…
> Calculus/analysis tests seem quite standard, where's the unusual push?
The tests in standard courses aren't really what's at play. It's about people and the ability to "run into" and work with those people gets people into research networks.
Not all MIT students do that, of course, and it's not an absolute; many people come from less-prestigious schools, but the networking effects stack things against them coming from undergrad and afford them fewer opportunities to "walk into" those circles, depending on the resources their UGs have.