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Abstract

Although there is an extensive literature on intergenerational mobility in education, including the completion of PhD degrees, far less is known about the transition into academic faculty positions. Here, the authors use administrative microdata following entire birth cohorts born from 1955 to 1985 in Norway, an egalitarian welfare state, to investigate the social origins of academic faculty. Despite publicly funded higher education and competitive wages for PhD positions, arguably removing many barriers to entry, the present findings reveal persistent disparities in the likelihood of becoming a faculty member. Differences in earlier stages of the educational career largely account for these disparities, indicating that disadvantaged family background does not appear to constitute an additional barrier to becoming a faculty member when comparing individuals with PhD degrees. However, more advantageous social origins influence the likelihood of employment at more prestigious institutions and higher earnings among faculty members, indicating that socioeconomic origins impact academic careers beyond their effects on entering academia. Overall, these findings show that within an egalitarian context designed to promote equality of opportunity, social origins continue to shape access and progression within academia.

Keywords

academia faculty intergenerational mobility social origin PhD

Academic faculty members occupy a key position in the knowledge economy, shaping societal development and informing policy decisions (Morgan et al. 2022). In many high-income countries, more than half of young adults today complete higher education, reflecting both structural shifts in educational systems and labor markets that increasingly demand academic skills and advanced educational qualifications (Autor, Katz, and Kearney 2008; Goldin and Katz 2009; OECD 2023). Academic faculty not only train the next generation of professionals—such as journalists, politicians, and other knowledge workers—but also direct the research agendas that shape future scientific breakthroughs and inform policies aimed at tackling pressing societal and economic challenges (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 2000; Kerr 2001; Martin 2012; Morgan et al. 2022). Weber (1946), in describing science as a vocation in the early twentieth century, argued that success in academia requires a passion for research and a willingness to sacrifice time, money, and family life, all within a highly competitive setting where appointments are unpredictable because of chance. In this study, we raise the pressing question of whether aspiring scholars of different social origins compete on equal footing when climbing toward top positions in the ivory towers of academia.

Given the central role of universities in teaching, research, and addressing societal and economic challenges, fostering socioeconomic diversity among their academic faculty may both shape their impact and affect universities’ legitimacy in the broader public. Researchers’ backgrounds influence their areas of research and the success of their scientific agendas (Hofstra et al. 2020; Hoppe et al. 2019; Kozlowski et al. 2022; Page 2007). A lack of diversity can, therefore, stifle innovation and limit how effectively challenges are addressed. Furthermore, unequal career opportunities can lead to the potential loss of talented would-be researchers from less privileged backgrounds (Bell et al. 2018). Working-class students often feel like cultural outsiders within higher education (Bourdieu 1988; Bourdieu and Passeron 1977), and those pursuing academic careers report feelings of alienation (Haney 2015; Waterfield, Beagan, and Mohamed 2019). A diverse faculty can foster a more inclusive environment, reducing barriers for underrepresented groups and promoting their career advancement in academia. Additionally, insufficient diversity can reduce trust in science within socioeconomically disadvantaged populations (Fuglsang 2024).

Despite the importance of diversity in academia, knowledge of the socioeconomic composition of academic faculty remains limited, with only a handful of mostly recent studies addressing this issue (e.g., Abramitzky et al. 2024; Andersen 2001; Helin et al. 2019, 2023; Morgan et al. 2022; Stansbury and Rodriguez 2024), including a few studies focusing on Nobel laureates and other star scientists (Airoldi and Moser 2024; Novosad et al. 2024). Our study broadens the limited research by leveraging population-wide administrative microdata on university employees and the broader public to analyze the social origins of academic faculty members in Norway, an egalitarian welfare state with a tuition-free, publicly funded system of higher education, competitive wages for PhD researchers, and comparatively high rates of intergenerational mobility.

We make several contributions to the literature. First, socioeconomic inequality in the likelihood of becoming a faculty member is the culmination of a long process that begins with achievements in early education (Chmielewski 2019; Skopek and Passaretta 2021) and continues through track choice in upper secondary education (Alexander, Cook, and McDill 1978; Gamoran and Mare 1989; Van de Werfhorst and Mijs 2010), enrollment in higher education (Lucas 2001; Shavit, Arum, and Gamoran 2007), and typically obtaining a PhD degree (Bachsleitner et al. 2018; Mastekaasa 2006; Mullen, Goyette, and Soares 2003; Triventi 2013). A key question is to the extent to which the lack of socioeconomic diversity among academic faculty reflects processes occurring at earlier stages of an educational career or whether there is an additional barrier—a class ceiling (Friedman, Laurison, and Miles 2015)—between the completion of a PhD degree and entry into faculty positions for individuals from less privileged backgrounds (Helin et al. 2019; Morgan et al. 2022; Stansbury and Rodriguez 2024). Our study investigates post-PhD inequality in access to academic faculty positions in the egalitarian Norwegian welfare state and explores the degree to which such barriers vary across different fields of study.

