Question for Daniel Larremore and Aaron Clauset

[muhua-h]

Questions for Dr. Daniel Larremore's and Dr. Aaron Clauset's talks.

Patterns and Determinants of Faculty Mid-Career Moves in US Universities. Despite extensive research on faculty hiring and attrition, relatively little is known about mid-career moves (MCMs) where faculty change institutions while remaining in academia. In this study, we analyze 10 years of annual census data on tenure-track faculty at US PhD-granting institutions to identify patterns in the rates, risks, and consequences of MCMs for careers and the scientific ecosystem more broadly. At a high level, MCMs tend to flow from rural to urban areas and from public to private institutions, with faculty often trading prestige for promotion. MCM rates vary considerably by academic field, even more so by career age and academic rank, by institutional characteristics such as private/public status, geographical location, and perhaps surprisingly, by whether one is employed at one's doctoral alma mater.

Reading List 1:

• https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05222-x

Evaluation dynamics in peer review at elite scientific journals Peer review at elite scientific journals plays a unique role in supporting public trust in science, influencing the direction of scientific discovery, and shaping scientific careers. However, the need for confidentiality in peer review makes it difficult to assess how well elite journals meet the community's ideals or to develop and test theories to improve it. Here, we use 110,303 submissions over 5 years to Science and to Science Advances, two elite, general science journals, to answer three questions about elite peer review. First, we ask, how much do author and manuscript characteristics like author team size, institutional prestige, manuscript topic, author gender, and geography have on editorial and peer review outcomes? Second, who has more influence on desk rejection and on acceptance decisions, journal editors and outside experts? Third, does a reviewer's gender influence the sentiment of the reviews they write? Our results shed new light on the complexity of manuscript evaluation at elite journals, and underscore the importance of detailed peer review data for untangling disparities in evaluations to identify and resolve potential sources of bias.

Reading List 2:

• https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.13665 and https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.09966

[ethanjkoz]

Hi! Interesting reads. My question is for Dr. Clauset. In the paper on how prestige drives epistemic inequality in the diffusion of ideas, you mention that in the field of computer science, university prestige matters significantly in the diffusion of ideas. Given that cs is much more conference based with respect to disseminating their ideas (as opposed to journals), how do you think this prest8ge mechanism will operate in different fields (especially those with higher emphasis on publishing in specific journals like Sociology or Economics). Is prestige then more imoirtant for journals than universities or is this mechanism still important?

[Adrianne-Li]

Thank you for sharing this intriguing readings. In your study on faculty mid-career moves (MCMs), you show that MCMs often involve trade-offs—such as moving from public to private institutions or rural to urban settings, frequently in exchange for promotion or prestige. However, did your analysis find any systematic patterns where faculty gained in both prestige and position (i.e., promotion and moving to a more prestigious institution)? If so, what structural or individual characteristics were most predictive of such "upward-only" transitions, and how might this differ across fields like Economics or Sociology where institutional hierarchy is tightly bound to publishing norms?

[alejandro-sarria-morales]

Thank you for sharing! I have a question for Dr. Larremore. Recent externalities (e.g. the pandemic and possibly the current political atmosphere) have shocked higher education higher and have lead to a higher frequency of "lateral moves" by non-tenured faculty. How you think this exalts or diminishes the dynamics found in your research?

[Lezy01]

Thanks for sharing! My question is for Dr. Clauset. How can we tell if “prestige → idea spread” in the faculty‐hiring network is a non‐meritocratic bias versus simply reflecting higher intrinsic idea quality, and how do these two forces jointly shape scientific diffusion?

[natashacarpcast]

Thank you! My question is about the definition and measurement of prestige. I see you measure it with the network and hiring patterns, but aren't other aspects such as Nobel prizes and groundbreaking research also very important in defining prestige as well?

[Jessieliao2001]

Thanks for sharing! My questions are: How do the evaluation dynamics in peer review at elite scientific journals and the patterns of faculty mid-career moves influence the allocation and mobility of intellectual capital? In what ways might these processes shape the pace of scientific innovation and, by extension, macroeconomic growth and regional development?

[Weiranz926]

Thanks for sharing！How might disparities in peer review outcomes—linked to factors such as institutional prestige, gender, and geography—and the observed mid-career mobility patterns among faculty reveal or reinforce existing social hierarchies within academia? What do these dynamics suggest about the evolution of social networks, professional identity, and group boundaries in scientific communities?

[PaulaTepkham]

Thank you very much for both of these intriguing studies. I have a question for Dr. Larremore. In your study, you mention that universal inequalities exist, where a small minority of universities produce a large majority of faculty across fields, exacerbated by patterns of attrition and reflecting steep hierarchies of prestige. I was wondering whether you have looked into within and between university inequalities. I believe it would be interesting to consider a decomposition of these inequalities, as it could provide a deeper understanding of the underlying structure and mechanisms of stratification in academia.

[amritapathak1]

Thank you for the studies. In your work on faculty hiring and epistemic inequality, to what extent do you think collider bias or over-conditioning on downstream outcomes—like faculty placement or citation count—might distort our understanding of the causal role of prestige? How might we distinguish structural prestige effects from biases that emerge due to conditioning on common effects in the faculty hiring or publication networks (i.e., causal salad situations)?

[zhian21]

Thank you for this insightful paper, Dr. Larremore. Your analysis shows that a small group of elite institutions dominate faculty training and placement, creating steep prestige hierarchies across academia. You also find that faculty with doctorates from outside the U.S., particularly from countries other than Canada or the UK, face significantly higher attrition rates. At the same time, newly hired faculty at more prestigious universities are more likely to hold non-U.S. doctorates. How should we interpret this apparent contradiction? Does it suggest that prestigious institutions hire internationally trained scholars to signal diversity, without ensuring long-term inclusion or retention? Or does it reflect broader structural barriers that lead to higher attrition for internationally trained faculty, especially at less prestigious institutions? I would be interested to hear how you see this dynamic affecting epistemic diversity and what it implies for more equitable hiring and retention practices.

[yifan-lyf]

Does gender or marital status affect MCM?

[Kevin2330]

Thanks for sharing.

In your research on mid-career moves, you found that faculty often trade prestige for promotion. Do you think this trend reflects a structural rigidity in how career advancement is distributed across institutions, and what implications might this have for talent retention at elite universities?

[zcyou018]

Thanks for sharing! How do these mid-career mobility patterns interact with the observed prestige hierarchies in faculty hiring networks—particularly when upward mobility in prestige is so rare?

[binyu0419]

Thank you for sharing, your study shows that mid‐career moves (MCMs) tend to flow from rural to urban areas and from public to private institutions, with faculty often trading prestige for promotion. Could you elaborate on the potential mechanisms that drive this trade‐off? In particular, how does staying at one’s doctoral alma mater alter the observed patterns of MCMs, and what implications might this have for institutional hiring and promotion policies?

[yiningYvette]

Your research highlights fascinating structural patterns in academic mobility and peer review. Given your findings that mid-career moves (MCMs) often involve a trade-off between institutional prestige and career advancement, and that peer review outcomes are influenced by factors like institutional prestige and geography, to what extent do you think the academic ecosystem structurally reinforces inequalities?