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The Academic Caste System: Prestige Hierarchies in PhD Exchange Networks
Abstract
The prestige of academic departments is commonly understood as rooted in the scholarly productivity of their faculty and graduates. I use the theories of Weber and Bourdieu to advance an alternative view of departmental prestige, which I show is an effect a department's position within networks of association and social exchange—that is, it is a form of social capital. The social network created by the exchange of PhDs among departments is the most important network of this kind. Using data on the exchange of PhDs among sociology departments, I apply network analysis to investigate this alternative conception of departmental prestige and to demonstrate its superiority over the conventional view. Within sociology, centrality within interdepartmental hiring networks explains 84 percent of the variance in departmental prestige. Similar findings are reported for history and political science. This alternative understanding of academic prestige helps clarify anomalies—e.g., the variance in prestige unconnected to scholarly productivity, the strong association between department size and prestige, and the long-term stability of prestige rankings—encountered in research that is based on the more conventional view.
... Analyzing these networks aids in studying academic inequality, particularly concerning institutional prestige. Despite extensive research in various disciplines, such as sociology (e.g., Burris, 2004), physics (Clauset et al., 2015), political science (e.g., Fowler et al., 2007), economics (e.g., Mixon et al., 2017), communication science (e.g., Barnett et al., 2010;Mai et al., 2015), mathematics (e.g., Myers et al., 2011), computer science (e.g., Clauset et al., 2015;Lee et al., 2021), information science (Zhu & Yan, 2017), business studies, and history (e.g., Clauset et al., 2015;Lee et al., 2021), studies have mainly focused on the American context (Nevin, 2019) and paid little attention to the education discipline and the factors shaping hiring network hierarchies. Only a few studies have remained at the theoretical level of inference, lacking empirical validation. ...
... The core finding of faculty hiring networks studies is that American academia has become a hierarchical system of stratification, with elite schools often occupying the most centralized locations (Fowler et al., 2007). This creates a hierarchical structure labeled a "caste system" (Burris, 2004) and a structure of "profound social inequality" (Clauset et al., 2015). Recent studies have embarked on new endeavors and yielded diverse findings. ...
... Class theory suggests that the prestige of schools acts as a form of social capital, specifically the positional effect within the doctoral exchange network (Burris, 2004). To some extent, the prestige of a doctoral degree can help a graduate secure a faculty position at a high-prestige school, irrespective of their academic abilities. ...
Faculty hiring networks are crucial for maintaining academic exchange and openness. However, existing studies have almost exclusively focused on the American context, with limited understanding of the academic labor market in China, where doctoral education has rapidly expanded and quasi-marketization reforms have been implemented in faculty recruitment. This research examines the faculty hiring network of 1806 academic staff with doctoral degrees from 56 leading Chinese schools of education. The findings reveal a highly hierarchical recruitment structure in the education discipline in China, reflecting an inherent academic stratification system influenced by symbolic recognition consistent with signal screening theory and the academic relationship conceptualized in class theory. This structure, on the one hand, challenges Chinese doctoral graduates securing positions in higher-tier schools and leads a “one-way road” rather than a “two-way road” of faculty flow. On the other hand, it reflects profound inequality of academic labor market, with a noticeable increase in inequality over the past decade, evidenced by a higher overall Gini coefficient (0.87) compared to other disciplines in the USA. This implies that it would be imperative to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of human resource allocation in the academic labor market through macro policies, thereby ensuring and promoting the prosperity and development of global education science.
... Whereas journals and conference sessions provide broader measures of attention to climate change in sociology in the U.S., I also explore climate change research and teaching from a bottom-up perspective by examining faculty biographies and course offerings in the 2022 U.S. News 20 top-ranked U.S. sociology departments. Given the predominance of these departments in hiring and other outcomes (Burris, 2004;Wapman et al., 2022; also see Data and Method), the extent to which they attend to climate change in research and teaching may disproportionately influence coverage at national level. 4 In this paper, I first summarize previous research on attention to climate change in research and teaching in sociology, as well as the absence of sociology and other social sciences in climate research and policymaking worldwide. ...
... Previous research has examined inclusion in top sociology journals as a measure of a field's centrality in sociology (e.g., Scott & Johnson, 2016). Faculty biographies and course offerings from top-ranked departments provide an on-the-ground sense of attention to climate change in departments that may wield disproportionate influence over the discipline nationally (Burris, 2004;Wapman et al., 2022; see Faculty Biographies and Course Offerings below). ...
... I examined faculty and course offerings in the U.S. News top-20 departments (as of December 2022) because of the disproportionate influence that these departments may have on sociological research and education across the country. Indeed, soci-ologist Burris (2004) highlighted that the "prestige of the department in which an academic received a PhD consistently ranks as the most important factor in determining the employment opportunities" of doctoral students across disciplines. He found that graduates from the top 20 sociology departments accounted for 70% of faculty hired in 94 PhD-granting departments. ...
Climate change is increasingly recognized as not only a biophysical and technological problem but also a social one. Nonetheless, sociologists have expressed concern that sociology has paid relatively little attention to climate change. This deficit threatens to limit the frames available to understand and imagine solutions to the climate crisis. In this paper I report the most up-to-date and expansive empirical assessment of attention to climate change in sociology in the United States (U.S.). I find little to no mention of climate change across leading sociology journal articles (0.89%), conference sessions (1.5%), and faculty biographies (2.8%) and course listings (0.2%) in the 20 top-ranked departments in the U.S. Two leading journals, the American Sociological Review and American Journal of Sociology, have cumulatively published just three articles focused on climate change to date. This level of disciplinary attention appears low compared to the field’s engagement with other important social problems. My findings thus suggest that climate silence is persistent and pervasive in U.S. sociology. I discuss the implications of this silence and outline opportunities for sociologists, funders, journalists, and policymakers to embrace social science perspectives in climate change teaching, research, and policymaking.
... These institutions are also among those that award the most number of doctorates in the social sciences. Among the criteria or variables examined in these ranking studies are prestige or reputation, number of scholarly articles published, especially in "top journals", number of citations of the scholars in a department, size of faculty, number of graduate students and number of doctorates awarded annually, number of new doctorate recipients immediately employed at top ranked universities or colleges, and endowment of an institution (Amir and Knauff, 2008;Nelson and Brammer, 2010;Burris, 2004;DiFuccia et al., 2007;"Economics: Ranked in 2009" 7 ;Eliason, 2008: pp. 51-52;Hinshaw and Siegfried, 1995;Kaba, 2009Kaba, , 2012Keith and Babchuk, 1998;Marwell, 2012;Paxton and Bollen, 2003;Oprisko, 2012; "Sociology: Ranked in 2009" 8 ; " Table 4. Top 20 doctorate-granting Institutions," 2012 9 ; "Top 100 QS World University Rankings for Sociology 2011," 2011 10 ; Weakliem et al., 2012). ...
... 51-52;Hinshaw and Siegfried, 1995;Kaba, 2009Kaba, , 2012Keith and Babchuk, 1998;Marwell, 2012;Paxton and Bollen, 2003;Oprisko, 2012; "Sociology: Ranked in 2009" 8 ; " Table 4. Top 20 doctorate-granting Institutions," 2012 9 ; "Top 100 QS World University Rankings for Sociology 2011," 2011 10 ; Weakliem et al., 2012). Pertaining to the prestige or reputation of departments, including the colleges and universities in which they are located, Burris (2004) points out that a large amount or scholarly research has illustrated that the prestige of an academic department is very important for the career chances of scholars in academia. Employers in colleges and universities consider the prestige of the department where potential applicants earned their doctoral degrees as the most important factor for employment. ...
This study examines the profile of the contributors of full-length articles to the American Sociological Review (ASR) in 2010. Examining over a dozen variables, the study compared the findings with both the 2010 regular issues of the American Economic Review (AER) and the American Political Science Review (APSR). Although substantial gender and racial inequalities are observed in all three journals and the disciplines that own those journals, the ASR tends to have more gender and racial representations. Some explanations are provided for this finding. For example, in 2010 women accounted for 29 (36.3%) of the 80 contributors of all full-length articles to the ASR, but only 28 (12.6%) out of 222 contributors to the AER, and 11 (13.9%) of 79 contributors to the APSR. Among other findings in the data are that the ASR tends to publish articles of scholars based in North America. Scholars in a selected group of private and public institutions in the United States tend to have more influence in the pages of the ASR. The most common degree earned by contributors to the ASR is the Ph.D., with over 9 out of every 10 of them having at least one. The Northeast and Midwest regions of the United States awarded almost two-thirds of all degrees earned by contributors to the ASR, and the South awarded only 7 (8.7%) of all degrees. The Northeast and Midwest also employed 53% of the contributors to the ASR.
... These institutions are also among those that award the most number of doctorates in the social sciences. Among the criteria or variables examined in these ranking studies are prestige or reputation, number of scholarly articles published, especially in "top journals", number of citations of the scholars in a department, size of faculty, number of graduate students and number of doctorates awarded annually, number of new doctorate recipients immediately employed at top ranked universities or colleges, and endowment of an institution (Amir and Knauff, 2008;Nelson and Brammer, 2010;Burris, 2004;DiFuccia et al., 2007;"Economics: Ranked in 2009" 7 ;Eliason, 2008: pp. 51-52;Hinshaw and Siegfried, 1995;Kaba, 2009Kaba, , 2012Keith and Babchuk, 1998;Marwell, 2012;Paxton and Bollen, 2003;Oprisko, 2012; "Sociology: Ranked in 2009" 8 ; " Table 4. Top 20 doctorate-granting Institutions," 2012 9 ; "Top 100 QS World University Rankings for Sociology 2011," 2011 10 ; Weakliem et al., 2012). ...
... 51-52;Hinshaw and Siegfried, 1995;Kaba, 2009Kaba, , 2012Keith and Babchuk, 1998;Marwell, 2012;Paxton and Bollen, 2003;Oprisko, 2012; "Sociology: Ranked in 2009" 8 ; " Table 4. Top 20 doctorate-granting Institutions," 2012 9 ; "Top 100 QS World University Rankings for Sociology 2011," 2011 10 ; Weakliem et al., 2012). Pertaining to the prestige or reputation of departments, including the colleges and universities in which they are located, Burris (2004) points out that a large amount or scholarly research has illustrated that the prestige of an academic department is very important for the career chances of scholars in academia. Employers in colleges and universities consider the prestige of the department where potential applicants earned their doctoral degrees as the most important factor for employment. ...
