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The Wealth Gap in Science: How Your Parents's Income Affects Your Career

54 points by xqcgrek2 4y ago

PuppyTailWags 4y ago
This refers to this paper: "Socioeconomic roots of academic faculty" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01425-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01425-4
foobarian 4y ago
This completely ignores the elephant in the room that the supply way outstrips demand, and therefore the selection process naturally starts to incorporate many features additional to simply merit. If there are sufficient candidates in the well-off rubric why should we as a society artificially push anyone else into the arena? At least the well-off folks won't have their lives ruined if they fail to get tenure.
- slg 4y ago
  Seems rather dystopian to argue that it is good for society that poor people don't get opportunities because they can't weather failure as well as rich people.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
    I assume you're referring to this line: > At least the well-off folks won't have their lives ruined if they fail to get tenure. Which I read as pointing to the fact that poor people will have to invest almost all or actually all of their savings and income into their education. Someone with more fortunate circumstances might be able to use half of their savings or let their parents pay for it.
    - slg 4y ago
      I wasn't arguing against the notion that rich people can weather failure better. That is objectively true. I was arguing against the notion that this is an acceptable outcome for society which was implied by the question asked in the prior sentence: >why should we as a society artificially push anyone else into the arena? We don't even need to get into the practical reasons that other comments mentioned. This is an inherently unjust way for society to be structured. That alone is enough reason to push for change.
      - foobarian 4y ago
        > was implied by the question My intention was not necessarily to imply that, but literally ask myself the original question - why push people into this when the outcome for them will likely be poor? Perhaps a good followup is to ask is, what can we do to both get a more diverse pool of academics without punishing those without means? I would think a massive expansion of the tenure track program would be needed, which is kind of what it was created for in the first place, just got too saturated. But that has its own slew of problems.
        slg 4y ago
        >why push people into this when the outcome for them will likely be poor? You have used the word "push" multiple times and I'm not sure what you mean by that. I would frame it as "allow" and not "push" as the motivation at an individual level comes from the individual. The goal should be to remove obstacles that prevent poor people from joining academy. That isn't the same thing as pushing poor people into academia even if the end result is effectively the same at a societal level. Either way, I simply think the answer to this question is self-evident based on the morals we claim to have as a society. We literally call it the American Dream. The station of one's birth should not eliminate a career like academia.
        foobarian 4y ago
        > the word "push" Sure, one example of what I have in mind are various efforts across the board to advertise "STEM"/"STEAM" careers, teach kids programming, promote STEM competitions, run STEM courses, etc. etc. This presumably "pushes" some fraction of people into these careers that otherwise would not have gone; but there is no corresponding increase in funding or safety nets. It's not a question of allowed or not - of course anyone is already welcome and able to join academia at least in the USA, it's just that the not well-off population probably drops off before the finish line due to financial constraints.
        slg 4y ago
        It is just semantics, but I don't consider that pushing kids into specific career paths. I tend to think of it like any other school subject. Would people say that having an English literature class in middle school is pushing kids to become writers or teaching high school kids calculus pushes them to be mathematicians? I instead view it as exposing kids to a wider breadth of topics in order to allow them to better self select what career paths interest them. It is still ultimately up to the individual kid to find the topic engaging and stick with it.
  - Draiken 4y ago
    I'd argue that's exactly the world we already live in and mostly by design. Another comment mentioned that science was a hobby for the aristocracy and I agree. Because of the big wealth inequality it seems to remain so as shown by the study. Not sure how we can fix any of that within the current landscape though. It really seems to me like it's only really doable with huge systemic changes that will take many revolutions to happen.
- uoaei 4y ago
  I don't come across many opinions which can legitimately be labeled as 'anti-social', but this definitely qualifies.
  - plutonorm 4y ago
    Welcome to the archetypal mind of the conservative. When your axiom is "the current order is just and appropriate" then unconsciously every data point aligns to that principle. The wealthy are good and deserve thier advantage. The poor are bad and they deserve their disadvantage. The outcast or morally abhorrent as they stand opposed to the just order. It's nuts, but that's how they think. They are literally Slytherin and proud of it. It's an insanely dangerous mindset and we should call them out for it. It naturally creates a wall between in group and out group. Any ideology that fosters such division should be fought against. The future, if we are to have one must foster the expansion of our empathy, not it's contraction. It's literally the fight between good and evil. For both sides and from both perspectives. There can be no reconciliation or melding of views. Yin and Yang, light and dark. The internet has laid bare this basic divide and there is a war coming in America. Maybe even a literal war.
    - RelativeDelta 4y ago
      It's not just america. It will be the foundation of the next world war. The fight is between collectivism and individualism. Collectivization requires that all sacrifice and all gain, lashed together. Individualism allows for some to sacrifice and for some to gain, devil take the hindmost. The questions facing those of us undecided on our allegiance are: Is our morality objective? Are we willing to die for a stranger? Are we willing to risk being ruled if we are uncomfortable ruling? Do we truely want the same things? Is harm minimization or gain maximization a better long-term strategy?
- hourago 4y ago
  > If there are sufficient candidates in the well-off rubric why should we as a society artificially push anyone else into the arena? 1. You get better prepared people. Any society based on nepotism is doomed to fail. 2. You get different views on how to solve problems. People with different background have different experiences that give a wider view of the world. 3. It is fair. Injustice is a bad way of running a society. > At least the well-off folks won't have their lives ruined if they fail to get tenure. Everybody in a society has a right to a good life. That someone does not get a tenure does not mean that their life has ended, there are many possibilities in life and governments have to provide safety nets to help people to get back on their feet.
