Asymmetrical Information

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"[P]eople who think that the entire world works this way might be more predisposed to pursue jobs in academia."

Very interesting point. I've thought along those lines myself before.

Dealing with the zero sum game of academia plus the tenure protectionism would certianly make professors lean a bit to the left.

This may have some bearing on the paradoxical result that many academics, who willingly go into crowded fields and successfully undergo some of the most rigorously brutal competitive job markets in the world (400 applications for one position), end up so rabidly anti-competition.

The paper as decsribed contains a fatal flaw vis-a-vis Harvard: Harvard is famous for not promoting it's junior faculty (at least in the sciences). Ph.D. hires are widely considered "five year post docs." MIT has a similar, though lesser problem. As result I have personally witnessed "hot hires" explicitly avoid these institutions.
This effect also means that Harvard's science faculty experiences significant sorting that pivots around the tenure decision.

Also, again in the sciences, I don't find the argument about barriers to rising from lesser university to the big leagues compelling. While I was at Caltech we brought in a very exciting Full Professor: from Virginia Polytechnic. Meanwhile, I watched a well-funded junior professor from MIT get exiled to nowheresville.

Starting one's career at a well-funded, well-connected school certainly helps, but additional sorting happens around tenure time that does not seem well-described by the description in the paper.

The dynamic that Teles is describing for faculty has been empirically demonstrated for undergraduates by Massey and Fischer (http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2005/02/2005022201n.htm). Basically, highly selective schools are so good that these macro benefits swamp any mismatch effect. Within reason, no matter how mediocre you are, you're better off at Harvard.

My hunch as to why the findings are different for law schools is that law schools have much higher base rates for dropping out than do 4-year colleges.

"But I find even more interesting the thought that the academic job market, as described here, is very close to what most academics think labour markets are like outside the economy: a sharply binary process in which there are clearly delineated winners or losers, the outcomes are somewhat arbitrary, and a very slight run of bad luck can land you in a place from which there is literally no hope of escaping. "

I've found my view of the labor market moving closer to this, over the past two decades. I've benefited from luck at crucial points, which opened up connections, training and access which I wouldn't even have been aware of, let alone able to take advantage. I've watched people benefit from screwing up, and suffer from doing well (a lot of this is within organizations).

Steve Teles ignores the winnowing process involved in getting into a Ph.D. program. As I understand it, the Harvard Physics Department is not exactly bursting with women or minorities, either gifted or goldbricking. And, as an English major (B.A. only), I must point out that Mr. Teles misuses the word "effected" throughout. He means "affected." If you're going to use words like "exogenous" and "endogenous," you ought to be able to get "affected" and "effected" right.

If this thesis is correct, the marooning of high-potential scholars at lesser institutions because of racism is costing even more than was originally thought, since these scholars will be unlikely to be able to overcome the effects (did I get that right?) of racist displacement. And those who benefit from racism by being placed at more stimulating institutions will be cited as proof of the efficacy of the racist system because they accomplish more than would have been expected, although not as much as the scholars they've displaced. So progress and reason lose and racism gains. The achievements of how many Salks and Einsteins and Asimovs will be lost before this culture returns to equal opportunity?

The achievements of how many Salks and Einsteins and Asimovs will be lost before this culture returns to equal opportunity?

Interesting question, since the achievements of at least one Einstein were achieved in the face of a near-total ban on Jewish participation in the Swiss scientific establishment.

There's also an issue here with why the "best" institutions are the best. As someone with absolutely no interest in being a professor I would regard Harvard as one of the best institutions because of the connections and job offers it made available - I'll bet most students at that school wouldn't care if Donald Duck was teaching the class, as long as they could put Harvard on their resume. In that respect, those admitted via affirmative action certainly benefit dramatically, with limited cost to candidates who didn't get in since they'll probably succeed on their own with a degree from a "lesser" institution.

From the standpoint of those wishing to become social science professors, the author is probably correct that AA has a desirable, or at least not damaging effect because much of the social science realm seems to regard "diversity", except with respect to political leanings, to be desirable in and of itself. And since the "research" being produced seems to have little or no impact on society at large, there's really no harm done. Academics in that field also have a larger stake in this debate since in many cases there's no demand whatsoever for their knowledge outside the academic world.

