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Ph.Ds From MIT, Berkeley, and a Few Others Dominate Top School's CS Faculties
An anonymous reader writes "A Brown University project collected the background information of over 2,000 computer science professors in 51 top universities. The data shows a skew in their doctoral degrees, "Over 20% of professors received their Ph.D. from MIT or Berkeley, while more than half of professors received their Ph.D. from the [top] 10 universities." For those professors, fewer work in theoretical computer science and there is a growing trend of recent hires in systems and applications. The original data is also publicly-editable and available to download."
Overheard at lunch there around 2000 (paraphrase): "We hire the most competitive candidates from the most competitive top three schools and then we wonder why they have trouble cooperating and getting along..."
I hope the policy has changed since... It also seemed like they were passing over a lot of interesting people and thus limiting their cognitive diversity.
See also Scott E. Page book "The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies"
http://www.amazon.com/Differen...
Google probably suffers to a lesser extent from a similar problem as I suggest here:
http://developers.slashdot.org...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
A Comp. Sci. professor is not low paying position - especially at a top university. Some of these places pay more than the private sector. You also have the added bonus of possibly getting tenure.