  - foobarian 4y ago
    I agree with your points. However, I think we still have the problem that there is too much supply, and pushing more people into it does them a disservice. Yes, it helps the scientific establishment re: points 1. and 2. As for 3., perhaps true, but I'm not sure it helps those individuals and thus conflicts with the next point that "Everybody in a society has a right to a good life." This may be colored with a US-centric point of view because social safety nets are not great, and if they existed to a greater extent maybe my criticism would be mitigated and it would be fine to push against the market. But without that I think many people are better off pursuing opportunities more appropriate for them.
- owlglass 4y ago
  > At least the well-off folks won't have their lives ruined if they fail to get tenure So the downtrodden shouldn't ever attempt anything. Also why is this a binary between tenure and financial ruin?
ncraig 4y ago
Perhaps parents with PhDs pass on genetic traits that support their offspring in the competition for PhDs and faculty positions. Unless the analysis controls for that dynamic, the research cannot correctly measure "socioeconomic" effects. As far as I can tell, the study does not attempt to do so.
- yummypaint 4y ago
  Eugenics has been shown time and time again to be junk/non science. This is like criticizing a dermatology study for not "controlling" for the possibility of lizard people.
  - crackercrews 4y ago
    GP isn't referring to eugenics. GP is pointing out that there may be heritable traits that lead one to be more successful in a PhD program. This could be grit, determination, ability to focus, or ability to recognize patterns. It would be surprising if there were no heritable traits that affected success in PhD programs. GPs comment is no more eugenicist than someone pointing out that children of NBA players are more likely to play in the NBA because height is somewhat heritable.
    - medvezhenok 4y ago
      Or that children of Olympians are more likely than chance to be Olympians themselves :)
    - eitally 4y ago
      I think a lot of those attributes are at least as attributable to nurture as nature.
      - crackercrews 4y ago
        Possibly, and that's what the whole video is about. The point is that we don't know how much of the difference is behavioral or related to wealth if we don't even try to consider the possible effects of heritability.
searine 4y ago
Science was traditionally the hobby of the aristocracy, and the middle-class scientist is only a very recent invention. It's a shame that the career seems to be reverting to a track that only the independently wealthy can pursue. Governments funding basic science as a long term investment in R&D is essential to building and maintaining a large and diverse population of experts to draw from for new ideas and innovations.
- yummypaint 4y ago
  Science pays significantly worse that almost anything else you can do with the same skillset. The only real money making pipeline in physics is to immediately go into finance after getting your PhD, for example. Everyone else who stays in research is taking a pay cut in exchange for doing work they are passionate about. On the one hand I think it's a good thing for science that the vast majority of people who only want to make money leave the field. The problem is the barrier to entry for people who really just want to do science. Most of this in the form of the cost of undergrad education, and PhD program sripends being too low to support a family.
- robwwilliams 4y ago
  Not the aristocracy, but the wealthy. The aristocracy kept busy wasting time and money.
  - est31 4y ago
    von Humboldt was an aristocrat. As was Lord Raleigh.
deleted 4y ago
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chasely 4y ago
I saw this anecdotally in grad school. Despite coming from a solidly middle class family I was definitely on the poorer side of my colleagues at the R1 I attended. You also see it in pretty much any field that confers status in exchange for lower pay. Starkest example I can think of is journalism, where you do a lot of schooling and low-paid or unpaid internships before you're able to get your first low-paying job.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  IIRC Graeber put some observations about this effect in Bullshit Jobs, especially as it relates to creatively or ethically fulfilling jobs with some decent social status attached to them. Media, non-profit careers, that kind of thing.
- beezlebroxxxxxx 4y ago
  Journalism has also become a sort of "status" job post-watergate for a lot of Ivy leaguers. The steps from journalism to "media consultant" are pretty small and there's a huge network effect of 'who you know' coming into play. Going to the same school as a judge or politician can open doors. This is the same way in pretty much all creative fields, though. Museums and galleries are a particularly egregious example. You can start working there for peanuts as a student and find out your fellow student colleagues regularly go to the French Riviera to "recharge" for a weekend.
  - kevviiinn 4y ago
    Hmm, Tucker Carlson?
- jackcosgrove 4y ago
  I'd much rather the children of wealthy families went into research or the arts - as long as they are not bad at what they do and displace more talented people by being connected - rather than they go into finance or management and make more money. IANARK (rich kid) but I imagine they see how unfulfilling the money chase is growing up and choose other paths. Which is good for them and good for society. I bet this is part of the "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations" dynamic.
msravi 4y ago
These studies seem to consistently play down the importance of "culture." By that, I mean that some families tend to place very great importance on education and learning (and consequently prioritize it above other activities), and these families are likely to be ones where the parents hold a bachelors/masters/phd degree. Somehow, the studies focus almost completely on the economic status that the family derives out of higher education and attribute all the benefits to income. Sure, there's definitely a link between how much time you can afford to spend on academics when you're poor, but after a threshold -- probably somewhere near middle income families -- the economic status starts to matter less and less, and the importance and priority accorded to education starts to matter a lot more. Kids from these families can also foresee their career path more clearly on account of having a parent already in the field. It's a natural and obvious effect, but to see this success as a negative and attribute it almost completely to income and nepotism is disingenuous.
- boringg 4y ago
  Agree it completely simplifies it so that it can lean in on inequality plot so they can leverage get more engagement. The family culture on science and education has a much greater weighting then money on outcome. I wonder if they could add that weighting to the equation how different the story line is. I am not discounting that money has benefits but theres a common narrative/fallacy that having the money drives outcomes. It's useless without culture. To be fair to the researchers the amount of effort to determine culture is more challenging -- requiring at minimum some kind of questionnaire.