Second, the landscape of academia has undergone substantial transformations over the past century (Compagnucci and Spigarelli 2020; Martin 2012), including shifts in the societal role of universities (Kerr 2001), professionalization of academic life (Jencks and Riesman 1969), and dramatic increases in student enrollment (Schofer and Meyer 2005; Trow 1972). This raises the critical question of whether these changes have altered the relationship between socioeconomic background and the likelihood of reaching a faculty position. Morgan et al. (2022) found a stable relationship between parental PhD attainment and the likelihood of children becoming university professors among U.S. cohorts born from the 1940s and onward. Likewise, Abramitzky et al. (2024) found that the socioeconomic composition of U.S. academics has stayed remarkably stable over seven decades. We extend these analyses by examining changes across a 20-year period for full birth cohorts born between 1945 and 1985 in Norway, employing more comprehensive measures of socioeconomic background.

Third, the existing literature predominantly focuses on parental education as the measure of socioeconomic diversity by family background (Helin et al. 2019; Morgan et al. 2022). Although parental education is central, socioeconomic background encompasses multiple dimensions (Bukodi and Goldthorpe 2013; Mood 2017; Thaning 2021), which each might uniquely influence the likelihood of becoming an academic faculty member. As cogently expressed by Jonsson et al. (2018), “It’s a decent bet that our children will be professors too.” Here, we study social origins through various indicators, including parental education, earnings, and faculty status.

Finally, we examine whether academic diversity varies across disciplines and universities by asking whether faculty members from less advantaged backgrounds sort into lower prestige fields and institutions. Previous research from the United States has shown that individuals from low socioeconomic backgrounds are particularly underrepresented in certain fields, such as the humanities, and in the most prestigious universities (Abramitzky et al. 2024). Furthermore, looking at PhD holders, Stansbury and Rodriguez (2024) showed that there is a class gap in career progression, finding that first-generation college graduates in the United States are less likely to be tenured at prestigious institutions than their fellow PhD students from more advantaged backgrounds. Using population-wide data, we provide a detailed analysis of academic diversity by discipline and university type in a more egalitarian welfare state.

Throughout this work, we pursue two interrelated research questions. First, how uneven is recruitment to academic positions on the basis of social origins? Second, how diverse is the socioeconomic composition of academic faculty members? These research questions are interconnected yet distinct. If recruitment were entirely equitable, faculty composition by socioeconomic background should mirror the overall population, but unequal access could still exist even in a case where professors with highly educated parents make up only a small share of all faculty members. For instance, while individuals with PhD-educated parents are significantly more likely to obtain academic positions in the United States (Morgan et al. 2022), this group constitutes only about 1 percent of the population, limiting their absolute representation among faculty members. Studying the absolute levels of diversity in faculty positions is important in its own right, as it describes the socioeconomic diversity that is observed by the broader public. However, comparing the relative chances of access to academic faculty positions by socioeconomic origins, before and after taking individuals’ own educational degrees into account, provides an indicator of the fairness in academic career opportunities and the extent of potentially lost talents.

Background

A long-standing body of comparative research on intergenerational mobility has consistently demonstrated substantial reproduction of educational attainment between parents and children across institutionally diverse contexts (e.g., Breen et al. 2009; Duncan, Boisjoly, and Harris 2001; Grätz et al. 2021). More recently, scholars have increasingly focused on the transition to PhD programs (e.g., Bachsleitner et al. 2018; Mastekaasa 2006; Mullen et al. 2003; Posselt and Grodsky 2017; Triventi 2013), although findings are mixed. For instance, using nationally representative U.S. data, Mullen et al. (2003) reported a strong link between parental education and entry into PhD programs. Likewise, Mastekaasa (2006) found that students from more privileged class backgrounds, particularly those with PhD-educated parents, were more likely to transition from a master’s degree to a PhD in Norway. In Germany, Bachsleitner et al. (2018) similarly showed that graduates with highly educated parents are more likely to pursue a PhD. By contrast, Triventi (2013), in a comparative study of students in 11 European countries, found little evidence that parental education significantly affects enrollment in PhD programs.¹

Quantitative research on the socioeconomic diversity of academic faculty and the role of social origins in the PhD-to-faculty transition remains more limited (Abramitzky et al. 2024; Airoldi and Moser 2024; Andersen 2001; Bukodi, Goldthorpe, and Steinberg 2022, 2023; Helin et al. 2019, 2023; Hurst et al. 2023; Morgan et al. 2022; Novosad et al. 2024; Roscigno et al. 2023; Stansbury and Rodriguez 2024). Early evidence from a survey of 788 Danish researchers revealed a substantial overrepresentation of individuals from advantaged social class positions (Andersen 2001). More recent Finnish register-based studies show that the professoriate is highly selective in terms of parental background, with increasing selectivity both in the completion of PhD degrees and the transition into professorships (Helin et al. 2019, 2023). In the United States, about half of all faculty members come from the top 20 percent of the parental socioeconomic rank distribution (Abramitzky et al. 2024). Survey data from the United States indicate that faculty members are nearly 25 times more likely to have parents with a PhD compared with the general population, and that professors are even more socioeconomically selective than PhD holders, suggesting additional barriers in the transition from doctoral training to faculty positions (Morgan et al. 2022).

