moving up the academic hierarchy
A question that is often asked goes something like this. “I am working in an academic career. However, my record isn’t so great. What can I do to improve my position?” For example, last week, a student asked the following question:
The first half of my college career was atrocious and my GPA suffered tremendously, which led to being put on academic dismissal. After three years I came back to school and I have been doing well, even making the Dean’s List last semester. Unfortunately I don’t think I’ll be able to raise my GPA up to 3.0 by the time I graduate, even if I continue to have 4.0 semesters. Is there any hope for me to get into a Grad program?
The analogous question for faculty and graduate students is “how do I move up even though I am at a low status place?”
Overcompensate. If you had an atrocious year as an undergraduate and you have a bad GPA, then work double hard to maximize your GRE. Get into an MA program and write a really innovative MA paper – and get it published. If you are in a low-status PhD program, then get published in a well known journal. The same advice goes for faculty.
Of course, this isn’t easy. That is why so few people pursue this strategy. But it does increase your chance of success. If you look at most (but not all) top 20 programs, you will see some faculty with PhDs from non-top 20 programs. If you look at graduate students at top programs, many come from not so fancy undergraduate institutions. What these people have in common is that, at some level, they moved on from the fact that there was something “imperfect” about their academic record and focused on being excellent.
Let me finish with an observation about academia. It’s a system that combines inertia and prestige chasing. That’s why being at the bottom of the pecking order can be frustrating. At the same time, the farther you get into your career, oddly, the less status matters. The rewards go to those who publish.
The truth is that very few people are consistently publishing quality material and few are consistently good teachers. While I have personally known a few good publishers who had tenure problems, most people with good records get promoted. Graduate students with publications do better on the job market than those who have none. Consistent publishers have an easier time moving to desirable jobs. Easy? Not at all. But excellence is the solution most likely to solve your career problems.
Adverts: From Black Power/Grad Skool Rulz
I’d add, for the specific goal of applying to grad programs, that at least in my field, different programs have radically different criteria for admissions. So if someone’s record is very good in some places and not so good in others, it may be worthwhile to apply to lots of different places; some of them may put less weight on the areas of weakness and more on the areas of strength than others (even better would be to figure out what criteria the different programs use and apply to the ones that like your strengths, but that would probably not be easy; it may sometimes depend a lot on who’s on the admissions committee that year).
Protagoras
February 6, 2012 at 12:44 am
Protagoras is right about places differing in criteria for grad admits. And, moreover, a mixed record is exactly what will get evaluated differently by different evaluators.
My own story involves upward mobility: low status first job (due to some bad stuff going on when I was a grad student at a good place), sent an article to AJS, got an R&R and improved the article beyond the reviewer suggestions. Two of the reviewers recommended me to their hiring committees at top-20 places; my current job was due to this process.
This was 30 years ago, so I don’t want to be too upbeat in today’s bad economy. But it remains true that there is a core meritocracy in the academy and people are looking for people who can do good work. Reviews are anonymous. The question is whether you can learn how to do good work and write about it in a way that impresses reviewers and readers. Top departments are looking for under-placed good people.
olderwoman
February 6, 2012 at 2:11 am
This comment is going to be a little off-topic from the main post but it is in regards to the academic hierarchy (it may serve as an idea for another main post in the future).
I have consulted with professors at my current university about other programs, how they view them, what they think of the current crop of faculty and students, and where they see the program being in 6-8 years from now. While I’ve received the opinions of a few professors that have been in the field for a while and are thoroughly embedded in it, I am wondering what your take (as well as others) is in regards to what programs they see as “up-and-coming” programs. It might be that the current faculty is engaging in interesting research, their output levels are high, their current graduate students are performing well, or they’re placing their students in good universities (or many other reasons), but I’m wondering what programs do you (and others) predict as moving up in the ranks in the coming years?
undergrad
February 6, 2012 at 4:31 am
First, thanks to the folks who wrote comments. These will be helpful to readers.
To respond to undergrad specifically, I find it very hard to predict which programs will “move up.” In the 1990s, the big stories in the top 20 were Princeton and Arizona. As I wrote on Friday, Princeton rocketed to the top of the profession with a series of smart hires and great PhD grad placements. Arizona cultivated an amazing crop of faculty and PhD students. Both were probably not predicted in advanced.
