I once heard a very senior faculty member make this observation: “There is prejudice aplenty about candidates’ doctoral alma maters. An odd one is that you can move south and you can move west, but you will have a very difficult time moving north or east from your alma mater.” He told me that he had developed this theory after serving on many search committees and watching dozens of tenure and promotion applications work their way through review committees.
At the time, I thought the advice was fairly quirky, wondering, of course, what graduates from the University of Miami or Stanford University would do for jobs (in both cases they do just fine!), but over the years, I’ve seen this play out on at least an anecdotal scale. At the same time, I’ve noted another related geographical factor: Candidates who possess degrees from institutions in various geographical regions likewise seem to hold advantages over uni-regional candidates.
I suppose that there are cultural issues at play here: When I moved from Mississippi to New York as a child, I was put in speech therapy and my mother had a difficult time finding a job because we sounded “dumb,” as one fellow townsperson openly termed it. On the other hand, I’ve known many Northerners who have been ill-treated in the deep South because they are perceived as being rude and uncollegial.
Does geographical snobbery occur in job searches, especially among the more sought-after positions at research-intensive institutions?
Follow On Hiring through your favorite RSS reader:
10 Responses to Geographical Snobbery
crunchycon - March 18, 2010 at 4:52 pm
Snobbery? In academic circles? By northern, eastern, and/or northeasterners? What???
greeneyes15 - March 18, 2010 at 5:11 pm
Nothing really substantial, although I did move an hour east and half an hour north of my alma mater; still in the Midwest and in the same athletic conference. I’m sure this exists; I mostly interviewed at schools in my region, or south or west. I did interview at a few northeastern schools, though. Interesting.
7738373863 - March 18, 2010 at 6:42 pm
I’ve seen a chair search committee in my own (New England) department reject the hands-down best candidate of the final three because he spoke with a southern drawl.
kcmiller55 - March 19, 2010 at 7:31 am
I recently participated in an “airport interview” for an administrative position at a large Research I institution in the northeast. Even though I grew up in the northeast, including graduating from an Ivy League university in the same state as the prospective institution, it was apparent that 18 years in the southwest had rubbed off on me. The interview was fun, but through out, I definitely had the sense that the search committee thought I must be from outer space. When I got the rejection phone call, the committee chair told me that I gave by far “the most interesting interview”. My read was that, life experiences and thus administrative priorities, really are very different from region to region. Luckily, I’ve landed in a great position, not in the northeast.
rab1960 - March 19, 2010 at 8:04 am
Of course it does. Regional prejudice especially towards southerners is one of the remaining elements of bigotry that is still politically correct.
aiestate - March 19, 2010 at 8:35 am
Indeed, in fact it even occurs in collaboration. I once visited a prestigious northeastern school with a colleague to speak to a professor about collaborating a project. I came from a very well-known university in the northeast, and my colleague came from a lesser-known school (but still very good) in the midwest. The professor asked each of us at least three times from which school we received our PhDs. He refused to acknowledge my colleague and only discussed research issues with me. Very sad.
octoprof - March 19, 2010 at 9:49 am
My research has shown that, in my field, 20% of doctoral graduates stay in the same state in which they earned the doctorate. A further larger percentage stay in the same region. I don’t think general patters of employer are a north v. south thing or an east v. west thing, or a coast v. interior thing. Mostly, I suspect, it is graduates’ preference for a particular geographical area.O. (a Southerner who’s lived north, south, east, and west post doctorate)
maw57 - March 19, 2010 at 10:29 am
As a midwesterner who went to undergraduate in the west, graduate school in the northeast, where I then worked for ten years before moving to a southern school, I can say that I was shocked, on arriving in the south, by the degree to which I had internalized condescension toward the south during all my years of living elsewhere. How could this prevalent attitude — part of the ether outside the south — not enter into the hiring process?
dank48 - March 19, 2010 at 10:44 am
This simply reflects the attitudes of American society as a whole. It’s so prevalent that people outside the South don’t notice it. One sufficiently aged example that should outrage no one at this point: When “Forrest Gump” won the Academy Award, the next morning NPR described the movie as “the story of a slow-witted Southerner who . . .” If Forrest had been from New Hampshire, say, would they have called him a slow-witted New Englander? Judging people by ZIP code is as witless as judging people by skin color, gender, or other irrelevant characteristic. And plenty of people who should know better will continue to rationalize it.
22028881 - March 19, 2010 at 1:33 pm
Regional prejudice–oh yes!! I’m a native New Englander–BA and MA from the northeast, PhD from midwest big 10 (that had one of the top programs in the country in my specialty.) I’ve served as a faculty member and administrator in the NE, midwest, south(twice) and now in California. When I served in the northeast, there was a sense that “this is the center of academic life”–no matter what other proof was offered. When I went to southern schools to work, my academic friends regarded me in the way that French must have regarded those who join the Foreign Legion (and I had to explain that the firehoses and dogs have long since disappeared!) Nonetheless, there are those in the south (both faculty and senior administrators) who regard anyone NOT from the south with suspicion, no matter what you do. They had a clannishness (and frankly, overt sexism that you don’t see elsewhere) that made life very difficult. But while academic admin could be tough, the community was wonderful, and some of my life-long best friends are southerners. California, on the other hand, is the land of people from everywhere else–and with a diversity of cultures that makes academic snobbery seem antiquated.