Socioeconomic disparities in academic trajectories and access to faculty positions are shaped by cumulative processes that begin early in life and unfold throughout different stages of schooling (Chmielewski 2019; Skopek and Passaretta 2021). Family background influences both achievement and educational decisions, often referred to as primary and secondary effects (Boudon 1974). Beyond inherited cognitive skills (Engzell and Tropf 2019), social origins can matter in various ways. For example, privileged parents often deliberately cultivate their children for academic success through structured activities (Lareau 2011), higher investment in developmental childcare activities (Altintas 2016), and effective engagement with schools to advocate for their children and teach them how to navigate and seek help in school settings (Calarco 2018; Lareau and Horvat 1999). Economically advantaged parents also have the means to invest in their children’s education through educational materials and tutoring (Duncan, Magnuson, and Votruba-Drzal 2017) and, indirectly, invest by securing housing in safe neighborhoods with better schools (Owens 2016). Conversely, economic pressures in lower-income families can negatively affect children’s development through adverse effects on parental distress and the family environment (Conger, Conger, and Martin 2010). Social origins also shape educational attainment through perceived costs and benefits of advancing beyond the educational levels of their parents and peers, as well as the choice of curricular tracks, fields of study, and institutions (Breen and Goldthorpe 1997; Lucas 2001; Raftery and Hout 1993).

Stratification research typically finds that the influence of social origins is most pronounced during early educational transitions (Jackson 2013; Mare 1980; Shavit and Blossfeld 1993). However, the influence of social origins continues through track choice in upper secondary education (Alexander et al. 1978; Gamoran and Mare 1989; Van de Werfhorst and Mijs 2010), extends to enrollment in higher education (Lucas 2001; Shavit et al. 2007), and ultimately influences the completion of PhD degrees (Bachsleitner et al. 2018; Mastekaasa 2006; Mullen et al. 2003; Triventi 2013). Taken together, these processes position individuals from advantaged backgrounds more favorably for becoming faculty members.

A college degree is often considered the “great equalizer,” as high-skill labor markets are usually seen as more meritocratic, where the role of family background is more muted (Breen and Jonsson 2007; Hout 1988; Torche 2011). This pattern is also evident among doctoral degree holders in the United States (Torche 2018). However, social origin can continue to shape inequality in career progression even after obtaining a doctoral degree, including influencing the transition from PhD to faculty positions (Helin et al. 2019; Morgan et al. 2022; Stansbury and Rodriguez 2024). This persistence may reflect different opportunities when navigating the academic job market. For example, gatekeepers in elite workplaces may favor culturally familiar applicants from privileged backgrounds (Rivera 2012; Rivera and Tilcsik 2016). Moreover, individuals from advantaged families often possess the knowledge and resources to navigate doctoral careers effectively, such as building beneficial peer networks and gaining access to academic mentors (Torche 2018), which can further enhance their positioning in the academic job market.

Additionally, precarious employment conditions frequently define the early stages of academic careers. Early-career academics often face considerable uncertainty before achieving tenure, contending with fixed-term contracts, high workloads, and intense performance pressure in fierce competition with peers (Ortlieb and Weiss 2018; Stringer et al. 2018). Such challenging circumstances often lead many aspiring researchers to abandon academia before securing tenure (Dorenkamp and Weiß 2018; Langenberg 2001). In this context, financial safety nets, social backing, and emotional support from family can be crucial for weathering these uncertainties and continuing through the academic pipeline.

Study Setting, Data, and Methods

The Context of Norwegian Academia

Our study focuses on the Norwegian case, in which higher education and academic institutions have traditionally been characterized by a two-tiered system. This system includes traditional research-oriented universities and specialized university colleges on the one side and teaching-oriented university colleges primarily focused on professional programs (e.g., nursing and teaching) on the other. Over the past two decades, reforms have transformed many university colleges into universities, either through applications for university status or through mergers (Frølich and Stensaker 2021; Kyvik 2004). Although the oldest and largest universities are typically regarded as the most prestigious (i.e., the universities in Oslo [University of Oslo], Bergen [University of Bergen], Trondheim [Norwegian University of Science and Technology], and Tromsø [Arctic University of Norway]), several specialized university colleges hold significant prestige within their fields (e.g., the Norwegian School of Economics and the Oslo School of Architecture and Design). All public higher education institutions in Norway receive funding primarily through governmental block grants, and many private institutions also receive public funding (Reymert 2021).

Norwegian academia features two distinct career paths leading to permanent research-oriented or teaching-oriented positions. This research focuses specifically on the two research-oriented faculty positions, associate professor (“førsteamanuensis”) and professor. Appointment to professorships does not require a PhD in Norway, and a considerable number of professors, particularly those above the age of 60 years, have not completed a PhD. As shown in the “Results” section, 86 percent of individuals in faculty positions hold PhDs. Currently, most PhD candidates are employed as temporary academic staff in three to four-year positions that offer competitive entry-level salaries relative to other master’s degree holders in the public sector. Following completion of their PhD, candidates aiming for academic careers typically secure temporary postdoctoral positions for two to four years or work in applied research institutes, although a few disciplines have established the use of tenure-track positions (Korseberg and Hovdhaugen 2024).

The appointment processes to faculty positions (i.e., associate professor and full professor) are strictly regulated by the institutions and the Ministry of Education and Research (Frølich et al. 2018). Positions are publicly advertised, and a committee is appointed to assess candidates’ qualifications and personal suitability for the position. The committee ranks all qualified applicants, after which candidates are further assessed for suitability by, e.g., interviews and trial lectures, which can lead to a re-ranking of candidates. Reymert (2021) further described the recruitment and ranking process in Norwegian academia. Associate professors are entitled to apply for promotion to full professor on the basis of their demonstrated competence (Frølich et al. 2018). This can occur in two ways. First, by applying for an advertised professor position, where the hiring committee evaluates the candidate’s qualification, regardless of whether they are ultimately offered the position; second, by seeking internal promotion from their current position as associate professor.

