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	Sun, 5 Dec 1993 00:51:53 -0800 for socgrad-list
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To: socgrad@UCSD.EDU
Subject: Re: Hiring 
             <199312050656.WAA03286@ucsd.edu> 
Date: Sun, 05 Dec 1993 00:53:19 -0800
From: Michael Lichter <lichter@nicco.sscnet.ucla.edu>
        I guess if you really like a school, and you would want to teach
        there one day, don't go study there.

I think you can go away and return someday in triumph, but to go right
from being a student to being faculty at the same school is unlikely.

Besides the family analogy, another reason I've heard is that the
status transition, from student to colleague, is difficult on both
parties.  One problem with that explanation is that the graduate
student-faculty relationship is often described as one of
apprenticeship (e.g. in my research job, I am described by the
university as "academic apprentice personnel").  As far as I know,
apprentices elsewhere in the world (e.g. in carpentry) grow up to work
beside their former masters.

Other reaons include the fact that a graduate student from any given
department is likely to duplicate specializations already present in
the faculty; that hiring from inside looks like nepotism and may be
legally or at least publicly challenged from the outside; and that
having to choose among the department's graduate students means having
to choose among the "progeny" of the department's faculty, and little
else could be expected to inspire as much rancor, back-stabbing,
conniving, etc., except maybe the struggle over prime office space.

Michael