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Most US professors are trained at same few elite universities

nature.com

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

#191

Post by gnicholas »

lapcat wrote: post #180
gnicholas wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The list you cite undermines the article's claim about elitism because it looks like 4 out of the 5 schools that it lists are also on your list. So the conclusion is that the 5 schools that produce the most professors...include 4 of the top 10 schools in terms of PhD graduates. Not much of a surprise there!

You can't just look at supporting evidence and ignore contrary evidence. That's profoundly unscientific thinking. What about the 6 schools — the majority! — on my list that are not elite?

Not all of the schools on the top 5 list are that elite. Three are public and only two are private. And UW Madison is not a super elite institution. For many people it wouldn't be in their top 20 schools, maybe more. I was surprised there was only one Ivy on the top-5 list. When I saw that list of schools, I thought "this person is saying these are the hyper-elite schools that are making too many professors?"

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

#192

Post by blagie »

jl2718 wrote: post #190
blagie wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true. "Harvard quality" means either: - Very smart - Connections to wealth and power A bit over 2/5s of the white undergrads are admitted for the later. That came up in the Asian law suit. Similar mechanisms apply elsewhere, but we haven't had legal discovery (note: not speculation; insider knowledge).

“White” seems overly broad here. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-myth-of-american...

Yes, speaking as an insider, cheating at universities like Harvard, Stanford, and MIT is ubiquitous. I'm not talking about undergrads copying exams, so much as research fraud, bizarre financial schemes to funnel endowment funds into faculty pockets, conflicts-of-interest, and occasionally, actual crime.

I was following the article until I ran into xenophobia:

"The absurd parental efforts of an Amy Chua, as recounted in her 2010 bestseller Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, were simply a much more extreme version of widespread behavior among her peer-group, which is why her story resonated so deeply among our educated elites."

Chua is an immigrant academic who has devoted much of her life to the study of cultural dynamics in the US. She published an honest account of her life parenting in the US, coming from a different cultural background, as a means of helping people understand the immigrant experience with America trying to Americanize them.

Instead, what she did got cast through an American cultural lens, anecdotes got distorted by the media, and she got beat up over a very personal, very honest, very well-crafted account.

I am an immigrant, and her book resonated 100% with me. Things I do with my kid seem absurd from an American cultural perspective. It's not the same set of things as Amy did, at all, but that's true of most immigrant families from different cultures, be that Middle Eastern countries, Africa, or many other places.

An author of this article either doesn't know what they're writing about (they're citing a book they haven't read), or they're lying.

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

#193

Post by lapcat »

gnicholas wrote: post #191
lapcat wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't just look at supporting evidence and ignore contrary evidence. That's profoundly unscientific thinking. What about the 6 schools — the majority! — on my list that are not elite?

Not all of the schools on the top 5 list are that elite. Three are public and only two are private. And UW Madison is not a super elite institution. For many people it wouldn't be in their top 20 schools, maybe more. I was surprised there was only one Ivy on the top-5 list. When I saw that list of schools, I thought "this person is saying these are the hyper-elite schools that are making too many professors?"

Madison is more elite than you think. "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

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

#194

Post by sicp-enjoyer »

mmmmpancakes wrote: post #186
sicp-enjoyer wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most academic areas my experience is you can get high quality education just about anywhere with serious study, but I have heard some math professors express that getting with a top advisor is super important to help bring you to to the frontier of research. Do you have any insight into whether this is true? Also just curious what your field of math is.

It goes without saying that quality of research is very important. However, getting a TT position is much more about connections and fashion than people think, especially in a field like pure math where it's much more difficult to argue concrete applicability and outcomes of your theoretical work. And this is especially true when there are many people doing top quality research (which there are). A top advisor will b…

That all makes sense to me, however I think those prestige benefits are similar in all fields. Although, as you point out math is perhaps even more unique in how siloed and impenetrable the various fields are.

The impression I got from these few professors was that the quality of research (besides status benefits) would be significantly higher. Something along the lines of, "most math researchers aren't doingimportant and groundbreaking research, only the top 5-10 departments are". Do you agree with that?

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

#195

Post by gnicholas »

lapcat wrote: post #193
gnicholas wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all of the schools on the top 5 list are that elite. Three are public and only two are private. And UW Madison is not a super elite institution. For many people it wouldn't be in their top 20 schools, maybe more. I was surprised there was only one Ivy on the top-5 list. When I saw that list of schools, I thought "this person is saying these are the hyper-elite schools that are making too many professors?"

Madison is more elite than you think. "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

That's not evidence of eliteness. It's evidence that they produce a lot of professors. And as the top-10 list above points out, they produce a lot of PhDs.

It is an open question as to whether the reason they make a lot of professors is because they make a lot of PhDs, or because they are "elite".

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

#196

Post by pyuser583 »

tedunangst wrote: post #160
pyuser583 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a research powerhouse, but so is University of Chicago. And University of Chicago is more prestigious. I would assume University of Chicago would produce more faculty.

If I found the right data, wisc graduates about twice as many PhDs per year.

Shouldn’t these ratings be adjusted for number of graduates?

If a university graduates 100 Phds, and 80 get tenure that’s pretty good. If a university graduates 10,000 and 80 get tenure … not so much.

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

#197

Post by epolanski »

ryan93 wrote: post #98
epolanski wrote: post #68

Earlier 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…

Why then have harvard and cambridge graduated such a incredibly large fraction of the worlds most productive and famous scientists and mathematicians? Can you please name the italian universities that have produce at the level of cambridge?

> Why then have harvard and cambridge graduated such a incredibly large fraction of the worlds most productive and famous scientists and mathematicians?

They didn't graduated most of them, they employed them, (e.g. the most recent Nobel recipient Penrose).

Out of 121 Nobel recipients from Cambridge most came from universities you never heard of.

Also: funding.

Academia works like that: the more you publish the more money you get => the more you can research and publish => the more money you get and so on.

Thus hubs that historically did well, will keep attracting more funds and outscore other universities.

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

#198

Post by Ancalagon »

bigbacaloa wrote: post #183
mmmmpancakes wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Co…

Those who leave for work condition reasons mostly would not have made good researchers - their priorities aren't conducive to doing good research.

I would expect good working conditions to lead to better research though. Buckling down, being able to focus for years at a time on obscure problems without interruptions, all of that would come even easier if the researcher had a good financial backing for them and their family (unless you're suggesting researchers shouldn't get to have one of those?). Overworking someone works great until it doesn't.

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

#199

Post by azinman2 »

goldenManatee wrote: post #187
azinman2 wrote: post #24

I 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…

This is all based on personal emotions and faux logical assumptions. There’s very little concrete or scientific evidence being presented to back up any of the anecdotes. There’s mention of avoiding mushiness, but ironically that’s precisely what the comforting cognitive miserliness does.

What a strange comment. The article itself gives you the trend. It doesn’t answer the why. I’m giving an insiders perspective to my experience, which is what the best HN comments typically contain.

Should all comments here only be pointers to research? That’s not the community that I’m interested in, as that’s what’s easily accessible already via google.

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

#200

Post by lapcat »

gnicholas wrote: post #195
lapcat wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Madison is more elite than you think. "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

That's not evidence of eliteness. It's evidence that they produce a lot of professors. And as the top-10 list above points out, they produce a lot of PhDs. It is an open question as to whether the reason they make a lot of professors is because they make a lot of PhDs, or because they are "elite".

Those are top 10 rankings by prestige, not by number of professors.
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