Importantly, Norway is characterized by comparatively low levels of income inequality and high rates of intergenerational social mobility in an international perspective (OECD 2015, 2018). These features reflect the country’s long-standing commitment to universal welfare policies, progressive taxation, and equal access to publicly funded education at all levels (Barth, Moene, and Willumsen 2014; Esping-Andersen 1999). In principle, such institutional arrangements should weaken the link between family background and educational or occupational attainment, making the academic career ladder more accessible to talented individuals from all social origins. The Norwegian case thus provides a particularly stringent test of whether socioeconomic inequalities in access to faculty positions persist even under conditions designed to promote equality of opportunity.

Data and Measures

We use population-wide microdata from Norwegian administrative registers that cover all native-born cohorts born across three decades (1955–1985) who are registered as residents at least once between 2015 and 2023. Population registers are matched to linked employer-employee data that cover all formal employment relations in the entire Norwegian labor market in the relevant years. Using unique person and employer identifiers, we can then link parents to children and match annual information on occupational titles, educational degrees, labor market earnings, and other demographic characteristics (birth cohort, gender, and immigrant background) in both generations. This information is matched from several data sources, including the Central Population Records, the Norwegian Educational Database, and the Norwegian Tax Administration. For our purposes, we restrict our focus to individuals born in Norway with either Norwegian-born or foreign-born parents, as information on social origin is not available for foreign-born individuals. (Appendix C provides a brief description of the immigrant composition of Norwegian academia.) This yields an analytic sample of 1,718,112 individuals.

An individual is counted as a faculty member if they hold a faculty position at any time during the observation period (2015–2023).² To identify academic faculty positions (i.e., associate professors and full professors), we use highly detailed six-digit occupational codes in Norway’s Standard Classification of Occupations, which is the Norwegian implementation of the internationally comparable International Standard Classification of Occupations. Given the similarity in background characteristics between associate professors and professors (Table A1 in the Appendix)—except for gender differences in that 53 percent of associate professors are women, compared with 37 percent among professors (Appendix B)³—we aggregate these roles into a single category of faculty members. This gives us a total of 9,695 nonimmigrant faculty members in our dataset. For faculty members, we retain the last recorded observation of their faculty position within the study time frame, while for the non–faculty members, we retain the last observation indicating residence in Norway.

Our data only includes information about academic positions in Norway, meaning that individuals holding academic positions outside of Norway are incorrectly registered as not having academic positions. We restrict our sample to individuals born in Norway and who are registered as residents at least once between 2015 and 2023. Among PhD holders in this sample, only about 1 percent are registered abroad each year; however, this share is higher among children of PhD-educated parents (1.5 percent) than among those of parents with compulsory education (0.7 percent) (Figure A10). Although we cannot observe whether these have academic positions abroad, it is possible that we slightly underestimate the differences between socioeconomic groups.

We use three measures of parental background. First, parental education is measured as the highest educational attainment of either parent, categorized into compulsory education, upper secondary education, bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and doctoral degree.⁴ Second, parental earnings are measured as the percentile rank of parents’ average pretax earnings. This is calculated as the average of both parents’ annual income from wages, self-employment, and fixed-term work-related transfers, which we then averaged across the years when the child was between 16 and 20 years of age. We rank parental earnings by percentile within each birth cohort of the children. Finally, parental faculty status is defined as having at least one parent who held a position as an associate or full professor in the period from 2015 to 2023.

Individuals’ educational attainment is based on information on the highest obtained level and field of education, as classified by the Norwegian version of the International Standard Classification of Education. We measure education in the same year as faculty position is measured and categorize attainment into five levels: compulsory education, upper secondary education, bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and doctoral degree. Statistics Norway collects information about educational degrees obtained abroad, including doctoral degrees, from different sources; however, there might be some foreign PhDs that remain unrecorded. Individuals’ earnings are recorded in the same year as faculty position is measured, calculated as the pretax sum of incomes from wages and fixed-term work-related transfers, adjusted to 2022 wage levels using the Consumer Price Index.

To capture horizontal differences within faculty positions, we focus on discipline and institutional prestige. Discipline is measured by the field of study corresponding to the highest completed degree, which for faculty members predominantly consists of PhD education. Institutional prestige is calculated by taking the average earnings among faculty members in each institution across the years 2015 to 2023, and then the institutions are ranked by average earnings. We then created a binary variable indicating the top 25 percent of institutions with the highest average faculty earnings.

Methods

Our aim is to describe the absolute diversity of faculty members and examine the relative likelihood of becoming a faculty member by characteristics of social origin. To assess absolute diversity, we calculate the socioeconomic background characteristics of faculty members and compare the composition to that of all PhD holders and the general population, where faculty members represent 42 percent and 0.6 percent of each group, respectively.

