BY DAVID A. VAREL
These days, as any job seeker will tell you, universities are prioritizing diversity on their faculties. The way they are conceptualizing it has expanded dramatically over time, now including not only race and gender but also sexual orientation, disability, military service, and many other categories. Yet one omission is especially striking: “pedigree” diversity. Today, as always, the lion’s share of tenure-track jobs goes to graduates from only the most highly ranked programs.
The absence of pedigree diversity from the list is telling. It demonstrates the degree to which the myth of meritocracy and its ugly cousin elitism continue to pervade academia. Elitism holds that those who attended the most prestigious programs in the country are the best and the brightest, and that they therefore deserve to hold as many of the nation’s professorships as they can fill. The logic is seductive. It envisions a level playing field where all other inequalities are set aside so that anyone from any group can compete and earn a place at the top through individual ability, intelligence, and work ethic.
However, the essential fact that elite universities cannot escape is that they ultimately matriculate a hugely disproportionate number of affluent students whose wealth, social connections, and class-based cultural knowledge make them more viable candidates. The students with greater access to top-ranked doctoral programs are the ones who have associated themselves with elite institutions and well-known professors as undergraduate or master’s students, who have strategically plotted out their academic careers from an early age, and who understand how to make use of their accumulating social privilege (including better access to grants, fellowships, social networks, and status) to gain admission. Upon matriculation, those advantages only compound.
Then, after elite-pedigreed students graduate, their wealthy institutions often lavish them with multiyear postdoctoral and visiting positions, allowing them the time and funding to comfortably build their curricula vitae and maintain prestigious affiliations while on the job market. Meanwhile, second- and third-tier institutions can’t afford to do the same, and their graduates often have to support themselves—as I have—with time-consuming, low-status adjunct positions at various colleges, which pay poverty wages, have no benefits, leave little time to write and publish, and are often procured only through expensive cross-country moves. It is this fundamental class advantage shared by students in top-ranked graduate programs that gives lie to the idea of meritocracy.
One justification for hiring faculty members with elite pedigrees is that they are a safer bet to become productive scholars—if only because of their accumulated privileges. However, in a time when there is a glut of jobseekers who have been demonstrating their scholarly productivity by publishing books and articles even while underemployed for years, the justification for preferring graduates of top-ranked programs falls apart. It proves that the continued hiring of elite-pedigreed scholars (many of whom have yet to publish anything substantive) is more about acquiring the prestige of those institutions than it is about building a coterie of productive scholars.
Beyond the issue of fairness, universities need to understand that the lack of pedigree diversity actually damages the academic profession because it diminishes scholarship. The more that the bulk of the tenure-track professoriate comes from only a handful of top-ranked programs, the less diversity and depth of scholarship there will be. Critics within the legal profession once put this bluntly: “Were we biologists studying inbreeding, we might predict that successive generations of imbeciles would be produced by such a system.”
The lack of pedigree diversity also hurts students. Most people have come to accept that the lack of a nonwhite faculty member makes it harder for nonwhite students to identify with their professors or to see themselves as welcome in that department or the larger profession. But they don’t understand that pedigree functions similarly. What does a student at Idaho State think when his or her professors all went to Ivy League schools as undergraduates and Berkeley or Stanford for graduate school? Students who feel inferior to their professors or hopelessly behind may give up the idea of entering the profession. The lack of role models with non-elite backgrounds becomes an engine for other types of homogeneity in the professoriate because students from lower-prestige universities tend to reflect a greater racial and socioeconomic diversity than do those from elite institutions.
The pedigree problem also damages the country as a whole. When its universities, which are so regularly touted as ladders of social mobility, become yet another tool for reproducing social hierarchies, there are few avenues left to challenge our nation’s endemic inequalities. As research shows, greater levels of inequality undermine democracy and sow political instability and domestic turmoil.
The pedigree problem has now reached crisis proportions after decades of disinvestment and state cuts to higher education. The financial difficulties, exacerbated by the rise of corporate management, swelling administrative staff, and the construction of outlandish country-club-style amenities at some universities, have contributed to the increasing reliance on contingent faculty members and the decline of tenure-track positions nationwide. Those applicants with elite pedigrees are therefore now taking an even greater percentage of the tenure-track positions that do become available. Both scholars and scholarship are becoming alarmingly less diverse as a result.