- deleted 4y ago
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- rayiner 4y ago
  I think it's because the idea of culture is deeply offensive to individualistic Americans. Individual outcomes must either be the result of starting conditions (parent income/education/etc), or individual effort. Either way, you can think of each person individually, in terms of those variables. For people used to that model, it makes no sense to talk about "culture"--where outcomes depend on groups of individuals reinforcing norms. My parents both have masters degrees, most of their friends have at least a masters degree. They're still upset my brother never got past his bachelors (even though the reason he didn't is that he went from an Ivy into finance). When my parents get together with their friends they talk at length about where their kids are on the educational/career ladder. If you have the slightest inclination to follow the herd and care about what your parents think (which most kids do) then of course culture has a tremendous impact.
hayst4ck 4y ago
I think what is missing from a lot of these conversations, particularly in academia, is the topic of meritocracy. Does being black make you a measurably worse candidate (in aggregate)? Does being black mean you will have a harder time succeeding in a meritocracy? If the answer is no, then what we see in terms of results are a matter of personal choice and there is no business in performing interventions. If the answer is yes, then the follow up question is why? If the answer is genetics, that is incredibly hazardous with extremely bleak societal consequences. If the answer is parental wealth, that means as long as black people (in aggregate) are poor, black candidates (in aggregate) are going to be measurably worse. The obvious conclusion that an academic or DEI executive must reach is that meritocracy promotes systemic "-isms". The obvious conclusion is that the only way to deal with the problem are social programs or reparative efforts (reparations -- such as affirmative action).
- t-writescode 4y ago
  This _also_ presupposes it's actually a meritocracy - unless "knowing a guy that knows a guy" gives someone merit, or our interpretation of merit, or our approximation of merit. And, just as your series of rhetorical questions also directs, that has long-reaching consequences.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - kevviiinn 4y ago
    Meritocracy is a lie because we live in an entirely deterministic system
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  >If the answer is parental wealth, that means as long as black people (in aggregate) are poor, black candidates (in aggregate) are going to be measurably worse This just means it will take more than one generation to reach a random socioeconomic distribution, which is exactly what you would expect. If you have two buckets, poor & not poor, with a 10% chance to escape poverty, the system will reach random equilibrium eventually. It might just take a long time (10 generations to get within 5% of a random distribution in this example). If outcomes are based on parental wealth (races treated equal), you will eventually achieve a random race distribution among social classes. If outcomes are based on biased treatment due to skin color (not wealth), the system will not reach a random racial equilibrium. We know parental wealth produces better performing children (merit). This is one reason why growing up in poverty is considered a bad thing (lost potential). The question then becomes (1) do we care more about having meritocratic systems or racial equality. If we care more about racial economic equality, the question then becomes (2) how much are we willing to deviate from meritocracy to achieve racial economic equality. The more you deviate from meritocracy, the faster racial equality will be achieved. I think these are both valid questions and worth discussing openly.
RandomWorker 4y ago
When I was doing my phd I noticed many advantages those that had parents which already navigated the system. Building up my C.V. with publications, workshops, presentations, teaching work, writing in public etc. (evidence of competence) is an impossible job to do when I figured out I needed this at the the end of my PhD to get the professor job. My colleagues that knew all this portfolio building and what is in and what is relevant had a huge leap up. I was just happy to finish with my publications and thesis. There is also a tonne of relationship building opportunities that I didn't realize I had after I finished. So, many things are also unsaid that when my children go in I will know how to help them navigate.
- SpaceManNabs 4y ago
  Big thing for me as well. I didn't even know about internships or research assistant summer positions until too late often. Part of the reason why I left academia. Outreach really does work and would have helped me.
  - RandomWorker 4y ago
    So many opportunities and how to pace yourself. Keeps going. So much is about being in the right places at the right time. Learning this for the first time you going to make mistakes.
powera 4y ago
I continue to struggle with the various reasons people seem to insist these days that being allowed to be successful is a bad thing.
a_c 4y ago
I'm confused. The title says parent's income affects career, the start of video says 1/4 of academics have at least one parent holding phd, the end of video says diversity is important because it brings different way of thinking so we need different gender, race, socioeconomic status, country of origin. Feels like many things conflating together. Anecdotally, most people who are successful in their career are either having parents in the same profession, or have parents providing secure childhood/early adult that allows them brew their career. Programmer parents, professional music player parents, having access to computer programmer at early age, etc. The first shoulder of giants are from parents, isn't it?
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  Agreed. As with many of these studies, it assumes that parental nurturing and education has no bearing on individual merit. As if a Mozart, educated in music from the age of three had the same merit as an orphan who never saw an instrument. There is a subtle bait and switch from merit (capability at time of assessment) to learning potential (at the time of conception). You might expect groups on average to have the same a potential at conception, but their merit and capability is impacted by their environment.
godelski 4y ago
