Good thread, OP. Thank you for sharing your perspective. The obsessions with status and affiliation in economics are really unhealthy.OP seems to still be obsessed with status. They have simply shifted their obsession from institutional status to status based on a "reputation (that) could exceed that of my institution".
(OP here on a new IP.)
You're not wrong. I have the occasional fantasy of being snapped back up by a top school, though I know it'll never happen.
But for anyone who is at risk of getting denied, or to whom it already happened, hang in there.
I learned this the hard way during my first conference as a grad student. Friend was at a HRM program and we coauthored a paper. He was presenting our joint work while I presented a solo paper.
While we were talking a HRM professor buts in our conversation to talk to friend about how great his paper is. Friend introduces me as the coauthor, HRM professor looks at my name tag sees my LRM affiliation and says “hmm” and keeps talking to friend about “his” paper.
It as a humiliating experience and extremely awkward for my friend.
biggest mistake during my phd is to not have realized how status-driven most people are. thought the the attention I got was because of myself, but in fact it was because of my school.
Took me a couple of years to recover. Moved down a level of course. Spent a lot of time bemoaning my fate but eventually recognised that my reputation could exceed that of my institution. These days, I even get "why are you still at (institution)" once in awhile.
The biggest shock was the quick exclusion - from the seminar circuit, conference keynotes, etc. all of which seem reserved for high-status players. I get it; if you announce that your speaker is from a crappy uni like mine, fewer people show up.
What bothers me most though is how much harder it is to get research funding. Even with a couple of internal awards my budget is lower than it used to be at a "top" institution. Worse, the foundations are status chasers like you've never seen.
On the bright side, I don't mind being left alone to focus on my research. I have enough HRM collaborators from my early career that my work still places OK, even if I am more of a backstage player.
Do I still work hard? Sure, maybe harder than I did as an AP. Why not kick back and just enjoy the tenured 2-2 life? Dunno, maybe deep inside I'm still trying to prove something...if only to myself.
Thanks for listening, despite the pathological verbosity.
I learned this the hard way during my first conference as a grad student. Friend was at a HRM program and we coauthored a paper. He was presenting our joint work while I presented a solo paper.
While we were talking a HRM professor buts in our conversation to talk to friend about how great his paper is. Friend introduces me as the coauthor, HRM professor looks at my name tag sees my LRM affiliation and says “hmm” and keeps talking to friend about “his” paper.
It as a humiliating experience and extremely awkward for my friend.
Very similar things have happened to me.
What a sick profession.
I learned this the hard way during my first conference as a grad student. Friend was at a HRM program and we coauthored a paper. He was presenting our joint work while I presented a solo paper.
While we were talking a HRM professor buts in our conversation to talk to friend about how great his paper is. Friend introduces me as the coauthor, HRM professor looks at my name tag sees my LRM affiliation and says “hmm” and keeps talking to friend about “his” paper.
It as a humiliating experience and extremely awkward for my friend.Very similar things have happened to me.
Wow, it’s astonishing that you feel discriminated against for being a faculty member at a top50... think about the lives of vlrm trying to get grants or publish something in top5 or top field journals.Try doing macro or monetary at LACs and see what happens.
David Colander wrote a paper explaining the discrimination LAC profs face if they do macro and monetary. Those two areas are dominated by a mafia which seeks conformity to their preconceived ideas and assumptions of how the aggregate economy works. Ever since that Colander paper, I make it a point to minimize citations of HRMs and find papers in lower ranked journals from unknown scholars. It is amazing how insightful some of the works from VLRM and LAC profs are. I have not adopted a textbook from a HRM since that Colander paper. I will never again cite an NBER paper. I hope others will do same.
I was turned down for tenure too. It was painful - I had to uproot the family and move and my wife had to quit her job. Two years later, three of the papers I had completed while working at my original employer came out in top 5's and then other ones started rolling in. So 5 years down the line I had a job in a better department than the one that turned me down for tenure. The real cost was on the family (which eventually broke up) and I blame my tenure committee for that - they should have said "wait a year, those three papers are great" but they were entirely backward looking and probably unable to see the quality of the papers. I learned a lot, it was costly but avoidable, and I now try to be helpful to juniors to make sure it doesn't happen to them.
I was turned down for tenure too. It was painful - I had to uproot the family and move and my wife had to quit her job. Two years later, three of the papers I had completed while working at my original employer came out in top 5's and then other ones started rolling in. So 5 years down the line I had a job in a better department than the one that turned me down for tenure. The real cost was on the family (which eventually broke up) and I blame my tenure committee for that - they should have said "wait a year, those three papers are great" but they were entirely backward looking and probably unable to see the quality of the papers. I learned a lot, it was costly but avoidable, and I now try to be helpful to juniors to make sure it doesn't happen to them.
Sheesh, that is such a sad story.
This is not uncommon: the disruption of family life from a tenure denial can be severe. (Sometimes the timing goes the other way, with the intensity of tenure-clock pressure causing family trouble that decreases productivity in the year or two before evaluation). I have heard more than a few stories like this from seniors in the field, denied tenure and taking a big step down "unconstrained" by their families.
I was turned down for tenure too. It was painful - I had to uproot the family and move and my wife had to quit her job. Two years later, three of the papers I had completed while working at my original employer came out in top 5's and then other ones started rolling in. So 5 years down the line I had a job in a better department than the one that turned me down for tenure. The real cost was on the family (which eventually broke up) and I blame my tenure committee for that - they should have said "wait a year, those three papers are great" but they were entirely backward looking and probably unable to see the quality of the papers. I learned a lot, it was costly but avoidable, and I now try to be helpful to juniors to make sure it doesn't happen to them.Sheesh, that is such a sad story.