The time to act is now. We must make a concerted effort to add pedigree diversity to the list of diversities affirmatively sought after by hiring committees. Hiring those without elite educations, which also means those with, on average, fewer social privileges, more racial diversity, and a wealth of firsthand experience regarding the inequalities built into academia, will help to diversify universities along all other lines. It will present a better example for students, and it will create a professoriate that is not only more representative of the country but one that is probably also a bit humbler, grittier, and better prepared to challenge the inequities that too often go ignored.
Guest blogger David A. Varel, who earned his PhD in history from the University of Colorado, is an adjunct professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He is the author of The Lost Black Scholar: Resurrecting Allison Davis in American Social Thought and The Scholar and the Struggle: Lawrence Reddick’s Crusade for Black History and Black Power.
In my opinion, in recent years, the “feelings” of students have too often been considered more important than their educational take-aways from a given course or curriculum. Yes, I understand the argument that students may learn more if they “feel good” in class but that may be more true of K-12 education (which has unfortunately become the model for college) than for universities.
However, IF (and it is admittedly a BIG “IF”) the top programs graduate top instructors and researchers and send them out to teach at non-select institutions, then those state college students will have the benefit of the pedagogical and research Best Practices in their fields. Isn’t that better than being taught by a potentially mediocre instructor who also graduated from a “lowly” state college?
Besides, shouldn’t college students try to identify with their professors’ BRAINS, rather than their alma mater? My doctorate is from a state university, UCLA, but in my discipline, Film and Media Studies, it was/is one of the top 3-4 programs in the Western Hemisphere. My M.A. is from NYU Cinema Studies, which was/is an expensive private school (I was on fellowship and loans) but, again, its film program is world-renowned. Over the years, i have won numerous numerous pedagogical and research awards and I attribute some of that academic success to my education under the aegis of excellent role model professors who attended the Sorbonne, Harvard, and other prestigious institutions — who passed along their wisdom and professionalism to their students. Rightly or wrongly, their high esteem in the field also made their letters of recommendation more compelling to search committees and other employers.
In short, why shortchange students of state colleges — again ASSUMING that, on average, graduates of the better universities will be better teachers and scholars — by (on average) inflicting second-tier professors on them? BTW, in closing, as a proleptic device, let me mention that there are SOME (if not many) graduates of less prestigious colleges who can teach and research as well as any Ivy League graduate. Those “diamonds in the rough” should be encouraged and hired when found — but not because of some commitment to “pedigree diversity.”
I strongly agree with the idea of “pedigree diversity,” but I’m not sure I love that term. I prefer to frame it as an issue of “prestige discrimination.” We should judge people as individuals based on their work and their potential, and not engage in stereotypes that someone from the Ivy Leagues is inherently superior.
We should also go beyond faculty hiring when we oppose “prestige discrimination.” Admissions policies are important to this. Too many graduate programs employ prestige discrimination in admitting students, preferring those from elite institutions. Now that many graduate programs are sharply curtailing admissions to Ph.D. programs this year, the danger of prestige discrimination is even greater.
In theory, I agree with John K. Wilson’s argument about “prestige discrimination,” although it would be difficult to prove that it exists on a sweeping basis in hiring, admissions, etc. As I indicated — and Wilson did not respond to — there might be good reason to hire profs and admit students from institutions and programs that are perceived to be more prestigious because they MAY actually be superior in training scholars, researchers, and graduate students. IF a state college grad is on a par wit such luminaries, by all means hire/admit him/her/them. 🙂
Wilson also implies that a “merit” system should be employed, one not based on one’s alma mater. But isn’t that precisely why “diversity” programs are instituted: to ensure that previously excluded or marginalized groups participate more fully in academic life — regardless of their merit, whose criteria are often seen to be determined by straight White males.
BTW, research ha shown that TALL individuals have more success in life — and academia. That may be because of inherent prejudice against the short OR from the inherent confidence obtained when one can “look down” — literally and figuratively — on one’s fellow (and gal) human beings. Should we set up a quota for folks under, say, 5′ 6″? (Have another height criteria for females? What about the transgendered?)
Weren’t Affirmative Action guidelines set up to prevent prejudice over one’s IMMUTABLE identity markers: race, gender, age (not enforced much these days), sexuality, etc.? Is one’s alma mater an immutable, inherent aspect of one’s being? I don’t think so.
No, diversity programs don’t overrule merit, they are used to ensure true merit–so that members of groups that face discrimination can be given a fairer chance. And prestige discrimination can sometimes be used to exclude minorities. Although discrimination based on immutable identity is the worst kind of bias, it’s not the only one. We should also oppose discrimination in academia based on religion, political beliefs, weight, prestige, food preference, etc., even though these are not immutable. If elite institutions are generally better at training researchers and teachers (a dubious assumption), then that should be evident in the individual candidate’s record, and not presumed. I’m not saying that prestige discrimination should be litigated in court, but I am urging a moral principle against it that faculty should voluntarily follow.
