An academic Great Gatsby Curve – How much academic success is inherited?

It's the Mathew principle all the way down.

Actually it's a bit worse, in the sense that if you exhibit competence without the "appropriate pedigree" all you'll get is punishment.

Not my experience at all, as a first generation college student, now research faculty at a highly regarded University.

"Pedigree" assumes many forms.

The fact that you are a "first generation college student" is irrelevant and conclusively shows that you do not understand what's at stake.

I can assure you, you are wrong.

Yes, I misunderstood, and was just about to delete my comment, but you caught me.

Yep, this. Another reason why the left has lost all public trust in institutions. Too much of elitism and connections.

This is completely general and independent of left/right liberal/conservative dualities.

Not the person you're replying to, but if you are going to make sweeping statements like "you are wrong", you should explain a bit more, because your argument is somewhat too vague to engage with meaningfully.

Obviously one can find discrimination anywhere, but I don't think it's as systematic as you seem to imply. Most academics are under considerable pressure to publish or generate results, so e.g. when faced with hiring a postdoc or a PhD candidate, they don't have the luxury of rejecting a brilliant candidate that could be productive for spurious reasons.

Well, the person I replied to aparently understood, so it wasn't as "sweeping" as you are implying.

Not quite. Almost all academia and universities are left leaning. It directly falls on the left's head that people lost trust and faith in these institutions.

I'll briefly expand. 1. Committed the sin of not reading the article, which as you may know is rampant in academia ;) 2. When I first came into grad school I got caught up into a conversation with several professors who were (lightheartedly) bragging about their academic pedigree, but in the familial sense, listing a prominent scientist or three with whom their was some relation, if not immediate, not entirely distant either..and it struck me then that professors are more likely to have relations that are professors, etc, leading to my misunderstanding. I, of course, know about the other type of academic lineage. My academic grandmother, my academic great grandfather, and so on, aka mentor's mentor's mentor. In this sense, I came into academia under a decent pedigree: Simona Ghetti (my advisor, prominent for her work on the development of episodic memory and meta cognition of memory), Gail Goodman (academic grandmother, widely credited with starting the modern scientific study of children's eyewitness memory and child victims as witnesses in legal contexts.)

No, the right seems to very happy with elitism and connections.

> I came into academia under a decent pedigree

So you did get it.

Just another note.

If you had the wrong facial bone structure, or some kind of deformity (before starting, not after like Hawking before anyone makes the point), or you were ridiculously short, or your voice had the wrong pitch, or a myriad of other traits, then that starting academic "pedigree" wouldn't have happened.

If you, by any chance worked in a field where you can work on your own and actually achieve something alone (you don't), had you achieved some great result you would have at best been ignored, but usually ridiculed.

If you insisted, the punishment would just get more and more vicious, but usually ignoring is enough.

It's the Matthew principle:

> For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.

This is ingrained in human psychology innately (like the just world fallacy and other delusions) and there is no way around it.

You really don't think that reactionary conservatism is not a factor too? Clearly the left has problems with excessive purity demands (just like the right) but I can't accept institutional failure as solely the fault of one side.

This is so ridiculously overstated.

I can think of at least 3-4 very highly respected faculty at top institutions who are short guys. Several more whose voice would never make it in a TV or radio career.

And that’s just in CS systems and security.

For a guy at least, you want to be handsome enough but not too handsome (don’t want to be a model, but the handsomest guy in the room), and tall enough that everybody has to look up to you, but not looming height. Then people just sort of assume you get whatever is going on if you nod and say “ok. Right. Good idea.” Which gives you enough time to look it up after the meeting is over.

The physical stats will give you a masters degree, looking it up after gets you the PhD.

What do you mean by reactionary conservatism being a factor? "Reactionary conservatism" holds next to zero sway in academia. Do you mean reactionary conservatives are to partially to blame for academic institutional failure because they don't trust those institutions (left wing) product, when they should? Trust and respect are earned so you can only be wrong, dumb, and silly for so long before you lose it. I'm struggling to think of a single sociopolitical idea that has come out of academia recently that has been clearly positive. I can think of many negatives.

This is broadly true.

You want to look dominant enough with gravitas

Without that any competence elicits a tremendous response from other people that can easily go all the way to murderous violence.

In a sense, they feel that you are undeserving and that your competence is an affront to the "natural order". And this is in areas where there is some objective metric, which is not the norm.

These are very old biological truths and they will never change at the human timescale, if ever.

Your anecdotal experience doesn't negate the Matthew Effect.

Yes yes, and good teeth is associated with better future income. I am a man, and I am 6'4", and that helped, I am sure...but you also overstate the case in a very exaggerated way. There are many factors at play, and no single one is deterministic. Else my glowering face and awkward social communication, and my impoverished upbringing, and undiagnosed ADHD, and the three children I helped raise while in college would have drug me down. I agree that there is an effect, but disagree that it is as strong as you say it is.

I once had a student assistant (I was a grad student, she was an undergrad), and she had the three things you aren't ever supposed to have at the same time: extreme beauty, intelligence, and super authentically nice. People wanted to not like her, but couldn't find an excuse. It happens like that sometimes. (and no, I didn't).