Thanks to sociologist Kieran Healy for calling our attention to these startling results about how academic job markets actually work:
"The paper confirms the intuition that there are self-reproducing departmental status systems within disciplines. Job candidates in all disciplines are exchanged in a well-defined manner between three classes of departments. Class I departments, at the top, exchange students amongst themselves and supply lower-tier departments with students but do not hire from them. Class II departments are on the “semi-periphery,” generally exchanging candidates with each other (though there is a hierarchical element to this) and also sending students to Class III departments, which never place students outside of their class and usually do not hire students from within their class."
Imagine that! Perhaps part of what explains the strong reaction in some parts of the philosophy academy to the PGR is that it has upset some of the traditional self-reproducing status systems.
Recent Comments