A little rant
Rants can be elevated to an art form. There are times when all these thoughts just bubble up inside you and you just want to talk at someone without being interrupted. Interruptions, and corrections can be especially annoying during these times. So what better way to purge yourself than to type them out?
This one is going to be about recommendation letters as it pertains to the world I know, academia.
There was a time when all of academia was a very small circle, mostly old white men who knew each other. When apprentices (PhD scholars) would go to work in someone’s group, a letter of recommendation from a well known, respectable person who was well acquainted with the candidate would certainly have been of value. Was the system entirely fair even then? No. It placed a disproportionate amount of power in the hands of the senior person, who was already wielding a lot of power. But currently, the system makes even less sense. I will elaborate.
Verbal referrals go around in small circles, much like gossip. A good word, even informally shared, can positively bias a superior’s attitude. Negative impressions when shared can be particularly harmful if it negatively biases people. When the ones in positions of power gossip about those who are not, it is a form of gatekeeping because this is no longer just idle chitchat, it can influence someone else who wields actual power. Of course in reality it is far more complex and not entirely black and white. There are times when sharing information is harmless and even beneficial to everyone involved. Most importantly it is human nature that cannot be changed. Mandatory recommendation letters though, are a completely different thing.
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I will speak now from the perspective of an immigrant academic from a moderately known group applying for a PhD to another group in a foreign country. Academia is no longer a small circle where everyone knows everyone else, even in people working on similar areas. It is especially difficult to know an applicant from a different country, developing and somewhat more disadvantaged than your own. The power hierarchy that already exists between students and supervisors is now intensified, it is a multi level hierarchy where your supervisor is pitted against others based on their fame, affiliations, publications and even nationality. In this already unfair system now comes recommendation letters. This dream lab in a foreign country that is completely oblivious to your existence now has to blindly recruit a PhD scholar (or in any other position). A PhD application particularly, because at this stage you are just starting out and do not have a whole lot of achievements of your own to show. Here comes recommendation letters that can totally tip the balance for or against you.
When sifting through applications, committees probably look for things that make them stand out. Applicants have been trying to stand out in all different ways, making them cliches in themselves. There has to be a point of saturation in all this. With diversity and inclusion in mind, your application may stand a chance to be picked up, although Indian applicants are hardly a rarity. A known school name certainly helps as well. But in a tie breaker between three different letters from random scientists, the least generic probably ultimately stands out. Perhaps a top school with heaps of applications know that above a cut off, any random pool of applicants would shine if given a chance. With whatever conscience they have, they try to make the most fair decision possible.
Now what about the people who are drafting these letters? In a university setting, lots of students are coming up and asking for them. Professors are probably hounded by requests everyday, besides all their other responsibilities. Unless they know each candidate intimately, it is impossible to write a detailed and very specific letter, particularly for people they have only taught in class or worked with for a couple of months. It should be enough, but it isn’t, because of the volume of such requests. They can either choose to refuse, so that they can write excellent letters for a small group of students or generic letters for everyone who approaches them. Some even ask the students themselves to come up with a draft, an especially hard thing to do.
But as a student, I sympathize most with the student’s position and also because in all this, it is their career on the line. If, for unfortunate reasons, the person recommending them holds a grudge, they have the power to ruin their chances. If they make the wrong choice to work with someone who refuses to back them, they have not just wasted time and spent longer in the underpaid workforce but have made it harder for themselves to apply to the next place. A reference letter in this situation can be a major bottleneck, and I know because I have been in similar situations. It can be demotivating enough to make you want to quit forever, there is no going forward without the backing of your superiors. A lot of people in India work in laboratories after their Master’s to gain research experience but also to have a source of recommendation letters to help them bag their dream PhD position. While some of these internships are paid, many are not and many are even predatory in that they take money from students in return for the experience. (I once spoke to a lab for a summer internship in my undergrad that asked for 3000 rupees to have us wash dishes and just watch what they do). In a world where the average age of academics getting permanent positions is pushed further back every decade, the average age of PhDs starting out is also pushed back against their will because of this system.
The counter to all this could be that in a world without recommendation letters, how would you resolve a tie between two applications? You will go for the next best thing. Even without recommendation letters, someone with a publication (that came out of working in a lab) would probably be preferred. The more competition there is, the more the need to stand out in the crowd. Recommendation letters probably make it easy for the admissions committee because it is a nod of approval from someone like them, but isn’t this tipping the balance of power further away from students whose lives can be dictated by them? Sure it’s all good if it works out. But if it doesn’t, should one sour relationship (a disagreement or the word of a vengeful/unfair supervisor) force an otherwise motivated student out of science? Isn’t it about time that we dropped this system altogether, if we wanted to make it more equitable for us all? Wouldn’t it be harder to confer nepotistic advantages as well?
I know there might be things I am overlooking here. But as things stand, many things which are unfair and do not make sense have existed for over a century and it is only now that people are beginning to talk about them, the whole business of scientific publishing for instance. Maybe this too is one of those things, and it is not too radical really. It is just a reevaluation of power dynamics that can be harder to appreciate if you are on the other side, or have never been affected by it.