John W.: Thanks for replying so well to my critiques. Your point about fairness, though, is a new wrinkle on the proposal posited in the original OP, which was based on the supposed need for students at less-than-prestigious colleges to identify with professors chosen from second-tier universities. That was the main point of my objection to giving preference in the hiring and admissions process to people who attended non-elite institutions. In my opinion, students will gain more from studying under the aegis of better teachers and scholars than those profs selected on the basis of their alma maters.
Using the individual’s “record,” as you say, should be the primary consideration, along with whatever Affirmative Action guidelines that apply. Someone should do a study on whether my “dubious” assumption (which I stated was “iffy”) is true that graduates of prestige schools have better “records” as instructors and researchers than their confreres from non-elite colleges. I based my assumption on my 40 years of academic experience hiring professors, my own experience in learning from teachers at top universities, and the higher standards that MAY be present at the Ivies and other such institutions.
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While I generally agree with Dr. Varel’s point about spreading the pedigree, I think he sells students from ordinary or “subordinary” backgrounds too short. In the 7th paragraph he writes:
“The lack of pedigree diversity also hurts students. ….. What does a student at Idaho State think when his or her professors all went to Ivy League schools as undergraduates and Berkeley or Stanford for graduate school?” [ellipses mine, jff]
Well I can tell you what a first generation in college Arkansas hillbilly at Louisiana State thought about that. He thought it was really neat and that he was very lucky to have the opportunity to study under people like Professor Henry V Howe (Ph D, Geology, Stanford), or William R Van Riper (Ph D, U Michigan) in American English dialects), or Wm Haag (Ph D, Anthropology, U Michigan). And when he got to graduate school at the U of Illinois, he through he was really really fortunate to get to study with anthropologists Demitri B Shimkin who had been a student of Alfred Kroeber at U Cal. Berkeley, and Frederick K Lehman (Ph D Columbia, Anthropology), and in Linguistics with R B Lees, Arnold Zwicky (BS Princeton), and T M Lightner, all Ph D MIT, Lees having been Noam Chomsky’s first doctoral student.).
The point is that I didn’t have any professors who were “like” me — or who talked like me. I wasn’t aware that that was a drawback or that I was being ill-served.
Yay, Joseph Foster! You go, guy!
I quick and very late comment to reinforce Prof. Foster’s excellent point by noting that in our shared discipline — anthropology — Idaho State’s current faculty were virtually all (with one exception) undergraduates at state universities like Idaho State or Louisiana State. The one exception, a faculty member who attended Bowdoin College, simply enhances the point.
I’ve never understood the expression “the exception that proves the rule.” Any exception to a rule DIS-proves that it is in fact a rule, except maybe a “rule of thumb.” So, the state university prof who went to an expensive private school like Bowdoin (which graduated Nathaniel Hawthorne) proves that SOME pedigree may have been involved.
Finally, one’s UNDERGRAD alma mater may not be as shaping an experience as one’s grad institution, where you really pick up the credentials of a professor, esp. when writing and defending a thesis and dissertation, not to mention studying under the aegis of top scholars and researchers.
Well, I did not use the phrase “the exception proves the rule,” so your point is…. pointless. As for its meaning, it comes from the old notion of “proof” as test — the exception tests the rule. And I hope I don’t have to make the additional point that one faculty member who attended a private undergraduate college does not “prove” that some pedigree may have been involved in….. what, exactly?
My suggestion was that a look at the diverse undergraduate experiences of anthropology faculty at Idaho State — which Dr. Varel chose to make his point about a lack of diversity — not only leads to a radically different conclusion than Dr. Varel offers, the fact that one faculty member did attend a private undergraduate college enhances the point that there is probably no bias in one direction or another. That is, the Idaho State anthropology faculty are neither biased in favor of — or biased in opposition to — elite undergraduate college experiences among faculty. That is the point that is enhanced.
I decided not to make the rather obvious additional point that, in much of academia, one’s graduate school is more important than one’s undergraduate school, for the simple reason that Dr. Varel’s comment was presumably about undergraduates, and so the pedigrees of Idaho State faculty in anthropology are, contrary to Dr. Varel’s suggestion, good news for Idaho State undergrads.
If there is no rule, there is no exception, and no case, fact, or condition is then anomalous. If anything stands out as an exception to a general pattern, there is then a general pattern for it to be an exception to.
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