This study examines the profile of the contributors of full-length articles to the American Sociological Review (ASR) in 2010. Examining over a dozen variables, the study compared the findings with both the 2010 regular issues of the American Economic Review (AER) and the American Political Science Review (APSR). Although substantial gender and racial inequalities are observed in all three journals and the disciplines that own those journals, the ASR tends to have more gender and racial representations. Some explanations are provided for this finding. For example, in 2010 women accounted for 29 (36.3%) of the 80 contributors of all full-length articles to the ASR, but only 28 (12.6%) out of 222 contributors to the AER, and 11 (13.9%) of 79 contributors to the APSR. Among other findings in the data are that the ASR tends to publish articles of scholars based in North America. Scholars in a selected group of private and public institutions in the United States tend to have more influence in the pages of the ASR. The most common degree earned by contributors to the ASR is the Ph.D., with over 9 out of every 10 of them having at least one. The Northeast and Midwest regions of the United States awarded almost two-thirds of all degrees earned by contributors to the ASR, and the South awarded only 7 (8.7%) of all degrees. The Northeast and Midwest also employed 53% of the contributors to the ASR.
... Networks are crucial assets to secure a job in most economic sectors throughout the world (Granovetter 1995), including academia (e.g. Brink & Benschop 2013;Burris 2004;Clauset et al. 2015;Hadani et al. 2012;Nielsen 2015). Therefore, social networks matter in applying for academic positions because information about job openings and requirements are not made completely public in some countries (for Denmark, see Nielsen 2015; for Finland, see Husu 2000; for the Netherlands, see Brink & Benschop 2013). ...
... As indicated earlier, a vast body of empirical research suggests the existence of academic hiring networks associated with the level of prestige of universities (Burris 2004;Clauset et al. 2015;Cowan & Rosello 2018, Hadani et al. 2012Headworth & Freese 2015). In a comparative analysis of academic job placement in Chile and South Korea, Celis and Kim (2018) found that industrial engineering academic departments at research-intensive universities in both countries are preferentially recruiting doctorate holders who graduated from top-ranked foreign universities. ...
... These institutions are also among those that award the most number of doctorates in the social sciences. Among the criteria or variables examined in these ranking studies are prestige or reputation, number of scholarly articles published, especially in "top journals", number of citations of the scholars in a department, size of faculty, number of graduate students and number of doctorates awarded annually, number of new doctorate recipients immediately employed at top ranked universities or colleges, and endowment of an institution (Amir and Knauff, 2008;Nelson and Brammer, 2010;Burris, 2004;DiFuccia et al., 2007;"Economics: Ranked in 2009" 7 ;Eliason, 2008: pp. 51-52;Hinshaw and Siegfried, 1995;Kaba, 2009Kaba, , 2012Keith and Babchuk, 1998;Marwell, 2012;Paxton and Bollen, 2003;Oprisko, 2012; "Sociology: Ranked in 2009" 8 ; " Table 4. Top 20 doctorate-granting Institutions," 2012 9 ; "Top 100 QS World University Rankings for Sociology 2011," 2011 10 ; Weakliem et al., 2012). ...
... 51-52;Hinshaw and Siegfried, 1995;Kaba, 2009Kaba, , 2012Keith and Babchuk, 1998;Marwell, 2012;Paxton and Bollen, 2003;Oprisko, 2012; "Sociology: Ranked in 2009" 8 ; " Table 4. Top 20 doctorate-granting Institutions," 2012 9 ; "Top 100 QS World University Rankings for Sociology 2011," 2011 10 ; Weakliem et al., 2012). Pertaining to the prestige or reputation of departments, including the colleges and universities in which they are located, Burris (2004) points out that a large amount or scholarly research has illustrated that the prestige of an academic department is very important for the career chances of scholars in academia. Employers in colleges and universities consider the prestige of the department where potential applicants earned their doctoral degrees as the most important factor for employment. ...
This study examines the profile of the contributors of full-length articles to the American Sociological Review (ASR) in 2010. Examining over a dozen variables, the study compared the findings with both the 2010 regular issues of the American Economic Review (AER) and the American Political Science Review (APSR). Although substantial gender and racial inequalities are observed in all three journals and the disciplines that own those journals, the ASR tends to have more gender and racial representations. Some explanations are provided for this finding. For example, in 2010 women accounted for 29 (36.3%) of the 80 contributors of all full-length articles to the ASR, but only 28 (12.6%) out of 222 contributors to the AER, and 11 (13.9%) of 79 contributors to the APSR. Among other findings in the data are that the ASR tends to publish articles of scholars based in North America. Scholars in a selected group of private and public institutions in the United States tend to have more influence in the pages of the ASR. The most common degree earned by contributors to the ASR is the Ph.D., with over 9 out of every 10 of them having at least one. The Northeast and Midwest regions of the United States awarded almost two-thirds of all degrees earned by contributors to the ASR, and the South awarded only 7 (8.7%) of all degrees. The Northeast and Midwest also employed 53% of the contributors to the ASR.
... These institutions are also among those that award the most number of doctorates in the social sciences. Among the criteria or variables examined in these ranking studies are prestige or reputation, number of scholarly articles published, especially in "top journals", number of citations of the scholars in a department, size of faculty, number of graduate students and number of doctorates awarded annually, number of new doctorate recipients immediately employed at top ranked universities or colleges, and endowment of an institution (Amir and Knauff, 2008;Nelson and Brammer, 2010;Burris, 2004;DiFuccia et al., 2007;"Economics: Ranked in 2009" 7 ;Eliason, 2008: pp. 51-52;Hinshaw and Siegfried, 1995;Kaba, 2009Kaba, , 2012Keith and Babchuk, 1998;Marwell, 2012;Paxton and Bollen, 2003;Oprisko, 2012; "Sociology: Ranked in 2009" 8 ; " Table 4. Top 20 doctorate-granting Institutions," 2012 9 ; "Top 100 QS World University Rankings for Sociology 2011," 2011 10 ; Weakliem et al., 2012). ...
... 51-52;Hinshaw and Siegfried, 1995;Kaba, 2009Kaba, , 2012Keith and Babchuk, 1998;Marwell, 2012;Paxton and Bollen, 2003;Oprisko, 2012; "Sociology: Ranked in 2009" 8 ; " Table 4. Top 20 doctorate-granting Institutions," 2012 9 ; "Top 100 QS World University Rankings for Sociology 2011," 2011 10 ; Weakliem et al., 2012). Pertaining to the prestige or reputation of departments, including the colleges and universities in which they are located, Burris (2004) points out that a large amount or scholarly research has illustrated that the prestige of an academic department is very important for the career chances of scholars in academia. Employers in colleges and universities consider the prestige of the department where potential applicants earned their doctoral degrees as the most important factor for employment. ...
This study examines the profile of the contributors of full-length articles to the American Sociological Review (ASR) in 2010. Examining over a dozen variables, the study compared the findings with both the 2010 regular issues of the American Economic Review (AER) and the American Political Science Review (APSR). Although substantial gender and racial inequalities are observed in all three journals and the disciplines that own those journals, the ASR tends to have more gender and racial representations. Some explanations are provided for this finding. For example, in 2010 women accounted for 29 (36.3%) of the 80 contributors of all full-length articles to the ASR, but only 28 (12.6%) out of 222 contributors to the AER, and 11 (13.9%) of 79 contributors to the APSR. Among other findings in the data are that the ASR tends to publish articles of scholars based in North America. Scholars in a selected group of private and public institutions in the United States tend to have more influence in the pages of the ASR. The most common degree earned by contributors to the ASR is the Ph.D., with over 9 out of every 10 of them having at least one. The Northeast and Midwest regions of the United States awarded almost two-thirds of all degrees earned by contributors to the ASR, and the South awarded only 7 (8.7%) of all degrees. The Northeast and Midwest also employed 53% of the contributors to the ASR.
... However, hardly anything is known about potential repercussions that these developments may have had on doctoral education. Against this backdrop, our results contribute to the unresolved question whether stronger competition among universities has led to increased stratification and social closure in the labor market for Ph.D.s (Baier & Münch, 2013;Burris, 2004). ...
... Beyond socialization, the heterogeneity of organizational environments in which doctoral candidates conduct their dissertation research has received substantial prior scholarly attention from the perspective of organizational stratification. In the U.S. university system, a small number of highly prestigious universities supply a large share of all university faculty, highly prestigious universities rarely hire faculty from less prestigious schools, and most faculty work at less prestigious universities than the one from which they obtained their Ph.D., which is suggestive of social closure at the level of universities (Burris, 2004;Wapman et al., 2022). In contrast, other national university systems such as the German one have traditionally not exhibited similar patterns of social closure (Baier & Münch, 2013). ...
Doctoral education is a crucial stage in the academic socialization of early-career researchers. Prior research has shown that career paths and activities of Ph.D.s are shaped by the universities and departments in which they were trained. To widen this focus, we analyze the role of public research organizations (PROs) and private-sector firms as organizational employment contexts of doctoral education. The empirical context of our study is Germany, where PROs and firms employ large numbers of doctoral candidates and provide the organizational environment for their dissertation research. Utilizing a novel process-generated dataset that covers about 40,000 STEM Ph.D.s who graduated from 1995 to 2011, we find that Ph.D.s employed at PROs during doctoral education are more likely to stay in academia than their university-employed peers. Despite extensive policy efforts that sought to strengthen the research performance of German universities, doctoral candidates employed at basic research-oriented PROs had the strongest cross-cohort increase in their post-graduation academic employment share. This group also experienced the most pronounced fall in the share of high post-graduation income owners. Industry-employed doctoral candidates are unlikely to migrate to the academic sector and have the highest likelihood of obtaining high post-graduation incomes.
