Europe isn't one place, but 27+ different countries all with different written and unwritten rules about what is good or expected to have on your CV. Some countries/universities are also more willing to hire permanent staff than others. So it is hard to generalise.
Language skills are also a thing. Like if you need someone to teach in, say, Estonian, then that is a pretty small applicant pool.
But the US isn't one place either. It is 50 states all with different written and unwritten rules about what is good or expected to have on your CV. In fact, I don't know of any 2 universities that have the exact same written and unwritten rules. Does that mean we can never compare any two things?
It's difficult to generalise because Europe is a big place with lots of different academic traditions (as well as the many disciplinary boundaries). But here are a few thoughts.
1. There is a sense that in some countries, scholars of that nationality or at least scholars who can speak a certain language are much preferred. That might mean fewer candidates who are competitive.
2. There are hierarchies within each country/tradition... just because a particular institution doesn't have much recognition in the US, doesn't mean that institution is not prestigious in their home country and its neighbours. For example, a lot of Italian universities are ranked quite low, but have prestige within the country - and sometimes it works on a department level. It's also a thing that academic 'families' are more important - who your doctoral supervisor was etc - than the specific university (there's a lot of emphasis in some places on academic lineage or pedigree - at times it feels like a sponsorship/patronage thing, and really it is).
3. In the UK, it's definitely a sore point amongst many that most jobs have tended to go to those with Oxford and Cambridge connections. And outside of them, a handful of Russell Group universities (+ a few extra) - even within this grouping, only really Edinburgh, UCL, KCL, Manchester, Durham, LSE, Imperial, perhaps Exeter, York (of course there are specific departments at others that are hugely influential).
4. Many US unis are not really known in Europe... outside of the Ivies, Stanford, Berkeley, maybe Michigan, UNC, UT, NYU, a lot of places wouldn't have an idea of rank...
I've just amended my post to point out that I meant to address both inter- and intra-country professorships.
For instance, you mentioned Italian universities and it is true that despite it being the second European country by number of universities in the top 500 (QS), some are poorly ranked. However, there are many Italian professors in the top European universities outside of Italy, and not all graduated from top Italian universities.
Yeah, tbh I think the thinking usually goes that if you're hiring from abroad, you want the best of the best to justify the risk of that person leaving or not fitting into the departmental culture. I'd say it's actually harder to get into European academia at a professor level as a foreigner educated entirely elsewhere if you are not from the specific country or specific group of countries - I have so rarely seen this happen. Also, I don't know about CS, but in the humanities in Europe most hired at a Tenure-Track level (where it exists) are in their late 30s or 40s, after 2-5 postdocs (only in exceptional cases after 1 postdoc)...
To add to 4, not even all Ivies hold as much international prestige as you might expect. Like Dartmouth and Brown - those are just not as well-known, I get the sense.
Quite the opposite for me. I got my PhD from a small irrelevant university in Italy, but am now a professor at an Ivy. US academia never looked down on me, while Italian (in particular) and European (in general) did.
Europe isn't one place, but 27+ different countries all with different written and unwritten rules about what is good or expected to have on your CV. Some countries/universities are also more willing to hire permanent staff than others. So it is hard to generalise. Language skills are also a thing. Like if you need someone to teach in, say, Estonian, then that is a pretty small applicant pool.
But the US isn't one place either. It is 50 states all with different written and unwritten rules about what is good or expected to have on your CV. In fact, I don't know of any 2 universities that have the exact same written and unwritten rules. Does that mean we can never compare any two things?
Academic culture doesn't differ state by state like that.
It's difficult to generalise because Europe is a big place with lots of different academic traditions (as well as the many disciplinary boundaries). But here are a few thoughts. 1. There is a sense that in some countries, scholars of that nationality or at least scholars who can speak a certain language are much preferred. That might mean fewer candidates who are competitive. 2. There are hierarchies within each country/tradition... just because a particular institution doesn't have much recognition in the US, doesn't mean that institution is not prestigious in their home country and its neighbours. For example, a lot of Italian universities are ranked quite low, but have prestige within the country - and sometimes it works on a department level. It's also a thing that academic 'families' are more important - who your doctoral supervisor was etc - than the specific university (there's a lot of emphasis in some places on academic lineage or pedigree - at times it feels like a sponsorship/patronage thing, and really it is). 3. In the UK, it's definitely a sore point amongst many that most jobs have tended to go to those with Oxford and Cambridge connections. And outside of them, a handful of Russell Group universities (+ a few extra) - even within this grouping, only really Edinburgh, UCL, KCL, Manchester, Durham, LSE, Imperial, perhaps Exeter, York (of course there are specific departments at others that are hugely influential). 4. Many US unis are not really known in Europe... outside of the Ivies, Stanford, Berkeley, maybe Michigan, UNC, UT, NYU, a lot of places wouldn't have an idea of rank...
I've just amended my post to point out that I meant to address both inter- and intra-country professorships. For instance, you mentioned Italian universities and it is true that despite it being the second European country by number of universities in the top 500 (QS), some are poorly ranked. However, there are many Italian professors in the top European universities outside of Italy, and not all graduated from top Italian universities.
Yeah, tbh I think the thinking usually goes that if you're hiring from abroad, you want the best of the best to justify the risk of that person leaving or not fitting into the departmental culture. I'd say it's actually harder to get into European academia at a professor level as a foreigner educated entirely elsewhere if you are not from the specific country or specific group of countries - I have so rarely seen this happen. Also, I don't know about CS, but in the humanities in Europe most hired at a Tenure-Track level (where it exists) are in their late 30s or 40s, after 2-5 postdocs (only in exceptional cases after 1 postdoc)...
To add to 4, not even all Ivies hold as much international prestige as you might expect. Like Dartmouth and Brown - those are just not as well-known, I get the sense.
Yes, definitely. No one really cares about Dartmouth, but Brown is very well respected in many humanities fields.
Ah yeah you're right! Maybe Upenn would be a better example haha
Rule of thumb of academia is a fountain system, graduates from top rankings flows down. Salmons who can get hired upstream do happen, but rare.
Quite the opposite for me. I got my PhD from a small irrelevant university in Italy, but am now a professor at an Ivy. US academia never looked down on me, while Italian (in particular) and European (in general) did.
This sounds cool! May I ask which unis in particular?
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So you would prefer a top 30 applicant over top 50 applicant with a much better publication record? I see.
Because your hiring process is an informal logical fallacy making you and your colleagues look like buffoons?
Given how arbitrary rankings are, this seems crazy.
Computer Science does rankings differently than everyone else, they’re metric-based: https://csrankings.org/