New study out on academic prestige and hiring

[bgt28]

I'm not trying to discredit the very real shit that is bequeathed us from time and, you know, the economy...BUT, I'm too absorbed with the desire to get in somewhere first before worrying about whether or not I'll graduate in a decent amount of time, let alone the issue of tenure/professional security. I get enough of that trauma from my parents:

 

Parental: When will you be able to support yourself financially? 

Me: Mom, I'm a minimalist. Give me a chair, a toilet bowl, a desk, and a bed, and I'll feel right at home. 

Parental: Why do you always have to be such a radical? Now, let's take it back to me. When will you stop asking me for money? 

Me: When I'm convinced that I've quenched my brain enough to know what it is I think is worth making money for. BYEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

Parental walks to the pharmacy and hands condom back for refund. 

[Katla]

I'm not trying to discredit the very real shit that is bequeathed us from time and, you know, the economy...BUT, I'm too absorbed with the desire to get in somewhere first before worrying about whether or not I'll graduate in a decent amount of time, let alone the issue of tenure/professional security.

 

Yes! I'm fully aware that mess and yet more mess is waiting down the line, and I guess one has to be aware, but there doesn't seem much point getting my head fried over it until it becomes more of a reality. I'm not even sure I'll get in to a PhD programme, I'm going to try to not worry myself over the next bits until that at least is in order.

 

I'm also thinking that if I get that PhD but fail at the next step at least I'll have had that much longer to research subjects which interest me, not saying it won't be a disappointment if I didn't succeed in getting further and of course priorities/needs can change but I can't predict the future, so all I can go by is how I think of the future now and at the moment it seems like a risk worth taking.

[queennight]

Parental walks to the pharmacy and hands condom back for refund. 

 

BAHAH amazing

[queennight]

Yo are you dumb fucks really arguing about this?

Let me poop some truth on you.

Even if you don't get a tenure track job at Columbia. An ivy league will. Will. Help you get a job at Melbourne or Berlin or Penguin or Verso or some other fucking corner of the world where they pay a decent amount of money to talk Marlowe.

So suck it up. And realize that brand name does have value.

And if God forbid. You end up having kids and a partner that loves going to the spa every fucking 9th weekend. You will still fucking need an income to pay for that bs. So here's the cold damn truth -- money matters. Reputation matters. And even if you don't end up teaching. You could make a living as an editor or an administrator. And pay the bills.

Sorry that reality doesn't sound like a Stoppard show.

But here's the truth -- if you got bills to pay, where you come from has significant fucking bearing on where you end up.

 

Your tone is really unnecessarily nasty and I'm not 100% sure why. I wouldn't say anybody here is arguing about this topic - just discussing the statistics and questioning what is the best route for post-PhD success. Of course an Ivy league will help you get a job, but the question is: how much, and for what careers. Also, Ivy League is a misnomer in this situation: Dartmouth and Brown don't place in the 'top 6' rankings of US News anyways. (Source here)

[mikers86]

I just assumed we weren't counting Dartmouth as they don't have a PhD program.

[queennight]

Eek. My mistake. Guess that would explain that one ...

[rhetoricus aesalon]

Well, here's to hoping that oldmangandhi doesn't get those positions. 

 

Despite everything in/not in, right/wrong, biased/unbiased about this study--I completely agree that prestige matters. Clearly it does; we didn't need this study to prove that. And--I don't believe the study does prove that. If anything, given the huge margin of error lifealive drew our attention to, it shows a real need for use to be able to approach and interpret statistical data on our own because I have a real distaste for the carelessness and confusion that these authors have sewn into this research.

Edited January 14, 2015 by Chadillac

[oldmangandhi]

Sorry about that last post. Sometimes I don't know what comes over me after a couple of drinks. I really didn't mean to vent my wrath on this forum. In fact, I don't even remember putting that up and when I read my comment I was completely taken aback. I do apologise for being an asshole.

[lyonessrampant]

^If you search for old posts by me, you'll see I've done the same thing before.  Add stress of being an English Ph.D. student + job market woes + alcohol = angst-ridden Grendel on forums.

[queennight]

Sorry about that last post. Sometimes I don't know what comes over me after a couple of drinks. I really didn't mean to vent my wrath on this forum. In fact, I don't even remember putting that up and when I read my comment I was completely taken aback. I do apologise for being an asshole.

 

No worries at all!! Also, the phrase "let me poop some truth on you" is fantastic and one that I will most likely be using on all of my friends from now on.

Edited January 14, 2015 by queennight

[InHacSpeVivo]

( It's coz they know the editors and publishers )

This just made me feel a ton better about working in academic publishing for four years before applying. Here's hoping for a chance to make use of those connections one day!

