Parents Education Effect on Becoming Faculty

[polly_mer]

https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/6wjxc Socioeconomic Roots of Academic Faculty by Allison Morgan, Aaron Clauset, Daniel Larremore, Nicholas LaBerge, and Mirta Galesic

with discussion at

https://mobile.twitter.com/aaronclauset/status/1375116154553896965

[marshwiggle]

It would be interesting to see this analysis done for other professional classifications; i.e. medicine, law, teaching, etc. My hunch is the pattern would apply to a lot of them. (For that matter, the pattern would probably hold in lots of vocational areas, like construction, farming, etc.) Being familiar with the "working culture" of your parents makes it a lot easier to go into any line of work.

[polly_mer]

That's a large part of the Twitter discussion.

The more interesting ramifications are for those who want to be academics without having the initial social capital to know to be doing the necessary things beyond the formal requirements in a given program.

For example, how many aspiring academics without academic parents fully participate in all the relevanr student research activities starting in middle school?  How many students are on the elite enough path to be naturally doing the networking and extracurricular activities that will lead to fully funded admission at a top five graduate program with excellent mentors, a realistic time frame, and additional natural  networking activities?

The related thread about the effect of academic pedigree on obtaining a faculty job (http://thefora.org/index.php?topic=2246.0) and the fact that most people will not get academic jobs at the same rank as their PhD program, but will instead go down 15 to 30 ranks suggests that folks earning a PhD and aspiring to be full-time faculty are at a significant disadvantage if they weren't on the path to professor starting before HS.

As Tweeps pointed out, there's really no option to establish an independent academic practice, unlike law, medicine, farming, or hair dressing.  One must know how to play the game and play at a competitive level.

[jimbogumbo]

I would like to see an analysis of how privileged the parents were growing up. My sister and I (very small sample, not randomized :) ) are the children of parents who were anything but high SES growing up, but were both upwardly mobile. While we clearly economically advantaged as children (not rich by any means) neither of us had any intention to become professors and had no idea what that meant.

[Durchlässigkeitsbeiwert]

From article:
"...faculty are 25 times more likely to have a parent with a PhD."

I wonder if information availability is a major factor here: as per other linked thread it is extremely important to get one's degree from a prestigious institution. This implies that to land a faculty job one need to 1) know importance of prestige 2) know which institutions have prestigious PhD programs in the specific field. The latter in particular may not be obvious for a general public. PhD-holding parent can greatly help with both.

[dismalist]

Now I get it: I had the wrong parents!

[Hibush]

https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/6wjxc Socioeconomic Roots of Academic Faculty by Allison Morgan, Aaron Clauset, Daniel Larremore, Nicholas LaBerge, and Mirta Galesic

with discussion at

https://mobile.twitter.com/aaronclauset/status/1375116154553896965

Fig. 5 shows this to be a recent phenomenon. Few faculty born in the 1930s and 40s had PhD parents. In that era, i.e. faculty being hired in the 1960s  expansion, academic parents were uncommon (~10% according  to the figure).  I recall from the time that scientists were generally from blue-collar families. I believe that the GI-bill driven demand for PhDs and develoment of more PhD candidates has a lot to do with the greater supply of 2nd gen PhDs today.

[Caracal]

For example, how many aspiring academics without academic parents fully participate in all the relevanr student research activities starting in middle school?  How many students are on the elite enough path to be naturally doing the networking and extracurricular activities that will lead to fully funded admission at a top five graduate program with excellent mentors, a realistic time frame, and additional natural  networking activities?

That's...not how it works. Networking in middle school isn't going to get you into a top five grad program and anybody who thinks it is is waiting their time. Going to a top tier university certainly helps a lot, but undergraduate programs aren't like grad programs. Any flagship state university or tier one private school will work just fine. From there, you just need to work closely with faculty members, do good work, show the ability to do original research etc etc.

[eigen]

The biggest issue I have with this article is that the data only looks at a subsection of PhD granting institutions, but then frequently generalizes its findings to all professors.

TT faculty at PhD granting institutions are a minority of the profession, with TT faculty at other institutions and nonTT faculty everywhere still being faculty.

It doesn't mean the analysis is wrong, but I'd be willing to suspect that more first gen faculty are drawn to teaching at PUIs, anecdotally.

[polly_mer]

It doesn't mean the analysis is wrong, but I'd be willing to suspect that more first gen faculty are drawn to teaching at PUIs, anecdotally.

It's also likely that those are the jobs that people who value education without an identity of being members of high SES can get having come from those institutions.

The problem in some fields are those PUI jobs are exactly the TT/T jobs going away as majors are eliminated and institutions are closing.

Even if the institution remains for certain majors, many of the humanities full-time positions go away and then there's no way to move up to the institutions that still have the jobs in an even more glutted market.

[jimbogumbo]

I agree with what eigen and polly just posted. I do have another conjecture based on anecdotal evidence: kids of professors are steered to professions other than professor based on their own first hand observations as well as parental advice.

[polly_mer]

I do have another conjecture based on anecdotal evidence: kids of professors are steered to professions other than professor based on their own first hand observations as well as parental advice.

I would think that would be more true outside the elite institutions.  Blocky certainly saw how much work being TT at Super Dinky was as he frequently got to come with me on weekends to prep the labs and all the evening grading in the living room.

Blocky has fond memories of General Physics lab and the chemistry auditorium piano on which he played while I prepped for science outreach programs.  I doubt those memories would be quite as fond if he had been dragged along at his current age instead of being small and easily entertained with a box of rocks.

The elite institutions with a 1/0 teaching load and an established research group with world travel to friends and colleagues would be quite pleasant.  My current employer has multiple generation employees because it is a great life of the mind in comfort experience.  Work hard, play hard can be very attractive.

[Ruralguy]

My daughter is old enough now to understand my conversations with my wife about academic politics and it really turns her off. We do tell her that some of it is just any workplace, but I have the feeling it's enough to completely turn her off to academics.  So I can certainly see how the current generation won't want to be academics. as for the past, I know of two of 100 current faculty and about 130 if you include former faculty who had a parent who was a faculty member. I am probably missing one or two, so maybe 3 percent of our faculty are children of faculty from elsewhere.
If you just want faculty who had Ph D parents, but not faculty, from what I know, it comes close to double the previous percent. I know that elite physics are much much more likely to have foreign trained faculty. Are foreign trained more or less likely to be from academic families? I just don't know. Is this more common in some fields than others?

[Wahoo Redux]

My father was an attorney and my mother had her masters in education.  Two of my uncles had PhDs in the sciences and one was an MD; one uncle was married to an MD, one was married to a woman with a masters in music education, and the other was married to a counselor with a masters in psychology. All these highly educated people loved their work, and family gatherings were filled with stories of cool experiments and cool mediciney stuff.  Growing up I thought everyone graduated high school, went to college, went in the military, and then went to graduate school. 

The town I grew up in, however, was largely blue collar, so I was disabused of the notion that education was universal and, like most of my classmates, I did not find school very interesting. I do remember thinking dad was cool because he did something interesting with his life, and he loved the law----so I associated learning with coolness.

Later in life I found myself casting about for purpose, and while I don't remember actively thinking about uncles and dad and education, I did naturally gravitate toward higher education.  Knowing stuff and working in academia were very attractive ideas.  These were just natural reactions.

I suspect I am typical of the demographics in this study.

[spork]

[. . .]

easily entertained with a box of rocks.

[. . . ]

I resemble that remark!