Socioeconomic roots of academic faculty

Allison C. Morgan (), Nicholas LaBerge, Daniel B. Larremore, Mirta Galesic, Jennie E. Brand and Aaron Clauset ()
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Allison C. Morgan: University of Colorado
Nicholas LaBerge: University of Colorado
Daniel B. Larremore: University of Colorado
Mirta Galesic: Santa Fe Institute
Jennie E. Brand: University of California
Aaron Clauset: University of Colorado

Nature Human Behaviour, 2022, vol. 6, issue 12, 1625-1633

Abstract: Abstract Despite the special role of tenure-track faculty in society, training future researchers and producing scholarship that drives scientific and technological innovation, the sociodemographic characteristics of the professoriate have never been representative of the general population. Here we systematically investigate the indicators of faculty childhood socioeconomic status and consider how they may limit efforts to diversify the professoriate. Combining national-level data on education, income and university rankings with a 2017–2020 survey of 7,204 US-based tenure-track faculty across eight disciplines in STEM, social science and the humanities, we show that faculty are up to 25 times more likely to have a parent with a Ph.D. Moreover, this rate nearly doubles at prestigious universities and is stable across the past 50 years. Our results suggest that the professoriate is, and has remained, accessible disproportionately to the socioeconomically privileged, which is likely to deeply shape their scholarship and their reproduction.

Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1038/s41562-022-01425-4

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