> 25% of the institutions produced 71 to 86% of all tenure-track faculty. Between 70 and 90% of professors at these elite schools received their doctorates from other elite schools
The top 25% are not what I think most people would call 'elite', though maybe there's a different understanding within the industry (i.e., in academia). Is the top 25% considered 'elite' in anything? Top 25% of software developers? Chess players? Playwrights? Restaurants?
Elite means to me the top 6-10 schools. I don't know how many are included in the top 25%, but I'd guess over 250 (anyone know?).
I'm surprised it's the top 25%; that's actually pretty broad-based and seems appropriate. The professors are supposed to be the 'elite' among students. If they lack the academic ability and drive to even attend a school in the top 25%, do I want them as a professor? (Of course there are exceptions.)
> I don't know how many are included in the top 25%, but I'd guess over 250 (anyone know?).
From [1], “placements of nearly 19,000 tenure-track or tenured faculty, among 461 North American departmental or school-level academic units, in the disciplines of computer science, business, and history (see Supplementary Materials and table S1).”
The 25% is from 461 universities, so probably 115 or 116 universities is included in that number.
Edit: On further reading of the supplement, there is a table that says they investigated CS faculty from 205 universities with 87% "doctorates in sample" meaning 87% of faculty having doctorates from those 205 universities being investigated. Business has 112 unis with 84% of doctorates in sample and history has 144 unis with 89% doctorates in sample.
It's not clear to me how many institutions of the "doctorates out of sample" are represented.
There is a stat in the supplement showing 50% of CS profs have doctorates from 18 universities, 50% of business profs have doctorates from 16 universities, 50% of history profs have doctorates from 8 universities.
It's possible the 25% of institutions could be closer to 51 for CS, 28 for business, and 36 for history.
> From [1], “placements of nearly 19,000 tenure-track or tenured faculty, among 461 North American departmental or school-level academic units, in the disciplines of computer science, business, and history (see Supplementary Materials and table S1).”
> The 25% is from 461 universities, so probably 115 or 116 universities is included in that number.
That seems to confuse the school whence the professor graduated, and the school at which they teach. 25% refers to the former, 461 to the latter, afaict. Or am I the one misunderstanding?
Yes, I think you’re right, which is why I added the information about the supplement after the “Edit:” placed in my comment. I should have made that edit more clear to say that I was mistaken with the first piece.
If I understood the supplement to the paper correctly, there were only 205 CS departments investigated and fewer departments for business and history. The 461 would refer to the sum of universities across the CS (205) business (112), and history (143) fields, which is where faculty are currently teaching.
The supplement had a statistic saying 87% of the profs in CS departments had “doctorates in sample.” Which meant 87% of the profs came from those 205 schools. I couldn’t find how many universities made up the remaining 13% of faculty.
The supplement says 50% of CS faculty came from 18 universities. I believe the 25% is referring to the 205 CS programs (which is both where the profs are currently teaching but also where most of them earned their PhDs from - the 87% doctorates in sample statistic) which would be 51 universities producing most of the faculty at the 205 universities in the study. At least I think…
For all I know, I am misunderstanding the supplement, and further muddying the waters with poor explanations.
I don’t see that at all. If a research professor can’t get a job at a top 250 school, it likely means their research isn’t impactful. Which makes it hard for them to mentor/advise graduate students towards generating impactful research. It’s a feedback loop on some level.
I did a PhD at a top-20 school. When I first heard this reality, it was too late. I do think this is true and I do believe most grad students with professorial ambitions do not know about this fact.
I also graduated around the 2008 financial crisis. The grads from MIT (and other elites) were scared about getting jobs, and applied to schools way below their "station". The geniuses at said departments didn't interview non-elites and focused on trying to recruit the prestigious candidates. End result was that the elite students didn't accept these lesser offers (duh!) and about 2-3 cycles of non-elite but strong grads were not able to get academic positions (or had to suffer the pain of post-docs).
