Daniel Z. Grunspan, Regis Komperda, Erika Offerdahl, Anna E. Abraham, Sara Etebari, Samantha A. Maas, Julie A. Roberts, Suhail Ghafoor, Sara E. Brownell
{"title":"Importance of undergraduate institution prestige in physics faculty hiring networks","authors":"Daniel Z. Grunspan, Regis Komperda, Erika Offerdahl, Anna E. Abraham, Sara Etebari, Samantha A. Maas, Julie A. Roberts, Suhail Ghafoor, Sara E. Brownell","doi":"10.1103/physrevphyseducres.20.010144","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Reforming the professionalization experiences of future faculty members, including their undergraduate experience, provides a possible means to create scalable change in higher education. However, this requires an understanding of where faculty undergraduate training occurs. We analyze data from 7748 tenure-line faculty members across 611 U.S. physics departments, including their undergraduate alma mater and their employer university. The resulting undergraduate professionalization network reveals a prestige hierarchy similar in strength to those previously found in hiring networks at the Ph.D. level, indicating that the road to faculty jobs begins during undergraduate admissions. Furthermore, 42% of physics faculty members earned their undergraduate degrees from institutions outside of the United States. These results reinforce the importance of institutional prestige in academia and offer a potential strategy for driving systemic change.\n \n \n \n \n Published by the American Physical Society\n 2024\n \n \n","PeriodicalId":54296,"journal":{"name":"Physical Review Physics Education Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.6000,"publicationDate":"2024-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Physical Review Physics Education Research","FirstCategoryId":"95","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevphyseducres.20.010144","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Reforming the professionalization experiences of future faculty members, including their undergraduate experience, provides a possible means to create scalable change in higher education. However, this requires an understanding of where faculty undergraduate training occurs. We analyze data from 7748 tenure-line faculty members across 611 U.S. physics departments, including their undergraduate alma mater and their employer university. The resulting undergraduate professionalization network reveals a prestige hierarchy similar in strength to those previously found in hiring networks at the Ph.D. level, indicating that the road to faculty jobs begins during undergraduate admissions. Furthermore, 42% of physics faculty members earned their undergraduate degrees from institutions outside of the United States. These results reinforce the importance of institutional prestige in academia and offer a potential strategy for driving systemic change.
Published by the American Physical Society
2024
期刊介绍:
PRPER covers all educational levels, from elementary through graduate education. All topics in experimental and theoretical physics education research are accepted, including, but not limited to:
Educational policy
Instructional strategies, and materials development
Research methodology
Epistemology, attitudes, and beliefs
Learning environment
Scientific reasoning and problem solving
Diversity and inclusion
Learning theory
Student participation
Faculty and teacher professional development