Departments outside the Top 40 - useless?

[Karlito]

While on this subject, does anyone know of any programs that routinely (or maybe have recent individuals) that have placed a job in a program of higher (or maybe even equivalent) ranked university than the one they attended? One of my advisers did this (and landed at my university from a lower ranked one) but she had a specific reason for going to the lower ranked program she went to and also had significant research experience outside of academia.

This happens a lot in the top 20, from 15 to 5, etc. Some from 5 to 15 etc. It goes both ways. I do not know specifically outside the top 20, but following Burris' infamous articles, it looks like it does not happen very often.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3593086?uid=3739448&uid=2&uid=3737720&uid=4&sid=47698901844517

[ThisSlumgullionIsSoVapid]

This happens a lot in the top 20, from 15 to 5, etc. Some from 5 to 15 etc. It goes both ways. I do not know specifically outside the top 20, but following Burris' infamous articles, it looks like it does not happen very often.

http://www.jstor.org...=47698901844517

Ya I knew it didn't happen very often. I took a social networks course at my university and the professor had some really interesting data about the academic hierarchy in terms of job hires. The general notion was that the elite programs hired within each other and the most common (almost determinant) trend of hiring is that people place in a tier below where they graduated. I wish I saved his powerpoints because it was some pretty interesting stuff.

Edited April 19, 2012 by ThisSlumgullionIsSoVapid

[Darth.Vegan]

While on this subject, does anyone know of any programs that routinely (or maybe have recent individuals) that have placed a job in a program of higher (or maybe even equivalent) ranked university than the one they attended? One of my advisers did this (and landed at my university from a lower ranked one) but she had a specific reason for going to the lower ranked program she went to and also had significant research experience outside of academia.

Yes. Javier Auyero got his PhD from the New School and now works at UT-Austin.

Also my friend that got his PhD in poli sci from here (unranked program), is a visiting professor at Williams. But he has yet to get offered a tenure track position, so keep that in mind.

[giacomo]

This happens a lot in the top 20, from 15 to 5, etc. Some from 5 to 15 etc. It goes both ways. I do not know specifically outside the top 20, but following Burris' infamous articles, it looks like it does not happen very often.

http://www.jstor.org...=47698901844517

Does this mean about, say, 70% of us (excluding varied anomalies) are doomed before entering grad school?

[Karlito]

The top 20 works like a caste. This being said, If your objectif is to teach and research at a top 20, you can hope to get hired coming from a lower ranked program if you publish TONS. There are various cases like this of people coming from lower ranked program hired at top programs because they publish both in quality and quantity. You are never doomed. There is still meritocracy in the process.

Edited April 19, 2012 by Karlito

[Ladril]

Does this mean about, say, 70% of us (excluding varied anomalies) are doomed before entering grad school?

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You're not doomed going to school anywhere. However, it is always easier to find a job at a school in the same tier or below the one you went to. Upward mobility is not easy, but it's still possible.

[Ladril]

Another thing to keep in mind is that, no matter where you went to school, getting a tenure-track job at a top 20 institution is VERY difficult. Even the brightest students from those schools have to settle for jobs in schools lower down the hierarchy, while waiting for better opportunities to come (some make it, most don't). The turnover of assistant professors in top 5 departments is huge, because most of them don't make it, no matter how bright. Even having Doug Massey or Randall Collins as your advisor is no sure ticket to an elite job, considering how overcrowded the market is and how competitive things are at the top.

[Darth.Vegan]

Ill be happy to get a tenure track job offer anywhere in the US, or possibly Canada and UK. I really don't care about prestige job wise, but the direction of the academic job market worries me. My fear is that in 8 years from now, we will be lucky to get tenure track jobs anywhere regardless of where we got our PhD from.

[giacomo]

I've been meaning to ask the following question to the fellow forum goers, but do teaching colleges and community colleges have tenure track positions?

[Darth.Vegan]

I've been meaning to ask the following question to the fellow forum goers, but do teaching colleges and community colleges have tenure track positions?

Yes. Community colleges however may only have 1 or 2 tenure faculty per department.

[jacib]

Schools outside of the Top-40 get jobs at more teaching heavy rather than more research heavy places. For example, look at the New School's "Hire a PhD Candidate" page and then click on the individual people--they all post sample syllabii. That's not something you see on at equivalent pages for Top-10 programs. There are certainly people who "move up" from the New School--Javier Auyero at UT-Austin is one, Jose Casanova at Georgetown is another--but these are generally superlative people, and their paths are not direct. Notice Javier Auyero adjuncted for a year, took two visiting professorships at weird time in his career to do so, and also got a ton of grants and awards leading up to his first book, and was also a perfect fit for the New School, and one imagines got a lot of attention (and social capital in professional networks) from prestigious New School professors.

As a general rule though, one moves down and not up. Things can violate this: for example, if you go to BC, say, and your adviser is Peter Berger and he talks you up and says "This is the most promising student I've ever had", you'll probably get a better job than your cohort-mates. But it's not just who your adviser is, it's how much they fight for you. My dad was on a faculty search and a very prestigious adviser basically went out of his way to make it very clear, "You want this guy, this is the guy for you, I'm vouching for this guy's potential and talent." That helped convinced my dad and get this guy the job. The guy's former adviser was right, of course, the student got tenure easily, but this particular adviser has a great placement record and I think it's clear that that's in part because he not only goes the extra mile while the student is writing a dissertation, but, for people he's willing to stake his reputation on, he's willing to really spend social capital on them when they're on the job market.

