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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

#201

Post by bo1024 »

motohagiography wrote: post #188
bo1024 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Imo, this comment is treating these sports as straw man symbols to assert an ideological point. Good horsemanship takes decades and isn't really comparable to intellectualism. We aren't your gods, and using riders as examples for iconoclasm is tedious.

I'm sorry if I gave offense, but I'm not sure what about my analogy you're objecting to and I would be glad if you could help me understand. I just meant to illustrate that an endeavor can be a fair and just meritocracy, but also non diverse and non representative -- these are two separate issues.

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

#202

Post by nextos »

woooooo wrote: post #159
nextos wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that hiring committees are busy, have imperfect information and therefore rely on easy metrics, i.e. prestige of candidate's university and journals where he has published. Many universities are now signatories of the SF Declaration, where they promise to value research based on ideas, not on prestige of journals: https://sfdora.org I have noted e.g. UMass goes one step further and asks tenure-track ap…

How does that work if anyone actually reads the publications? They'll have the journal name and probably current institution of the authors, right? Am I being naive with the question? Is reading the publications unusual?

It's a bit more complicated, you are asked to submit a CV, a research proposal and some summaries of your publications, all anonymized.

Then, an external committee theoretically does look only at that, and preselects candidates.

At that stage, they tell applicants and their internal committee begins looking at all non-anonymized materials.

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

#203

Post by lnwlebjel »

wbillingsley wrote: post #112
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 fro…

Good points for sure. The thought experiment I had in mind was a little different. You're on hiring committee at University X, and you can hire candidate A from prestigious university, or B from less prestigious University. Presumably, they get the same resources going forward.

Perhaps you are right that the social connections alone would differentiate candidates A and B. Which would suggest that hiring committees are somewhat correctly acting in their own best interest when they hire A.

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

#204

Post by gnicholas »

lapcat wrote: post #200
gnicholas wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks for clarifying. But it's actually if they're top 10 in any department, so there's a clear tilt in favor of universities that are large and have lots of departments.

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

#205

Post by lapcat »

gnicholas wrote: post #204
lapcat wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Thanks for clarifying. But it's actually if they're top 10 in any department, so there's a clear tilt in favor of universities that are large and have lots of departments.

Lots of universities are large and have lots of departments. That doesn't explain the success of the top 5 elite. For example, 6 universities grant more PhDs than UW-Madison yet have less success.

This conversation is getting repetitive and tiresome, I'm done.

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

#206

Post by melonrusk »

melonrusk wrote: post #151
derbOac wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the Pareto principle doesn't really provide a lot of insight into process: https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/03/01/144958/if-youre-...

Garbage model, garbage methodology. Their model has a set of agents with a 'talent' normally distributed between 0 and 1 (mean 0.6, SD 0.1). Each agent gets a random series of doubling and halving events. The doubling is applied with probability = 'talent'. The lengths of the series of events have an exponentially decreasing distribution (four longer is x10 less probable, approximately). The application of these seri…

Late addition:

It's actually worse than that. If we take a population with only median and maximum talents, the probabilities for each event are: halving: p=0.5, doubling because median-or-above talent: p=0.5*0.6. Meaning that in 80% of the events for a given actor the talent is not considered at all.

So the result that luck plays a larger part isn't an emergent property of the model, it was explicitly baked into the model from the start.

It wouldn't be unfair to call this paper fraudulent.

DOI: 10.1142/S0219525918500145

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

#207

Post by StanislavPetrov »

sicp-enjoyer wrote: post #136
StanislavPetrov wrote: post #81

Fortunately the prestige and social currency among Ivies and "elite" universities is rapidly turning to a stigma among a large portion of the population.

Where/when have you experienced that? My experience is that people will express that sentiment, but still be impressed when they encounter someone with such a status symbol.

Certainly it is true that many people are impressed by those who have an Ivy league degree. This is especially true among older people, who view these institutions with the historical prestige that they have traditionally carried. It reminds me in many ways of the Craftsman brand of tools. For many years, people swore by the quality tools put out by Craftsman. Then, in 2017, Sears sold Craftsman to Black and Decker. The quality of Craftsman tools plummeted. Its true that many people, especially older people, kept buying Craftsman tools, relying on the reputation they had built over the years. However, they learned the hard way that the Craftsman brand wasn't what it used to be. It is five years later, and some people still buy Craftsman tools based on their previous reputation, but a lot of people are already wise to the situation. It won't be next year, or the year after, but a few years down the road Craftsman will eventually be universally regarded as the trash it has become.

I can only speak personally to my experiences in the film industry (where I have worked for the last ~25 years). Speaking from my extensive personal experience, on "indie" shoots (those not being bankrolled by a studio), the last thing anyone producing a film wants is someone from an Ivy league school. Unless the Ivy league applicant is bringing some source of funding, avenue for distribution or other tangible benefit to the film, they are virtually always less competent, lazier, and more troublesome than people from other backgrounds. When I am hiring for a film, I want competent people who know their business, are going to show up on time and have as their only priority getting the job done. When I see an applicant from an Ivy I know I'm more likely to get a lazy, self-entitled person and someone who is much more likely to create friction and resentment with the rest of the crew. People who have worked hard for their positions don't like to work with someone who is slacking and complaining, especially when it someone who got the job because of a "prestigious" degree.

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