This was why I decided to not go for my PhD. I looked at the latest hires for tenure track positions from my graduating year and saw that essentially all of them came from the same 6 "top tier" schools for my program/field of study. That meant I had to get into those schools if I wanted to end up a professor. Then I looked at the incoming class of PhD candidates for those schools from that year. They all also came from those 6 schools.
It was especially disappointing when I found incredible research being done in "less elite schools", which I was explicitly told to not apply to or "I would have no chance getting to tenure track interviews." But, guess where those professors at those "less elite schools" came from? Those same 6 schools! It was absurd.
At my own B-tier undergrad school, which I went to because it was affordable and offered me a lot in scholarships, all of the new hires were also from those schools. The whole system was absurd.
My Ph.D. wasn't from a top 20 school. But my thesis advisor was a student of a well known Nobel Laureate (he won the prize while she was his student). I'd noticed this trend in faculty back in my undergrad days, when looking at grad schools to attend.
Things working against me when I was finishing up (early-mid 90s), included being at a lower tier school, the massive overproduction of Ph.D.s in physics, combined with reducing NSF and related budgets, and the fall of the USSR, which resulted in extremely senior faculty decamping from Russia and taking every possible post in the west.
This was the time of the Young Scientists Network in the late 80s through mid 90s. Many other soon to be and freshly minted Ph.D.s learned of interminable post-docs, getting your first tenure track when you turned 40 or so, and not getting a tenure decision until you were 48 or so.
I skipped the post doc, and went into industry. Means I didn't get to do much science (occasional collaborations here and there). But I was able to support a family. That latter part was more important to me than anything.
As my daughter shortly decamps for grad school, we are telling her how it really is, and what to expect. My simple guide for her was do what you love, but have a realistic plan to be able to support yourself at the end of the process.
No one ever said that the system is fair. It isn't. But then, neither is life.
The financial crisis had a different effect on the market for macroeconomists. The Federal Reserve was hiring so many macroeconomists (due to increased workloads) that it became difficult for some schools to hire anyone for their positions.
The real scandal is that the lower end of the distribution that doesn't even touch that remaining 10 - 30% keeps promoting their Ph.D. programs despite the very dubious value of those degrees. Sure, they may carefully couch their language in the brochures that the program should really only be undertaken by people who truly want to learn for learning's sake, but I somehow doubt the culture of the departments really helps applicants or current students understand this if their funding is closely tied to the number of students they bring in. Why do these programs exist, really, other than cheap grad student labor? They divert the best and the brightest resources among the faculty away from undergrads, which overall cheapens their experience too. And for what, so the tenured and tenure track people can focus on publishing? American academia is so dysfunctional in some ways, despite its overall excellence.
I agree with this outlook. The 'product' of elite academic institutions is academicians capable of working within elite academic environments. In other words, these elite institutions act as their own incubators, selecting only a small proportion of their PhD students and post-docs to join their faculty.
As you say, it is unclear what the actual 'product' of low tier schools actually is - yes, many will graduate with a PhD funded by public and/or private grants, but ultimately low tier PhDs aren't valued much by either the academic or industry job markets. One possible explanation is that the 'product' of the low tier PhD programs is to further the existence of the PhD program.
How is this different from saying 80% of engineers went to engineering school?
"The observed placement rates would imply that faculty with doctorates from the top 10 units are inherently 2 to 6 times more productive than faculty with doctorates from the third 10 units." At least looking at top CS conferences the authorship of accepted papers ARE in fact this correlated (it seems to me).
> We can see there is this bias in the system, but we can't say yet what causes the bias
I went to Stanford and cal (undergrad and master’s respectively). I can tell you academia is plagued with elitism. There’s almost a class system that parallels the idea of an Ivy League or an elite institution. People who get in, feel special, that they are better and worked harder than the others, and therefore want to keep the others out.