One can move much further down than one can move up. Sometimes, I've looked at a sociology department at place I've barely heard of and see Michigan and Wisconsin grads mixed in with people with PhD's from schools I wasn't aware had Sociology PhD programs. Some of that is self-selection, I'm sure (one of my friends is in Princeton's Comp Lit program, who I'm fairly confident is smarter than me, is planning on teaching at a community college when she graduates because that's where she's committed to teaching students who she feels need the most committed teachers. Teaching as a beruf), but not all of it. A lot of it is that people, especially at some programs, people can fall through the cracks, not have someone mentoring them through publishing, not have someone kicking their ass to get the best work possible, not someone to fight for them on the job market.

In general, I'd say that the New School and especially Yale probably punch a little above their rankings weight class, and other schools probably don't. However, keep in mind that at all programs, and probably at less famous programs especially, there's a HUGE variation in placement. At lot of it is how much your adviser works for you, what you have the potential to publish in your first five years (what you've published already is more important for indicating what you will publish, in terms of both quality and quantity, rather than indicating something in itself, I believe, if you miraculously have 4 letters from great people saying "this is a dissertation ready to be turned into a pathbreaking book", I think you'll be fine), what your topic is (criminologists in general have an easier time getting jobs at middle tier places because they're in demands, cultural people probably have a harder time everywhere; and the there are trends and emerging areas. I've been told that I'll have an easier time on the market if I work on Islam than if I work on Judaism). Generally, as the study cited above, like hires like. Elite private schools hire elite private school people a lot, big state schools hire big state school people a lot. This is partly due to professors networks above (fighting for someone makes a bigger difference if you personally know someone on the search committee) and this is partly a product of perceptions of teaching. One of my friends in History got a degree from the best school in her subdiscipline (an elite private school), but a non-flagship state college only offered her a one year trial weird thing because they weren't confident she could handle teaching huge lectures.

[jacib]

Damn it, I realized I was only tangentially on topic. Sorry, a lot of stuff in my mind grapes.

Any degree's usefulness is affected by what you want to do with it. Most people outside of Top 40 departments get jobs. Among the teaching jobs, these will most likely be at local liberal arts college, directional state university, community college, university of a-city-that-isn't-Chicago-or-Boston, etc. and will involve less research. That's fine. Some people at non-Top 40 places also get jobs in things like, I don't know, a state department of ed, for example, something like that. I think they generally know that when they apply for schools, though. For example, I was going to do a study on prostitution in Turkey (abandoned it as too emotionally difficult) and realized that one of the main people who had done work on this was a guy with a PhD from Rutgers who now worked for the Turkish State Police.

One can "move up" from outside the Top-40, but it's difficult, and only for people producing pretty exceptional work like the two people from the New School mentioned above. People from outside the Top-40, I would guess, are more likely to be stuck in cycles of adjuncts/visiting professorships, but I think this is in part because they'll often have less geographic mobility (that's how some people end up at non Top-40 programs in the first place--they're tied to a partner who can't move). From what I've seen, singleness/partner's mobility matters a lot for academic success. Also, if you can have a partner who can support you taking time off to write and publish, especially early in your career (I've met two or three people for whom that's mattered a lot).

Moreover, if you look at a lot of the "Outside the Top-40" schools, they're TINY. They only graduate one-to-three PhDs a year so you have to take that into consideration. Often people choose between a smaller outside the top-40 place and somewhere just inside the top-40, you know? And at that point... on reputational surveys, they'll always be low because fewer people have encountered their graduates, especially if those graduates are not geographically mobile, but some of them smaller programs are surely recognized as "close to equal" to average students from bigger, middle ranked PhD programs, at least regionally.

But yeah, ultimately it's useful or useless depending on what you want to do. If you want to work at a place like the University of Michigan, a degree from Michigan State University might be useless. If you want to work at a place like Central Michigan University, a PhD from Michigan State might be exactly what you need.

[Ladril]

Damn it, I realized I was only tangentially on topic. Sorry, a lot of stuff in my mind grapes.

Any degree's usefulness is affected by what you want to do with it. Most people outside of Top 40 departments get jobs. Among the teaching jobs, these will most likely be at local liberal arts college, directional state university, community college, university of a-city-that-isn't-Chicago-or-Boston, etc. and will involve less research. That's fine. Some people at non-Top 40 places also get jobs in things like, I don't know, a state department of ed, for example, something like that. I think they generally know that when they apply for schools, though. For example, I was going to do a study on prostitution in Turkey (abandoned it as too emotionally difficult) and realized that one of the main people who had done work on this was a guy with a PhD from Rutgers who now worked for the Turkish State Police.

Just for the record, Rutgers is a Top 40. I see your general point, though.

[gaygaygay]

I am sure no one in this thread applied professor X's past PhD institution, Uni of Strachylde. But he is a publishing scholar and he published very good things.