5 ms·

Totally anecdotal, but I've been in a number of tenure-track hiring meetings at multiple universities and someone always brings up the idea of "pedigree". As in

Totally anecdotal, but I've been in a number of tenure-track hiring meetings at multiple universities and someone always brings up the idea of "pedigree". As in, "X has a good pedigree" etc., as if that's an argument for hiring the person above and beyond their track record. So at least in my personal experience, these things do enter into the process. Of course, the process involves a lot of other variables too; there are plenty who don't talk about pedigree, but there's often someone who will point to it as a rationale. I hear similar whispers about federal grant receipts, etc., in that people who get stamped with approval in the form of training fellowships, predoctoral NSF awards, etc. are seen as sort of "understanding the system" etc. As I think of it, I can think of lots of other "in-group signaling" in various domains, so maybe it's not unique to academics. But that cuts both ways when you're talking about exclusivity and "old-boy" networks.

OJFord 4y ago
But is that entirely wrong? Isn't 'good pedigree' saying 'we can trust the unknown here more than in other cases'?
- derbOac 4y ago
  Maybe? I think that's where this gets murky. What are you basing that trust on?
  - fny 4y ago
    The individual has been "vetted" in a more rigorous setting. For example, is someone who graduates with a 3.5GPA Math BA from the University of Central Florida trained as well as someone who graduates with 3.5 from the University of Maryland? What about UNC? What about MIT? If pedigree was a useless signal, it wouldn't be used. Mind you, I've seen this used against people as well. For example... "The last few MIT grads we hired were full of themselves and way too combative." These are real words from a hiring manager.
    - SantalBlush 4y ago
      >If pedigree was a useless signal, it wouldn't be used. The notion of good pedigree benefits anyone who might fit in that category, so they're incentivized to convince people that this matters. For example, if someone on a hiring committee sees an applicant coming from their alma mater, they can call that a "good pedigree" and reinforce the value of their own background.
      - pc86 4y ago
        I mean, only if it actually is a good pedigree. I used to work at a company where one of the HR directors went to Harvard for undergrad. He could say that and people probably would have nodded their heads in agreement. You can't say that if you went to Ohio State. Nothing against the Buckeyes but it's just not in the same tier, to the point where that "pedigree" -- I can't even imagine anyone referring to their Ohio State education as a "pedigree" in any serious sense -- isn't any better or worse than any of the other ~60 half-way decent "$STATE State" or "$STATE University" schools. There's also a lot of discussion here around the people who get excluded because they lack that pedigree. I don't think anyone is saying that you can't find brilliant folks who went to a small school you've never heard of. They're saying that you're hiring for one professorship, there are a lot of unknowns, and you're trying to eliminate false positives to avoid a bad hire. Seeing that between two otherwise-identical candidates, one of whom has a BA from Harvard and one of whom has a BA from West Virginia State, you're well within your duty as a member of the hiring committee to assume that the person from Harvard has at least as good a chance of being acceptable as the other one. False negatives are okay (not great), false positives are horrible.
        neffy 4y ago
        The problem though is that exceptional people are scattered all over the system, since 1) not everybody can get into Harvard (class size) and a significant percentage who do are selected from a small monied elite. The number of non-Harvard graduates is much, much larger. So statistically it is actually far more likely that the Harvard person is relatively mediocre to a neutral sampling of the entire system.
BurningFrog 4y ago
There is some truth to the heuristic that "if you got into Harvard" you have to be pretty good. Because Harvard is really good at finding the "Harvard quality" people among applicants.
- gammarator 4y ago
  Jared Kushner would like a word: https://www.propublica.org/article/the-story-behind-jared-kushners-curious-acceptance-into-harvard https://www.propublica.org/article/the-story-behind-jared-ku...
  - fny 4y ago
    Having a lot of money is Harvard quality. Remember these institutions survive because the rich donate. This is also how brilliant minds come in contact with capital, and how we fund people studying knots and english literature all day long. It's a form of patronage. In turn, no one would ever give Jared Kusher a professorship unless he bought it.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- derbOac 4y ago
  Maybe I'm jaded but I've met a lot of brilliant people in my life. They come from all sorts of backgrounds. I've often in turn seen how those backgrounds can become safety nets, not equally distributed. The benefit of the doubt is extended very far, and when you have knowledge on the other side of the curtain it starts to look self-fulfilling sometimes. It's hard not to look at scatterplots of things like SATs, GREs, and GPAs, and see a lot of randomness. Not pure randomness but it starts to be hard to justify to yourself when correlations of .1-.3 begin to be interpreted in the general public as if they were .9.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    > It's hard not to look at scatterplots of things like SATs, GREs, and GPAs, and see a lot of randomness. Not pure randomness but it starts to be hard to justify to yourself when correlations of .1-.3 begin to be interpreted in the general public as if they were .9. Do you have a link? Be keen to read about this.

