Divisions within Academia: Evidence from Faculty Hiring and Placement

I look for divisions to clusters among academic departments in three disciplines: economics, mathematics, and comparative literature. I define clusters as subsets of departments with unexpectedly little hiring across the cluster lines. The division within economics is by far the strongest, is consistent with anecdotal evidence about “freshwater” and “saltwater” schools of thought and has been stable over time. There is also a significant division within comparative literature, but the hiring patterns among top mathematics departments are consistent with random matching. © 2011 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.