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Most US professors are trained at same few elite universities

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

#111

Post by derbOac »

OJFord wrote: post #101
derbOac wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally anecdotal, but I've been in a number of tenure-track hiring meetings at multiple universities and someone always brings up the idea of "pedigree". As in, "X has a good pedigree" etc., as if that's an argument for hiring the person above and beyond their track record. So at least in my personal experience, these things do enter into the process. Of course, the process involves a lot of other variables too; the…

But is that entirely wrong? Isn't 'good pedigree' saying 'we can trust the unknown here more than in other cases'?

Maybe? I think that's where this gets murky. What are you basing that trust on?

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

#112

Post by wbillingsley »

lnwlebjel wrote: post #95

What would be more interesting is this: are the researchers in the 80% category as productive as the researchers from the 20% of elite institutions category (on average)? This could be studied and measured, and would go a long way toward dispelling the notion of prestige. I see what they are getting at - yes there needs to be more diversity in academia and education needs to be more available, and widely distributed,…

It would be very difficult to dispel the notion of prestige, because most output measures are highly influenced by input measures. Prestige inevitably flows into the measures.

E.g. an academic at a prestigious university has a healthy supply of able PhD students, post-docs, a "research environment" that will make applying for grants that bit easier, etc. Their publication and citation numbers will quickly diverge from their identical twin who has is less well resourced. Likewise, the PhD students at a prestigious university are more likely to be attached to well-funded grants, collaborators who have well-tuned paper mills, etc.

Academia is quite a social game. Network effects (which are one part of prestige) are a strong influence.

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

#113

Post by lo_zamoyski »

bo1024 wrote: post #32
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).

> There is an important and different question of how diverse and accessible academia is.

What I find troubling is the baggage of background assumptions that makes this sort of value judgement possible.

You have three professors, two white, one black. The two white professors, A and B, have diverging yet compelling views. The black professor C agrees with A. Which is better? Hiring A and B, or A and C? According to prevailing views of the value of diversity, the latter is preferable because of the racial diversity rule.

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

#114

Post by oneplane »

beambot wrote: post #91
oneplane wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd hope that quality requirements could be used to make a bar that is high enough so any accredited institution would be delivering highly educated and developed people. Anything beyond that would be nice to have, but not enough to be a deciding factor when judging merit. When you think about it, what is it that we want? Someone with fancy labels who went to places that also had fancy labels, or someone who can do…

The minimum bar (accreditation) is very different from top performers. You may call every person who graduates medical school & passes the boards "doctor", but they're definitely not all created equal either. Same for lawyers, engineers, computer scientists, etc.

But doesn't that mean that either the bar is too low, or the additional performance of top performers skews the entire field?

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

#116

Post by BurningFrog »

derbOac wrote: post #94
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…

Totally anecdotal, but I've been in a number of tenure-track hiring meetings at multiple universities and someone always brings up the idea of "pedigree". As in, "X has a good pedigree" etc., as if that's an argument for hiring the person above and beyond their track record. So at least in my personal experience, these things do enter into the process. Of course, the process involves a lot of other variables too; the…

There is some truth to the heuristic that "if you got into Harvard" you have to be pretty good.

Because Harvard is really good at finding the "Harvard quality" people among applicants.

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

#117

Post by throwawaylinux »

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…

> These are non-sequiturs. The research question here is whether faculty are hired from those prestigious schools above and beyond the rate at which they would have been hired based on other signals of their potential as researchers, which, presumably, are related to what school they go to.

> I am not seeing how schools' historical relationships with marginalized peoples bears on that question.

You're right, but it would be truly hilarious if those universities used this same reasoning to defend themselves. Now they don't like the intersectionality they preach when it's going to be used against them.

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

#118

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#119

Post by gammarator »

BurningFrog wrote: post #116
derbOac wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally anecdotal, but I've been in a number of tenure-track hiring meetings at multiple universities and someone always brings up the idea of "pedigree". As in, "X has a good pedigree" etc., as if that's an argument for hiring the person above and beyond their track record. So at least in my personal experience, these things do enter into the process. Of course, the process involves a lot of other variables too; the…

There is some truth to the heuristic that "if you got into Harvard" you have to be pretty good. Because Harvard is really good at finding the "Harvard quality" people among applicants.

Jared Kushner would like a word: https://www.propublica.org/article/the-story-behind-jared-ku...

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

#120

Post by ninjin »

cycomanic wrote: post #34
setgree wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have been on multiple hiring committees and had insights into plenty of hiring processes at other “top-25” universities. My experience is that it is more complex than simply using prestigious universities, supervisors, and collaborators as markers. In fact, I have so far never heard that kind of argument raised, while I have heard diversity arguments raised more times than I can count.

Rather, my experience tells me that having attended prestigious universities, as well as having had “great” supervisors and collaborators drives up other metrics for a candidate such as publications, impact, collaboration networks, etc. Success breeds success across academic generations, due to overall positive perception of people/institutions, (in particular at top American institutions) ample access to funds, etc. Note also – and this is very important – that the metrics I mentioned are considered “objective” and disconnected from prestige. Making matters even worse, the ability to make use of the opportunities that these prestigious institutions bring, is of course correlated with intrinsic attributes you want to see in a candidate (not everyone that goes to Harvard ends up being a superstar).

It is very difficult for me to pick this apart. How can I possibly objectively tell whether individual A that entered a top-5 institution or individual B that entered a top-100 institution is most deserving? Given the complexity of it all, I suspect that I can not, but I also sincerely doubt that the insistence on “objective” metrics does much to alleviate an already very messy situation.

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