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Academia's 1%
101–110 of 144 posts
Re: Academia's 1%
#102An interesting article. It certainly seems unfair to have such selection bias. It may be beneficial to have a standardized country-wide test which could quantify and compare the quality of PhD grads arising from universities. If an effective test could be devised, it seems that companies and universities would pay attention to it. As it stands now, no such testing exists, making universities rely on qualitative evaluations, such as reputation, prestige, and price. I think it is true in general that without quantitative ways of evaluating something, looking at price seems to be the best alternative.
Re: Academia's 1%
#103There is a signalling/game mechanic that explains this sort of thing: 1) You have some rare ability that is distributed unevenly (Research skill, football skill) 2) There's certain brands that are imperfectly connected to the distribution of ability (Harvard, Man Utd) 3) You can hire a guy who looks to have the ability minus the brand, and he'll be cheap (Easier to lure, lower weekly salary). Once in a while, someone…
I'm not sure, but I'd bet that the best institutions actually don't care where their applicants come from. They can afford to just choose the best. It's the so-so places that have to signal their quality by 'hiring the best'. I've seen this in graduate school applications - students with poor marks often stand a better chance of admittance in a top program than a so-so one.
True at the graduate level. But how many faculty at Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, etc. did their PhD at a school outside of the top ~15 schools?
Re: Academia's 1%
#104There is a signalling/game mechanic that explains this sort of thing: 1) You have some rare ability that is distributed unevenly (Research skill, football skill) 2) There's certain brands that are imperfectly connected to the distribution of ability (Harvard, Man Utd) 3) You can hire a guy who looks to have the ability minus the brand, and he'll be cheap (Easier to lure, lower weekly salary). Once in a while, someone…
I'm not sure, but I'd bet that the best institutions actually don't care where their applicants come from. They can afford to just choose the best. It's the so-so places that have to signal their quality by 'hiring the best'. I've seen this in graduate school applications - students with poor marks often stand a better chance of admittance in a top program than a so-so one.
I think the explanation model agrees. For instance if you're a top football club, you can tell who the cream of the crop are, and you'll get your share.
If you want to, you can take a chance on a player. If he's not good enough, he's still got your stamp of approval, so he can be sold at a higher price anyway.
Re: Academia's 1%
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are rare instances of people coming back to academia after being very successful in industry. It's hard to say whether the rate is low because there's a bias against it from the hiring committees, or if people are actually generally happy in industry and uninterested in going back, or likely some combination of both.
" after being very successful in industry " I've heard of one example of that in the MIT AI Lab in the '60-70s, although it helped that "very successful" can equal "can pay for his research budget" ^_^. And of course there weren't many real CS graduates to turn into faculty members in the bad old days.
Back in the glory days of the 1960's you'd often see a scientist who'd made big money for a company get an endowed chair somewhere.
Re: Academia's 1%
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stanford has always been pretty good with postdoc pay, and postdocs never paid tuition. Pretty much all of these schools and mine (UCLA) are on similar levels. At all UC's postdocs are unionized as well given additional protections (like 1yr contracts, limits on training time, etc).
The tuition part is wrong. Stanford postdocs do pay tuition, but it isn't out of pocket. They are legally unmatriculated graduate students, so they pay some kind of tuition/registration fee for the year/quarter (I can't remember which). It isn't something that they are necessarily responsible for, and it is a small amount. But it is paid in their name.
That's a peculiarity of stanford; but it's like $200/year. At UCLA we have something similar called an infrastructure fee which is about the same amount a year. Importantly, this is not something they are responsible for paying ever.
Re: Academia's 1%
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
In STEM, I have the very strong impression that there are many paths that will take you off the academic track, and essentially none that will get you back on it. E.g. you have to keep up with the current literature to some degree.
There are rare instances of people coming back to academia after being very successful in industry. It's hard to say whether the rate is low because there's a bias against it from the hiring committees, or if people are actually generally happy in industry and uninterested in going back, or likely some combination of both.
I went to a startup after my phd for a few years, came back and am now a prof. I can't say I was very successful in industry. It happens, it's fairly rare, but it is definately becoming more common
Re: Academia's 1%
#108It is really hard to find excellent PhD students. The supply is very limited. The top schools snap them up, and there they are at graduation time.
Re: Academia's 1%
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because grad schools produce more (graduating students) than they consume (hiring faculty).
Yes, that much is obvious. But you would think that if a department is staffed by, say, MIT graduates, that they can do MIT-quality research, thanks to their MIT training, without being in the geographical vicinity of downtown Cambridge . Despite this, academic status-signaling seems to assume that the geographical vicinity is of profound importance.
Those ex-MIT profs no longer have access to MIT-level resources and MIT-level grad students. The latter being more important than the former.
Re: Academia's 1%
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think there are two distinct issues here. The first is that it seems like university students select schools and classes based on the academic background of their professors (having a professor from Harvard seems to be more prestigious than having one from most state schools). For many students (especially before they ever take a class), they don't know enough about most of the professors to evaluate them (so the e…
I disagree with you on both counts: 1. Perhaps your university background is different, but I haven't ever had the impression that a particular professor's class is preferred to another due to the first professor's educational pedigree, in undergraduate classes . Such classes often conform to general topics and there is insufficient variability for two professors to directly compete for students. Undergraduate studen…
Undergraduate universities are chosen by parents at least as much as students. Parents may well see an Ivy-league stuffed faculty as attractive.