To investigate the relative likelihood of attaining faculty positions, we estimate the relative risk ratio of being a professor using a generalized linear model for the binomial family with a log link (McCullagh and Nelder 1989). Separate models are carried out for the different measures of social origin. The baseline models adjust for the year of birth (dummies), while the adjusted models further add controls for individuals’ educational levels (dummies). These adjusted models aim to decompose the inequality in faculty attainment into differences arising from earlier educational transitions and those occurring in the transition from a completed PhD degree into faculty positions. Although these analyses strive to compare like with like, the results should be viewed as descriptive.

To isolate causal mechanisms within the academic job market, we would ideally want to compare doctoral degree holders who are identical in all ways except for their social origins. However, it is important to keep in mind that individuals from less advantaged backgrounds who pursue academic careers may be more positively selected on academic talent, motivation, and perseverance than their peers of more privileged origins because of stronger selection for continuation in earlier educational transitions. This selection bias complicates the literature on how social origins influence the transitions leading to entry into academic faculty positions, as these attributes are often unobserved or difficult to measure (Elwert and Winship 2014; Mare 2011). Naïve comparisons of doctoral degree holders from varying social origins may, consequently, conflate causal mechanisms, such as discriminatory practices, with selection effects. Although causal mechanisms suggest that PhD holders from higher social origins are more likely to secure faculty positions, selection effects may work in the opposite direction, leading to an underestimation of the barriers facing members of disadvantaged groups.

Results

We present the results in four steps. First, we document the absolute levels of socioeconomic diversity among academic faculty by comparing their social origins to those of the general population and PhD holders. Second, we examine the relative likelihood of obtaining a faculty position by parental education and income, including changes across cohorts. We also assess the role of having parents who themselves are academic faculty. Third, we analyze horizontal inequalities by assessing how the social origins of faculty vary across academic fields. Fourth, we explore whether faculty members from more advantaged backgrounds earn higher wages and are more likely to be employed at prestigious institutions.

Socioeconomic Diversity of Academic Faculty Members

Our analysis begins by describing the absolute diversity of faculty members. Table 1 presents a comparison of the background characteristics of academic faculty relative to both the general population and individuals with a PhD. To further illustrate this, Figure 1 visualizes the distribution of parental education and earnings across these three groups.

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics by Population.

	Full Population	PhD	Faculty Member
Faculty member	.56%	42.29%	100%
Parental education
Compulsory education	55.70%	19.80%	22.85%
Upper secondary education	19.72%	14.44%	14.19%
Bachelor’s degree	17.52%	31.43%	31.15%
Master’s degree	6.54%	29.27%	27.19%
PhD	.51%	5.07%	4.62%
Parental earnings
Bottom 10%	9.31%	3.73%	4.19%
10%–24%	14.93%	6.89%	6.64%
25%–49%	25.28%	14.25%	15.10%
50%–74%	25.36%	23.50%	24.25%
Top 10%	15.19%	25.15%	24.64%
Parents are faculty members	.48%	4.30%	4.40%
Women	49.25%	46.16%	45.81%
Immigrant background
Children of native-born parents	94.73%	91.77%	92.26%
Children of immigrants	5.27%	8.23%	7.74%
Year of birth	1969.6	1970.7	1968.9
Age	1969.6	1970.7	1968.9
Education
Compulsory education	23.49%		.30%
Upper secondary education	35.48%		.55%
Bachelor’s degree	28.62%		3.40%
Master’s degree	11.26%		9.47%
PhD	1.15%		86.28%

Note: The number of observations is 1,718,112 for all variables except for parents are faculty members, which is observed only for individuals born between 1970 and 1985 (n = 848,819).

Figure 1.

Parental education and earnings composition among faculty members compared with PhD holders and the full population: (a) parental education and (b) parental earnings.

Figure 1A reveals two key takeaways concerning parental education. First, nearly 40 percent of professors come from families where neither parent attained higher education, indicating that a sizable proportion of professors are first-generation academics. In fact, one in five professors has parents whose highest level of education is compulsory schooling, suggesting that Norwegian academia does exhibit considerable diversity in terms of parental education. Second, and despite this, there are large disparities in the likelihood of becoming a faculty member on the basis of parental education. Although about 60 percent of faculty members have parents with higher education, only 20 percent of the general population shares this background. Notably, although fewer than 0.5 percent of the general population have PhD-educated parents, approximately 4 percent of faculty members do. In fact, those with PhD-educated parents are 28 times more likely to become faculty members compared with individuals whose parents have only compulsory schooling (discussed in more detail below).

Turning to parental income, Figure 1B shows that academic faculty members predominantly come from more economically advantaged backgrounds. Approximately half of the academic faculty grew up in families within the top 25 percent of the parental earnings distribution, while only 10 percent came from families in the bottom 25 percent. Individuals with parents in the top 10 percent of the earnings distribution are about 6 times more likely to become faculty members compared with those in the bottom 10 percent. However, the distribution of faculty members by parental earnings is more similar to that of the overall population than what we observe for parental education.

Moreover, the likelihood of becoming a faculty member is highest among those whose parents both have high education and high earnings. Figure 2 shows that the percentage of academic faculty is particularly high among individuals whose parents hold PhDs and are in the top 10 percent of earners. This pattern suggests that a combination of cultural and economic resources significantly increases the likelihood of becoming a faculty member.

Figure 2.

Percentage holding faculty positions by parental education and earnings.

