Socioeconomic Roots of Academic Faculty

Abstract

Tenure-track faculty play a special role in society: they train future researchers, and they produce much of the scholarship that drives scientific, technological, and social innovation. However, the professoriate has never been demographically representative of the general population it serves. For example in the United States, Black and Hispanic scholars are underrepresented across the tenure-track, and while women’s representation has increased over time, they remain a minority in many academic fields. Here we investigate the representativeness of faculty childhood socioeconomic status and whether it may implicitly limit efforts to diversify the professoriate in terms of race, gender, and geography. Using a survey of 7218 professors in PhD-granting departments in the United States across eight disciplines in STEM, social sciences, and the humanities, we find that the estimated median childhood household income among faculty is 23.7% higher than the general public, and faculty are 25 times more likely to have a parent with a PhD. Moreover, the proportion of faculty with PhD parents nearly doubles at more prestigious universities and is stable across the past 50 years. Our results suggest that the professoriate is, and has remained, accessible mainly to the socioeconomically privileged. This lack of socioeconomic diversity is likely to deeply shape the type of scholarship and scholars that faculty produce and train.

The hidden curriculum in health care academia: An exploratory study for the development of an action plan for the inclusion of diverse trainees

“…Individuals who are the first in their family or social network to enter a PhD program may experience a profound "network gap" in that they are less aware of ways in which professional positions are identified and pursued. 24 In ideal circumstances, faculty mentors can play a key role in helping doctoral students identify and navigate these unwritten norms and expectations.…”

The dynamics of faculty hiring networks

“…Faculty hiring plays a fundamental role in shaping the composition of the scientific workforce [5,23], and hence in determining the demographic composition of scientists [23], and what and whose particular scientific questions are studied [24]. Although past work has shown that doctoral prestige is predictive of whose graduates are hired as faculty [5,6,29], we have lacked a deeper understanding the dynamics of and mechanisms that create and maintain prestige hierarchies [3,13,17,22,28].…”

Rural exclusion from science and academia

“…Few data are available regarding rural individuals in science and research. For instance, only three studies have been conducted in North America examining how class and socioeconomic origin affect obtaining professorship, and none focused on rurality [1][2][3]. The National Science Foundation, which conducts the Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED), could provide valuable insights by reporting geographical workforce data.…”

“…Parental educational attainment is another established predictor of postsecondary outcomes and is substantially lower in rural communities [5]. Parental education influences whether children are encouraged to attend college and parental ability to assist children with success in academia [1,9]. First-generation students (no bachelor's degree held by either parent) are 15% less likely to complete a bachelor's degree within 6 years [10].…”

“…Evidence suggests that low parental educational attainment inhibits completion of graduate degrees and advancement to tenure-track faculty positions. Currently, first-generation students account for only 17% of newly awarded doctoral degrees (SED v ), and tenure-track faculty in STEM fields are 50% more likely to have a parent with a graduate degree than the general population [1].…”