... These institutions are also among those that award the most number of doctorates in the social sciences. Among the criteria or variables examined in these ranking studies are prestige or reputation, number of scholarly articles published, especially in "top journals", number of citations of the scholars in a department, size of faculty, number of graduate students and number of doctorates awarded annually, number of new doctorate recipients immediately employed at top ranked universities or colleges, and endowment of an institution (Amir and Knauff, 2008;Nelson and Brammer, 2010;Burris, 2004;DiFuccia et al., 2007;"Economics: Ranked in 2009" 7 ;Eliason, 2008: pp. 51-52;Hinshaw and Siegfried, 1995;Kaba, 2009Kaba, , 2012Keith and Babchuk, 1998;Marwell, 2012;Paxton and Bollen, 2003;Oprisko, 2012; "Sociology: Ranked in 2009" 8 ; " Table 4. Top 20 doctorate-granting Institutions," 2012 9 ; "Top 100 QS World University Rankings for Sociology 2011," 2011 10 ; Weakliem et al., 2012). ...
... 51-52;Hinshaw and Siegfried, 1995;Kaba, 2009Kaba, , 2012Keith and Babchuk, 1998;Marwell, 2012;Paxton and Bollen, 2003;Oprisko, 2012; "Sociology: Ranked in 2009" 8 ; " Table 4. Top 20 doctorate-granting Institutions," 2012 9 ; "Top 100 QS World University Rankings for Sociology 2011," 2011 10 ; Weakliem et al., 2012). Pertaining to the prestige or reputation of departments, including the colleges and universities in which they are located, Burris (2004) points out that a large amount or scholarly research has illustrated that the prestige of an academic department is very important for the career chances of scholars in academia. Employers in colleges and universities consider the prestige of the department where potential applicants earned their doctoral degrees as the most important factor for employment. ...
This study examines the profile of the contributors of full-length articles to the American Sociological Review (ASR) in 2010. Examining over a dozen variables, the study compared the findings with both the 2010 regular issues of the American Economic Review (AER) and the American Political Science Review (APSR). Although substantial gender and racial inequalities are observed in all three journals and the disciplines that own those journals, the ASR tends to have more gender and racial representations. Some explanations are provided for this finding. For example, in 2010 women accounted for 29 (36.3%) of the 80 contributors of all full-length articles to the ASR, but only 28 (12.6%) out of 222 contributors to the AER, and 11 (13.9%) of 79 contributors to the APSR. Among other findings in the data are that the ASR tends to publish articles of scholars based in North America. Scholars in a selected group of private and public institutions in the United States tend to have more influence in the pages of the ASR. The most common degree earned by contributors to the ASR is the Ph.D., with over 9 out of every 10 of them having at least one. The Northeast and Midwest regions of the United States awarded almost two-thirds of all degrees earned by contributors to the ASR, and the South awarded only 7 (8.7%) of all degrees. The Northeast and Midwest also employed 53% of the contributors to the ASR.
... These institutions are also among those that award the most number of doctorates in the social sciences. Among the criteria or variables examined in these ranking studies are prestige or reputation, number of scholarly articles published, especially in "top journals", number of citations of the scholars in a department, size of faculty, number of graduate students and number of doctorates awarded annually, number of new doctorate recipients immediately employed at top ranked universities or colleges, and endowment of an institution (Amir and Knauff, 2008;Nelson and Brammer, 2010;Burris, 2004;DiFuccia et al., 2007;"Economics: Ranked in 2009" 7 ;Eliason, 2008: pp. 51-52;Hinshaw and Siegfried, 1995;Kaba, 2009Kaba, , 2012Keith and Babchuk, 1998;Marwell, 2012;Paxton and Bollen, 2003;Oprisko, 2012; "Sociology: Ranked in 2009" 8 ; " Table 4. Top 20 doctorate-granting Institutions," 2012 9 ; "Top 100 QS World University Rankings for Sociology 2011," 2011 10 ; Weakliem et al., 2012). ...
... 51-52;Hinshaw and Siegfried, 1995;Kaba, 2009Kaba, , 2012Keith and Babchuk, 1998;Marwell, 2012;Paxton and Bollen, 2003;Oprisko, 2012; "Sociology: Ranked in 2009" 8 ; " Table 4. Top 20 doctorate-granting Institutions," 2012 9 ; "Top 100 QS World University Rankings for Sociology 2011," 2011 10 ; Weakliem et al., 2012). Pertaining to the prestige or reputation of departments, including the colleges and universities in which they are located, Burris (2004) points out that a large amount or scholarly research has illustrated that the prestige of an academic department is very important for the career chances of scholars in academia. Employers in colleges and universities consider the prestige of the department where potential applicants earned their doctoral degrees as the most important factor for employment. ...
This study examines the profile of the contributors of full-length articles to the American Sociological Review (ASR) in 2010. Examining over a dozen variables, the study compared the findings with both the 2010 regular issues of the American Economic Review (AER) and the American Political Science Review (APSR). Although substantial gender and racial inequalities are observed in all three journals and the disciplines that own those journals, the ASR tends to have more gender and racial representations. Some explanations are provided for this finding. For example, in 2010 women accounted for 29 (36.3%) of the 80 contributors of all full-length articles to the ASR, but only 28 (12.6%) out of 222 contributors to the AER, and 11 (13.9%) of 79 contributors to the APSR. Among other findings in the data are that the ASR tends to publish articles of scholars based in North America. Scholars in a selected group of private and public institutions in the United States tend to have more influence in the pages of the ASR. The most common degree earned by contributors to the ASR is the Ph.D., with over 9 out of every 10 of them having at least one. The Northeast and Midwest regions of the United States awarded almost two-thirds of all degrees earned by contributors to the ASR, and the South awarded only 7 (8.7%) of all degrees. The Northeast and Midwest also employed 53% of the contributors to the ASR.
... This study examines how marketisation and state factors influence the construction of sociology departments, focusing on the presence of foreign PhD faculty members and levels of academic "inbreeding". Faculty backgrounds by alma mater could represent education resources as forms of social capital (Burris 2004). Following an institutional framework, we first examine how hiring preferences in sociology departments in Chinese universities came to be associated with local levels of marketisation and state power. ...
... Among all the institutional resources impacted by regional inequality caused by reform, the academic backgrounds of faculty members in Chinese universities are especially vulnerable. Faculty members' academic backgrounds in terms of location and prestige of faculty terminal degrees represent both institutional capital (the focus of university competition) and individual choices based on economic and prestige incentives (Burris 2004). As a result, universities in wealthy cities can attract scholars, especially those with Western degrees and strong publications, unlike institutions in poorly marketised areas, regardless of the city's administrative status or the university's academic tier designated by the government (Tang and Hao 2017). ...
Neoliberal policies since 1978 have caused severe regional inequality in China. Cities in regions with high levels of marketisation attract top academic experts due to their proximity to economic incentives and prestigious universities. However, little is known about how economic reform has shaped the distribution of experts in the social science and humanities disciplines as they are less in demand on the market and often rely on support from the state. Using sociology as a unique case, this study investigates market and state influences on the regional distribution of sociology experts in Chinese universities based on city-level measurements. Sociology has a unique historical and paradigmatic connection with the state of China, which complicates any straightforward relationship between neoliberal policies and higher education inequality in sociology departments. Through a manual collection of 1,041 faculty profiles from 66 university websites, it was determined following the fractional logistic regression method that both the market and the state facilitate distribution. The city’s marketisation increases the internationalisation of faculty members in sociology departments, while the city’s position in the state’s administrative hierarchy maintains the sociology departments, regardless of the city’s marketisation. In general, the state still plays an important role in shaping academic expert distribution after 40 years of market reform in China.
... These institutions are also among those that award the most number of doctorates in the social sciences. Among the criteria or variables examined in these ranking studies are prestige or reputation, number of scholarly articles published, especially in "top journals", number of citations of the scholars in a department, size of faculty, number of graduate students and number of doctorates awarded annually, number of new doctorate recipients immediately employed at top ranked universities or colleges, and endowment of an institution (Amir and Knauff, 2008;Nelson and Brammer, 2010;Burris, 2004;DiFuccia et al., 2007;"Economics: Ranked in 2009" 7 ;Eliason, 2008: pp. 51-52;Hinshaw and Siegfried, 1995;Kaba, 2009Kaba, , 2012Keith and Babchuk, 1998;Marwell, 2012;Paxton and Bollen, 2003;Oprisko, 2012; "Sociology: Ranked in 2009" 8 ; " Table 4. Top 20 doctorate-granting Institutions," 2012 9 ; "Top 100 QS World University Rankings for Sociology 2011," 2011 10 ; Weakliem et al., 2012). ...
... 51-52;Hinshaw and Siegfried, 1995;Kaba, 2009Kaba, , 2012Keith and Babchuk, 1998;Marwell, 2012;Paxton and Bollen, 2003;Oprisko, 2012; "Sociology: Ranked in 2009" 8 ; " Table 4. Top 20 doctorate-granting Institutions," 2012 9 ; "Top 100 QS World University Rankings for Sociology 2011," 2011 10 ; Weakliem et al., 2012). Pertaining to the prestige or reputation of departments, including the colleges and universities in which they are located, Burris (2004) points out that a large amount or scholarly research has illustrated that the prestige of an academic department is very important for the career chances of scholars in academia. Employers in colleges and universities consider the prestige of the department where potential applicants earned their doctoral degrees as the most important factor for employment. ...
This study examines the profile of the contributors of full-length articles to the American Sociological Review (ASR) in 2010. Examining over a dozen variables, the study compared the findings with both the 2010 regular issues of the American Economic Review (AER) and the American Political Science Review (APSR). Although substantial gender and racial inequalities are observed in all three journals and the disciplines that own those journals, the ASR tends to have more gender and racial representations. Some explanations are provided for this finding. For example, in 2010 women accounted for 29 (36.3%) of the 80 contributors of all full-length articles to the ASR, but only 28 (12.6%) out of 222 contributors to the AER, and 11 (13.9%) of 79 contributors to the APSR. Among other findings in the data are that the ASR tends to publish articles of scholars based in North America. Scholars in a selected group of private and public institutions in the United States tend to have more influence in the pages of the ASR. The most common degree earned by contributors to the ASR is the Ph.D., with over 9 out of every 10 of them having at least one. The Northeast and Midwest regions of the United States awarded almost two-thirds of all degrees earned by contributors to the ASR, and the South awarded only 7 (8.7%) of all degrees. The Northeast and Midwest also employed 53% of the contributors to the ASR.
