[PaulHoule]

When you look an an elite school, a huge fraction of professors have parents as professors. If the system was going to be made fair maybe 70% of the people who are getting those jobs today would have to be told, starting grad school, that they were automatically disqualified from getting a job in academia to give somebody else a chance.

Women do have real problems but it's also a fact that doubling the applicant pool doubles the number of professor's kids that the system wants to hire and makes it harder for outsiders to get in.

[ajkjk]

Don't think they're becoming professors because of like.. nepotism. More like their family is culturally academic and heavily prioritizes/assumes that.

[PaulHoule]

I am not saying it is nepotism, but that people coming from the outside find it to be an alien culture and find it hard to fit in.

[jorl17]

I am from Portugal and in my experience this is the reason.