> The qualifications for being a professor should be related to your capability as a scientist, your ability to teach, and quality as a mentor. It should not be related to your parent's income or education level. You can stop listening after this (0:45) because this is where the blunder is. The complaint is that most professors have a parent with a PhD. They also make comparisons with the average population. First off, only 1.2% of Americans have a PhD. So we're likely working with outlier data to begin with and you can't compare with the average population in a simple way. Second off, we need to account for household trends. I'll claim that it is quite common that children follow in the footsteps of their parents and this isn't unique to academics. I say this as someone who is at the tail end of my PhD and where I am the only one on either side of my family that is even involved in STEM. My peers had very different childhoods than I did and it is unsurprising that growing up in an academic culture results in them following along. Most of my family followed the rest of my family in pursuing business and sales. I grew up hearing sales terms and strategies all my life. Friends learned calculus early because their parents knew it and taught it to them. Why the difference? Because both our families used different tools to navigate their lives and had a different set of objectives for what is important to success and thus taught their children that. Why is this important? Because the premise is asking how to "resolve" this issue and create a more equitable system. There's two important factors we need to understand: what assumptions have been made and what is the causal graph. For the assumptions, one that seems fair was made but actually isn't. The assumption made is that your parent's education level does not correlate with your abilities as a scientist/educator/mentor. But this is a bad assumption. A better assumption to start with it: a randomly selected child has a similar upper bound in their capacity as a scientist/educator/mentor. Why are these different? Because the environments these children grew up in are different. Even if you are born of poor professors (or even grad students) then you're still going to grow up in an academic household, hearing academic terms and having academic frameworks for thinking. Grow up in a household like mine and you hear about the Ivory Tower and how stuck up academics are. We can't ignore 30 years of someone's life and make accurate conclusions about outcomes. The children who grew up in academic households likely got closer to their upper limit capacity as a scientist/educator/mentor than the child who didn't. They have gotten more education/training, even if everything else is held equal (income, schooling, health, etc). Given more training, we should expect a bias! There is a lot of talk about equity, equality, and meritocracy going on these days but without real understanding of what any of these things are. I'm sorry, but none of these things exist and they cannot exist. To achieve any of these systems would result in revoke one's free will, to make humans robotic. This is a choice we need to make. It is incredibly hard to measure things, and if we rely just on measurements we'll make grave errors (see the state of ML). There is a lot of noise in the system and we can't ignore it. I'm not saying we shouldn't make the world better (including being more fair and reducing nepotism), but we can't pretend that the world is simple. This idea of "good enough" or "if you understand it you can explain it to a layman" are terrible notions and only take us steps back. Yes, they work for many cases but they do not work for complex systems. The history of human kind has been a history of increasing complexity. We are adaptable creatures, but this is something difficult to adapt to given our evolutionary constraints. But we need this culture to encourage nuance and recognition of complexity.
hayst4ck 4y ago
> the qualifications for being a professor should be related to your capability as a scientist your ability to teach and your quality as a mentor. > should not be related to your parents income or education level but unfortunately this is the case His initial assertion is that being a professor should be related to your ability to teach, but he cannot see the relationship between higher parental income level or higher parental education level and a person's ability to teach. Nor does he pay much attention to the idea that a parent with expertise is like a very motivated private tutor for that expertise. > this would ignore the economic component as the study also found that on average academics come from wealthier families this would likely mean that they went to more expensive schools and could afford more expensive colleges previous Here the guy in the video catches a brief glimpse of awakening, an understanding that economic factors make you (in aggregate) a better candidate. This is the core idea of the liberal definition of woke. Without understanding this core principle, you can't see the systemic racism. You can't have a cohsive, coherrant, or convincing narrative. > the more money we receive from our parents the more likely we are to continue on to do a PhD Here again the guy in the video is dangerously close to understanding that people who aren't spending time meeting their basic needs are more able to spend time becoming qualified to be a professor. > the more prestigious the university the more likely faculty is to have a PhD parent this means that more prestigious universities are hiring from a smaller pool Here the guy in the video contradicts himself. Prestigious universities have way more choice and therefore they are able to be more selective. The demographics the candidates come from are smaller, but that does not mean the pool of options is small. Here we see again, that the author does not understand that more money is the same thing as more meritorious candidate, by his own definition of merit. If the most meritorious candidates come from a narrow set of people then we would expect more selective institutions to have a narrow set of staff. Since the guy does not see that that the distribution of merit itself is not equal among various sets of people, the guy is prevented from seeing the truth. > diversity is so important we want people from different backgrounds as they bring a different way of thinking which is crucial to science Here we see the author starting to change his definition of merit. Merit is no longer scientific capability and ability to teach and mentor alone, but also defined by their diverse perspective. > this means that when hiring new faculty committees should consider all aspects of diversity gender race socioeconomic status country of origin and many more this will help to maximize And this is the contradiction that so enrages conservative people. The video starts out saying choose professors based on merit, and ends with lets choose factors other than merit. The guy in the video is still sleeping while dreaming of being awake.
fernandopj 4y ago
Anectodally, this reminds me of a discussion I heard coming from a former boss, discussing a team which had two junior graphic designers and one of them was being let go. He concluded that it was a shame that the one who was somewhat more resourceful, or arguebly slightly more competent tool-wise, was just not at the same level as the other one because that other one you could see that was exposed to arts from a young age, so it could naturally argue about colors and aesthetic in a way the other one just couldn't grasp. He was just He just couldn't see how he could eventually overcome this gap with his peers, and he would most likely have that difficulty throughout his career.