This extends beyond academia where a lot of hiring decisions boil down to who went where. It’s ultimately a private club where you’re not invited. Cal and Stanford grads can get away with it in Tech, but the minute you go higher up the ladder, suddenly Harvard (mgmt) grads make you feel you’re on the outside.
This isn't all that surprising. Although I didn't realize it was this bad.
It's not just professors either. Look at any group where academic credentialing matters (and even groups where it's not supposed to matter).
Most of the YC partners are from elite institutions. Many of the YC founders are too (to YCs credit this has gotten a lot better recently, but a while back it was either Ivy League or Berkeley/Stanford/Washington/CMU for the most part).
And I don't think YC does this intentionally nor many of the other groups where it happens. Academic signalling is just so ingrained that it happens subconsciously.
In fields like Biology or Medicine, where peer review is not double-blind, there's also what I would call a publication bias that perpetuates this elite cartel.
If you submit an article to Nature or Science from, say, Oxbridge it has much higher chances to get in than if you submit from a good university like Southampton or Exeter.
Professors from elite institutions are really well connected to editors and funders. Actually, many editors come from the same institutions. So while reviewers might treat you fairly if you submit from a less prestigious institution (I think this is also questionable), the editorial board will be less likely send you article for review.
I once received a rejection letter from an elite school (I have a Ph.D. and was applying for a lecture position). The head of the search committee told me, nearly verbatim: "your pedigree is not high enough for you to be hired at this institution".
So, yeah, I can see that. I graduated from (at that time) an R2 and was applying at R1s. Nope.
Essentially all education, science, is taited by racist cleptocrats reinforcing there own families importance over time. Think about the decisions that are tainted because of this self importance?
I will say it again, that means ALL RESEARCH (which informs government policy) IS TAINTED by the views appropriotated by these people. That means assumptions, starting and ending points, methodologies.... ie. drug addiction, mental health, treatment of aboriginal populations, behavioural, gene, medical, tainted. Anything, tainted.
This is why the scientific method is a robust process. When bad theories are investigated, the unyeildimg accumulation of evidence will eventually result in an improving model of objective reality regardless of individual idiosyncrasies.
How long does that take?
How long does something politically convenient but completely unfunctional in reality last?
Lysenkoism was popular from 1933-1965. Who says it won't take us that long to learn the lessons of defunding the police? Or Critical race theory.
Yeah, given that there are more PhD-holding job candidates than their are faculty positions available in a given year, this is the expected result in two scenarios:
1) The scenario where signalling matters above all else. So there's too many highly-credentialed candidates for the openings at the institutions they graduated from, so they apply to jobs at lower-tier institutions.
2) The scenario where these institutions are producing truly better candidates and the interview process is robust. There's still too many great candidates for the "same-tier" positions, so they apply to lower-tier.
This rules out a few scenarios such as: "the interview process is robust BUT these institutions produce no-better candidates" but it doesn't tell us much specifically about the interviewing process or the candidate quality because of the candidate pool size.
A few interesting followup data points would be:
1) what ratio of graduates go into faculty positions for each tier of school. It must approach 0% at the lowest tier, but how quickly does it fall off?
2) what does industry hiring look like? Do you see a similar distribution, or are faculty positions preferred by enough PhDs that top-tier industry companies have to "settle for" a broader set of schools?
If meritocracy as a concept has any validity in theory or practice this wouldn’t be too surprising due to the nature of success and failure snowballing throughout one’s life.
The article starts:
“ Faculty careers are shut off to all individuals with Ph.D.s except those from a small number of universities,”
I’m wondering what % they think would be expected if it wasn’t ’shut off’ ?
Should it be <1%? E.g. equal to the number of elite graduates? What would this outcome presume?
Seems anecdotally true for many so called "Elite" careers, ie. Investment Banking, Management Consultant, Law, etc. They mainly hire from "Elite" schools.