OJFord 4y ago

But is that entirely wrong? Isn't 'good pedigree' saying 'we can trust the unknown here more than in other cases'?

derbOac 4y ago
Maybe? I think that's where this gets murky. What are you basing that trust on?
- fny 4y ago
  The individual has been "vetted" in a more rigorous setting. For example, is someone who graduates with a 3.5GPA Math BA from the University of Central Florida trained as well as someone who graduates with 3.5 from the University of Maryland? What about UNC? What about MIT? If pedigree was a useless signal, it wouldn't be used. Mind you, I've seen this used against people as well. For example... "The last few MIT grads we hired were full of themselves and way too combative." These are real words from a hiring manager.
  - SantalBlush 4y ago
    >If pedigree was a useless signal, it wouldn't be used. The notion of good pedigree benefits anyone who might fit in that category, so they're incentivized to convince people that this matters. For example, if someone on a hiring committee sees an applicant coming from their alma mater, they can call that a "good pedigree" and reinforce the value of their own background.
    - pc86 4y ago
      I mean, only if it actually is a good pedigree. I used to work at a company where one of the HR directors went to Harvard for undergrad. He could say that and people probably would have nodded their heads in agreement. You can't say that if you went to Ohio State. Nothing against the Buckeyes but it's just not in the same tier, to the point where that "pedigree" -- I can't even imagine anyone referring to their Ohio State education as a "pedigree" in any serious sense -- isn't any better or worse than any of the other ~60 half-way decent "$STATE State" or "$STATE University" schools. There's also a lot of discussion here around the people who get excluded because they lack that pedigree. I don't think anyone is saying that you can't find brilliant folks who went to a small school you've never heard of. They're saying that you're hiring for one professorship, there are a lot of unknowns, and you're trying to eliminate false positives to avoid a bad hire. Seeing that between two otherwise-identical candidates, one of whom has a BA from Harvard and one of whom has a BA from West Virginia State, you're well within your duty as a member of the hiring committee to assume that the person from Harvard has at least as good a chance of being acceptable as the other one. False negatives are okay (not great), false positives are horrible.
      - neffy 4y ago
        The problem though is that exceptional people are scattered all over the system, since 1) not everybody can get into Harvard (class size) and a significant percentage who do are selected from a small monied elite. The number of non-Harvard graduates is much, much larger. So statistically it is actually far more likely that the Harvard person is relatively mediocre to a neutral sampling of the entire system.

BurningFrog 4y ago

There is some truth to the heuristic that "if you got into Harvard" you have to be pretty good. Because Harvard is really good at finding the "Harvard quality" people among applicants.

gammarator 4y ago
Jared Kushner would like a word: https://www.propublica.org/article/the-story-behind-jared-kushners-curious-acceptance-into-harvard https://www.propublica.org/article/the-story-behind-jared-ku...
- fny 4y ago
  Having a lot of money is Harvard quality. Remember these institutions survive because the rich donate. This is also how brilliant minds come in contact with capital, and how we fund people studying knots and english literature all day long. It's a form of patronage. In turn, no one would ever give Jared Kusher a professorship unless he bought it.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
derbOac 4y ago
Maybe I'm jaded but I've met a lot of brilliant people in my life. They come from all sorts of backgrounds. I've often in turn seen how those backgrounds can become safety nets, not equally distributed. The benefit of the doubt is extended very far, and when you have knowledge on the other side of the curtain it starts to look self-fulfilling sometimes. It's hard not to look at scatterplots of things like SATs, GREs, and GPAs, and see a lot of randomness. Not pure randomness but it starts to be hard to justify to yourself when correlations of .1-.3 begin to be interpreted in the general public as if they were .9.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  > It's hard not to look at scatterplots of things like SATs, GREs, and GPAs, and see a lot of randomness. Not pure randomness but it starts to be hard to justify to yourself when correlations of .1-.3 begin to be interpreted in the general public as if they were .9. Do you have a link? Be keen to read about this.