54 points by xqcgrek2 4y ago

This refers to this paper: "Socioeconomic roots of academic faculty" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01425-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01425-4

foobarian 4y ago

This completely ignores the elephant in the room that the supply way outstrips demand, and therefore the selection process naturally starts to incorporate many features additional to simply merit. If there are sufficient candidates in the well-off rubric why should we as a society artificially push anyone else into the arena? At least the well-off folks won't have their lives ruined if they fail to get tenure.

slg 4y ago
Seems rather dystopian to argue that it is good for society that poor people don't get opportunities because they can't weather failure as well as rich people.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
  I assume you're referring to this line: > At least the well-off folks won't have their lives ruined if they fail to get tenure. Which I read as pointing to the fact that poor people will have to invest almost all or actually all of their savings and income into their education. Someone with more fortunate circumstances might be able to use half of their savings or let their parents pay for it.
  - slg 4y ago
    I wasn't arguing against the notion that rich people can weather failure better. That is objectively true. I was arguing against the notion that this is an acceptable outcome for society which was implied by the question asked in the prior sentence: >why should we as a society artificially push anyone else into the arena? We don't even need to get into the practical reasons that other comments mentioned. This is an inherently unjust way for society to be structured. That alone is enough reason to push for change.
    - foobarian 4y ago
      > was implied by the question My intention was not necessarily to imply that, but literally ask myself the original question - why push people into this when the outcome for them will likely be poor? Perhaps a good followup is to ask is, what can we do to both get a more diverse pool of academics without punishing those without means? I would think a massive expansion of the tenure track program would be needed, which is kind of what it was created for in the first place, just got too saturated. But that has its own slew of problems.
      - slg 4y ago
        >why push people into this when the outcome for them will likely be poor? You have used the word "push" multiple times and I'm not sure what you mean by that. I would frame it as "allow" and not "push" as the motivation at an individual level comes from the individual. The goal should be to remove obstacles that prevent poor people from joining academy. That isn't the same thing as pushing poor people into academia even if the end result is effectively the same at a societal level. Either way, I simply think the answer to this question is self-evident based on the morals we claim to have as a society. We literally call it the American Dream. The station of one's birth should not eliminate a career like academia.
        foobarian 4y ago
        > the word "push" Sure, one example of what I have in mind are various efforts across the board to advertise "STEM"/"STEAM" careers, teach kids programming, promote STEM competitions, run STEM courses, etc. etc. This presumably "pushes" some fraction of people into these careers that otherwise would not have gone; but there is no corresponding increase in funding or safety nets. It's not a question of allowed or not - of course anyone is already welcome and able to join academia at least in the USA, it's just that the not well-off population probably drops off before the finish line due to financial constraints.
        slg 4y ago
        It is just semantics, but I don't consider that pushing kids into specific career paths. I tend to think of it like any other school subject. Would people say that having an English literature class in middle school is pushing kids to become writers or teaching high school kids calculus pushes them to be mathematicians? I instead view it as exposing kids to a wider breadth of topics in order to allow them to better self select what career paths interest them. It is still ultimately up to the individual kid to find the topic engaging and stick with it.
- Draiken 4y ago
  I'd argue that's exactly the world we already live in and mostly by design. Another comment mentioned that science was a hobby for the aristocracy and I agree. Because of the big wealth inequality it seems to remain so as shown by the study. Not sure how we can fix any of that within the current landscape though. It really seems to me like it's only really doable with huge systemic changes that will take many revolutions to happen.
uoaei 4y ago
I don't come across many opinions which can legitimately be labeled as 'anti-social', but this definitely qualifies.
- plutonorm 4y ago
  Welcome to the archetypal mind of the conservative. When your axiom is "the current order is just and appropriate" then unconsciously every data point aligns to that principle. The wealthy are good and deserve thier advantage. The poor are bad and they deserve their disadvantage. The outcast or morally abhorrent as they stand opposed to the just order. It's nuts, but that's how they think. They are literally Slytherin and proud of it. It's an insanely dangerous mindset and we should call them out for it. It naturally creates a wall between in group and out group. Any ideology that fosters such division should be fought against. The future, if we are to have one must foster the expansion of our empathy, not it's contraction. It's literally the fight between good and evil. For both sides and from both perspectives. There can be no reconciliation or melding of views. Yin and Yang, light and dark. The internet has laid bare this basic divide and there is a war coming in America. Maybe even a literal war.
  - RelativeDelta 4y ago
    It's not just america. It will be the foundation of the next world war. The fight is between collectivism and individualism. Collectivization requires that all sacrifice and all gain, lashed together. Individualism allows for some to sacrifice and for some to gain, devil take the hindmost. The questions facing those of us undecided on our allegiance are: Is our morality objective? Are we willing to die for a stranger? Are we willing to risk being ruled if we are uncomfortable ruling? Do we truely want the same things? Is harm minimization or gain maximization a better long-term strategy?
hourago 4y ago
> If there are sufficient candidates in the well-off rubric why should we as a society artificially push anyone else into the arena? 1. You get better prepared people. Any society based on nepotism is doomed to fail. 2. You get different views on how to solve problems. People with different background have different experiences that give a wider view of the world. 3. It is fair. Injustice is a bad way of running a society. > At least the well-off folks won't have their lives ruined if they fail to get tenure. Everybody in a society has a right to a good life. That someone does not get a tenure does not mean that their life has ended, there are many possibilities in life and governments have to provide safety nets to help people to get back on their feet.
- foobarian 4y ago
  I agree with your points. However, I think we still have the problem that there is too much supply, and pushing more people into it does them a disservice. Yes, it helps the scientific establishment re: points 1. and 2. As for 3., perhaps true, but I'm not sure it helps those individuals and thus conflicts with the next point that "Everybody in a society has a right to a good life." This may be colored with a US-centric point of view because social safety nets are not great, and if they existed to a greater extent maybe my criticism would be mitigated and it would be fine to push against the market. But without that I think many people are better off pursuing opportunities more appropriate for them.
owlglass 4y ago
> At least the well-off folks won't have their lives ruined if they fail to get tenure So the downtrodden shouldn't ever attempt anything. Also why is this a binary between tenure and financial ruin?

