[LarsDu88]

This is more accurate. The productive fraction of professors still follow the Pareto principle or 80/20 rule. And even then, these professors aggregate into the elite institutions making it even more skewed.

To get an academic position, you need to have a star advisor either for your degree or postdoc.

[Balgair]

I think it was The Atlantic a few years back that ran the numbers on professors and their PhD alma maters. But I can't find the article, so please accept my bad recollection.

Essentially, in nearly all of the humanities, if you did not go to a top 10 PhD program, you had a 0% chance of getting tenure. Not 'like' a 0% chance, an actual 0%. There are no professors at all, anywhere in the US, in nearly all the humanities departments that did not go to a top 10 school. The distribution followed a power law, of course.

However, most universities have PhD programs that will accept students.

The hubris (?) is just amazing to me. Both on the students and the advisors sides. Like, guys, what are we doing here? This isn't STEM, there's like no difference in the job market between a humanities PhD and a BA.

[a123b456c]

I've known some English PhDs. They were more focused on self-education rather than external rewards. Many of them were training to become high school teachers eventually, and they knew it. They saw no hurry to begin that career.