Recently, I find it hard to see which schools might move in the rankings. IU has recently hired three excellent Cornell graduates, which may signal a move up for that program. I encourage other readers to chime in here.
fabiorojas
February 6, 2012 at 4:48 am
This description of the challenges associated with moving up the academic hierarchy seems very blind to the issues which usually concern sociologists – such as inequalities associated with work family conflict, not to mention obstacles associated with things like uneven distribution of social and cultural capital.
What about things like how ‘fashionable’ one’s research topic is affecting citation rates?
Do we really believe that – unlike all the other social hierarchies sociologists investigate – academia is a meritocracy?!
Jane Gray
February 6, 2012 at 10:19 am
@Jane Grey +1
Jenn Lena
February 6, 2012 at 3:18 pm
@Jane Gray: You are very much correct. There are many inequalities in academia. However, I think you overstate the point. No system is 100% meritocracy. At the same time, no system is 0% meritocracy.
My point is simple, as long as academia is X% meritocracy ( and X>0 ) , there is a strategy that you can execute. It’s being good at your job. For undergraduates, it means doing well on the GRE. You can study for it and excel. And I can tell you, many soc students have weak GRE scores. You will stand out. Trust me, I just spent a few weeks reading folder after folder of weak math scores.
For graduate students and faculty, it means publishing. Are there fads or prejudices against certain types of research? Absolutely. But we have lots of journals and academic presses. No journal has a monopoly on good research. Keep submitting and improving, and you’ll do well.
fabiorojas
February 6, 2012 at 4:44 pm
You see lots of posts like Jane’s on the sociology job market rumor mill site. It seems to me that people who are not doing well (or as well as they would like) are especially prone to stunning insights into the discipline, and subsequently need to enlighten the rest of us with their great discoveries. It’s not a meritocracy?? Hold the presses!
The reality is that *no one* believes that jobs are distributed according to merit. Everyone–except perhaps those who feel the need to disabuse us of what they imagine to be our misconceptions–knows that networks matter, in every occupation, pretty much all the time. The real question is who are these folks who are so late to the game?
I have an image of a talented grad student who goes his own way, maintaining only sporadic connections to faculty as he pursues his research passion. Then, lo and behold, he discovers that folks aren’t all that interested in his particular variant of me-search, and his dissertation chair isn’t making a lot of calls on his behalf. So he winds up lamenting the unfairness of the system on a message board.
If you haven’t picked up on the rules of this game by your first couple years of grad school, you might question your sociological acumen. Fortunately, you can now get a copy of the grad skool rulz to spell things out for you. While you’re reading it, count your lucky stars that our system is not *completely driven by networks (as I imagine the German academy once was), and that you have a chance to publish your way up, even if you lack social capital.
p.s., if this sounds excessively grouchy, it’s because I have also been something of a loser–albeit a fully conscious one–in this networking game. I knowingly let a connection to a very powerful adviser slip away, consistently fail to network effectively at conferences (too much drinking with grad school friends) and have had to claw my way into a top-30 job. I also haven’t had coffee yet.
flunkingsocialstudies
February 6, 2012 at 5:38 pm
I think academia works like a meritocracy for some people and for others it does not. There’s a good reason for this – scarcity of jobs!! The reality of academia is that there simply aren’t enough good jobs for the number of good applicants out there. Because of that, good scholars are not getting the kinds of jobs that they feel like they deserve. I think that the level of competition also results in very few good jobs going to under-qualified people. The injustices are typically not type I errors. This doesn’t mean that all great hires pan out like you expect, but it’s rare that a top institution hires someone who clearly does not merit the position.
brayden king
February 6, 2012 at 8:14 pm
I agree with Brayden’s assessment, and I would have edited my post to say, “no one believes that jobs are distributed *solely* according to merit.” Part of the problem is that it is very difficult to measure or even discern merit (and pretty darn near impossible to gauge future potential). Everyone who sits on hiring committees knows that while it’s pretty easy to put candidates into crude tiers, the tiebreakers for the top tier of applicants can be very arbitrary–and that’s one moment when networks can really matter. But once the tie has been broken, the loser–who is arguably just as qualified as the winner–goes on to a presumably worse job, with long-term career consequences. The winner enjoys no small amount of cumulative advantage. But all this is pretty obvious, and is hardly unique to sociology. Learn the rules (or the rulz) and play along…
flunkingsocialstudies
February 6, 2012 at 9:10 pm
Fair points. Just remember, the drift of the original post was about moving up. I think we all agree that academia has a lot of unfair traits that suppress mobility. My point was simple – if you want to be in the small fraction of people who experience upward mobility, then send out unequivocal signals. Except for competition at the very, very top, there is a lot of variance in publication record.
