Who Hires Whom? A Case Study of Prestige Stratification in U.S. Transportation Faculty Hiring

Abstract:

Faculty hiring shapes the long run research and advising capacity of transportation engineering, yet field specific evidence on hiring pipelines is rarely reported in a comparable way. This paper provides a transparent case study of the U.S. transportation focused civil engineering faculty hiring system. Using publicly available records, we construct a reproducible cross sectional dataset linking faculty to their PhD institutions and first tenure track academic appointments at leading U.S. universities. We operationalize institutional prestige using a five tier scheme derived from U.S. News civil engineering rankings and summarize doctoral tier to first hire tier transitions, upward and downward mobility at entry, and heterogeneity in placement concentration across PhD institutions. We then estimate ordered logit models to quantify the association between doctoral tier and first hire tier while conditioning on PhD completion cohort and coarse educational background characteristics observable in public records. Descriptive results show strong persistence in initial placement, with most hires occurring within the same tier or an adjacent tier, alongside nontrivial upward mobility from all doctoral tiers and substantial hiring at institutions outside the ranked set. Model estimates indicate a monotone prestige gradient that is stable to cohort and background controls. The findings provide an operational baseline for benchmarking and motivate policy relevant levers related to placement transparency, mentoring and professional visibility, and efforts to broaden participation in the transportation research workforce.