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> “But if your case had been approved, who in the senior faculty would have won?” I am not from academia, but can someone explain the "game" to me? Why do seni

• travisgriggs 5y ago
  (I have an extended family member who is currently a research assistant at MIT). Different faculty have different areas of expertise and research. Let's say you've got a handful of professors in the economics department. Each one has a thing (or two) that they're currently all about. One might be about international fraud, another about comparative economics, maybe another is into the whole basic income thing, so on and so forth. Each vies to attract other talent to the university that is complimentary or congruent to their own. They tend to want to see that grown into a larger "program" at the university, a sort of cabal. Academic merit is valuable as a second tier priority. You won't people that further your area of passionate research, and you want the people that do it best. And so those climbing the ladder, have to choose research that appeals to the people they want to retain them.