... To highlight some examples, mechanisms of closure can e.g. be at play in male academic networks (Noordenbos 2002), in PhD exchange networks (Burris 2004), in the socioeconomic profiles of students, doctoral students and professors (Blome et al. 2019) and more generally in the maintenance of positions endowed with institutional power both inside and outside academia 2019). Alongside their capacity to erect barriers to entry into scientific domains by way of control over e.g. ...
... Whitley 1976;Laudel 2005). Authors in the field have not only pointed to the existence of (inter)disciplinary status hierarchies between disciplines, but also (intra)disciplinary prestige hierarchies, i.e., status differences between different branches within the same discipline (Cole and Cole 1973;Cole 1983;Burris 2004;Gingras and Wallace 2010;Korom 2020a;Benz and Rossier 2022). For instance, Gaston (1970) observed that greater repute was attached to contributions in theoretical high energy physics as opposed to advances made in the experimental branch of the discipline (Blume and Sinclair 1973). ...
The notion of science as a stratified system is clearly manifested in the markedly uneven distribution of productivity, rewards, resources, and recognition. Although previous studies have shown that institutional environments for conducting research differ significantly between national science systems, disciplines, and subfields, it remains to be shown whether any systematic variations and patterns in inequalities exist among researchers in different national and domain specific settings. This study investigates the positioning of citation elites as opposed to ‘ordinary’ researchers by way of examining three dimensions of concentration (accumulation of publications and citations, specialisation, and institutional concentration) in biology, economics and physics in Denmark and the UK. Across all three dimensions, we put Richard Whitley’s bipartite theory to the test, suggesting a nexus between the intellectual structure of a discipline and the configuration of its elite. The study draws on a dataset of researchers who published most of their publications in either physics, biology, or economics over the 1980–2018 period and with at least one publication in 2017–2018 while affiliated to either a British or a Danish university. We find higher degrees of concentration in the UK compared to Denmark, and that physics and biology respectively display the greatest and lowest degree of concentration. Similar patterns in disciplinary differences are observed in both countries, suggesting that concentration patterns are largely rooted in disciplinary cultures and merely amplified by the national context.
... Apart from individuals with black skin colour and women, people from a more disadvantaged educational background also seem to be the minority in pursuing a successful clinical and academic career. For example, in the fields of neural networks, sociology and management, graduates from top universities (compared to non-top universities) are more likely to be employed by top universities [26][27][28][29]. ...
... First, neurologists being currently affiliated with a top university are more likely to have graduated from a top university for their PhD or Master's degree. This is similar to findings in the fields of neural networks [26], sociology [27], management [28] and other fields [29]. ...
Equitable representation is key for successful clinical and research work. Inequalities in gender, skin colour, and education have been found among professionals in many medical, surgical and academic fields, but have not been examined yet in the current UK neurologists' workforce. This cross-sectional study examined whether there are disparities in gender, perceived skin colour, education, academic productivity, and career progression among UK neurologists. The names of consultant neurologists working in the UK anytime between December 2021 and March 2022 were found via an online search. Online data were collected regarding education, research activity, academic productivity, impact and progression. A total of 1010 consultant neurologists were found to be working in the UK. There was predominance of men at consultant level, with a university affiliation, and with a full professor position. All 24 female full professors had white skin colour. There were no skin colour or gender disparities in currently being affiliated with a top university, obtaining a Master's degree, or duration between medical degree obtainment and becoming full professors. However, less black or brown neurologists had obtained a PhD, were consultants, and it took them a longer time from medical school graduation until becoming consultants. Less females were currently affiliated with a university and had obtained their medical degree from a top university. There were also skin colour and gender disparities in bibliometrics. In conclusion, this study revealed that there are gender, skin colour, education, academic productivity, and career progression gaps among UK consultant neurologists, which need to be addressed.
... These biased evaluation processes challenge the idea of meritocratic selection procedures. Researchers argue that the prestige of a given applicant's PhD affiliation might determine the chances of being funded or hired to a much greater extent than productivity (Burris, 2004;Baldi, 1994;Cret & Musselin, 2010, Clauset et al., 2015Cowan & Rossello, 2018;Tomlinson & Freeman, 2018;Smith et al., 2004;Williamson & Cable, 2003). Specifically, scholars (Burris, 2004) claimed that the prestige of PhD affiliation is essential in determining the chances of entering the academic labor market. ...
... Researchers argue that the prestige of a given applicant's PhD affiliation might determine the chances of being funded or hired to a much greater extent than productivity (Burris, 2004;Baldi, 1994;Cret & Musselin, 2010, Clauset et al., 2015Cowan & Rossello, 2018;Tomlinson & Freeman, 2018;Smith et al., 2004;Williamson & Cable, 2003). Specifically, scholars (Burris, 2004) claimed that the prestige of PhD affiliation is essential in determining the chances of entering the academic labor market. Scholars outline two pivotal arguments to explain the positive discrimination towards applicants whose PhD degrees are affiliated with institutions from the Global North. ...
Prestigious academic scholarships are highly competitive, so using appropriate evaluation criteria is important. In this study, we analyzed 259 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) grantees in social sciences and humanities to see their composition in terms of productivity, educational background, mobility, and gender. Based on quantitative content analysis, linear regressions, and network analyses, the findings reveal that while most grantees significantly improved in their production after funding, there are many awardees with weak or even invisible publication records on Scopus both prior to and following their awards. Most of the scholars who had already been prolific prior to their grant continued to be productive after funding, while many awardees with weak past performances were even less productive after winning the scholarship. In terms of gender, we found no Matilda effect in the grant allocation process; while in terms of production, male scholars benefit more from the grant than females. The outcomes also show that Western countries dominate both the awardees' education trajectories and their host institutions. Our conclusion is that the geographic diversity among the awardees should be developed and that the evaluation process should focus on pre-MSCA performance to support the most promising applicants.
... Departmental prestige helps careers because prestige operates and reproduces in networks. As a scholar climbs up the career ladder, she or he advances into the core of a field and becomes part of a reproductive vortex that makes it increasingly hard to not benefit from collective dynamics (Burris, 2004;Clauset et al., 2015;Way et al., 2019). Cores harbor the few positions that strongly influence how a field reproduces (Fuchs, 2001). ...
... Careers are tournament-like endeavors (Sørensen, 1986) to improve one's rank in the academic "pecking order" (Chase, 1980). Ranks translate to positions in networks, and upward or downward mobility resembles approaching or withdrawing from network cores (Burris, 2004;Clauset et al., 2015). Only a few make it up those "chains of opportunity," for most the way is down (White, 1970). ...
Inequality prevails in science. Individual inequality means that most perish quickly and only a few are successful, while gender inequality implies that there are differences in achievements for women and men. Using large-scale bibliographic data and following a computational approach, we study the evolution of individual and gender inequality for cohorts from 1970 to 2000 in the whole field of computer science as it grows and becomes a team-based science. We find that individual inequality in productivity (publications) increases over a scholar’s career but is historically invariant, while individual inequality in impact (citations), albeit larger, is stable across cohorts and careers. Gender inequality prevails regarding productivity, but there is no evidence for differences in impact. The Matthew Effect is shown to accumulate advantages to early achievements and to become stronger over the decades, indicating the rise of a “publish or perish” imperative. Only some authors manage to reap the benefits that publishing in teams promises. The Matthew Effect then amplifies initial differences and propagates the gender gap. Women continue to fall behind because they continue to be at a higher risk of dropping out for reasons that have nothing to do with early-career achievements or social support.
Peer Review
https://www.webofscience.com/api/gateway/wos/peer-review/10.1162/qss_a_00283
... Specifically, previous research has evidenced that social relationships, including those between organisations, tend to be linked to status homophily (Burris, 2004): social relationships are both powerful markers of status and a mediator as organisations associate with others with similar positions in the status hierarchy to maintain or improve their own standing reputation and status (Chung et al., 2000;Podolny, 1994), which in turn may allow them to influence the rules governing future competition for status and resources alike (Piazza & Castellucci, 2014;Podolny, 2010). ...
... Although, as noted in the theoretical framework, higher-status institutions generally tend to collaborate with those with similar standing (Burris, 2004;Chung et al., 2000;Podolny, 1994), under certain market conditions, this tendency can be overridden (Collet & Philippe, 2014). The current market conditions for HE in Europe are mixed with a number of challenges, including funding cuts, demographic changes, and competition (for students and personnel) from foreign HEIs, but also opportunities for growth for the HEIs which are able to adapt and evolve (e.g. by teaching online, diversifying programme offer, improving mobility opportunities for students or staff, or expanding recruitment to foreign markets). ...
Using a dataset of higher education institutional alliances within the framework of the European University initiative (EUi), we test empirically whether the policy-defined goal of a relative balance between excellence and inclusiveness within the scheme has been achieved. Specifically, we provide a descriptive and analytical account of the diversity of the higher education institutions (HEIs) participating in the EUi, the composition of—as well as the mechanisms behind—the formation of individual alliances. We observe that alliance formation activated the deep sociological mechanisms of hierarchisation, with the alliances largely reproducing the existing hierarchy of European HEIs. Specifically, we argue that the global-level stratification hierarchy cast by rankings influences the participation of individual institutions and—although to a more limited extent—the formation/structure of the alliances. Further, we demonstrate that the EUi has strengthened existing ties since most alliances thus far have built on existing forms of collaboration. However, we also show empirically that some of the distinctive policy design measures, namely the requirement for broad geographical coverage and generically framed rules for participation, as well as opening the initiative to new alliances and encouraging enlargement of the existing ones, have generated opportunities for involvement of the lower-status institutions. This broadened the scope of the EUi beyond the core of top-ranked research universities located in the knowledge production centres of Europe. We suggest that these observations may have important implications for how the intended extension of the EUi may be implemented in the future.
... The old caste systems have replaced the new caste system by composition or definition. Universities have a caste system (Burris, 2004), like journals have a caste system. The old caste system was about differences between communities: high versus low. ...
... Our results reveal that the prestige of the doctoral institution is insignificant for Japanese-trained Chinese PhDs, consistent with findings by Jiang et al. (2020) and Meng and Shen (2023). In contrast, the prestige of U.S. doctorate-granting institutions significantly influences job placement in the academic labour market, aligning with studies in the sociology of science indicating that the origin of a doctorate directly or indirectly affects job placement (e.g., Burris, 2004;Headworth & Freese, 2016). A recent study on PhD graduates in China also confirmed that more academically competitive graduates -those from leading universities -tend to secure positions at more prestigious institutions (Liu & Li, 2024). ...
... Moreover, the introduction of international university rankings such as Times Higher Education (THE), the QS Ranking, or the Shanghai Ranking (ARWU) has made universities around the world adopt the metrics that are used by such rankings (Schmitt, 2012;Tomlinson & Freeman, 2018). For example, international rankings use Scopus or Web of Science to calculate research excellence when ranking universities on the general and the by-subject lists (Burris, 2004;Pietrucha, 2018). Evidently, the widespread use of bibliometrics became possible for both scientometrists and institutions with the development of digital databases such as the Web of Science (now owned by the Clarivate™ analytics company) and Elsevier's Scopus, which offer a huge amount of data for bibliometric analysis (Assimakis & Adam, 2010). ...
This paper introduces the concept of narrative literaturemetrics, a novel mixedmethods approach that applies the quantitative metrics traditionally used in bibliometrics to the field of literature. Utilising an extended version of Bourdieu’s field theory, this study draws parallels between academia and literature, emphasising the applicability of concepts such as capital, field, and agents to literary analysis. Despite the evident similarities, there has been a surprising lack of field-theoretical studies employing bibliometric methodologies within literary studies. This paper addresses that gap by outlining the theoretical foundations and methodological considerations of narrative literaturemetrics. It discusses adapting bibliometric indicators to literary analysis and highlights the distinctions necessary to respect the unique norms governing literature and academia. Furthermore, the paper explores the emerging qualitative turn in bibliometrics, particularly the development of narrative bibliometrics, and its relevance to the proposed approach. By detailing the conceptual framework and potential applications of narrative literaturemetrics, this study aims to establish a comprehensive model for future empirical research in literary studies.
... Apart from our variable on specialization and generalization, we include the covariates of Lutter and Schröder (2016) and Habicht, Schröder, and Lutter (2024), which all have been manually coded from the scholars' resumes (CVs) and webpages. (Burris 2004;Burt 1992;Granovetter 1973), we include mobility, which is the sum of the number of universities a scholar has worked at, interim professor, which is the accumulated number of temporary substitute professorships, and the number of co-authors for each publication. ...
Sociological research on careers and organizations suggests that those with a wide range of skills (generalists) are disadvantaged due to the dispersion of their competencies, whereas those with a focused expertise in a specific area (specialists) benefit from a deeper understanding of their domain. This study tests the applicability of these findings to academia, assessing whether scholars with a specialized publication output are more likely to obtain tenure than those with a more generalist output. Using a combination of computational quantitative text analysis of 5497 journal abstracts published along with longitudinal career data covering CV and publication data of sociology professors in German academia, first, we find that a generalist research focus has a positive and statistically significant effect on attaining tenure. In addition, male sociologists derive greater benefits from a generalist publication strategy, whereas female sociologists experience greater advantages from specialization. Second, we disentangle the overall effect into ‘qualitative’ and ‘quantitative’ specialization. Our results show a slight but non-significant advantage for sociologists who focus primarily on publishing quantitative research. Furthermore, results reveal that women in particular profit from a quantitative specialization in sociology.
... The old caste systems have replaced the new caste system by composition or definition. Universities have a caste system (Burris, 2004), like journals have a caste system. The old caste system was about differences between communities: high versus low. ...
Intellectual Biography
... The old caste systems have replaced the new caste system by composition or definition. Universities have a caste system (Burris, 2004), like journals have a caste system. The old caste system was about differences between communities: high versus low. ...
... A Harvard graduate will be gladly received at any American university, but Harvard, so as not to lose its position, can only give jobs to people with degrees from a few universities. (It is interesting that the prohibitions against in-breeding which exclude the employment of one's own graduates, are weaker at the highest level of such a hierarchy [Burris 2004], reflecting the fact that Harvard can experience a much more acute shortage of suitable candidates than a middle-ranking university.) Those who are lacking a degree from a leading school can make up for it with substitutes: postdoctoral positions or visiting appointments. ...
... Our field will benefit from this too, as emerging work can continue to broaden and deepen the scope of climate change sociology and environmental sociology in general while building on and acknowledging foundational work from the past. This will also help to mitigate inequality within the field, such as lessening the formation of closed networks between scholars at more elite institutions who are beginning to pursue sociological research on climate and climate-adjacent topics (Burris 2004;Hermanowicz and Lei 2023). ...
... These relationships can take the form of formal agreements, such as research collaborations, or informal relationships, such as shared resources or information. Burris (2004) developed a model to explain how universities are organized into a hierarchical network. The model suggests that each university occupies a position in the network based on its relative size, prestige, and power. ...
Introduction. The centrality degree of a university collaborative network indicates how many other universities the given university has active collaborations with. The study analyses the centrality of university-level collaboration networks and aim to assess the influence of organizational characteristics and bibliometric factors of universities on the centrality degree. Method. This study used artificial neural networks, particularly a multilayer perceptron. The input variables included number of documents published, citations, size, type, and location of the university. Data was extracted from the census of institutions identified within the inter-university collaborative networks of Santander and Caldas in Colombia. A total of 154 universities comprises the dataset for the territory of Santander and 126 for Caldas. Results. The results indicated that bibliometric factors had a significant influence on the centrality degree of the networks. Organizational characteristics also had an influence, but to a lesser extent than bibliometric factors. Conclusion. The study found that the research output and impact are the most important factors in predicting the centrality degree of a university in a collaborative network. This suggests that policies to increase the research output and impact of a university are likely to result in a more central position in the network.
... An individual's confident behaviour (Anderson & Kilduff, 2009;Jiménez & Mesoudi, 2021) and display of pride (Tracy et al., 2013) may also be related to social status. Other studies have suggested that prestige is associated with job titles (Burris, 2004;Jiménez & Mesoudi, 2020), academic titles (Dalmaso et al., 2012) and wearing certain types of clothing (DeWall & Maner, 2008). Although people can access these cues with less cognitive demand than direct evaluations of success, the cues are also more likely to be unrelated to actual competence and less reliable cues (Jiménez & Mesoudi, 2019). ...
Knowledge and behaviour are transmitted from one individual to another through social learning and eventually disseminated across the population. People often learn useful behaviours socially through selective bias rather than random selection of targets. Prestige bias, or the tendency to selectively imitate prestigious individuals, has been considered an important factor in influencing human behaviour. Although its importance in human society and culture has been recognised, the formulation of prestige bias is less developed than that of other social learning biases. To examine the effects of prestige bias on cultural evolution theoretically, it is imperative to formulate prestige and investigate its basic properties. We reviewed two definitions: one based on first-order cues, such as the demonstrator's appearance and job title, and the other based on second-order cues, such as people's behaviour towards the demonstrator (e.g. people increasingly pay attention to prestigious individuals). This study builds a computational model of prestige bias based on these two definitions and compares the cultural evolutionary dynamics they generate. Our models demonstrate the importance of distinguishing between the two types of formalisation, because they can have different influences on cultural evolution.
... Un ejemplo de esta dinámica son las diversas capas de un sistema universitario: El núcleo se conforma por Universidades que reciben profesores del núcleo y envían profesores a todas las otras capas. En ese caso, una capa intermedia recibe profesores de ella misma y de las capas superiores y envía profesores a capas inferiores (Burris, 2004;Clauset, Arbesman y Larremore, 2015). ...
La noción de ciudad intermedia ha adquirido gran importancia en años recientes en Chile y en América Latina. Aunque usualmente la referencia de dicha noción es clara, lo que define y distingue a una ciudad intermedia como tal, resulta bastante menos claro. En este artículo, examinamos diferentes propuestas para definir este concepto. Observamos que las definiciones absolutas de tamaño, que suelen usarse como definiciones operacionales, no resultan adecuadas. Además, definiciones basadas en el rol y ubicación que cumplen esas ciudades resultan más útiles, pero ellas también se enfrentan a dificultades. Concluimos planteando que explorar posibilidades que entrega una aproximación que defiende una definición basada en la idea de modo de vida podría ser una aproximación interesante para definir estas ciudades.
... Middle-class students and parents' pursuit of admission into elite universities (e.g., Aurini et al., 2020;Stevens, 2009) is also partly a function of their deference to firmly institutionalized status hierarchies. Scholars also reinforce prevailing hierarchies when they hire new faculty predominantly from the same small group of elite universities (Burris, 2004), or compete to publish their work in prestigious journals (Starbuck, 2005). ...
It is generally accepted that Canadian universities are less stratified than their southern neighbours, a hypothesis popularized in the mid-2000s and verified by subsequent comparative empirical research. Through this piece, we revisit the Canadian “flatness” hypothesis, embracing a more sociological definition of status hierarchies and using social media followers as a focal proxy for status. Despite our theoretically based skepticism, adoption of an alternative status proxy, and use of more recent data, our analyses validate the flatness hypothesis. We theorize the implications of these findings, and our novel approach, for the study of organizational stratification in higher education.
... Para EE.UU., véaseBurris, 2004;Hadani, Coombes, Das & Jalajas, 2012;Lee, Clauset & Larremore, 2021. Para Francia, Alemania y EE.UU., véaseMusselin, 2009. ...
The professionalization of academic hiring processes in Chilean universities is a topic of increasing importance. With mounting pressures to enhance scientific productivity, understanding how faculty members are selected remains a critical enquiry. This study addresses this research gap, by conducting a qualitative case study of seven academic departments affiliated with universities of varying scientific capacities.To perform the study, recommendations of hiring practices of foreign universities have been followed, focusing on recruitment and evaluation of unconscious biases. Findings reveal that most academic departments employ open calls and formal hiring committees, and also there is a significant absence of discussion about how unconscious biases affect hiring decisions. Moreover, hiring criteria tend to favor candidates who are part of academic networks, as they are perceived as more dependable candidates and more likely to accept a potential job offer.
... 13 11 Bkz. Burris, 2004;Lee, 2022. 12 Nietzsche, F. 2015. ...