Two avenues left unexplored: First, the entire discussion assumes the reputation and status of an institution is static. Is it possible for the displaced candidate to end up at a better institution because the "lesser" institution he works at's reputation gets better? What would change an institution's reputation faster - an increase in spending on scholarly subjects the school wanted emphasize, or top faculty repeatedly being held up as out of touch lunatics?

Second, it's possible that AA has a doubly damaging effect on the quality of professors at lesser institutions because the guy passed up for the job at Harvard elects to leave academia altogether and go into the business sector, leaving the even less qualified available to them. I'll bet that would amplify the effect described in her last paragraph considerably.

Alas, Alan swiped my affect/effect snark. On a more substantive note, Mr. Teles does not seem to address the putative (and believed by no one) rationale for racial affirmative action at colleges and universities: Providing a more diverse educational environment for everyone.

Leaving aside the fact that the actual effect is to minimize rather than maximize intellectual diversity, does racial selection of less-competent scholars into "sticky" elite institutions, while more-competent scholars are relegated to situations where they are relatively less efficient, really improve the overall educational diversity? Does the supposed benefit to the elite schools really outweigh the supposed harm to second- and third-tier schools, from the standpoint of society as a whole?

I find Teles' ideas intriguing. But we are concerned that academic institutions are producing candidates whose credentials more reflect their initial sorting into institutions than their merit, the academy is not the first place I'd think of. The reason for affirmative action is (at least in part) that minorities are underrepresented. And they're underrepresented (at least in part) because public schools have these same flaws. So why focus on the academic, which is such a small part of the larger picture?

I tried to put it better here.

The crux of the debate hinges on how much movement and sorting is possible after the first hire and what opportunities there are to "prove" you are better.

Fields with some degree of empirical verification -- applied physics, engineering, etc would probably allow the most chances. But there would still be sorting issues because of access to resources. Unlike, say, linguistics, an unknown university could simply set up a multi-billion dollar bio or physics lab and move into the big time. Moreover, you could hire overlooked geniuses from second tier schools and produce first rate research once they're given the right labs.

In contrast, since resources don't play as large a role, it's much harder for a second tier program in linguistics, english or sociology to arbitrage errors by hiring overlooked scholars at 2nd-3rd tier departments.

Econ is about half and half. It shares something of the hard sciences but does not have strict rules about critical experiments so has some of the faddishness of the other social sciences. As you would expect, consensus on the "top" economists is higher nationwide than I would guess in sociology [I'm told that there have been informal studies at Stanford that confirmed the consensus effect in econ]. But there have also been plenty of Nobel prize winners who never got tenure at a top 5 econ department (e.g. Buchanan, North, Coase (law school not Chicago econ), V. Smith, etc.)which matches the outsider effect you see in medicine or physics. Then again, Shleifer tended to publish his buddies in the QJE. etc....

Second, it's possible that AA has a doubly damaging effect on the quality of professors at lesser institutions because the guy passed up for the job at Harvard elects to leave academia altogether and go into the business sector, leaving the even less qualified available to them.

That's not "doubly damaging" -- it provides a measure of mitigation. The academic position at the lesser institution will presumably be filled by someone more appropriate to it, who likewise will not be able produce a whole lot, given the limitations of the situation. Meanwhile, the guy who Harvard passed up will contribute to society in the business sector, which otherwise would not have been able to obtain his talents.

Unless you are the sort of pointy-headed intellectual who presumptively devalues the contributions of the business sector.

All the points are quite interesting. However, one issue that has not been addressed is how the insitution that practices the affirmative action is harmed.

How might the displaced scholars have benefitted the institution practicing affirmative action?

The real world example of Paul Samuelson shows this nicely.

As was related to me, when Professor Samuelson finished his thesis at Harvard (coincidentally enough), he desired to join the economic faculty there. At the time he was considered to be a very promising scholar.

However, because of a quota against jewish professors he was denies a position and instead took a position down the street at MIT. At the time MIT had a very poor economics department.

