Two recent studies have revealed an academic system wherein most tenure-track faculty come from the same few universities and researchers generally come from families with similar academic backgrounds, leading to more of the same in academia.
One study, “Quantifying hierarchy and dynamics in US faculty hiring and retention,” was published in science journal Nature on Sept. 21. It indicated that just 20% of PhD-granting U.S. institutions supplied 80% of tenure-track faculty to U.S. institutions 2011-2020. And no historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) or Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs) were among that 20%, said Dr. Hunter Wapman, computer scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder and co-author of the paper.
A study published last month in Nature Human Behaviour also revealed that almost 25% of faculty in the U.S. have at least one parent with a PhD.
