Academia's 1% • Hacker News Board

Re: Academia's 1%

#21

Post by hiou » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 3:56 PM UTC

williamstein wrote: post #5

[Disclaimer: I'm part of that 1% she is talking about, since I'm tenured faculty in Mathematics at University of Washington, with "Harvard" on my resume due to my first job being there. http://wstein.org ] The author says: "The most prestigious universities – the Ivy League, University of Chicago, Stanford University, the University of California system – tend to lie in the most expensive parts of the country. Even w…

I will add some of my own anecdotal evidence to your anecdotal evidence. I have yet to meet a single person in life that has admitted they they had it easier or an advantage. I've always believed that was because for the most part everyone works hard, some just get larger rewards for that hard work.

I can tell you growing up from a small high school without any prestige there was very much a hard cap on how many students from our school a Harvard(or other top institutions) would except. To the point where top students would bargain with each other about which schools to apply to so they didn't steal someone else's acceptance offer on a 3rd choice etc.

Secondly, the tech world has been a glaring example of while one can use Harvard's selections as a signal to find talent, there are many, many, many exceptions to that rule. And your comments are quite sad to read in light of that new information.

Re: Academia's 1%

#22

Post by rdtsc » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 3:58 PM UTC

I applied for a PhD at an average school, passed the qualifying exam. But after a couple years found a full time programming job and didn't finish. Looking back family and friends were upset at me for not finishing, but I think it was a bullet I dodged. Having to look for research position at a company or getting stuck fighting for tenure position at some even less than average school in the middle of nowhere would not have worked out as well.

And funny enough, I looked at the list of faculty at the university I was at, to see where they came from. All from high end school Harvard, Purdue, Cornell etc, just like the article mentions.

The policy it seems is hire up, graduate down. Unless of course they are in the top university then they hire from peers.

Re: Academia's 1%

#23

Post by elbenshira » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 4:01 PM UTC

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #11

nycticorax wrote: post #8

The author seems to view the hiring statistics she cites as evidence of "bias", but I didn't see any attempt to control for the actual quality of the applicants. I.e. You could read all of this as just more evidence that the "system" works: the good schools tend to be enriched for good graduate students, who then tend to get a lot of the tenure-track jobs.

>You could read all of this as just more evidence that the "system" works: the good schools tend to be enriched for good graduate students, who then tend to get a lot of the tenure-track jobs. Then, I think we have to continue reasoning, why do those grad-students grow up and find they can only acquire tenure-track jobs by jumping to lower-tier institutions, where their own academic "children" will be considered infe…

Because these universities produce more students than tenure-track positions?

Re: Academia's 1%

#24

Post by analog31 » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 4:03 PM UTC

williamstein wrote: post #5

[Disclaimer: I'm part of that 1% she is talking about, since I'm tenured faculty in Mathematics at University of Washington, with "Harvard" on my resume due to my first job being there. http://wstein.org ] The author says: "The most prestigious universities – the Ivy League, University of Chicago, Stanford University, the University of California system – tend to lie in the most expensive parts of the country. Even w…

So, if you don't mind a question: What do your grad students do about the fact that for whatever reason, they are largely not headed for the tenure track? How do you advise them about their careers?

The only story that I know about that: A professor of trombone at the nearby state university started telling his students that he was happy to teach them, but that there were no jobs for trombonists. He lost his job, but he felt that he shouldn't build his success on the false hopes and eventual failure of his students.

In my own experience, as a grad student at a second tier university, when I fully realized that tenure track was not in my stars, I shifted my own focus to preparing as well as I could for an industry career. My advisor accepted my decision, but admitted that he had no advice for me. That was 20+ years ago. I was fortunate to have two industrial scientists as role models: My parents. Continuing with my PhD might have been a mistake, but I'm living with it OK.

One thing he did, to his credit, was to start bringing in all of his former students who were in industry, to give talks. That was his own idea, but a few other profs began to follow suit.

Another question: If your students are headed into job markets where publications don't matter, how do you maintain your own publication record?

Re: Academia's 1%

#25

Post by jseliger » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 4:04 PM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #22

I applied for a PhD at an average school, passed the qualifying exam. But after a couple years found a full time programming job and didn't finish. Looking back family and friends were upset at me for not finishing, but I think it was a bullet I dodged. Having to look for research position at a company or getting stuck fighting for tenure position at some even less than average school in the middle of nowhere would n…

I applied for a PhD at an average school, passed the qualifying exam. But after a couple years found a full time programming job and didn't finish. Looking back family and friends were upset at me for not finishing, but I think it was a bullet I dodged

This is me, right now, except in English: I'm a technical writing consultant (www.seliger.com if you're curious) and I feel terrible for my peers who are trying to make it in academia. The problem is bad enough that I wrote this: http://jakeseliger.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-know-befor....

Intellectually I know that I should've finished the dissertation, for the letters, but I stopped caring.

Re: Academia's 1%

#26

Post by cle » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 4:04 PM UTC

nycticorax wrote: post #8

The author seems to view the hiring statistics she cites as evidence of "bias", but I didn't see any attempt to control for the actual quality of the applicants. I.e. You could read all of this as just more evidence that the "system" works: the good schools tend to be enriched for good graduate students, who then tend to get a lot of the tenure-track jobs.

I was thinking the same thing, and then I read:

"With institutional bias in hiring now proven by multiple social scientists..."

Is anyone familiar with these studies? This is a crucial piece of information for the article.

Re: Academia's 1%

#27

Post by jrells » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 4:05 PM UTC

There's a lot to take issue with in this article. Graduate institutional affiliation is huge because more and more research is being done by undergraduates, so top institutions can more easily pick out the best talent early. It is still true in academia that research>institution, but the latter is becoming more and more correlated with the former. Top PhD graduates come from top schools, with few exceptions (and those exceptions still get jobs). With undergraduate this correlation is weak.

Yes financial privilege is huge for getting that far, but everyone applying for an academic PhD program has spent decent time in academia and has chosen that instead of money. I've never seen or heard of someone turning down an elite academic PhD program because of a low stipend (students do use stipends to choose between similar schools). Any academic adviser would tell you you'd be crazy to do so.

Edit: This might only be true for math. In undergrad I was constantly surprised to find students from elite vs sub-elite institutions differed hugely in privilege and less in ability. In my PhD program, there was a huge difference in ability between our school (arguably #3 in the area) and nearby Harvard/MIT. While this is all anecdotal, elite academia is a small community and I've seen a large chunk of math. Ability here in math is easy to measure (if they can solve my problems and I can't understand theirs). Mathematicians keep mental rankings of other mathematicians. When you apply for graduate school and later jobs, lots of other mathematicians have a really good idea how you compare.

Re: Academia's 1%

#28

Post by Dewie » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 4:07 PM UTC

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #11

nycticorax wrote: post #8

The author seems to view the hiring statistics she cites as evidence of "bias", but I didn't see any attempt to control for the actual quality of the applicants. I.e. You could read all of this as just more evidence that the "system" works: the good schools tend to be enriched for good graduate students, who then tend to get a lot of the tenure-track jobs.

>You could read all of this as just more evidence that the "system" works: the good schools tend to be enriched for good graduate students, who then tend to get a lot of the tenure-track jobs. Then, I think we have to continue reasoning, why do those grad-students grow up and find they can only acquire tenure-track jobs by jumping to lower-tier institutions, where their own academic "children" will be considered infe…

Why can't everyone who joins the military attain the rank of colonel or higher eventually?

Re: Academia's 1%

#29

Post by skj » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 4:10 PM UTC

hga wrote: post #3

This is one of the reasons you want to avoid getting a "subprime" Ph.D.

Only if you care about going into academia. It's possible to want to get a PhD just to grow in your field.

I acquired my PhD a few years ago, and while I admit that it's hard to compare that to the experience I could have had in industry, I feel like I grew quite a lot and that it helps me in my current position in many many ways, only one of which is pure CS ability.

Re: Academia's 1%

#30

Post by nuncanada » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 4:12 PM UTC

jrells wrote: post #27

There's a lot to take issue with in this article. Graduate institutional affiliation is huge because more and more research is being done by undergraduates, so top institutions can more easily pick out the best talent early. It is still true in academia that research>institution, but the latter is becoming more and more correlated with the former. Top PhD graduates come from top schools, with few exceptions (and thos…

About being correlated, I guess it is simply not true, just check statistical models. What happens is that increasingly what is considered good research are what top schools are researching... Like String theory in Physics...