Academic Elitism: Career Experiences of First-Generation vs Generational PhD Faculty in U.S. Institutions

Scientific elitism is divisive, benefiting the elite, and excluding those with less privilege. It is also persistent, supported by a broad pattern of social closure that excludes new members. The more elite are advantaged as evidenced in prestige-based academic hiring networks (Burris, 2004; Clauset et al., 2015; Wapman et al., 2022), and collaboration and citation behaviors (Kozlowski et al., 2022; Nielsen, 2021; Rubin & O’Connor, 2018). Exclusion brings consequences that dimmish the advancement and impacts of science, from reduction in topic and methodological diversity (Nielsen et al., 2017) and novel discoveries (Hofstra et al., 2020).

While “scientific elites” are often defined by their PhD institution (Wapman et al., 2022), productivity (Hagstrom, 1971), and visibility (Nielsen & Andersen, 2021), other personal attributes may contribute to these privileged characteristics. For example, in the U.S., faculty are twenty-five times more likely to have a PhD parent than the overall population, and that this is even greater in more prestigious institutions, points to another important dimension of elitism (Morgan et al., 2022).  This same study showed that faculty who are “first generation” (with parents without a college degree) are less likely than the overall population to be in the professoriate. Embedded in these different educational levels are highly varied socioeconomic backgrounds.