Has the college academic job market always been highly competitive and elitist?

[MWolf]

@bristlecone

HYPMS grad will go further than a state school grad on average.

This is not true for most STEM faculty posts at state schools, though it may be true at medical schools. Search committees cast a wide net and focus on research quality and productivity (publications) regardless of where the research took place.

“Elitist” implies unfair discrimination, when in fact most hiring decisions and promotions are highly quantitative based on productivity in teaching, research and other metrics. Decisions are vetted through departments and several administrative committees. Everything must be documented and justified, with members of committees designated to ensure compliance with affirmative action criteria. It’s hard to imagine a more egalitarian process than selection of tenure track faculty.

That is very definitely not true. Most of the decisions are made on the basis of very non-quantitative factors. For most search committees, factors like “fit” and “potential” far outweigh anything that is even somewhat quantitative, like grants amounts and number of publications. That is why many “elite” colleges will interview and hire a graduate from an Ivy who hasn’t published, or even defended their thesis yet, over a person from a program with less prestige who has a PhD, and has a number of publications in top journals. The reason that is almost invariably given is that the former “has potential”.

Sometimes it is reverse elitism. Many “lower tier” universities will toss applicants who graduated from an “elite” program, since they do not feel that the candidate will fit, or they feel that the candidate is using the positions as a stepping-stone, and will leave. This is not an entirely baseless fear, though.

Also, many universities in the South will prefer hiring people who have their PhDs from universities in the South, because of “fit”, or often personal preference. There are people who prefer graduates of their program, and people who prefer PhDs whose adviser was a Big Name.

The Search Committee makes recommendations based on factors which are mostly non-quantitative, and the department votes based on whatever they feel like. Then the Dean or Provost may decide to override the department’s choice, and hire based on personal reasons.

Academic hiring is very far from Quantitative.

So is, in fact, tenure. First, because most of the quantitative measures are not quantitative. Publications and conference presentations are not all created equal, and different sub-fields have different funding rates and different funding amounts. That is only 1/3-45% of the tenure portfolio. The rest is “student evaluations” for which the only known ways of trying to quantify this are known to be biased against women, minorities, is also strongly related to physical appearances. The last third or so is “collegiality” which doesn’t even pretend to be quantitative.

Hiring and awarding tenure by committee is a terrible way to do things. Unfortunately, to paraphrase what Churchill said about democracy - every other way is even worse.