ncraig 4y ago

Perhaps parents with PhDs pass on genetic traits that support their offspring in the competition for PhDs and faculty positions. Unless the analysis controls for that dynamic, the research cannot correctly measure "socioeconomic" effects. As far as I can tell, the study does not attempt to do so.

yummypaint 4y ago
Eugenics has been shown time and time again to be junk/non science. This is like criticizing a dermatology study for not "controlling" for the possibility of lizard people.
- crackercrews 4y ago
  GP isn't referring to eugenics. GP is pointing out that there may be heritable traits that lead one to be more successful in a PhD program. This could be grit, determination, ability to focus, or ability to recognize patterns. It would be surprising if there were no heritable traits that affected success in PhD programs. GPs comment is no more eugenicist than someone pointing out that children of NBA players are more likely to play in the NBA because height is somewhat heritable.
  - medvezhenok 4y ago
    Or that children of Olympians are more likely than chance to be Olympians themselves :)
  - eitally 4y ago
    I think a lot of those attributes are at least as attributable to nurture as nature.
    - crackercrews 4y ago
      Possibly, and that's what the whole video is about. The point is that we don't know how much of the difference is behavioral or related to wealth if we don't even try to consider the possible effects of heritability.

searine 4y ago

Science was traditionally the hobby of the aristocracy, and the middle-class scientist is only a very recent invention. It's a shame that the career seems to be reverting to a track that only the independently wealthy can pursue. Governments funding basic science as a long term investment in R&D is essential to building and maintaining a large and diverse population of experts to draw from for new ideas and innovations.

yummypaint 4y ago
Science pays significantly worse that almost anything else you can do with the same skillset. The only real money making pipeline in physics is to immediately go into finance after getting your PhD, for example. Everyone else who stays in research is taking a pay cut in exchange for doing work they are passionate about. On the one hand I think it's a good thing for science that the vast majority of people who only want to make money leave the field. The problem is the barrier to entry for people who really just want to do science. Most of this in the form of the cost of undergrad education, and PhD program sripends being too low to support a family.
robwwilliams 4y ago
Not the aristocracy, but the wealthy. The aristocracy kept busy wasting time and money.
- est31 4y ago
  von Humboldt was an aristocrat. As was Lord Raleigh.

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chasely 4y ago

I saw this anecdotally in grad school. Despite coming from a solidly middle class family I was definitely on the poorer side of my colleagues at the R1 I attended. You also see it in pretty much any field that confers status in exchange for lower pay. Starkest example I can think of is journalism, where you do a lot of schooling and low-paid or unpaid internships before you're able to get your first low-paying job.

yamtaddle 4y ago
IIRC Graeber put some observations about this effect in Bullshit Jobs, especially as it relates to creatively or ethically fulfilling jobs with some decent social status attached to them. Media, non-profit careers, that kind of thing.
beezlebroxxxxxx 4y ago
Journalism has also become a sort of "status" job post-watergate for a lot of Ivy leaguers. The steps from journalism to "media consultant" are pretty small and there's a huge network effect of 'who you know' coming into play. Going to the same school as a judge or politician can open doors. This is the same way in pretty much all creative fields, though. Museums and galleries are a particularly egregious example. You can start working there for peanuts as a student and find out your fellow student colleagues regularly go to the French Riviera to "recharge" for a weekend.
- kevviiinn 4y ago
  Hmm, Tucker Carlson?
jackcosgrove 4y ago
I'd much rather the children of wealthy families went into research or the arts - as long as they are not bad at what they do and displace more talented people by being connected - rather than they go into finance or management and make more money. IANARK (rich kid) but I imagine they see how unfulfilling the money chase is growing up and choose other paths. Which is good for them and good for society. I bet this is part of the "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations" dynamic.

msravi 4y ago

These studies seem to consistently play down the importance of "culture." By that, I mean that some families tend to place very great importance on education and learning (and consequently prioritize it above other activities), and these families are likely to be ones where the parents hold a bachelors/masters/phd degree. Somehow, the studies focus almost completely on the economic status that the family derives out of higher education and attribute all the benefits to income. Sure, there's definitely a link between how much time you can afford to spend on academics when you're poor, but after a threshold -- probably somewhere near middle income families -- the economic status starts to matter less and less, and the importance and priority accorded to education starts to matter a lot more. Kids from these families can also foresee their career path more clearly on account of having a parent already in the field. It's a natural and obvious effect, but to see this success as a negative and attribute it almost completely to income and nepotism is disingenuous.

