Sociological Stratification: Change and Continuity in the Distribution of Departmental Prestige, 1965–2007

Previous research has found that there is a good deal of stability in departmental prestige, but has not considered its long-term dynamics. This paper investigates a hypothesis implied by some accounts in the sociology of science and organizational theory: that there will be a permanent component of prestige associated with the department or university. The data are the ratings of graduate departments of sociology between 1965 and 2007 using a measure of prestige constructed from hiring patterns. There is no evidence of a permanent component for individual departments, but there is evidence of a permanent difference between departments in “elite” universities and those in other universities. Despite change in rankings within each group, the difference between the groups remained constant over the period. That is, there appear to be enduring barriers that limit the mobility of individual departments.     

The Institutional Structure of Eminence: Alignment of Prestige among Intra-University Academic Departments

Abstract

This study examines the reputational ratings of twenty disciplines using data from the 1982 Conference Board of Associated Research Councils to identify the extent to which such ratings can produce meaningful rankings of universities. Given that perceptions of departments and universities reflect social psychological images about the relative value of the program or school, such images can have powerful implications for hiring, recognition and the rewards process if they remain stable over time. The result is a mental construct that can have powerful implications for structure of stratification among higher educational institutions and the careers of those who pass through these universities. Seen from this perspective, eminence based on reputation is a property of the university. As such, departments within given universities should be quite consistent with regard to their respective ratings. Findings from this paper reveal the reputations of programs within universities are quite similar to each other, based on prestige ratings made by faculty in the same discipline at other universities. Implications for the structure of eminence and its consequences for individuals are subsequently discussed.     

Frequency of Citations as Criterion for the Ranking of Departments, Journals, and Individuals

Interest in the structure and dynamics of sociology as a discipline has led to recurrent attempts to measure the prestige, productivity, and quality of education of the various sociology departments. While several previous papers have suggested the potential value of the Science Citation Index (SCI) as a measure of scientific standing, few attempts have been made to utilize a citation-based measure of scientific prestige. This paper considers the meaning of the citation in science and in stratification theory. Procedures are described whereby citations to individual sociologists and journals are employed to yield rankings of departments of sociology and journals. The differences between these rankings and other rankings are discussed.     

Changes in the stratification structure of sociology, 1964–1992

Early sociological studies of the American higher education system noted that despite a widespread ideology of egalitarianism, both individuals and departments are highly stratified. Their main findings were that 1) the distribution of Ph.D. departments in any given field tended to cluster at the low end of the prestige hierarchy; 2) a few elite graduate programs graduated the vast majority of all Ph.D.’s awarded in the United States; 3) downward mobility for all but a handful of Ph.D.’s was inevitable; and 4) elite graduate programs protected their prestige through inbreeding. Since those studies there have been few attempts to document changes in the structure of stratification in scientific disciplines in general, and sociology in particular. I use longitudinal data on departments and individual data on recent sociology Ph.D.’s to study changes in the structure of the stratification system in sociology over the past 30 years. My results reflect a mixed picture of change and stability; while the distribution of departmental prestige, the production of Ph.D.’s, and inbreeding mechanisms have shifted since 1964, the pattern of placement of new Ph.D’s in doctorate-granting departments has changed very little. Portions of this paper were presented at the annual meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society, Baltimore, MD, March 1994.     

Multiple Jobs and Inequality in Earnings

This paper shows that individual and structural factors which determine professors' salaries also influence, in various degrees, the accumulation of earnings from additional sources. As a result, those who receive greater rewards from their main work role are likely to have proportionately higher supplementary incomes. Thus, expanding occupational role-sets increase the inequality in economic rewards in the academic system. It is proposed that the relative effect of each of the salary determinants on extra earnings depends on their ability to generate, directly or indirectly, extra earning opportunities.
The examined factors are professorial rank, research productivity, departmental prestige and the length of academic experience. Professorial rank has been shown as the main determinant of institutional salary level, whereas research productivity is the most crucial factor in generating extra earning opportunities. It is likely that the importance of the latter, in our case, is mainly indirect in that it generates critical intervening resources such as professional reputation, visibility in the academic system and communication network.     

RANKING LAW JOURNALS AND THE LIMITS OF JOURNAL CITATION REPORTS

Journal rankings published by Journal Citation Reports (JCR) are widely used to assess research quality, which influences important decisions by academic departments, universities, and countries in the allocation of research funds. We study refereed law journal rankings by JCR and Washington and Lee Law Library (W&L). JCR's rankings are uncorrelated with W&L's. The differences appear to be attributable to underrepresentation of law journals in JCR's database. We illustrate the effects of database bias on rankings through case studies of three elite journals, the Journal of Law and Economics, Supreme Court Review, and the American Law and Economics Review. (JEL C18, C81, Y10)     

Objective and Reputational Rankings of Ph.D.-Granting Departments of Sociology, 1965–1982

Abstract

From its inception in 1965 until 1975 when it stopped publishing such studies, The American Sociologist (TAS) published numerous quality rankings of Ph.D.-granting sociology departments and several articles that compared different rankings. During these years TAS published far more rankings of sociology departments than did any other journal This article reviews these studies as well as the rankings of sociology departments found in three major multi-disciplinary rankings (Cartter, 1966; Roose and Andersen, 1970; Jones, Lindzey, and Coggeshall, 1982). It discusses the major methodological approaches used in these studies and reviews the debate among scholars regarding the most appropriate ways to rank departments. An analysis of the various objective and subjective rankings reveals that there is an elite group of seven departments that consistently rank at the top regardless of the ranking method employed.     