We next examine whether the absolute diversity of faculty members has shifted over time, given the significant transformation of the role of academia and the substantial expansion of higher education in recent decades. Figure 3 illustrates changes in the proportion of faculty members with highly educated (Figure 3A) and high-income (Figure 3B) parents, compared with the general population, across cohorts born 30 years apart.⁵ The results suggest that the socioeconomic selectivity of academic faculty has remained persistent. Although approximately 10 percent of all Norwegians born in 1955 had higher educated parents, this figure increased to 40 percent for those born in the mid-1980s. Among faculty members, this rise is similar in absolute terms, growing from about 45 percent to 80 percent over the same period. Similarly, the proportion of faculty members with parents in the top 25 percent of earners has remained relatively stable, although slightly declining, with about 50% in the top parental earnings quartile across all cohorts.

Figure 3.

Changes across birth cohorts in the percentage of faculty members with higher-educated and high-income parents: (a) parental education and (b) parental earnings.

Finally, we address the importance of having parents who themselves are academic faculty members for the absolute diversity of faculty members. As shown in Table 1, less than 0.5 percent of the general population has at least one parent who is a faculty member. Nevertheless, more than 4 percent of current faculty members have parents who themselves are professors. Individuals with faculty parents are nearly 11 times more likely to become faculty members than those without faculty parents.

Equality of Access to Faculty Positions

We now turn to examining the relative likelihood of becoming a faculty member on the basis of socioeconomic background characteristics. Figure 4 presents the relative risk of obtaining a faculty position by parental education and earnings, showing the risk ratio before (baseline models, blue estimates) and after adjusting for individuals’ own educational level (orange estimates). In the baseline models, the estimates align with the patterns we observed in Figure 1, where we compared the parental educational background of the general population, PhD holders, and faculty members. Individuals with parents holding a master’s degree are 12 times more likely to become faculty members compared with those with compulsory-educated parents, while those with PhD-educated parents have a 28-fold increase in this likelihood. In absolute terms, those with PhD-educated parents are 5.8 percentage points more likely to become faculty members than those with compulsory-educated parents (i.e., 5.999 percent vs. 0.217 percent).

Figure 4.

Relative risk of becoming an academic faculty member by parental education and earnings: (a) parental education and (b) parental earnings.

A similar pattern emerges when comparing the relative risk associated with parental earnings across the three groups. Compared with parental education, there is less disparity in the likelihood of becoming a faculty member by parental earnings, as indicated by the smaller differences between individuals with parents at the top and bottom of the earnings distribution. For instance, although those with parents holding a master’s degree are 12 times more likely to become faculty members than those with parents who only completed compulsory education, individuals with parents in the top 10 percent of the earnings distribution are about 6 times more likely to become faculty members compared with those in the bottom 10 percent (Table A2).⁶

The baseline models show that having parents with higher education and, to a lesser extent, having high-income parents increases the likelihood of becoming academic faculty. However, individuals from advantaged social origins are also much more likely to complete advanced educational degrees. For instance, the likelihood of obtaining a PhD is 30 times higher for those with PhD-educated parents compared with those whose parents have only compulsory education (Figure 5). This raises the question of the extent to which differential selection into faculty positions is driven by inequalities arising at earlier educational transitions, or whether PhD-educated individuals from less advantaged origins face additional barriers in securing access to faculty positions. To investigate this, we adjust for individuals’ own education level in Figure 4 (orange estimates).

Figure 5.

Relative risk of obtaining a PhD degree by parental education and earnings: (a) parental education and (b) parental earnings.

In Figure 4A, the results indicate that differences in individuals’ own educational attainment fully explain the differential sorting into faculty positions by parental education. For example, although those with PhD-educated parents are initially 28 times more likely to obtain faculty positions compared with those with compulsory-educated parents, this difference becomes statistically insignificant and is very close to 1 (i.e., no difference) once we adjust for individuals’ own educational attainment.

The negligible role of parental education after adjustment for individuals’ own education is largely driven by the lack of parental education differences among PhD holders. In supplementary analyses, we have estimated the relative risk ratio among individuals who pass certain educational thresholds (Figure A9). For example, among individuals who have completed a bachelor’s degree or higher, those with PhD-educated parents still have nearly a 10 times higher probability of becoming a faculty member than compulsory-educated parents. A small difference also remains when looking at master’s degree holders, but it disappears once we compare PhD-educated individuals with different parental backgrounds.

For parental earnings, Figure 4B shows that the advantages of individuals from higher-income parents in securing access to faculty positions are entirely explained by adjusting for their own education. In fact, after controlling for individuals’ own education, individuals from higher-income parents are about 10 percent less likely to become faculty members compared with those from lower-income families.

We also examine whether the relative risk of becoming a faculty member by parental education and earnings changes across cohorts (Table 2). The results align with the patterns observed for absolute diversity. Although there is a modest reduction in the relative risk ratio for those at the top of the education and earnings distribution across cohorts, the changes are generally small. Furthermore, when adjusting for individuals’ own education, differences across cohorts become negligible.

Table 2.

Changes across Cohorts in the Relative Risk of Becoming an Academic Faculty Member.

	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 4	Model 5	Model 6
	1955–1964	1965–1974	1975–1985	1955–1964	1965–1974	1975–1985
Parental education
Compulsory education	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00
Compulsory education	(.00)	(.00)	(.00)	(.00)	(.00)	(.00)
Upper secondary education	2.31***	2.04***	1.60***	.99	.97	.86**
Upper secondary education	(.05)	(.06)	(.07)	(.04)	(.04)	(.06)
Bachelor’s degree	5.37***	5.07***	4.54***	1.03	1.03	.98
Bachelor’s degree	(.05)	(.05)	(.06)	(.03)	(.04)	(.05)
Master’s degree	12.63***	10.97***	10.78***	1.02	.92**	.96
Master’s degree	(.05)	(.05)	(.06)	(.03)	(.04)	(.05)
PhD	28.43***	27.40***	24.80***	1.13	1.06	.97
PhD	(.11)	(.08)	(.09)	(.08)	(.06)	(.07)
Parental earnings
Bottom 10%	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00
Bottom 10%	(.00)	(.00)	(.00)	(.00)	(.00)	(.00)
10%–24%	.99	.98	1.01	.92	.88	.82**
10%–24%	(.11)	(.10)	(.12)	(.08)	(.08)	(.10)
25%–49%	1.32***	1.34***	1.34***	.97	.97	.92
25%–49%	(.10)	(.09)	(.11)	(.07)	(.07)	(.09)
50%–74%	2.02***	2.09***	2.32***	.99	.95	.94
50%–74%	(.09)	(.09)	(.10)	(.07)	(.06)	(.08)
50%–89%	3.59***	3.71***	3.56***	1.00	.93	.88
50%–89%	(.09)	(.09)	(.10)	(.07)	(.06)	(.08)
Top 10%	6.47***	5.25***	5.30***	.96	.85**	.88
Top 10%	(.09)	(.09)	(.10)	(.06)	(.07)	(.08)
Year of birth	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Own education	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
n	559,378	608,805	549,929	559,378	608,805	549,929

Note: Values in parentheses are standard errors. Separate analyses are presented for parental education and parental earnings. Baseline models adjust for year of birth (models 1–3), while the adjusted models further add controls for individuals’ educational levels (models 4–6).

p < .05. ***p < .01.

Finally, we address whether the relative risk of becoming a faculty member differs by whether an individual’s parent is also a faculty member (Table 3). The baseline relative risk ratio is 11, indicating that individuals with faculty member parents are 11 times more likely to become faculty members themselves compared with those whose parents are not faculty members. After adjusting for individuals’ own educational attainment, this risk ratio drops to 1.2. In other words, even after controlling for educational level, individuals with academic parents still have an approximately 20 percent higher likelihood of obtaining faculty positions than their peers with PhD degrees.

Table 3.

Relative Risk of Becoming an Academic Faculty by Whether Parents Hold Faculty Positions.

	Model 1	Model 2
Parents are faculty members	10.60***	1.18***
Parents are faculty members	(.07)	(.06)
Year of birth	Yes	Yes
Own education	No	Yes
n	848,819	848,819

Note: Values in parentheses are standard errors. The baseline model adjusts for year of birth (model 1), while the adjusted model further adds controls for individuals’ educational levels (model 2).

***

p < .01.

Horizontal Differences across Academic Fields

While previous sections have documented overall disparities in access to faculty positions by social origin, these patterns may vary across academic fields. Differences in disciplinary cultures, career pathways, and labor market dynamics may shape the degree of socioeconomic selectivity. We therefore examine how the parental background of faculty members differs across academic fields.

Figure 6 shows the composition of various fields by parental education (Figure 6A) and earnings (Figure 6B). Although the parental earnings among academic faculty members show relative consistency across fields, disparities by parental education are substantial. Approximately 70 percent of academics in fields such as humanities and arts, law, and medicine have parents who possess a higher education degree, compared with 55 percent in business and administration. Notably, within the humanities and arts, individuals with higher-educated parents are approximately 50 percent more likely to obtain academic positions than those whose parents have only compulsory education, even after controlling for their own education (Figure 7).⁷

Figure 6.

Parental education and earnings composition of different fields: (a) parental education and (b) parental earnings.

Figure 7.

Relative risk of becoming a faculty member by parental education in selected fields.

Differences in Institutional Prestige and Earnings by Social Origin

Beyond access to faculty positions, social origin may also influence outcomes within academia, such as the prestige of the employing institution and the earnings of faculty members. Figure 8 illustrates that among faculty members, individuals with parents who have higher education or earnings are more likely to work at more prestigious institutions. For example, those with PhD-educated parents are twice as likely to hold faculty positions at a prestigious university compared with their professor peers with parents who only completed compulsory education.

Figure 8.

Relative risk of having an academic position in the top 25 percent of institutions among academic faculty members by parental education and earnings: (a) parental education and (b) parental earnings.

Figure 9 illustrates the differences in earnings among faculty members by parental education and parental earnings, before and after controlling for individuals’ own educational qualifications, field of study, and institutional sorting. Figure 9A shows that faculty members with higher-educated parents tend to earn more than those whose parents have lower levels of education. Specifically, faculty members with PhD-educated parents earn almost 20 percent more annually than those whose parents have only compulsory education—a substantial earnings gap. This disparity is somewhat attenuated after accounting for faculty members’ own qualifications and is further diminished, becoming borderline statistically significant at the 5 percent level, when adjusting for the distribution of faculty across institutions.