To cut a long story short, he went on to become one of the most influential economists of the century and helped found one of the 2 best econ departments in the world (while Harvard's is good it is nowhere near the caliber of MIT...Jane may have a strong opinion on Chicago being superior).

Do you think Harvard regrets it's decision to practice affirmative action and deny this man a position?

Interesting question, since the achievements of at least one Einstein were achieved in the face of a near-total ban on Jewish participation in the Swiss scientific establishment.

Physics scholarship during the era (1915-1925) when Einstein did his best work was distinctly different than modern physics. Einstein's era was a time of individual scientists operating using fairly basic equipment. Consider the materials used by the Hahn-Meitner team in discovering Protactinium, Auger tracks, and Fusion. All required negligable resources and a team of at most 3 people. ( Hahn, Meitner, and one research assistant, Strassman.)

The era preceeding Einstein's was a time of science being conducted in large party by individuals, particularly those rich enough to afford their own private labs and leisure time. (Time to put towards activity that didn't have an immediate benefit.)

Increasingly, organized, or at least well funded teams are required to do science. Ever try to buy an NMR?

I remember going to Fermilab's website back when the top quark was discovered and looking at a whole page of team leaders and subteams which had been engaged in finding the tiny particle.

There are still a few lone geniuses who can do good work even without a lab. i.e. Kary Mullis' invention of PCR.

But generally speaking, I don't think the politics of science pre-1940s is a good model for modern science, whether academic or corporate.

From the standpoint of those wishing to become social science professors, the author is probably correct that AA has a desirable, or at least not damaging effect

Read the more traditional "Alcoholics Anonymous" into that sentence and it takes on a whole new world of meaning.

Einstein's era was a time of individual scientists operating using fairly basic equipment. Consider the materials used by the Hahn-Meitner team in discovering Protactinium, Auger tracks, and Fusion. All required negligable resources and a team of at most 3 people. ( Hahn, Meitner, and one research assistant, Strassman.)

This is still true in some fields, although the equipment has gotten much more sophisticated. I work at JILA at CU Boulder, one of the world centers for atomic, molecular, and optical physics, and the typical experiment probably has about 4 people working on it full time, with a single professor overseeing up to 3 or 4 experiments. ~$100,000 per published paper would be a reasonable estimate, including the salaries of all workers and overhead. That's not horribly more expensive than the days of Compton et al, if you account for inflation, and bear in mind that modern experiments are much more sophisticated than in the early days of quantum mechanics.

Uhhh, I'd argue that an NMR isn't a great example of an instrument that really requires a lot of funding. Unless you're looking for some 800 MHz monster, they're not that pricey. Then again (and I'm sure this is what Ryan's getting at), it depends on what you need to do.

I've always thought that there are fields of science (organic chemistry, specifically) where getting the relevant instrumentation and reagents wouldn't take a whole lot of money, depending on the institution. ($10,000 a year, maybe?) It's just that you've got to find your 'low-cost' niche, low manpower niche. Easier said than done...

I had written an article about academia, but from a different viewpoint - that of funding, titled the economics of academics.

The academy's loss is industry's gain. A high-quality Ph.D who gets shunted off to a lesser institution will usually, if he's both frustrated and talented, chuck the academy entirely and get a real job in the real world. (Depending on his field, of course.)

Getting a real job in the real world is very true. The company I work for and the last one regularly went shopping for PhDs right after tenure decisions were made. We know exactly when each year they are made and then cherry-pick the best from he ones who didn't make it.

Of course we are looking for the hard sciences. A English, Woman Studies, etc., PhD, from our point of view and regardless of graduating institution, are considered illiterate and not any better than a High School grad. You can see this in the Blogasphere where there are many pundits that are numerically illiterate even when they graduated from Harvard!! It far easier to teach an analyst/engineer to write than it is to teach an English major to add.

SDB I read you blog for a long time and I know you probably have uncountable example of this.

'The academy's loss is industry's gain.'

There's a dubious conclusion if ever I saw one.