Not to say tech doesn't pay fantastically well but it's seen as a trade within law/banking/media circles, especially by the older crowds. It's definitely not in the same category.
In regards to FAANG, it will help but it's way more fluid than some law firms that only hire Ivy League.
I don't think its seen as a trade, plenty of people in tech have PhDs or other degrees which are significantly more difficult than those required for finance, law or media. Its just more meritocratic than those fields which rely heavily on nepotism. So even if it pays well, its not seen as a marker of class like some of those are, which is a great thing imo. Tech is also significantly less white and full of immigrants (because of the meritocracy) which contributes to it not being a marker of class but of merit.
> plenty of people in tech have PhDs or other degrees which are significantly more difficult than those required for finance, law or media. Its just more meritocratic than those fields which rely heavily on nepotism.
That's quite a self-serving narrative for us on HN. Do we have any evidence that the degrees are harder to get or that tech is more meritocratic?
> Tech is also significantly less white and full of immigrants (because of the meritocracy)
Tech's diversity record isn't evidence of meritocracy. Compare women in law, business, and media and those in tech, for example. It also may be that law, business, and media require exceptional cultural communication and understanding, which may be hard for a new immigrant to learn.
Yes its definitely harder for a new immigrant to understand the cultural norms required to work in a law or media (i think plenty work in "business"). But the fact that a field requires a particular cultural background makes it less meritocratic. Hiring people who are "like you" is the furthest possible thing from meritocracy. Technology work is generally pure logic, which is pretty universal and universality breeds meritocracy. In terms of the degrees being harder I don't have hard evidence, but having done some humanities and some math I think its pretty obvious which type of work is more complex.
They generally cast their net wider, but if you want to have a job offer lined up at one of them at graduation then it helps.
Later in the career though, all bets are off. You only have to get into an interview room and solve 5 questions on a whiteboard (6, if you include the phone screen). If you're in Silicon Valley and have "software engineer" on your LinkedIn profile you're guaranteed to get at least one shot at each company.
The other issue is that this will surely go back to the Elite High School feeding to the Elite School. And the Elite Junior School feeding to the Elite High School. And the Elite Preschool feeding to the Elite Junior School. If your parents are willing and able to pay the fee you can drastically increase your chances of acceptance into Oxford University by going to Dragon School and then Eton.
This is slightly mitigated by elite graduate schools selecting good candidates from elsewhere (unlike for academic hiring). The large majority of Oxford DPhil students didn't go to Oxford as undergrads; I went to Leeds and most of my cohort was international, for example.
The expensive school to Oxford pipeline is definitely a thing, but it's much more prevalent at undergraduate level, at least if we're talking about expensive British schools...
I'm sure it does, but doesn't it also make sense that the best and the brightest doctoral students would get accepted to elite universities, and the best and the brightest doctoral students have the highest odds of going on to teach at elite universities?
This is anecdotal but most of my closest friends got their DPhils at Oxford and all of those who wanted to pursue academia got postdoc positions at 'top schools' based entirely on quick chats and someone in the lab who knew the group they'd been with at Oxford vouching for them. I've heard people say they've been told the main differential between them and other candidates was the school they went to, not the academic output they had during their PhD.
So this isn't too say you're wrong - there is definitely something about better students go to better schools and there should be some correlation there, but this is way bigger than that.
No. Because the juice isn't worth the squeeze.
A degree from a top school is not going to be 200% of the quality of a local state school. It is likely to be 200%+ of the tuition of a local state school.
Is this surprising? If you go to an elite school, you make connections with students, faculty, and similar universities, which then lead to job opportunities over other applicants. As a bonus you'll likely be a much better fit as you know the culture around the job already.
That's how it works in every single industry for better or worse.
This is ultimately why I decided not to pursue a PhD in astronomy, as the undergraduate of a lowly state school. You look around at faculty of any institution and they all were grads of Ivies, MIT, etc. By not getting into one of those schools for undergrad you're in for an uphill if not largely impossible battle to get any sort of career traction in academia.