Departmental quality ratings and visibility: The advantages of size and age

In this article I argue that quality ratings can be conceptualized as reflecting the extent to which departments are visible to outside raters. Using cross-sectional as well as panel data on sociology departments from the two latest surveys of graduate education published by the National Research Council in 1982 and 1995, I explain departmental quality ratings in terms of measures that reflect a department’s visibility, such as its faculty productivity, size, age, and location at an elite-status university. While the results of the cross-sectional and the longitudinal models tell different stories, the two are not incompatible. Specifically, both models suggest strong effects of departmental size and age. By comparison, the estimated effects of faculty productivity and location at an elite-status university are weaker and significant only in the cross-sectional model. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, New York, NY, August 1996. This research was conducted under a FLAS fellowship from the U.S. Department of Education. I wish to thank Lowell Hargens for helpful comments and advice.     

Producing sociology: Time trends in authorship of journal articles, 1975–1986

Authorship of articles in three major journals is used as an indicator of productivity of individuals and institutions over a twelve-year period. Authorship is dispersed among more than 1000 persons, with few consistent publishers. Productivity is highly concentrated among institutions. But while relative rankings of institutions on productivity by alumni are extremely stable, there have been important changes in rankings on authorship by current staff during this period. Finally, productivity is strongly associated with reputation for faculty quality, but change in productivity is hardly correlated with reputation for improvement. His recent book,Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place (coauthored with Harvey Molotch) was published by the University of California Press in 1987.     

Duality of departmental specializations and PhD exchange: A Weberian analysis of status in interaction using multilevel exponential random graph models (mERGM)

Weber proposes that lifestyle similarities preserve status by producing interactional closure between status similar actors. I investigate this theory on academic status hierarchies by conceptualizing sub-disciplinary specializations as departmental lifestyles and PhD exchange networks as interdepartmental interactions. Multilevel exponential random graph models (mERGM) reveal that the more specializations departments share, the more likely they are to exchange personnel. On the flip side, departments that do not share specializations are less likely to exchange doctoral candidates. Moreover, shared specializations are key determinants of closure between elite departments. These results support Weber’s theory and suggest that shared specializations preserve existing patterns of inequality between elite and non-elite departments.     

WHICH JOURNAL RANKINGS BEST EXPLAIN ACADEMIC SALARIES? EVIDENCE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

The ranking of an academic journal is important to authors, universities, journal publishers, and research funders. Rankings are gaining prominence as countries adopt regular research assessment exercises that especially reward publication in high‐impact journals. Yet even within a rankings‐oriented discipline like economics there is no agreement on how aggressively lower‐ranked journals are down‐weighted and in how wide is the universe of journals considered. Moreover, since it is typically less costly for authors to cite superfluous references, whether of their own volition or prompted by editors, than it is to ignore relevant ones, rankings based on citations may be easily manipulated. In contrast, when the merits of publication in one journal or another are debated during hiring, promotion, and salary decisions, the evaluators are choosing over actions with costly consequences. We therefore look to the academic labor market, using data on economists in the University of California system to relate their lifetime publications in 700 different academic journals to salary. We test amongst various sets of journal rankings, and publication discount rates, to see which are most congruent with the returns implied by the academic labor market. (JEL A14, I23, J44)     

Internal markets for department chairs: Comparative advantage,life-cycle,and jury duty

We examine the internal market for department chairs in U.S. universities and pro-vide the first empirical evidence concerning the determinants of departmental chair service using data from the economics departments in eight large public universities. The results reveal the wage premium for chairs increases with length of service and continues for an extended period thereafter. The chair premium largely represents com-pensation for foregone research and the attendant atrophy of research skills. The empir-ical results also indicate that departments tend to choose productive scholars to serve as chair, but avoid putting their most productive scholars in that position unless they are past their peak productivity period in their life-cycle. We thank an anonymous referee for helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this paper. We are responsible for any errors.     