fabiorojas
February 6, 2012 at 9:36 pm
For current faculty members, I would add to Fabio’s post that letting friends and trusted colleagues know that you are interested in moving (discreetly so as not to offend your current colleagues) is also important. As Granovetter taught us, friends of friends get us jobs; so if one of your friends knows that are interested in moving and one of their friends gets in touch with them, then you will be recommended as a potential contact.
mike3550
February 7, 2012 at 3:50 am
There’s kind of a levels of analysis issue here, isn’t there? We can acknowledge that as a system academia is not a meritocracy, but if an individual asks for advice about what he or she should do personally, the best we can suggest (and it is good advice) is publish as much as you can (and try to mobilize networks).
At the level of the system we could mobilize as a group to try to ensure that academia becomes as fair and meritorious as possible. But there’s a problem, that’s well illustrated by some of the comments above. If you criticize the unfairness of the system, unless you’re recognizably in the top tier of achievers, you are assumed to be an embittered loser. So this means we’re dependent on those in the top tier to challenge the system. But wait, they have an incentive to believe it is a meritocracy. Hmm, I don’t think this is going anywhere!
This is not a trivial issue where I work, by the way.
Jane Gray
February 7, 2012 at 11:59 am
Having voluntarily left a tenured position at a higher tier university for a third tier PhD program, I have some insight into the process that is worth considering. Over the last decade, several assistant professors have left our humble university for a higher ranked school. However, NONE of them made tenure at those institutions. Be careful what you wish for. You might wind up getting hired at a place where your chances for tenure are minimal, and are leaving behind a really excellent job if you’d just get over your desire for status. I think many assistants on the move fail to realize that at the next tier, their solid publications in second or third tier journals don’t count at all for tenure. Stepping stones don’t help if the next step is the ocean…
sherkat
February 7, 2012 at 4:49 pm
@Sherkat: Good point. We have to be careful if we want to move up the hierarchy. For junior faculty, it is very tricky. You need strong assurances that if you continue working in the same vein, you will be rewarded. It’s like going to an undergraduate college. Make sure that your skills are similar to other people who are already there.
@Jane Gray: I think we agree on the main point. But when it comes to advising people, it really does help to pretend that bias does not exist. Here’s why. Let’s say that X% of the academic profession is meritocratic. They care more about your written work than who your adviser is or where you went to school. When you meet such a person, you have to be ready to unambiguously stand out. The only way you can do that is if you work everyday to have an obviously strong record.
fabiorojas
February 7, 2012 at 7:04 pm
Jane, there may be an egoistic incentive for successful people to believe that this is (mostly) a meritocracy, but I have yet to meet a successful person who actually believes it. All the stars that I know are quite blatant about how institutional halo effects and networks matter for mobility.
flunkingsocialstudies
February 7, 2012 at 7:24 pm
This might be very naive, but while I can understand the draw of prestige/top-tier status for a PhD programme (job prospects) and early jobs (likelihood of getting tenure in later jobs), I can’t quite see why people feel strongly about ending up at a top-tier university.
Is it simply the prestige? Or the pay? How does being at, say, Harvard, improve your enjoyment of your job on a day-to-day basis?
Mise
February 7, 2012 at 11:48 pm
@mise
For me it is because top-tier schools tend to exist in places I’d like to live: major metro areas or interesting college towns.
Austen
February 7, 2012 at 11:56 pm
Considering the uphill battle being described for those who endeavor to ascend the academic ladder and start at a bottom rung, is there ever reason to attend a lower status program for grad school than a higher status program (if given the choice, of course)?
That is, can networking, a high status advisor, and “big fish, small pond” effect at a comparatively lower status department ever yield better job prospects than simply a degree from a high-ranked program where you were, perhaps, a run of the mill student?
And when I ask for “reason”, let’s assume I only mean careerist reason and ignore geographical, funding, etc.
admitted
February 8, 2012 at 2:46 am
@admitted: In general, the rule of thumb is that you improve your career chances with higher ranked programs. Don’t worry about micro-differences (e.g., program rank 12 vs. 15), but about tiers.
Still, lower ranked programs are desirable in some cases:
- You are really wedded to a specialty that a higher ranked program doesn’t do.