Antropolojik anlamda klan, kabile, kast gibi sosyal toplulukların en önemli özellikleri aynı soydan, aynı etnik kökenden, aynı ırktan, aynı inançtan ya da aynı sınıftan insanların bir araya gelerek genellikle aynı alan (mekân) ve aynı iklim (atmosfer) içerisinde yaşamalarıdır. Sözkonusu sosyal grupları (klan, kabile, aşiret, cemaat, tarikat, kast vb.) birbirinden ayırt eden birçok özellik bulunsa da genel olarak “dışa kapalılık”, “mekânsal birliktelik”, “hiyerarşi ve otoriteye bağlılık” vb. bu topluluklarda yaygın olarak gözlemlenen olgulardır. Örneğin, “kast içi evlilik” (kast endogamisi) geçmişte ve halen kast sistemlerinde benimsenen ve tatbik eden bir uygulamadır. Kastlar arasında kesin sınırlar ve hiyerarşi sözkonusudur. Örneğin, bir Jati’nin bir başka kasta mensup olan biriyle evlenmesi asla sözkonusu değildir; jatiler kast endogamisine (kast içi evlilik) sıkı sıkıya bağlı olan bir sosyal sınıf ya da topluluktur. Fransız antropolog Louis Dumont’un (1970) ifadesiyle kast sisteminde “homo hierarchicus”ların statü, görev, alt ve üst kastlar arası ilişkilerini belirleyen normlar önceden belirlenmiştir ve kast üyeleri bu sıkı ve katı kurallara bağlı “sosyal tabakalaşma” içinde yaşarlar. Şüphesiz inançlar, gelenekler, değerler, alışkanlıklardan oluşan “kültür” adını verdiğimiz sosyal normlar zaman içerisinde erozyona uğrar ve değişime zorlanır. Örneğin kentleşme, küreselleşme, zenginleşme gibi faktörler bugün dünyanın en katı ve kapalı kuralları altında yaşayan “homo hierarchicus”ları bile yatay hareketliliğe (örneğin, göç) ve dikey hareketliliğe (örneğin, yoksul sınıftan zengin sınıfa geçiş) zorlamıştır.
Bu yazımda Türkiye’de devlet üniversitelerimizin çoğunluğunda yukarıda kısaca özetlediğim klan kültürü ve kast sistemine benzer bir “akademik ekoloji”nin (akademik iklim) varolduğu iddiasında bulunmak istiyorum. Ülkemizde “homo academicus”lar tıpkı “homo hierarchicus”lar gibi aynı “habitus” içerisinde yaşamakta, aynı akademik yapı ve kültür içerisinde yetişmekte, yükselmekte ve kadrolaşmaktadırlar. “Akademik akrabalık” (academic inbreeding) olarak adlandırılan bu yapı akademik klan kültürü, akademik kast sistemi, akademik otarşizm, akademik oligarşi gibi kavramlarla ifade edilen akademik kültürün temel parçalarıdır. Bu çalışmada bu kötü “akademik immobilite” ve “akademik endogami” uygulamasını eleştirerek onun yerine sahte ya da yapay değil, gerçek anlamda bir “akademik hareketlilik” önerisinde bulunmaya çalışacağım.
... More specifically, the objective of this paper is to clarify elements that contribute to the existence of a self-deprecated attentional dynamic, focusing on economists' conscious or unconscious daily scientific practices. Introdução U ma literatura crescente (Alatas, 2003;Anderson, 2002;Burris, 2004;Ferreira, 2019;Neves, 2020) vem analisando os aspectos que implicam a diferenciação entre ciência do centro e da periferia. As mais recentes vão além da análise das questões macrossociológicas imbricadas na estrutura econômica desigual do sistema capitalista (Cepal e teorias da dependência, marxistas ou não), ressaltando também os recursos simbólicos que criam as dinâmicas de atenção e ignorância reforçadoras de hierarquias. ...
Resumo Os economistas justificam a internacionalização da ciência econômica recorrendo à metalinguagem, de tal modo que a competição é apresentada como o mecanismo “exemplar” de estímulo à qualidade (credibilidade epistêmica) e produtividade da ciência (novos conhecimentos). Entretanto, a competição dos mercados perfeitos da teoria econômica raramente é encontrada no mundo real, muito menos na ciência, onde uma combinação de fatores materiais e simbólicos reforça o caráter desigual e hierárquico da produção científica. Partindo desse entendimento, o presente trabalho lança mão do conceito de “regime de administração da irrelevância” para compreender a ordem indutora de processos científicos nos quais o conhecimento produzido é diminuído a uma condição de inferioridade ante outros contextos. Mais especificamente, o objetivo será evidenciar, a partir de procedimentos conscientes ou não, a prática científica cotidiana dos economistas, elementos que contribuem para a existência de uma dinâmica atencional autodepreciada.
CEO compensation has expanded dramatically over the past half-century, with network processes playing a pivotal role. We advance research on these processes by focusing on which CEOs are more likely to get pay premiums and how this shapes income going to other actors within the firm. Using Danish registry data and a weighted k-core measure of elite connections, our analyses highlight that CEOs embedded in the corporate elite can extract a substantial wage premium. These premiums are then followed by reductions in wages going back to workers over the next three years. However, the more of a firm’s board of directors who are similarly connected to the corporate elite, the less effective are those connections in generating a premium. These findings extend the role of social networks beyond just the diffusion of increasing compensation for CEOs to the creation of inequalities among CEOs and between CEOs and workers.
Researchers have repeatedly found that within modern higher education systems, students from wealthier backgrounds tend to be concentrated in the most advantageous sectors. Dubbed “effectively maintained inequality,” this process allows these groups to maintain a competitive advantage in the labor market by virtue of acquiring more elite credentials. But what happens in nations with flatter university hierarchies, where there is relatively modest vertical differentiation in the brand strength of domestic universities? Through this study, we provide the first national-level analysis of the relationship between parental income and access to more selective, better resourced, and higher ranking Canadian universities. We also assess the extent to which there is an earnings premium associated with attending these more elite institutions. Our results suggest there are few differences in the types of universities attended by Canadians from different economic strata. Moreover, any earnings premium associated with attending a more elite Canadian university disappears once we account for basic demographic and field of study controls. We theorize that Canadian universities’ flatter institutional hierarchy drives wealthy families to seek advantages through enrollment in elite majors (e.g., business, engineering) and other tactics that take place outside the higher education system.
O princípio da impessoalidade é fundamental na administração pública no Brasil, assegurando igualdade de tratamento e oportunidades aos cidadãos. Nos concursos públicos para a carreira do magistério superior federal, regulamentados pela Lei 12.772/2012, esse princípio é essencial para garantir a lisura dos processos seletivos e evitar a endogenia, prática que pode comprometer a imparcialidade. Este artigo analisa como o judiciário interpreta e aplica o princípio da impessoalidade frente a alegações de impedimento na composição das bancas examinadoras, utilizando decisões dos cinco Tribunais Regionais Federais entre 2003 e 2023. A pesquisa adota o Método de Análise de Decisões (Freitas Filho; Lima, 2010) para avaliar a coerência dos julgados com os critérios estabelecidos.
Borgatti and Everett's model (2000) remains the prevailing standard for identifying categorical core-periphery structures in empirical networks, yet this method poses two significant issues. The first concerns the handling of inter-categorical ties—those linking core and periphery actors. The second problem is the model's definition of the ideal core as a complete block or clique, which can be overly stringent in practical applications. Building on advancements in direct blockmodeling, we propose modifications to address these shortcomings. To better handle inter-categorical ties, we replace the traditional cell-wise correlation approach with one based on exact- and minimum-density blocks. To relax the constraint of a fully connected core, we introduce the p-core, a proportional adaptation of the k-core/k-plex cohesive subgroups, providing greater flexibility in defining the level of cohesion required for core membership. We illustrate the advantages of these enhancements using both classic network examples and synthetic networks.
We examine the educational backgrounds of the global elite, using new data on a diversity of organizational leadership roles as well as the population of the super‐rich across the world. Four trends emerge when examining the university education of the global elite. First, we find a small number of globally prestigious universities to take on super prominent roles, suggesting a strongly hierarchical distribution of credentials among the global elite. Second, we find a consistent and unique place for Harvard University within this system. Third, we find evidence for a significant yet variable ‘home‐bias’ in the education of the global elite. This is moderated by the fourth regularity, the hegemony of Anglo‐American credentials. These four global regularities can enhance ongoing research on global elite populations. Our findings are robust to both the removal of all American elites in the sample, to dynamic stratified sampling of the network boundary and to disaggregating the sample into different elite roles. The analysis of this article is the first of its kind to offer a large‐scale descriptive mapping of central tendencies in global elite university education.
Millions of people move for work yearly, but this labor migration risks social and cultural challenges, hindering migrants' integration into new communities. Software tools could support this transition, but the design space around, and the mechanisms behind, how individuals develop spatial understanding and 'sense of place' is unclear. In our study, we leverage mental maps to explore migrants' 'sense of place'. We conduct a mixed- methods study with 12 participants, spanning two sessions - one before and one after their relocation, totaling 24 data sessions. We discover that post-relocation, mental maps not only widen coverage and generalization but also decrease in cartographic complexity and accuracy, reflecting a nuanced blend of personal narratives and spatial awareness. We also find that strategies for rebuilding and reshaping 'sense of place' span a complex set of dimensions spanning personal, social and environmental challenges, post-move. Our findings lay the groundwork, and underscore the need, for 'platial' (versus spatial) understanding and tools to rebuild sense of place, and foster better community cohesion. We highlight design opportunities for creating tools, especially those capturing personal nuances, to help migrants reestablish themselves and their sense of place.
This study uses event history analysis to show what promotes tenure in German economics, utilizing a unique and virtually complete national dataset that includes 70,657 publications from 3955 economists, of which 1196 received tenure between 1984 and 2021. While existing theories emphasize that gender discrimination, parenthood, human capital, academic prestige, and social capital explain who is tenured, no study has thus far evaluated these factors concurrently across an entire national population of economists. Our findings reveal that fewer women receive tenure than would be expected based on their representation in the candidate pool. However, gender, parenthood, and non-reviewed publications do not significantly influence tenure attainment after controlling for covariates. Instead, mobility, accessing advanced career stages, and peer-reviewed journal articles are most strongly related to receiving tenure. Independently of productivity, academic prestige, such as receiving grants and awards, also impacts tenure prospects significantly, as does social capital, measured through research mobility, interim professorships and co-authorships. Being affiliated with prestigious universities shows minimal effects on receiving tenure, however. These findings imply that mobility, moving up career stages and being productive by publishing peer-reviewed journal articles are the strongest determinants of becoming a tenured economics professor in Germany.
Cet article analyse les embauches des professeurs d’université dans le champ des sciences sociales au Québec (principalement en sociologie, science politique, économie, géographie, anthropologie, communication, psychologie/psychoéducation et travail social) entre 1900 et 2020. Nous montrons que la langue d’enseignement (français ou anglais), la position géographique (métropoles ou régions) de l’université d’embauche et le prestige perçu des universités d’obtention du doctorat et d’embauche constituent autant de facteurs contribuant à la structuration du marché de l’emploi universitaire québécois en sciences sociales. Nous mettons au jour un mouvement historique de « québécisation » des embauches, analogue au mouvement de « canadianisation » observé dans le reste du Canada, qui a débuté à la fin des années 1960, atteint son apogée à la fin des années 1990, et connu ensuite un recul au tournant du 21 e siècle dans le contexte des discours sur l’internationalisation des universités. Nous montrons finalement l’existence d’une féminisation des corps professoraux qui, pour être différenciée selon les disciplines, est continuelle depuis la fin des années 1960.
To study stratification among scientists, we reconstruct the career-long trajectories of 8.2 million scientists worldwide using 12 bibliometric measures of productivity, geographical mobility, collaboration, and research impact. While most previous studies examined these variables in isolation, we study their relationships using Multiple Correspondence and Cluster Analysis. We group authors according to their bibliometric performance and academic age across six macro fields of science, and analyze co-authorship networks and detect collaboration communities of different sizes. We found a stratified structure in terms of academic age and bibliometric classes, with a small top class and large middle and bottom classes in all collaboration communities. Results are robust to community detection algorithms used and do not depend on authors’ gender. These results imply that increased productivity, impact, and collaboration are driven by a relatively small group that accounts for a large share of academic outputs, i.e., the top class. Mobility indicators are the only exception with bottom classes contributing similar or larger shares. We also show that those at the top succeed by collaborating with various authors from other classes and age groups. Nevertheless, they are benefiting disproportionately from these collaborations which may have implications for persisting stratification in academia.
Featuring data from a nationwide survey of English faculty in Canada, this study focuses on the reasons that faculty offered for choosing their respective doctoral programs. This analysis pays particular attention to gendered disparities in participants’ responses and to disparities associated with parental educational level, two variables that sometimes intersect in striking ways. This investigation explains why some reasons that women and first-generation university students provided for their choice of doctoral program can increase a student’s chances of entering a poorly ranked program. Employing previously unprocessed data from Statistics Canada, this article also presents information to help would-be PhD students who are women, first-generation university students, or both make more informed decisions about where to pursue doctoral study to be more competitive in the academic job market if they aspire to be professors. This article is simultaneously designed to increase faculty mentors’ understanding of the problematic logic that women and first-generation university students may use when selecting their PhD programs so that such mentors can better address these students’ misperceptions about doctoral studies and the profession.
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ABSTRACT:
Background. It is important to have a diverse workforce in clinical and research environments. A cross-sectional study was conducted to examine the possible presence of gender,
perceived skin colour, education, academic productivity, and career progression inequalities among neurosurgeons in the United Kingdom. Methods. A list of all consultant neurosurgeons working in the United Kingdom (N=384) was obtained from the Specialist Info website. Data about their education, research activity, academic productivity, impact and progression were obtained from publicly available online sources. Results. Over 90% of consultants and all full professors were men. There was a small number of black or brown consultant neurosurgeons and no black full professors. Very few black or brown consultants obtained their medical degree from a top university or had a PhD. There were no gender disparities in currently being affiliated with a university (or top university), obtaining a PhD or Master's degree, ranking of the university from which they obtained their medical degree, Master’s degree or PhD, or number of pages and open access availability of their PhD thesis. Neurosurgeons who obtained their medical degree from the UK and those with a PhD had more publications, citations and a higher h-index. Male (vs female) academic neurosurgeons had more publications, non-self citations, and a higher h-index, and white (vs brown) female neurosurgeons had more citations per paper. Conclusion. This study identified important gender, skin colour, education, academic productivity, and career progression inequalities in the 2023 UK consultant neurosurgery workforce.
Sociological research has long been interested in inequalities generated by and within educational institutions. Although relatively rich as a literature, less analytic focus has centered on educational mobility and inequality experiences within graduate training specifically. In this article, we draw on a combination of survey and open-ended qualitative data from approximately 450 graduate students in the discipline of sociology to analyze graduate school pipeline divergences for first-generation and working-class students and the implications for inequalities in tangible resources, advising and support, and a sense of isolation. Our results point to an important connection between private undergraduate institutional enrollment and higher-status graduate program attendance—a pattern that undercuts social-class mobility in graduate training and creates notable precarities in debt, advising, and sense of belonging for first-generation and working-class graduate students. We conclude by discussing the unequal pathways revealed and their implications for merit and mobility, graduate training, and opportunity within our and other disciplines.
Universities have changed in recent decades with the introduction of various performance measurement systems, including journal ranking lists. This Bourdieu-inspired article analyses three types of strategies used by male associate professors in response to journal lists: building social capital at conferences and during stays abroad; marketing of research papers to potential reviewers and journal editors; and tactical co-authorship. Drawing on 55 qualitative interviews with male associate professors in the social sciences in Denmark, the article shows that journal lists, and the forms of strategic networking they are associated with, represent a new doxa in higher education. However, it also reveals that participants are unequally positioned when it comes to acting in accordance with performance metrics. Although comprehended as neutral, journal lists are based on (and contribute to) dividing lines between acknowledged and unacknowledged research – lines that tend to pass unnoticed among winners as well as losers in the academic publishing game.
Research on the science enterprise ordinarily assumes that any hierarchy among academic departments reflects an egalitarian system based on merit. This assumption is predicated on the view that departmental prestige is primarily a function of faculty scholarship. In this article, the association between prestige and scholarship is examined for the discipline of sociology using evaluative ratings from three national studies and objective data on publications. Scholarship is found to be far less important in determining prestige ratings than either the past reputations of departments or their affiliated universities. Publishing is not necessarily a straightforward means of securing a department's prestige. Instead, past reputation reflective of an institutional context, rather than scholarly productivity, appears to be the critical property bearing on how departments are viewed.
This article tests one key assumption of Bourdieu's theory of culture fields: that actors are positioned in a ''topography'' of social relations according to their endowments of economic, social, and cultural capital. Blockmodeling procedures are used to analyze data on German writers and to identify a social structure in which positions vary according to the types and amounts of capital accumulated. A strong split between elite and marginal writers dominates the social structure, and even the fundamental distinction between high and low culture is embedded in this bipartition. Significant differences in both cultural and social capital distinguish elite from nonelite positions; within this bipartition, pronounced differences in cultural capital separate high and low culture. Relative to cultural and social capital, economic capital plays a lesser role in understanding the social structure of cultural fields.
Academic reputation rests on publication. But unlike many fields, sociology recognizes both journal articles and books, thereby complicating the relation of publication to reputation. Drawing on the sociology of science and organization theory to analyze elite sociology journals and books nominated for a major prize, the authors show how genre structures scholarly fields and shapes the reception of texts. Method and evidence, not subject matter, distinguish articles from books. Private universities ''prefer'' books, while scholars trained at public universities are more likely to publish articles. Gender and rank are associated with choice of genre, while citation rates increase with authors' prior publication records. Books generate conversations across subfields and disciplines; articles serve as a currency of evaluation within sociology.
How explain the emergence and diffusion of new ideas? One perspective is that ideas are assessed for their cognitive content; new ideas succeed essentially because they arc “better” than older ideas. A second perspective holds that the process of innovation helps define what is “better” and what is adopted. Debate over these two competing interpretations continues in many fields of science (and “non-science”!).
This essay traces the development of the research enterprise, known as the social resources theory, which formulated and tested a number of propositions concerning the relationships between embedded resources in social networks and socioeconomic attainment. This enterprise, seen in the light of social capital, has accumulated a substantial body of research literature and supported the proposition that social capital, in terms of both access and mobilization of embedded resources, enhances the chances of attaining better statuses. Further, social capital is contingent on initial positions in the social hierarchies as well as on extensity of social ties. The essay concludes with a discussion of remaining critical issues and future research directions for this research enterprise.
The reward and communication systems of science are considered.
Data from probability samples of U.S. graduate faculty in physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, and political science are examined in order to determine whether variation in disciplinary consensus is associated with differences in status-attainment patterns. We argue that high levels of agreement on research priorities and techniques facilitate the accurate and early detection of scientific talent, and we suggest how variation in agreement might be reflected in status attainment models. The results are consistent with our suggestions, but they imply that substantial variation in consensus produces fairly small differences in the status attainment patterns we analyze. We briefly discuss similarities between our results and Turner's typology of contest and sponsored mobility.
Analysis of data for 576 natural scientists currently faculty in U. S. graduate institutions shows that the prestige of the institution where a scientist received his doctorate is related to the prestige of his present affiliation even when the effects of his productivity are controlled. The relative effects of prestige of doctoral institution and productivity vary between different levels of the academic stratification system and between different stages in the scientific career. Turner's concepts of contest and sponsored mobility are related to these findings, and conditions promoting the existence of each type of mobility are suggested.
This paper reports correlates of departmental prestige (American Council on Education ratings of the quality of graduate faculty, 1966) for a sample of 125 departments in mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology. The analysis mostly uses multivariate linear regression. Large and significant correlations with departmental prestige exist for measures of department size, research production, research opportunities, faculty background (including quality of Ph.D. university), student characteristics (number of postdoctoral fellows, undergraduate selectivity), and faculty awards and offices. Combinations of from six to nine indicators of these variables account for about three-fourths of the variance in departmental prestige; when other types of variables are held constant, indicators of all except research opportunities remain significantly associated with departmental prestige. Correlations of prestige with rates of inbreeding and the proportion of foreign doctorates are discussed. Differences in the correlates of prestige are small among the four fields studied. It is shown that prestige is correlated with average amount of informal scientific communication and with departmental morale even after possible confounding variables are held constant.
