
If you didnt get a PhD at an elite university, good luck finding an academic job - evanb
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2015/02/university_hiring_if_you_didn_t_get_your_ph_d_at_an_elite_university_good.html?wpsrc=fol_fb
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001sky
_Another factor could be that it’s not easy for schools to evaluate job
applicants on merit alone, because merit can be difficult to define or
measure. In the tenure system, a professor might work at the same institution
for 40 years. But when hiring for tenure-track positions, schools often have
to guess about lifelong productivity based on just a few years of experience.
Hiring faculty is therefore a high-stakes decision; while you can always deny
someone tenure, doing so means you’ve wasted years nurturing talent that you
don’t want to keep. With so much uncertainty involved in the process, it may
be natural to go with what seems like a safe choice: an applicant trained at a
high-prestige school, even at the expense of exciting candidates from slightly
less elite institutions._

Brilliant, and applicable clearly to other areas