boringg 4y ago
Agree it completely simplifies it so that it can lean in on inequality plot so they can leverage get more engagement. The family culture on science and education has a much greater weighting then money on outcome. I wonder if they could add that weighting to the equation how different the story line is. I am not discounting that money has benefits but theres a common narrative/fallacy that having the money drives outcomes. It's useless without culture. To be fair to the researchers the amount of effort to determine culture is more challenging -- requiring at minimum some kind of questionnaire.
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rayiner 4y ago
I think it's because the idea of culture is deeply offensive to individualistic Americans. Individual outcomes must either be the result of starting conditions (parent income/education/etc), or individual effort. Either way, you can think of each person individually, in terms of those variables. For people used to that model, it makes no sense to talk about "culture"--where outcomes depend on groups of individuals reinforcing norms. My parents both have masters degrees, most of their friends have at least a masters degree. They're still upset my brother never got past his bachelors (even though the reason he didn't is that he went from an Ivy into finance). When my parents get together with their friends they talk at length about where their kids are on the educational/career ladder. If you have the slightest inclination to follow the herd and care about what your parents think (which most kids do) then of course culture has a tremendous impact.

hayst4ck 4y ago

I think what is missing from a lot of these conversations, particularly in academia, is the topic of meritocracy. Does being black make you a measurably worse candidate (in aggregate)? Does being black mean you will have a harder time succeeding in a meritocracy? If the answer is no, then what we see in terms of results are a matter of personal choice and there is no business in performing interventions. If the answer is yes, then the follow up question is why? If the answer is genetics, that is incredibly hazardous with extremely bleak societal consequences. If the answer is parental wealth, that means as long as black people (in aggregate) are poor, black candidates (in aggregate) are going to be measurably worse. The obvious conclusion that an academic or DEI executive must reach is that meritocracy promotes systemic "-isms". The obvious conclusion is that the only way to deal with the problem are social programs or reparative efforts (reparations -- such as affirmative action).

t-writescode 4y ago
This _also_ presupposes it's actually a meritocracy - unless "knowing a guy that knows a guy" gives someone merit, or our interpretation of merit, or our approximation of merit. And, just as your series of rhetorical questions also directs, that has long-reaching consequences.
- deleted 4y ago
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- kevviiinn 4y ago
  Meritocracy is a lie because we live in an entirely deterministic system
s1artibartfast 4y ago
>If the answer is parental wealth, that means as long as black people (in aggregate) are poor, black candidates (in aggregate) are going to be measurably worse This just means it will take more than one generation to reach a random socioeconomic distribution, which is exactly what you would expect. If you have two buckets, poor & not poor, with a 10% chance to escape poverty, the system will reach random equilibrium eventually. It might just take a long time (10 generations to get within 5% of a random distribution in this example). If outcomes are based on parental wealth (races treated equal), you will eventually achieve a random race distribution among social classes. If outcomes are based on biased treatment due to skin color (not wealth), the system will not reach a random racial equilibrium. We know parental wealth produces better performing children (merit). This is one reason why growing up in poverty is considered a bad thing (lost potential). The question then becomes (1) do we care more about having meritocratic systems or racial equality. If we care more about racial economic equality, the question then becomes (2) how much are we willing to deviate from meritocracy to achieve racial economic equality. The more you deviate from meritocracy, the faster racial equality will be achieved. I think these are both valid questions and worth discussing openly.

RandomWorker 4y ago

When I was doing my phd I noticed many advantages those that had parents which already navigated the system. Building up my C.V. with publications, workshops, presentations, teaching work, writing in public etc. (evidence of competence) is an impossible job to do when I figured out I needed this at the the end of my PhD to get the professor job. My colleagues that knew all this portfolio building and what is in and what is relevant had a huge leap up. I was just happy to finish with my publications and thesis. There is also a tonne of relationship building opportunities that I didn't realize I had after I finished. So, many things are also unsaid that when my children go in I will know how to help them navigate.

SpaceManNabs 4y ago
Big thing for me as well. I didn't even know about internships or research assistant summer positions until too late often. Part of the reason why I left academia. Outreach really does work and would have helped me.
- RandomWorker 4y ago
  So many opportunities and how to pace yourself. Keeps going. So much is about being in the right places at the right time. Learning this for the first time you going to make mistakes.

powera 4y ago

I continue to struggle with the various reasons people seem to insist these days that being allowed to be successful is a bad thing.

a_c 4y ago

I'm confused. The title says parent's income affects career, the start of video says 1/4 of academics have at least one parent holding phd, the end of video says diversity is important because it brings different way of thinking so we need different gender, race, socioeconomic status, country of origin. Feels like many things conflating together. Anecdotally, most people who are successful in their career are either having parents in the same profession, or have parents providing secure childhood/early adult that allows them brew their career. Programmer parents, professional music player parents, having access to computer programmer at early age, etc. The first shoulder of giants are from parents, isn't it?

s1artibartfast 4y ago
Agreed. As with many of these studies, it assumes that parental nurturing and education has no bearing on individual merit. As if a Mozart, educated in music from the age of three had the same merit as an orphan who never saw an instrument. There is a subtle bait and switch from merit (capability at time of assessment) to learning potential (at the time of conception). You might expect groups on average to have the same a potential at conception, but their merit and capability is impacted by their environment.

