Labor advantages drive the greater productivity of faculty at elite universities.

ABSTRACT: Faculty at prestigious institutions dominate scientific discourse, producing a disproportionate share of all research publications. Environmental prestige can drive such epistemic disparity, but the mechanisms by which it causes increased faculty productivity remain unknown. Here, we combine employment, publication, and federal survey data for 78,802 tenure-track faculty at 262 PhD-granting institutions in the American university system to show through multiple lines of evidence that the greater availability of funded graduate and postdoctoral labor at more prestigious institutions drives the environmental effect of prestige on productivity. In particular, greater environmental prestige leads to larger faculty-led research groups, which drive higher faculty productivity, primarily in disci

SUBMITTER: Zhang S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9674273 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature