Assistant professors at higher ranked vs lower ranked universities

ClassicRockerDad
Thu, 29 Aug 2013 06:42:04 +0000

93tiger16, I do not particularly agree with that PhD students from prestigious universities mainly find jobs in prestigious universities.



MOST PhDs in engineering from top universities don’t take faculty jobs. There are nowhere near enough of of those jobs, not to mention that the industry jobs are far more lucrative in the wallet. Why work 85-90 hours/wk and be a peon for 7 years when you can work 50-55 hours/wk and quickly become a star in a corporation or a startup while maintaining work-life balance. If you’re good enough to compete for a top tier university, then that could be more lucrative because professors at places like Stanford, Berkeley and MIT do a lot of startups, but you have to work nearly as hard to get tenure at a mid tier also, and will have far less to show for it, in my opinion



In fact, from what I’ve seen, the percentage of professors from prestigious universities is relatively the same across universities from different tiers.



I’d be surprised if this were true. If received your PhD from a mid-tier, and you just had to have a faculty position, the only positions that would be open to you would be from lower tiers. If you received your PhD from a top-tier, and just had to have a faculty job, you’d have the whole spectrum available to you, but going from the rich intellectual environment of the top tier to a low tier school would be hard to enjoy both intellectually and financially compared to working in industry. Therefore, it’s more likely that the lowest tiered schools would have a larger fraction of faculty from mid and lower tier schools than the top tier, whose professors generally speaking always come from the top tier.