DOES WHOM YOU KNOW MATTER? UNRAVELING THE INFLUENCE OF PEERS' NETWORK ATTRIBUTES ON ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE

This paper examines how students' network size, distance, prestige, and connections to influential individuals impact academic performance. Larger and closer networks facilitate information exchange, but may also increase distractions that decrease productivity. We resolve this ambiguity using administrative data from a business school that features random assignment of students to multiple overlapping sets of peers, allowing us to calculate degree, closeness, eigenvector, and Katz‐Bonacich centrality for each node. We find that increasing closeness centrality within the network negatively affects student performance measured by grade point average, suggesting that synergy reduction and information processing costs outweigh benefits from greater information access. (JEL I23, L14, L23)     

Evaluating Ph.D. sociology programs: Theoretical,methodological and policy implications

Reputational surveys frequently are used in evaluating doctoral programs. A sample of faculty-rated graduate programs and the resulting data are used to rank the programs in the academic discipline being considered. As an alternative, we present a new and auspicious assessment methodology by analyzing sixty doctoral programs in sociology for 1975/80 on six measures of research productivity and graduate education. We calculate two proximity matrices and reduce each with ALSCAL. Two solutions are generated: (1) per capita and (2) gross productivity of departments. These analyses show that conventional ranks contain a number of deficiencies and more comprehensive measures of departmental performance add important dimensions. We empirically document a tendency for conflict between faculty productivity and graduate education. Finally, our analyses suggest that omission of several assessment variables may have penalized departments emphasizing qualitative research. Recommendations for improving the next national assessment are advanced. Address correspondence to Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work, Illinois State University, Normal, IL, 61761-6901.     

PRESTIGE DETERMINANTS OF FIRST ACADEMIC JOB FOR NEW SOCIOLOGY PH.D.s 1985–1992

Previous studies of stratification in science have found a consistent positive correlation between the prestige of the departments where scientists received their degrees and the prestige of the departments where they obtained jobs, especially their first jobs. This correlation held regardless of previous research performance. Two limitations associated with these studies are (1) their almost exclusive focus on the hard sciences, and (2) their inability to inform a theoretical comparison between the hard and soft sciences. This study uses data on new sociology Ph.D.s who obtained their first job in Ph.D.-granting departments between 1985 and 1992 in order to assess whether the stratifying mechanisms in the hiring of sociologists are similar to those in the hard sciences. The results are generally consistent with previous findings for the hard sciences and suggest that job placement in sociology values academic origins over performance. The two strongest determinants of the prestige of a first job are the prestige of the Ph.D.-granting department and the selectivity of the undergraduate institution. In contrast, the effects of predoctorate single- or first-authored publications and of mentor's recognition are weak, though significant.     

Occupational Prestige Hierarchy: Methodological Artifact or Cultural Category System

Occupational prestige findings are among the most stable, replicable findings in all of sociology. Yet, the “cognitive reality” underlying these findings has never been clearly established. Based on the responses provided by students to three questionnaires and comparative data from the more recent NORC study of occupational prestige, the research described in this paper investigates two hypotheses: 1) the occupational rankings resulting from the five‐point scale used in the NORC studies reflect highly differentiated evaluations in the minds of respondents; and 2) occupational prestige rankings form a unidimensional scale. Both of these hypotheses were supported. Not only is the occupational prestige hierarchy highly differentiated in the minds of individuals, it is predominantly a single dimension about which there is substantial agreement. The implications of these findings are briefly discussed.     

Stability and Change in Private and Public Ethnic Regard Among African American,Puerto Rican,Dominican, and Chinese American Early Adolescents

Over the past 20 years, researchers have demonstrated that ethnic identity in adolescence is multifaceted and dynamic, encompassing a number of aspects of content and self‐definition. The present study examines private regard (i.e., youths' positive evaluations of their ethnic group) as well as public regard, which refers to their perceptions of others' evaluations of the group. The primary objective of the present study was to examine stability versus change in private and public regard among an ethnically diverse sample of early adolescents as they progressed through middle school. Using data from a longitudinal investigation of 6th graders, we found that private regard was stable over time and quite positive for all groups. In addition, while Chinese American youths' public regard tended to increase over time, African American, Puerto Rican, and Dominican youths' public regard decreased across the middle school years. Implications for ethnic identity theory are discussed.     

“Did You See What I Saw?” Gender Differences in Perceptions of Avenues to Prestige among Adolescents

We use data from 1,796 college students to explore gender differences in perceptions of avenues to prestige during adolescence. Students attending seven large universities during the 1997–98 academic year provided information on the ways in which adolescents in their high schools had gained prestige with peers. The analysis reveals substantial gender differences in perceptions regarding the most common avenues to prestige. Most important, men were less likely than women to report that female students in their high schools accrued prestige through sports and grades, and more likely than women to report that male students accrued prestige through engaging in deviant behaviors, such as sexual activity, drug and alcohol use, and fighting. We discuss the findings in the context of gender differences in social perception and gender-role attitudes.     

The Occupational Structure of Science: a Log-Linear Analysis of the Inter-sectoral Mobility of American Sociologists

The occupational structure of science is conceptualized as consisting of four sectors within which the career patterns of two cohorts of sociologists are examined. Using an origin criterion, receipt of the Ph.D. from an American university, to define the cohorts, we analyze the effects of various factors on sectoral immobility—which has been the norm for three decades—and mobility. In general, structural factors supersede individual differences in explaining observed movement. Moreover, the evidence underscores the "university bias" that has dominated studies of stratification in science. This suggests that the prestige of sociological work and the sectoral contexts in which it is performed be reevaluated, particularly in view of the current glut of the academic sectors.