The Philosophers' Cocoon

No kidding. But seriously,  a new study apparently demonstrates it:

Aaron Clauset, Sam Arbesmann and Daniel Larremore have a new article in Science Advances crunching the data on academic career paths in computer science, business and history. Their main findings are twofold. First, academics’ career success largely depends on the prestige of the department where they did their PhD. Second, the system is so skewed in favor of academics who came from prestigious departments that it’s really hard to explain this by just saying that they are better than people who went to less prestigious departments. The evidence suggests “a specific and significant preference for hiring faculty with prestigious doctorates” even aside from differences in their productivity (which are also more skewed than one would expect if the differences were based on merit alone). The system is also significantly skewed against women in both computer science and business, although there’s no evidence that they’re discriminated against in history.