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The list you cite undermines the article's claim about elitism because it looks like 4 out of the 5 schools that it lists are also on your list. So the conclusi
by gnicholas 4y ago
The list you cite undermines the article's claim about elitism because it looks like 4 out of the 5 schools that it lists are also on your list. So the conclusion is that the 5 schools that produce the most professors...include 4 of the top 10 schools in terms of PhD graduates. Not much of a surprise there!
- lapcat 4y agoYou can't just look at supporting evidence and ignore contrary evidence. That's profoundly unscientific thinking. What about the 6 schools — the majority! — on my list that are not elite?
- gnicholas 4y agoNot all of the schools on the top 5 list are that elite. Three are public and only two are private. And UW Madison is not a super elite institution. For many people it wouldn't be in their top 20 schools, maybe more. I was surprised there was only one Ivy on the top-5 list. When I saw that list of schools, I thought "this person is saying these are the hyper-elite schools that are making too many professors?"
- lapcat 4y agoMadison is more elite than you think. "Among the 1,070 departments that are ranked top-10 in any field, 248 (23.2%) top-10 slots are occupied by departments at just five universities—UC Berkeley, Harvard, Stanford, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Columbia; fully 252 universities (64%) have zero top-10 departments." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05222-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05222-x
- gnicholas 4y agoThat's not evidence of eliteness. It's evidence that they produce a lot of professors. And as the top-10 list above points out, they produce a lot of PhDs. It is an open question as to whether the reason they make a lot of professors is because they make a lot of PhDs, or because they are "elite".
- lapcat 4y agoThose are top 10 rankings by prestige, not by number of professors.
- gnicholas 4y agoThanks for clarifying. But it's actually if they're top 10 in any department, so there's a clear tilt in favor of universities that are large and have lots of departments.
- lapcat 4y agoLots of universities are large and have lots of departments. That doesn't explain the success of the top 5 elite. For example, 6 universities grant more PhDs than UW-Madison yet have less success. This conversation is getting repetitive and tiresome, I'm done.