Received: from carson.stat.ucla.edu (carson.stat.ucla.edu [128.97.86.52]) by csf.Colorado.EDU (8.7.6/8.7.3/CNS-4.0p) with ESMTP id OAA06781 for ; Mon, 23 Jun 1997 14:50:02 -0600 (MDT) Received: (from clee@localhost) by carson.stat.ucla.edu (8.8.3/8.8.3) id NAA07095; Mon, 23 Jun 1997 13:49:58 -0700 (PDT) From: Cathie Lee Message-Id: <199706232049.NAA07095@carson.stat.ucla.edu> Subject: problems w/hiring inquiry To: socgrad@csf.colorado.edu (socgrad) Date: Mon, 23 Jun 1997 13:49:57 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >hey all, >With all the other threads, don't forget to email where your university's >recent job talks and hires got their Ph.D's. Dan Ryan has set up a very >nice excel page (on the web) but its pretty empty right now. > >It could benefit us all to have a picture of the hiring network. > >Pam I have read with quite a bit of interest the various posts regarding hiring practices. I realize Dan Ryan has taken the time to create a spreadsheet for the purpose of tracking various universities' recent interviews of students and eventual hires. I think this is an interesting project and a very worthy goal. But, I wonder if the design of study, as embodied in the spreadsheet, can really help to answer the question we are posing. In fact, I believe it has serious flaws. As it is, it is designed to answer the question, "what does the hiring process look like at other universities compared to mine?" I doubt that it can answer the question, "All else being equal, what will the impact of the institution that grants me my degree be on what sort of job I get after I get this degree?" In attempting to answer the latter, I do not believe that this project will provide very usefulresults. I would like to point out some flaws. 1. Someone has already mentioned that examining departments via this list would already preclude many schools which may be the plum destination for some. For example, someone noted that we would be excluding schools such as Swarthmore and Reed. Small, elite, liberal arts college which do not have graduate programs are not included in the study. (Unless there is a very knowledgeable undergrad who can provide useful information). Also excluded are foreign universities. Some departments bring in a lot of international students, train them, and send them back to their home countries (often to good jobs at prestigious departments). These foreign students are excluded, since there are very few, if any, students in foreign departments on this list. Basically,we are only looking at American sociology departments that train graduate students. 2. Given our universe is the one defined in #1, it's pretty clear that we do not have a good response rate. Less than a dozen departments have responded, and I do not recall a single top ten department reporting back any details. And if one of our initial interests in this whole inquiry were to evaluate whether or not prestigious departments fill positions at other prestigious departments, it would be quite useful to have some response from these so-called, highly prestigious departments. 3. OK. So, we don't have a very high response rate. Well, couldn't we still evaluate what we've got? Not quite. And here's my biggest problem with this endeavor so far. We're addressing the question from the wrong end. Students have been asked to report which potential candidates from which departments have been interviewed and/or hired by their own departments. This leads to serious overcounting of certain hot shots or superstars for the given year. Let me give you an example to illustrate this point. Here at UCLA we interviewed someone from Harvard this past year. Well, this student was interviewed in the first place because there was this huge buzz going around all the major departments - that he was the "it" candidate for the year. By the time we interviewed him, he had interviewed at around 8 places - 6 or 7 of which were top 10 schools. Now, if all of those 8 schools at which he interviewed responded to the inquiry, Harvard would have come out looking mighty successful in landing its students interviews and offers at top schools. But Harvard didn't have 8 students with 8 separate interviews at 8 top departments. It was just one student. Instead of starting with the hiring departments as the site of the inquiry, we should be looking at the PhD granting institutions themselves. Thus, someone at Harvard could have explained that one of their fine colleagues had 8 interviews this year at such and such great departments. 4. Though prestige of the PhD granting department may be critical, just how critical it is will vary. It will even vary for two people coming out of the same department the same year. That is, depending upon who sits on your committee, the prestige of the department will be recognized or not. You can come out of UCLA with a super slick committee full o' stars or you can come out with a committee of less well established and/or younger faculty. Add to this complexity the fact that some of those slicksters are better at schmoozing with other slicksters than other hot shots in the home department. Some faculty are better networked to other faculty at other prestigious institutions. 5. There has been a good discussion so far about prestige of areas of study in sociology. This is certainly an important factor in the hiring process. Often times, positions are advertised as positions in certain areas. If prestigious schools specialize in prestigious fields, then they will want students who have been trained in these prestigious fields. And where will they find these students? At other prestigious institutions. Call it a form of inbreeding. Well, just some thoughts. Cathie Lee Department of Sociology UCLA clee@stat.ucla.edu