Who Gets Hired at the Top? The Academic Caste System Theory in the Planning Academy

Abstract

This study is the first to examine detailed faculty demographics and impacts of elite hiring networks in the planning academy. Institutional prestige significantly shapes faculty placements. Nearly half of planning faculty graduated from Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Cornell, and University of North Carolina (UNC)-Chapel Hill. Faculty are predominantly hired in similar or lower ranking programs with little upward mobility, after accounting for demographics and program factors. While race and gender did not have a significant relationship to placements, the findings demonstrate how status-based inequities are perpetuated through elite programs and constrain faculty representation.