[t1racyjacks]

the question is: are you going to let the fact that brand name matters bother you so much? I don't mind just ekeing out a living as long as I'm left to do the research I want, generally. I think if we're going to let brand name dictate our choices too much then there's little point going to grad school in the first place -- to pursue your passions -- and it becomes just like a corporate rat race. I mean, academia HAS been corporatised, but the degree to which we will buy into the ideology of capitalism (the exchange value of the brand name, technically speaking) is another thing. Truly I think that we should just try to find the best opportunity to let us do the research we want to do, nevermind the brand name, and think about which department would give us the best support for that research, etc -- and eke out a living anyway. For things are bleak in the humanities, even for a 'brand name' student, and we don't need the kind of internal divisions that tear us researchers apart. If we're looking for money and success, even the most famous Yale prof or whatever can't compete with a successful businessman........ the question is: why are we here in the first place? and why would we want success? I've given up on it, personally speaking. I hope I can get employed but I'm not counting on it. I want a corner in which I can hide. If it means simply teaching high school at the end, I guess... well. C'est comme ca.

[InHacSpeVivo]

the question is: are you going to let the fact that brand name matters bother you so much? I don't mind just ekeing out a living as long as I'm left to do the research I want, generally. I think if we're going to let brand name dictate our choices too much then there's little point going to grad school in the first place -- to pursue your passions -- and it becomes just like a corporate rat race. I mean, academia HAS been corporatised, but the degree to which we will buy into the ideology of capitalism (the exchange value of the brand name, technically speaking) is another thing. Truly I think that we should just try to find the best opportunity to let us do the research we want to do, nevermind the brand name, and think about which department would give us the best support for that research, etc -- and eke out a living anyway. For things are bleak in the humanities, even for a 'brand name' student, and we don't need the kind of internal divisions that tear us researchers apart. If we're looking for money and success, even the most famous Yale prof or whatever can't compete with a successful businessman........ the question is: why are we here in the first place? and why would we want success? I've given up on it, personally speaking. I hope I can get employed but I'm not counting on it. I want a corner in which I can hide. If it means simply teaching high school at the end, I guess... well. C'est comme ca.

Preach. I had to come to terms with this after researching programs and realizing for what I want to study most of the US News top 25 programs simply weren't a good fit for me, whether or not I wanted them to be. I'd rather study what I love than get rejected from another dozen programs based on lack of fit (or study something I hate if I did manage to trick an adcomm into admitting me).

Edited January 26, 2015 by In hac spe vivo.

[kurayamino]

I remember when, as a double major, I decided to focus specifically on English instead of Psychology for graduate school. My mentor (in English) told me flat out what the prospects were about becoming a tenured professor and offered personal sobering statistics about his graduating class from Yale (he was the only one who found TT). I just said that I'd never wanted to pursue any aspect of psychology as much as I wanted my field of research in English and that it didn't matter one iota if I could get a TT position. I'd be happy at any location with good library access so long as I could continue my research.

 

That being said though, I did look long and hard at placement records when I chose my schools to apply to because I wasn't about to sell myself short either. In some cases this meant "prestigious schools", but prestige isn't everything. I mean, Yale didn't make my list because of their refusal to list their placement record in spite of the fact that there are professors there who I would have loved to have worked with. So, the long and short of it is, in my opinion, prestige isn't everything, finding TT shouldn't be everything, but passion? That's pretty much non-negotiable.

[1Q84]

What sites are there available for investigating rankings of English graduate programs? I noticed with envy the "Gourmet report" that the philosophy students have and realized how utterly little our field seems to discuss this topic. From what I see, no resources exist aside from the pretty much useless US News rankings.

[kurayamino]

I've seen this one, which is moderately more useful than usnews. http://m.chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-English/124728/

[1Q84]

I've seen this one, which is moderately more useful than usnews. http://m.chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-English/124728/

 

Oh yeah I remember seeing this and it making my head spin. Definitely reminded of how numbers hate me and vice versa. I will say that it's interesting how different it is from the unsubtle US News!

[lyonessrampant]

It is super different, and while their FACs is pretty transparent on methodology and random halves is a pretty reliable statistical measure, I'd like to know who are the people giving them the opinion rankings that they use as the data.  Maybe I missed this, but I'd also like to see the criteria they specifically use to determine the Students category.  They say funding, time to degree, and completion are some of the metrics, but do they adjust for cost of living for example?  For example, the standard stipend at my university is $14,000 and it is $25,000 at CUNY.  Obviously, the number for CUNY is way higher, but the cost of living is astronomically higher so that when adjusted for cost of living, the stipend here is actually larger in terms of going farther.  I don't mean to hate on these rankings and used the example I did only because I know those funding amounts, but in many ways it seems like the NRC's rankings use some of the same methodology as USNWR (ask some people what they think and then we'll make rankings) but asked more people and randomized the data better.  The other metrics could also be more transparent in terms of source.

 

TLDR; rankings still seem pretty arbitrary and largely they don't matter, I think, because perceived prestige doesn't shift a lot so the same schools/programs people think are great will be ranked that way.

[Mercyhurst2010]

When I was applying to PhD programs, the advice I was given (which has borne out so far) was--grads from top 10/20 programs compete for all the research oriented jobs. Everybody else competes for the teaching jobs at 4-year and regional state schools. In that sense, it doesn't always matter if you are coming from U of Maryland (ranked in the 30s) or U of Kentucky (ranked in the 80s); what you do while you are in the program (if there's anything meritocratic about the system at all) will far outway the letterhead your recommendation letters are printed on. Meanwhile, there are plenty of programs in the "63 and below" category that place students in TT jobs at a much higher rate than some top 10s, because many small 4-years and state regionals assume that an Ivy PhD wants a research job and will merely use the first gig as a stepping stone.

 

What I wonder about, given the way R1 jobs are going mostly to top-10, some to 11-35, the occasional job to a 36-62, and (from anything I've seen) virtually none to anyone below that threshold, is how much who your advisor is and where you publish (if you publish) factor into the equation.

 

For example -- say you are in a small, low-ranked PhD program, but your advisor makes a big name for him/herself and you manage to publish one or two articles in really high quality journals (of the Representations, PMLA, ALH, New Literary History, etc. variety). Obviously this is an extraordinary rare and difficult scenario--but might good publications and a strong advisor (the things that are really supposed to matter in grad school) counteract the ranking bias when R1 programs, especially those in the upper crust, are hiring for a position? All other things being equal, if a search committee at Brown or UC Davis is sifting through applications and see a U of Kentucky graduate with articles in ELH and Twentieth Century Literature, and a Princeton graduate with either no publications or, perhaps, one article in a very small journal or a book chapter through a minor press, is the U of K grad now at least on equal footing with the Princeton grad for the job? Or would the elite R1s never stoop below the top 35 regardless of the applicants "peripherals," as the baseball scouts would say? I assume nobody here has an answer for this, but it's something I'd be interested in hearing opinions on, as there seems to be a tendency to align top-tier publishing with top-tier pedigree, but that doesn't necessarily have to be the case.

 

(By the way, all schools named randomly just for the sake of discussion--I have no affiliation with any of them.)

[InHacSpeVivo]

Mercyhurst: Sadly, I am out of up votes. Please know that if I wasn't you would have one for a number of reasons. ;-) First being that two of your examples happen to be places where I applied (and I certainly hope there isn't a ton of difference between UMD and U of K, being that I likely didn't get into the former and still have a shot at the latter).

 

I put a *lot* of thought into this while I was researching programs and, of course, have been second-guessing some of my choices a lot lately given that it's just sort of the time of year. After speaking with several profs (and given a historical lack of success in the app process), I decided that it would be best to spread my apps across the US News "tiers," so to speak. I was in a good position in that there were several strong fit programs, but I would be more than happy to teach at, say, a LAC, so I didn't want to front load with only T10 schools that historically get more applications for fewer spots. While 10/15 schools to which I applied are R1s (the remaining five are R2s), the English rankings are spread out all across the board (one top 20, three 20-35, five 50-65, four >65, and two outside the top 100). Many of the schools that are lower on the US News rankings have editorial opportunities at, for example, a regional MLA journal, in addition to teaching assistantships. There are a few T20 that, in retrospect, I feel like I should have at least tried, but having accumulated so many rejections, I'd rather get in a program in the 50s or 60s (and I would be happy anywhere I applied) then get completely shut out again by placing as much emphasis on prestige as fit.

 

This is all just a personal decision and, basically, a really long way of saying I'm very vested in this question myself. I'm very much hoping that publications, etc. will be weighted in my favor, but only time will tell. I'm hoping the tide is turning in this direction. Antecdotelly, someone in my cohort who works her butt off but is not among those of us with teaching assistantships was admitted to a #52 school, which is more than the TAs I know who applied (myself included) can say at this (albeit early) juncture. Of course, I'm hoping this principle will apply when I'm looking for jobs.

 

It's also interesting to note the number of programs in that 25-65 ranage that have fantastic placement ratings. Granted, not iveys, but in my view a TT position at a big state school, for example, is nothing to scoff at in this market (and Clemson, for example, a 2/2 teaching requirement for faculty).  

[allplaideverything]

I can't help but turn up with critical theory when thinking about the system of prestige, and how, like capital itself, it reifies its own values constantly. I think prestige is total horseshit, but its dominance over the social and economic landscape means I can either allow myself to be interpellated into its own value system and choose to pursue prestige, or I can be swept into the margins and crushed. That sucks!

[InHacSpeVivo]

I can't help but turn up with critical theory when thinking about the system of prestige, and how, like capital itself, it reifies its own values constantly. I think prestige is total horseshit, but its dominance over the social and economic landscape means I can either allow myself to be interpellated into its own value system and choose to pursue prestige, or I can be swept into the margins and crushed. That sucks!

Still up vote-less, but well said!

[Catria]

Good thing particle cosmology isn't as elitist as English is, as far as the necessity of holding a degree from a top school to land a TT job is concerned...

Edited February 15, 2015 by Catria

[__________________________]

Good thing particle cosmology isn't as elitist as English is, as far as the necessity of holding a degree from a top school to land a TT job is concerned...

Dammit.  I knew I chose the wrong field...

[Dr. Old Bill]

Dammit.  I knew I chose the wrong field...

 

Wrong field, eh? I bet you just inadvertently made a hilarious pun among particle cosmologists.