- the higher ranked program is toxic (people don’t graduate, fail to get jobs, bad funding)
- There’s something else about the university is especially appealing. For example, if you wanted to do a dual degree or learn about some topic. The soc program may be less than great, but the school has other resources that compensate.
And of course, you can find compensating factors at lower ranked schools. But I’ll be honest, these resources become more and more scarce as you go down the hierarchy.
fabiorojas
February 8, 2012 at 4:42 am
Admitted: The big issue about “lower ranked” school is specifically who is there on the faculty. A really top person who takes you on, trains you and mentors you can provide the networking etc that can help launch you. This is especially true in fields that are highly mentor-based, such as lab sciences. My son moved from a higher-ranked to a lower-ranked (and unambiguously worse) grad program in math to follow his world-class advisor who is not only a very prominent mathematician but a superb advisor who creates opportunities for his advisees by getting them invited to places to give papers, strategizing how to get them into the “best” post doc positions, taking a hands-on interest in their research, etc. (I’ve learned a ton about advising itself from watching this process.) He was surely worried not only about the lower-prestige degree but about the lack of other faculty to study with at place #2, but in his case the top advisor trumped these concerns.
Sociology is less a mentor-based field and more a field in which the breadth of your training is important, but there can still be cases in which you get much more mentoring and career help from the one top person at a less-good place than from a higher-ranked department. The downside is that you are putting all your career eggs in one basket. There are many ways in which this can go wrong. Some of these top people at less-top places have deep character flaws that make them toxic advisors despite their research excellence. Many are decent people but don’t have the vision and mentoring skills to compensate for their institution’s weaknesses. The top person might take a job elsewhere and leave you behind. So it isn’t a generically safe bet, but sometimes if you are certain about your research interests and have checked out “the word” on top person X, it can be the right choice on sheer careerist grounds.
olderwoman
February 8, 2012 at 2:14 pm
Very helpful advice from both Fabio and OW. Thank you both. I’m in a position now to choose between an unambiguously top tier program and a– let’s call it– third tier (not sure what the cut off’s are here) program that has been, in recent years, playing pokemon (gotta catch ‘em all!) with top scholars, young and not-so-young, in my area of specialization. Although I’m confident that a degree from this third tier program will only appreciate in value, I think I’ll leave that uphill battle to students braver than me.
admitted
February 8, 2012 at 8:12 pm
With all of this in mind, the question that is bouncing around in my head for me right now is: Is it harder to move up or not fall down?
hillbillysociologist
February 8, 2012 at 8:41 pm
What can be said about entering a grad program that is filled with mostly students that got their masters elsewhere before going to that school? What unforeseen issues might arise for a student coming from a bachelors into a PhD program when that program consists of a large majority of people that didn’t go this route and, as a result, are much further in their careers? More or less, I’m wondering what kind of effect being in a program with a cohort that is older and from a different route might have on my graduate development and overall experience.
undergrad
February 9, 2012 at 3:45 am
@hillbilly: In terms of easiness -
falling down < staying put < moving up.
@undergrad: I wouldn't worry about it. What matters is that you learn the craft of research from some established faculty who can help you. If your class mates have MAs, I wouldn't worry.
fabiorojas
February 9, 2012 at 6:10 am
Undergrad: ditto what Fabio said. I’d guess that the correlation between entering with an MA from another program and graduate school “success”, however it is measured, is trivial. It may not even be positive.
krippendorf
February 9, 2012 at 2:43 pm
I completed a BS in criminology summa cum laude but none of my professors would write letters of recommendation for me for graduate school. So, I just took a graduate class my senior year at my university, and seamlessly became a graduate student the following semester without their approval or the GRE.
Having written over 300 newspaper and magazine articles, I am not working on academic placements. I got my first three small ones last year.
Oh, there is an inconvenient truth, of course: we end up where we do because we belong there. If your academic careeer is not going anywhere, you may need a different career, or at least a different form of the one you imagine for yourself. (As Objectivist Edward Hudgins has pointed out in two blog posts, WIlly Loman was a terrible salesman but a good carpenter. He just made the wrong choices…. repeatedly…)
Michael E. Marotta
February 9, 2012 at 4:28 pm
“I am not working on academic placements. I got my first three small ones last year.”
I am now working… I see this as a sales opportunity, the same as commercial placements. You read a bunch of journals and pick on that seems right for you.
Michael E. Marotta
February 9, 2012 at 4:36 pm