Credential Privilege or Cumulative Advantage? Prestige, Productivity, and Placement in the Academic Sociology Job Market

Using data on the population of US sociology doctorates over a five-year period, we examine different predictors of placement in research-oriented, tenure-track academic sociology jobs. More completely than in prior studies, we document the enormous relationship between PhD institution and job placement that has, in part, prompted a popular metaphor likening academic job allocation processes to a caste system. Yet, we also find comparable relationships between PhD program and both graduate student publishing and awards. Overall, we find results more consistent with PhD prestige operating indirectly through mediating achievements or as a quality signal than as a “pure prestige” effect. We suggest sociologists think of stratification in their profession as not requiring exceptionalist historical metaphors, but rather as involving the same ordinary but powerful processes of cumulative advantage that pervade contemporary life.