Matthew Yglesias, recent philosophy graduate from Harvard and now professional pundit (based, I think, in DC), remarks on Professor Siegel's dilemma (to stay at Harvard, or go to Arizona):
"I dunno about you, but if I had to choose between life in sunny Cambridge, MA and the damp chilliness of Arizona, I'd definitely be packing my bags for Tucson. Just my two cents. It says a great deal about path-dependence that the universities of the American northeast are able to compete at all with the southwestern alternatives."
The sociology of the distribution of academic talent is not a topic that, to my knowledge, has been addressed systematically, but it is the topic suggested by Mr. Yglesias's posting. Why should a university in, say, New Haven, Connecticut--what one of my colleagues (an alum, no less) called "the armpit of Connecticut" (adding, "This is unfair to armpits, actually, since if you cut out your armpit, you'd have a real problem, whereas nothing would be lost by eliminating New Haven")--have a dominant position in American academic life? "Path-dependence," per Mr. Yglesias's suggestion, is a quick gloss on a variety of factors, including:
(1) Long being thought of as a good university is one of the best ways to remain a good university, i.e., to attract each new generation of faculty and students. It is easier to be "long thought" of that way if you've been around longer, of course.
(2) Money and resources (material and human capital) accumulate with time, and especially to institutions "long thought of" as high quality (per (1)). Money and resources attract faculty and students.
(3) Already having good faculty and good students is the best way to get more good faculty and more good students.
There are, to be sure, other factors: proximity to New York City (or Los Angeles or Chicago), and its cultural and culinary offerings, is surely an important factor for many academics, and while path-dependence surely explains much of New York's dominance in these "quality of life" areas, that kind of path-dependence is not institution-specific.
In the end, though, Mr. Yglesias is on to something. The fact is that Yale is not nearly as dominant in American academic life as it was in the 1960s, although a small handful of units (Law, History, perhaps one or two others) have held on to such status. The same could be said of Johns Hopkins, Penn, and the University of Chicago, among others. Deteriorating and often dangerous urban environments, not to mention nasty weather, have taken their toll. New York's better fortunes among Northeastern urban areas is intimately connected to the rise to prominence (in Philosophy, notably, but also in other areas) of schools like NYU and Rutgers.
Fifty years ago, few would have guessed that schools in Austin, Texas and Tucson, Arizona would dominate Yale in any academic fields, let alone a half-dozen or more. What will things look like 50 years hence?
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