This study examines the reputational ratings of twenty disciplines using data from the 1982 Conference Board of Associated Research Councils to identify the extent to which such ratings can produce meaningful rankings of universities. Given that perceptions of departments and universities reflect social psychological images about the relative value of the program or school, such images can have powerful implications for hiring, recognition and the rewards process if they remain stable over time. The result is a mental construct that can have powerful implications for structure of stratification among higher educational institutions and the careers of those who pass through these universities. Seen from this perspective, eminence based on reputation is a property of the university. As such, departments within given universities should be quite consistent with regard to their respective ratings. Findings from this paper reveal the reputations of programs within universities are quite similar to each other, based on prestige ratings made by faculty in the same discipline at other universities. Implications for the structure of eminence and its consequences for individuals are subsequently discussed.
Scientists' academic sponsors might influence their students' careers through the quality of training they provide and through their ability to transmit to their students a professional status and other ascriptive advantages. Using data for a probability sample of doctoral chemists, this study explores the effects of scientists' Ph.D. departments and several characteristics of their doctoral sponsors on their scientific productivity and positions over their first postdoctoral decade. Sponsorship appears to play a vital role in the chemists' careers. Their sponsors' productivity affected sample members' predoctoral productivity, and the calibre of their Ph.D. department affected their postdoctoral productivity. Although measures of the quality of their training did not affect the setting (university versus other employer) of the chemists' jobs, two measures of their sponsors' professional stature were consequential. These results suggest ascriptive effects of doctoral sponsorship, independent of the effects of sponsors' performance, the calibre of the Ph.D. department, and the chemists' own productivity.
CannadineDavid. The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. 1990. Pp. xvi, 813. $35.00. - Volume 24 Issue 1 - Sheldon Rothblatt
This paper examines the interrelationship between scientific productivity and academic position, two key dimensions of the scientific career. Contrary to the results of most earlier studies, the effect of departmental location on productivity is found to be strong, whereas the effect of productivity on the allocation of positions is found to be weak. Productivity, as indicated by measures of publications and citations, is shown to have an insignificant effect on both the prestige of a scientist's initial academic appointment and on the outcome of institution changes later in the career. Although the relationship between productivity and the prestige of an academic appointment is insignificant at the time a position is obtained, the effect of departmental prestige on productivity increases steadily with time. For those scientists who change institutions, the prestige of the new department significantly affects changes in a scientist's productivity after the move. It is argued that past studies have obtained spurious results due to their failure to employ a longitudinal design. Not only do cross-sectional designs provide misleading results regarding the interrelationship between departmental location and productivity, but they also systematically alter the findings regarding the effects of sponsorship and doctoral training on productivity.
Generalized exchange, in which sections of a tribe exchange women in a cycle and thus guarantee social solidarity, was induced from models of the norms governing classificatory kinship systems. A blockmodel analysis of one aboriginal tribe yields sections that serve as marriage classes in a generalized exchange system, though the norms that govern kinship would fail to manifest, if followed, a cycle for exchange. Generalized exchange systems emerge from inequalities exogenous to the kinship system, specifically gerontocracy. Models of norms are weak predictors of actual exchange structures. Models of relations yield insight into the etiology of systems that build social solidarity from social exchange.
Institutional inbreeding has traditionally been viewed as a manifestation of academic particularism and parochialism. More recently, McGee and Berelson have hypothesized that, under certain circumstances, inbreeding may reflect patterns of recruitment and may aid a department's efforts to secure the services of noninbred scholars. This paper examines data for 1,165 .U.S. academic scientists in an attempt to test the hypotheses of McGee and Berelson. Small but consistently negative relationships between being inbred and measures of scholarly productivity are found; inbred scientists at high-prestige departments appear to be no more productive than scientists at departments of lesser eminence. In addition, evidence consistent with McGee's claim that inbred scientists are discriminated against in the allocation of departmental rewards is presented. Some implications of these results for the question of the nature and future of institutional inbreeding are suggested.
This study examines the characteristics of faculty who joined the top twenty departments in six disciplines between 1963 and 1966 in order to evaluate the relative importance of prestige of doctoral origing and scholarly performance in the selection for a position in these departments. While there is a weak relationship between rank of doctorate and rank of hiring department, graduates from departments with the highest ranks are much more likely to be hired by all the top twenty departments. When rank of academic affilation and levels of productivity, citations, and recognition are controlled, the proportion of graduates hired from the highest ranking departments remains the same. Among senior faculty, this proportion diminishes slihgtly when these factors are controlled. These findings suggest that, among younger faculty, prestige of doctorate rather than past performance is used as a predictor of future performance by those who are responsible for faculty recritment.
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Regression analyses of longitudinal data for a probability sample of chemists provide estimates of the causal links between chemists' predoctoral training, early productivity, recognition and organizational context and productivity at the end of the first postdoctoral decade. After identifying certain methodological problems involved in using Science Citation Index citation counts to assess the effects of collegial recognition on later productivity, I report tests of several hypotheses proposed to account for scientists' conformity to productivity norms. Apart from the calibre of the Ph.D. department, measures of socialization have no direct effect on decade productivity. Early productivity and collegial recognition do contribute to decade productivity, but the strength of their effects varies by the research orientation of the first employer: early productivity is more important for those employed in universities, whereas collegial recognition is particularly important for chemists in contexts that do not stress scholarly publication.
The impact of quality of department of doctoral training upon research productivity is analyzed. Using a measure developed by Glenn and Villemez (1970), the authors examined the publication records of 2,205 holders of the Ph.D. in sociology for the period 1940-1970. Quality of department is operationalized on the basis of Kenniston's 1959 study of graduate schools and the 1966 and 1970 studies sponsored by the American Council on Education. In addition, the authors developed a fourth rating system, a composite of the three studies, for the present research. Regression analysis is used to assess the predictive efficiency of the four rating schemes. Controls on possible confounding variables, e.g., sex and year of Ph.D., are instituted at appropriate points in the analysis. The standardized partial regression coefficients indicate that quality of department of doctoral training has less impact upon productivity than has generally been assumed. When the effects of extraneous variables are removed quality of department exerts little independent influence upon any of six operational indices of productivity. Possible reasons for the failure of the independent variable to emerge as a stronger predictor of publication output are suggested and briefly discussed.
This article draws an analytical distinction between two types of market uncertainty: egocentric, which refers to a focal actor's uncertainty regarding the best way to convert a set of inputs to an output desired by a potential exchange partner, and altercentric, which denotes the uncertainty confronted by a focal actor's exchange partners regarding the quality of the output that the focal actor brings to the market. Given this distinction, the article considers how the value of "structural holes" and market status vary with these two types of uncertainty. The article proposes that the value of structural holes increases with egocentric uncertainty, but not with altercentric uncertainty. In contrast, the value of status increases with altercentric uncertainty, but declines with egocentric uncertainty. Thus actors with networks rich in structural holes should sort into markets or market segments that are high in egocentric uncertainty; high-status actors should sort into markets that are low in egocentric uncertainty. Support for this claim is found in an examination of the venture capital markets.
This paper examines the initial academic placement of 239 male, Ph.D. biochemists. Position in the academic stratification system, according to the normative structure of science proposed by Merton, should be allocated universalistically on the basis of a scientist's contribution to the body of scientific knowledge. Our analyses, however, show that after controlling for the effects of doctoral origins and the prestige of the mentor, preemployment productivity has an insignificant effect on the prestige of the scientist's first academic position. This basic finding is elaborated by examining the effects of postdoctoral fellowships, additional characteristics of the doctoral department, and the academic rank of the position obtained. In no instance does preemployment productivity affect the prestige of the first job. The universalistic nature of the scientific stratification system is assessed by comparing those factors which determine job allocation to those which predict scientific productivity later in the career. It is found that prestige of a scientist's first teaching position is least influenced by those factors which are most predictive of future productivity and most influenced by those factors which are likely to involve ascriptive processes.
The hypothesis of cumulative advantage is widely accepted in the sociology of science, but empirical tests have been few and equivocal. One approach, originated by Allison and Stewart (1974), is to see whether inequality of productivity and recognition increases as a cohort of scientists ages. This paper extends their work by examining true cohorts of biochemists and chemists rather than synthetic cohorts. Increasing inequality is observed for counts of publications but not for counts of citations to all previous publications. It is also shown that a mathematical model of cumulative advantage does not imply increasing inequality. When the model is modified to allow for heterogeneity in the rate of cumulative advantage, however, increasing inequality is implied.
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Previous studies of stratification in science have found a consistent positive correlation between the prestige of the departments where scientists received their degrees and the prestige of the departments where they obtained jobs, especially their first jobs. This correlation held regardless of previous research performance. Two limitations associated with these studies are (1) their almost exclusive focus on the hard sciences, and (2) their inability to inform a theoretical comparison between the hard and soft sciences. This study uses data on new sociology Ph.D.s who obtained their first job in Ph.D.-granting departments between 1985 and 1992 in order to assess whether the stratifying mechanisms in the hiring of sociologists are similar to those in the hard sciences. The results are generally consistent with previous findings for the hard sciences and suggest that job placement in sociology values academic origins over performance. The two strongest determinants of the prestige of a first job are the prestige of the Ph.D.-granting department and the selectivity of the undergraduate institution. In contrast, the effects of predoctorate single- or first-authored publications and of mentor's recognition are weak, though significant.
To see what factors explain departmental prestige ratings in sociology, this study assesses the effects of four ascriptive characteristics after holding departmental books, articles weighted by journal selectivity, citations, faculty size, and faculty rank constant. Departments in schools with “State,” “A & M,” or a direction in their name, departments with more female graduate students, and departments in urban public, largely commuter schools do worse on the NRC ratings. Departments with a few well-cited scholars receive lower scores than departments with comparatively equal citation counts across faculty, but departments from the three most prestigious Ivy League institutions receive stronger quality ratings after scholarly accomplishments have been held constant. The results show that both scholarship and ascription influence departmental prestige.