Another inside joke among academic economists is that the highly ranked PhD students find dissertation and paper topics by looking at low rank publications. Basically the low ranks don’t get into good journals due in large part to their school, so high ranks can just take their work, spin it a bit, and then publish in a top tier journal that their buddies referee.
I went to college when the postwar (WW II) expansion had not quite ended. The college was not elite itself, and I must say there was a pretty fair show of Harvard crimson whenever the faculty gowned up (commencements, I guess). There were also professors from Stanford and Penn, though I don't know what those robes look like.
Most schools in the top 25% can be easily transferred into as an undergrad from CC (Most top state schools). Anyone with real talent should have no problem getting access to these schools.
Isn't this basically just dogfooding? I mean, if as an elite administrator you don't think that the degrees from your own and similar schools aren't vastly superior to ordinary schools, how do you justify your school's existence (and tuition)?
While reductive to compare this to Amway Pin Levels, it may be a fair observation that many teachers joined that multi level marketing business with intent on working within trades outside of the MLM itself, yet often never escape.
Ya sorry, if you want a tenure track position for your excellent contributions to academia, the chances you went to a not very good school are quite low, because those folks typically aren't doing the top tier work. It's not that it's not possible, and we see that with it not being 100% of the time, but by the time you're in grad school, the top talent starts to rise to the top... particularly for the sciences where tuition isn't a factor because the school pays you (so it's not just about how rich you are).
Personally I see this actually as a fairly good thing as a student - when I was in less good schools I was always happy to know when a teacher/professor had gone to a top school themselves. You want to be taught by the best.
Academia is really hard. There are very few spots, and there's a wide spectrum of talent that exists. The top 25% is a very large spread already (I'd suggest the bottom of that 25% shouldn't really be called elite), and you will easily encompass a huge portion of the best in it just by virtue of pareto distributions. There will possibly be some weaker talent that might get a job that could have been had by an equally weaker talent from a non-top 25% school, but I seriously doubt that's a general rule. There's just not enough slots, and the top talent is so much more obviously capable than the bottom talent.
For reference, I've personally attended a wide variety of schooling in the US (public & private pre-grad, community college, lower-tier state college, upper-tier state college, and elite private graduate) and seen the differences in the population makeup. There has been top talent everywhere, but the percentage at the school has varied drastically (from <1% to >50-90%).
I don't know why we pretend that all people are created equal, from equal backgrounds, and should be expected therefore to have equal results... and if they don't, then bias must be inherent! This is to me ideals of what society ought to look like forced onto messy reality where it's patently not the case. Not everyone is an A+ talent, and in fact, those are rare by definition. The percentage of A+ talent is going to drop as you go down the totem pole. That's just life.
> I don't know why we pretend that all people are created equal, from equal backgrounds, and should be expected therefore to have equal results...
I think the number of people who truly believe that are low. But you'll find people all over the map in HOW they disagree with it!
For instance, if you point out that some people have unequal backgrounds, you might get labeled "woke," especially if you push for certain policies to try to mitigate that!
Have you seen the level of indoctrination in these elite schools? The people who say a man who puts on a dress becomes a woman, and sees racism behind every difference in groups is not producing top tier work.
The top 25% are not what I think most people would call 'elite', though maybe there's a different understanding within the industry (i.e., in academia). Is the top 25% considered 'elite' in anything? Top 25% of software developers? Chess players? Playwrights? Restaurants?
Elite means to me the top 6-10 schools. I don't know how many are included in the top 25%, but I'd guess over 250 (anyone know?).
I'm surprised it's the top 25%; that's actually pretty broad-based and seems appropriate. The professors are supposed to be the 'elite' among students. If they lack the academic ability and drive to even attend a school in the top 25%, do I want them as a professor? (Of course there are exceptions.)