godelski 4y ago

> The qualifications for being a professor should be related to your capability as a scientist, your ability to teach, and quality as a mentor. It should not be related to your parent's income or education level. You can stop listening after this (0:45) because this is where the blunder is. The complaint is that most professors have a parent with a PhD. They also make comparisons with the average population. First off, only 1.2% of Americans have a PhD. So we're likely working with outlier data to begin with and you can't compare with the average population in a simple way. Second off, we need to account for household trends. I'll claim that it is quite common that children follow in the footsteps of their parents and this isn't unique to academics. I say this as someone who is at the tail end of my PhD and where I am the only one on either side of my family that is even involved in STEM. My peers had very different childhoods than I did and it is unsurprising that growing up in an academic culture results in them following along. Most of my family followed the rest of my family in pursuing business and sales. I grew up hearing sales terms and strategies all my life. Friends learned calculus early because their parents knew it and taught it to them. Why the difference? Because both our families used different tools to navigate their lives and had a different set of objectives for what is important to success and thus taught their children that. Why is this important? Because the premise is asking how to "resolve" this issue and create a more equitable system. There's two important factors we need to understand: what assumptions have been made and what is the causal graph. For the assumptions, one that seems fair was made but actually isn't. The assumption made is that your parent's education level does not correlate with your abilities as a scientist/educator/mentor. But this is a bad assumption. A better assumption to start with it: a randomly selected child has a similar upper bound in their capacity as a scientist/educator/mentor. Why are these different? Because the environments these children grew up in are different. Even if you are born of poor professors (or even grad students) then you're still going to grow up in an academic household, hearing academic terms and having academic frameworks for thinking. Grow up in a household like mine and you hear about the Ivory Tower and how stuck up academics are. We can't ignore 30 years of someone's life and make accurate conclusions about outcomes. The children who grew up in academic households likely got closer to their upper limit capacity as a scientist/educator/mentor than the child who didn't. They have gotten more education/training, even if everything else is held equal (income, schooling, health, etc). Given more training, we should expect a bias! There is a lot of talk about equity, equality, and meritocracy going on these days but without real understanding of what any of these things are. I'm sorry, but none of these things exist and they cannot exist. To achieve any of these systems would result in revoke one's free will, to make humans robotic. This is a choice we need to make. It is incredibly hard to measure things, and if we rely just on measurements we'll make grave errors (see the state of ML). There is a lot of noise in the system and we can't ignore it. I'm not saying we shouldn't make the world better (including being more fair and reducing nepotism), but we can't pretend that the world is simple. This idea of "good enough" or "if you understand it you can explain it to a layman" are terrible notions and only take us steps back. Yes, they work for many cases but they do not work for complex systems. The history of human kind has been a history of increasing complexity. We are adaptable creatures, but this is something difficult to adapt to given our evolutionary constraints. But we need this culture to encourage nuance and recognition of complexity.

hayst4ck 4y ago

> the qualifications for being a professor should be related to your capability as a scientist your ability to teach and your quality as a mentor. > should not be related to your parents income or education level but unfortunately this is the case His initial assertion is that being a professor should be related to your ability to teach, but he cannot see the relationship between higher parental income level or higher parental education level and a person's ability to teach. Nor does he pay much attention to the idea that a parent with expertise is like a very motivated private tutor for that expertise. > this would ignore the economic component as the study also found that on average academics come from wealthier families this would likely mean that they went to more expensive schools and could afford more expensive colleges previous Here the guy in the video catches a brief glimpse of awakening, an understanding that economic factors make you (in aggregate) a better candidate. This is the core idea of the liberal definition of woke. Without understanding this core principle, you can't see the systemic racism. You can't have a cohsive, coherrant, or convincing narrative. > the more money we receive from our parents the more likely we are to continue on to do a PhD Here again the guy in the video is dangerously close to understanding that people who aren't spending time meeting their basic needs are more able to spend time becoming qualified to be a professor. > the more prestigious the university the more likely faculty is to have a PhD parent this means that more prestigious universities are hiring from a smaller pool Here the guy in the video contradicts himself. Prestigious universities have way more choice and therefore they are able to be more selective. The demographics the candidates come from are smaller, but that does not mean the pool of options is small. Here we see again, that the author does not understand that more money is the same thing as more meritorious candidate, by his own definition of merit. If the most meritorious candidates come from a narrow set of people then we would expect more selective institutions to have a narrow set of staff. Since the guy does not see that that the distribution of merit itself is not equal among various sets of people, the guy is prevented from seeing the truth. > diversity is so important we want people from different backgrounds as they bring a different way of thinking which is crucial to science Here we see the author starting to change his definition of merit. Merit is no longer scientific capability and ability to teach and mentor alone, but also defined by their diverse perspective. > this means that when hiring new faculty committees should consider all aspects of diversity gender race socioeconomic status country of origin and many more this will help to maximize And this is the contradiction that so enrages conservative people. The video starts out saying choose professors based on merit, and ends with lets choose factors other than merit. The guy in the video is still sleeping while dreaming of being awake.

fernandopj 4y ago

Anectodally, this reminds me of a discussion I heard coming from a former boss, discussing a team which had two junior graphic designers and one of them was being let go. He concluded that it was a shame that the one who was somewhat more resourceful, or arguebly slightly more competent tool-wise, was just not at the same level as the other one because that other one you could see that was exposed to arts from a young age, so it could naturally argue about colors and aesthetic in a way the other one just couldn't grasp. He was just He just couldn't see how he could eventually overcome this gap with his peers, and he would most likely have that difficulty throughout his career.