In a recent post Cosma Shalizi pondered the possibility of making a friendster-like network for scientists entering the work market: phdmeatmarket.com. I am wholly for this, and would be appreciative if it were available before my bid for an academic career.
I only wish that there were one for students pitching themselves to universities—that would be quite helpful. Profiles could consist of academic records, professional memberships, honor societies and GRE scores. Most of the relations would be the same, with the addition of the “recommended-by” relation.
Hmm... gsameatmarket.com? (gsa = Graduate School Applicant)
Posted by John at January 25, 2004 09:43 PMMost Ph.D.s possess a nice trackable quantitative feature that most grad student applicants lack: published papers with bibliographies. PhDMeatmarket.com is feasible because the network of citations is pretty much machine-readable.
That said... who knows? Nobody's keeping undergrads from establishing some equivalent class of artifact. I've often thought that grades (the proverbial "permanent record") ought to be publicized, objectively normalized for the grade-giving behavior of the professors, of course, and taking into account student ratings of faculty....
Posted by: Bill Tozier at January 26, 2004 02:12 PMBill Tozier,
Some, though not many, of us do have published papers with bibliographies and would like them featured. There are important quality-control issues to be taken care of, even so.
I agree about the grades needing to be normalized (contra grade inflation). I suspect profs wouldn't be too happy about it and the academic institutions might balk at their market-space being invaded. Of course, they could be incorporated in some appeasing way.
Do you know of anyone who might be interested in the undergrad equivalent of PhDMeatmarket.com?
Regards