The dynamic that Teles is describing for faculty has been empirically demonstrated for undergraduates by Massey and Fischer (http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2005/02/2005022201n.htm). Basically, highly selective schools are so good that these macro benefits swamp any mismatch effect. Within reason, no matter how mediocre you are, you're better off at Harvard.

I'm not a subscriber to the Chronicle, but the well known Krueger and Dale data (see, http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200410/easterbrook for example) indicate otherwise -- namely that the characteristics of the students matter a great deal and the particular institution matters little. Students who were accepted to Harvard but chose to go elsewhere did just as well as Havard grads (so, in fact, Harvard's reputation depends on the quality of the students it accepts while it's graduates actually derive little or no special benefit from either the Harvard experience or the Harvard 'brand' when compared to 'lesser' institutions -- just the opposite of the conventional wisdom).

"It far easier to teach an analyst/engineer to write than it is to teach an English major to add.

"SDB I read you blog for a long time and I know you probably have uncountable example of this."

The problem with using Dale and Krueger for the purposes of this discussion is that they focused on earnings. But in academia, it's also about status and the pecking order. It might well be that a bright Stanford grad has more chance of finishing a Phd at Princeton and being a professor at Yale earning say, $130,000 a year. His peer who went to Unknown South North West U couldn't make it to Princeton Phd and so wound up in consulting in Indiana where he's earning $150,000 a year.

Others -- such as ONeill have in fact found an earnings difference between elite and non-elite grads and though it is not huge, it is greater than the marginal cost of attending a top school.

But for some jobs, -- academia, the Supreme Court, the World Bank, etc. it's not just about the money and it is in these places where having elite connections helps. Granted a State grad can go to Harvard for a Phd but going to an elite college maximizes the chances of going to an elite PhD program.

But for some jobs, -- academia, the Supreme Court, the World Bank, etc. it's not just about the money and it is in these places where having elite connections helps. Granted a State grad can go to Harvard for a Phd but going to an elite college maximizes the chances of going to an elite PhD program.

That arguments is based on just the sort of reasonable assumptions that lead everyone to believe that attending Harvard gave people a major advantage in earnings (if only for the value of the 'Harvard' brand). But, of course, that has not turned out to be the case (the advantage is somewhere between slight and non-existent). Has anyone tried to extend Kruger and Dale to academia--checking to see if those accepted to Ivy League schools by choosing to attend others are disadvantaged in academic careers?

It would be ironic if it turned out to be true, though, wouldn't it--that in the 'right wing' world of business, success depends on merit rather than pedigree while success in left-wing academia depends on pedigrees, connections, and 'good old boy' networks. Ironic, but perhaps not surprising (is there any industry that treats highly-educated employees as poorly--in pay, job security, and respect--as universities treat non-tenure track faculty?

There is one side effect that he doesn't address, which is that if he's right, the costs of affirmative action to those who are displaced by it are very large. A white male academic shunted off to a lesser institution will never, ever get out of it.

It depends what you regard as "lesser". If affirmative action lands you in your 148th choice instead of your 8th -- yeah, that's pretty tough to dig out of. If you want to move up from your 10th choice to your 8th, that's not an unrealistic aspiration at all.

I'm only familiar with science departments, where the number of "underrepresented" hires is so small anyway that you can't get knocked down very far. It may be different in the humanities (although probably not *that* different), but there you're a lot less dependent on grad students and postdocs so the upward mobility is a lot easier.

Slocum,

I believe that there is already a study for graduate schools in econ. It suggests that Math GRE and studying at a top 3 department independently correlate with success in academia. So someone with good scores, etc. who didn't go to the top departments has a smaller chance of success at the top places.

There is also the recent study by Wu that the QJE under Shleifer published a disproportionately large percentage of papers from five departments compared to the past and compared to the AER. Admittedly, now we're talking faculty effects, but the closer you are to the terminal degree, the more acute elite effects are.

I would also add that if you believe the non Dale Krueger studies, the income differences, though small are NOT insignificant. They are still larger than the marginal costs of going to elite schools themselves hence passing the cost-benefit test.

