Does It Make a Difference on the Job Market?
Obviously a wide range of factors play into a candidate’s success on the job market, but using the limited comparison to the faculty listings in the Directory suggests that the undergraduate origins of a student could serve as an important marker of future success. As we noted in our review of how many of the 1990 2004 PhDs had found jobs in the departments and organizations listed in the Directory, programs in the top tier of the NRC rankings appear more successful in placing their students 43 percent in comparison to almost 28 percent at all other programs.9 When we factor in the undergraduate origins of these PhDs, graduates from the Select 25 schools had a placement rate almost 27 percent higher than students from other programs (Figure 5). The institution that conferred the PhD still made a critical difference, but the undergraduate differential was evident among graduates from every rank of PhD-granting institutions. Almost 52 percent of the students with PhDs from the top-tier s
