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If you receive a PhD from a university department, that department will think that it is too good to hire you as a faculty member. Instead, they lust after facu

If you receive a PhD from a university department, that department will think that it is too good to hire you as a faculty member. Instead, they lust after faculty hires holding degrees more prestigious than the one that they bestowed upon you. This tells me the author has no knowledge of the academic hiring processes. Once you are at the stage of looking for tenured faculty jobs, your publication record is everything. If you're trying for a liberal arts school, then your research needs to be compatible with involving undergrads, and they care alot about your record as an instructor. Professors all know how the PhD sausage is made, and are the group of people least likely to be impressed by prestige. They will just look up your actual thesis and critique it instead of relying on the halo effect.

fdgsdfogijq 4y ago
I agree on the publication record. But the school you go to has a huge effect on your ability to publish. This is well documented. Go to top PhD program -> publish top journal easier -> attain tenure track job. It all comes down to prestige in the end. This is aside from very hard sciences where true ground breaking results cannot be ignored.
- yummypaint 4y ago
  Most publications these days have many authors. Your first papers are published with your advisor and other collaborators, and that establishes your history of publishing on the topic in good journals. Also, peer reviewers don't know or care which school your degree came from.
- yxwvut 4y ago
  Even in things like applied math, it's pretty arbitrary which assumptions and formulations become standardized when tackling similar problems (and it usually comes down to the effects of prestige on your network/ 'reach': the more prominent people you get your ideas in front of, the more likely your work is to become the 'state of the art' default approach, and the more prestigious your university (and the professors you collaborate with), the easier it is to get your ideas in front of important people.
  - fdgsdfogijq 4y ago
    Theres a huge feedback loop that is very opaque
gh02t 4y ago
I'm not saying that universities aren't using PhD students as cheap labor and then cutting them loose (they absolutely are), but a more charitable side to it is not that universities want to "hire up", it's that they want diversity of thought/background. Hiring your own graduates, who have been "raised" in the same culture, can lead to isolation and groupthink plus it reinforces the existing specialties within your department. The degree to which so-called academic incest is a factor varies from school to school and department to department, but I don't think it's wholly unreasonable as part of faculty hiring considerations.
Victerius 4y ago
> Once you are at the stage of looking for tenured faculty jobs, your publication record is everything If a university thinks a PhD student's publication record is good enough to grant him or her a doctorate, it should be good enough to offer him a faculty position.
thomasahle 4y ago
> They will just look up your actual thesis and critique it Actually reading your thesis is probably a bit too much work. But they will certainly look up your publication list and count the number of papers at the top conferences/journals they care about.
valarauko 4y ago
> This tells me the author has no knowledge of the academic hiring processes. Once you are at the stage of looking for tenured faculty jobs, your publication record is everything. While this may be true, the fact remains that most academic hires are from the top universities, even for jobs at state universities. If professors are the least susceptible to prestige, then why do we have the situation we do?
yunohn 4y ago
> professors are the group of people least likely to be impressed by prestige. Not true, academia is dominated by posturing, prestige, and networking just as much as any other profession. > your publication record is everything This is literally a form of prestige. The content of research rarely matters - the value proffered by the publication and your research group have much larger bearing.

fdgsdfogijq 4y ago

I agree on the publication record. But the school you go to has a huge effect on your ability to publish. This is well documented. Go to top PhD program -> publish top journal easier -> attain tenure track job. It all comes down to prestige in the end. This is aside from very hard sciences where true ground breaking results cannot be ignored.

yummypaint 4y ago
Most publications these days have many authors. Your first papers are published with your advisor and other collaborators, and that establishes your history of publishing on the topic in good journals. Also, peer reviewers don't know or care which school your degree came from.
yxwvut 4y ago
Even in things like applied math, it's pretty arbitrary which assumptions and formulations become standardized when tackling similar problems (and it usually comes down to the effects of prestige on your network/ 'reach': the more prominent people you get your ideas in front of, the more likely your work is to become the 'state of the art' default approach, and the more prestigious your university (and the professors you collaborate with), the easier it is to get your ideas in front of important people.
- fdgsdfogijq 4y ago
  Theres a huge feedback loop that is very opaque

gh02t 4y ago

I'm not saying that universities aren't using PhD students as cheap labor and then cutting them loose (they absolutely are), but a more charitable side to it is not that universities want to "hire up", it's that they want diversity of thought/background. Hiring your own graduates, who have been "raised" in the same culture, can lead to isolation and groupthink plus it reinforces the existing specialties within your department. The degree to which so-called academic incest is a factor varies from school to school and department to department, but I don't think it's wholly unreasonable as part of faculty hiring considerations.

Victerius 4y ago

> Once you are at the stage of looking for tenured faculty jobs, your publication record is everything If a university thinks a PhD student's publication record is good enough to grant him or her a doctorate, it should be good enough to offer him a faculty position.

thomasahle 4y ago

> They will just look up your actual thesis and critique it Actually reading your thesis is probably a bit too much work. But they will certainly look up your publication list and count the number of papers at the top conferences/journals they care about.

valarauko 4y ago

> This tells me the author has no knowledge of the academic hiring processes. Once you are at the stage of looking for tenured faculty jobs, your publication record is everything. While this may be true, the fact remains that most academic hires are from the top universities, even for jobs at state universities. If professors are the least susceptible to prestige, then why do we have the situation we do?

yunohn 4y ago

> professors are the group of people least likely to be impressed by prestige. Not true, academia is dominated by posturing, prestige, and networking just as much as any other profession. > your publication record is everything This is literally a form of prestige. The content of research rarely matters - the value proffered by the publication and your research group have much larger bearing.