The Chronicle article I linked is free.
The Massey/Fischer article is different from the Dale/Krueger study in that the former looks at whether you finish school and the latter looks at how much money you make once you get out. I'm not sure if the Dale/Krueger study looked at matriculants or graduates, this may be another difference.

The reason for affirmative action is (at least in part) that minorities are underrepresented. No, they're not underrepresented, if you consider merit. That's the whole point of the post. Of a white and a black professor with equal potential, the black one has a much much higher chance of getting the top jobs - so much higher that it is likely that minorities are overrepresented.

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I believe that there is already a study for graduate schools in econ. It suggests that Math GRE and studying at a top 3 department independently correlate with success in academia. So someone with good scores, etc. who didn't go to the top departments has a smaller chance of success at the top places.

But that doesn't really tell us what we want to know because Math GRE isn't the only determining factor for who gets accepted at top departments. What we want to know about are those with high Math GREs and other qualifications such that they were accepted into a top department, but chose to go elsewhere. However, unlike the case with undergrad education, the Ns would probably be too small to draw any conclusions.

I know about that problem. I suspect that's one of the reasons why foreign students did so well in that study. Acceptance of foreigners is not need blind and they are not eligible for NSFs. I know of many foreign nationals who were accepted at MIT, Stanford, or Harvard who had to go to other departments because of funding problems. Thus, there is a greater likelihood that a strong foreign grad is underplaced relative to an American and that has a positive effect on success, but it is independent of the elite school effect (which by the way was significant for HYP but not for Chicago/Stanford) which remains.

For those white, hetero males who have suffered through the quota era, little doubt remains.

The humanities departments at my alma mater are stuffed with Marxist feminists and gay activists.

One of the causes of this is male competitiveness and jealousy... really. Feminists and gays have done a great job of setting hetero men at one another's necks.

I can't tell you how many times some smug, male professor 20 years my senior told me that I might as well accept the fact that I should kiss my future goodbye for the greater good of women, gays and blacks. Of course, this cost him nothing. He gained something... the right to preen in front of the sainted oppressed.

hi buffpilot,
"Of course we are looking for the hard sciences. A English, Woman Studies, etc., PhD, from our point of view and regardless of graduating institution, are considered illiterate and not any better than a High School grad. You can see this in the Blogasphere where there are many pundits that are numerically illiterate even when they graduated from Harvard!! It far easier to teach an analyst/engineer to write than it is to teach an English major to add."

Being able to write: $40,000
Being able to add: $100,000
Being able to mount an effective (or should that be affective?) argument that we value not just technical skills but an ability to comprehend and argue coherently about an issue (in its depth and complexity) beyond a narrow scientific construction: priceless...

Being able to mount an effective (or should that be affective?) argument that we value not just technical skills but an ability to comprehend and argue coherently about an issue (in its depth and complexity) beyond a narrow scientific construction: priceless...

Sure...except many of the programs in question do not teach those skills; indoctrination of ideology, maybe, but not necessarily strong writing skills. If you don't believe me, try to plow through the social sciences literature some time (do note that I have, on several occasions). Even when the topic of a paper is near and dear to your needs at that moment, the level of coherency in said paper frequently tends toward pulling a broadblade plow through partially-set concrete. Not because the topic and its structure are difficult, as might be the case in a scientific or technical paper; but because the author never learned how to present and structure a comprehensible argument in a comprehensible way.

Moreover, in many areas of business and industry the writing and debate skills are not as valuable as the technical skills, in terms of returned compensation, for the simple reason that the technical skills generate more revenue when it comes time to produce a salable product. I hope this concept doesn't come as a shock.

"Being able to mount an effective (or should that be affective?) argument that we value not just technical skills but an ability to comprehend and argue coherently about an issue (in its depth and complexity) beyond a narrow scientific construction: priceless..."

Before you go down the "narrow scientific construction" road, you might want to read this: http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/lingua_franca_v4/lingua_franca_v4.html . If you're a social scientist you probably are (or need to be) familiar with this story.

The ability to "comprehend and argue coherently about an issue" doesn't exist apart from applicable technical and scientific understanding.

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