Figure 9.

Earnings differences among faculty members by parental education and earnings: (a) parental education and (b) parental earnings.

In Figure 9B, the effect of parental earnings is less pronounced but still shows a modest earnings advantage for faculty members from the most economically privileged backgrounds. However, this association does not reach statistical significance at conventional levels, neither in the baseline model nor after adjustments for own education and institutional sorting.

Discussion

Socioeconomic diversity among academic faculty members shapes universities’ impact and affects their legitimacy in the broader public. A lack of diversity can stifle innovation and erode trust in science, while unequal career opportunities risk losing talented researchers from less privileged backgrounds. Yet despite growing acknowledgment of the advantages of faculty diversity, empirical knowledge about the socioeconomic composition of university professors remains limited (e.g., Abramitzky et al. 2024; Andersen 2001; Helin et al. 2019, 2023; Morgan et al. 2022; Stansbury and Rodriguez 2024). Using population-wide administrative microdata from Norway, this study offers a high-resolution analysis of socioeconomic diversity and inequality within the context of an egalitarian welfare state. Norway’s policies, including tuition-free higher education, competitive PhD wages, and strong social welfare programs, are designed to mitigate socioeconomic inequalities. Given these factors, socioeconomic background should arguably matter less for accessing and succeeding in academic positions, yet our findings challenge this assumption. Even though approximately 40 percent of faculty members come from families where neither parent holds a degree from higher education, our findings clearly show that individuals from advantaged backgrounds are far more likely to secure faculty positions. In a country often regarded as a high-equality benchmark, the persistence of these inequalities underscores that even egalitarian institutional arrangements do not fully remove the influence of social origins on academic careers.

These disparities have remained largely stable across a period of unprecedented educational expansion. The academic landscape has undergone substantial changes over the past century (Compagnucci and Spigarelli 2020; Kerr 2001; Martin 2012; Schofer and Meyer 2005). However, these transformations have not reduced the link between social origins and the likelihood of becoming a faculty member. Similar to findings in the United States (Abramitzky et al. 2024; Morgan et al. 2022), we find a stable link between having parents with higher education and the likelihood of securing a faculty position among cohorts born 30 years apart. Additionally, the relationship between parental earnings and the probability of becoming faculty members remains consistent across this period. This stability across time and major institutional change points to enduring mechanisms that operate both before and after doctoral training.

In this regard, a key question was whether the lack of socioeconomic diversity among academic faculty stems from processes occurring at earlier educational stages or from additional barriers between completing a PhD and gaining access to faculty positions for individuals from less privileged backgrounds. Unlike previous studies from the United States (Morgan et al. 2022) and Finland (Helin et al. 2019), our findings reveal that differences in earlier stages of educational careers largely account for the disparities in access to faculty positions by parental education and earnings. When comparing individuals with similar educational levels, parents’ education and earnings no longer predict lower likelihoods of obtaining faculty positions among those from less-advantaged families. This implies that most of the inequality in access to faculty positions arises before the completion of doctoral training. However, individuals with faculty parents are still more likely to become professors themselves, even after adjustments of individuals’ own education. This finding points to a specific intergenerational transmission of academic careers and preferences for pursuing scholarly work, but also potentially reflects advantages in tacit knowledge, networks, and strategic career navigation. Moreover, career penalties, such as lower earnings and fewer opportunities at prestigious institutions, persist for those from less privileged backgrounds, even among those who secure faculty roles. Thus, despite Norway’s egalitarian welfare-state institutions, substantial barriers to socioeconomic diversity in academic careers remain.

We can only speculate why becoming a faculty member and succeeding in an academic career varies by socioeconomic background, even among individuals with similar educational levels. The early stages of academic careers are often marked by insecurity and challenging work conditions, leading many to exit the profession before securing tenure (Dorenkamp and Weiß 2018; Langenberg 2001). We hypothesized that social origin could buffer this stress through financial and psychological safety nets; however, our findings suggest that this is not the case, at least for parental education. Additionally, it remains unclear why hiring discrimination should differ between individuals with faculty parents and those with PhD-educated parents. One plausible explanation is that faculty parents possess more specific, insider knowledge of career pathways in academia, enabling their children to navigate the academic job market more effectively and gain an advantage beyond that conferred by having highly educated parents alone.

Expanding on these disparities, we find important variation across academic disciplines. Individuals from more advantaged backgrounds are more likely to enter certain fields, and within specific disciplines (e.g., medicine, law, and humanities), social origins still influence the likelihood of obtaining faculty positions even after controlling for individual education. For instance, when comparing individuals with similar educational levels, those with higher-educated parents have 50 percent greater likelihood of securing academic positions within the humanities and arts than those with only compulsory education, indicating that the academic career trajectories differ across fields. This disciplinary variation may reflect differences in labor market competition, funding structures, and the relative importance of cultural know-how in professional advancement.

Moreover, the prestige of academic positions varies, and while individuals with PhD-educated parents are no more likely to secure faculty positions than those with parents who have only compulsory education, they are still more likely to be employed in more prestigious institutions when comparing individuals with similar educational qualifications. Faculty members from more advantaged backgrounds also tend to earn higher salaries, even after controlling not only for educational level and field but also for sorting across institutions. This suggests that parental education shapes academic careers beyond its effects through educational attainment. This finding aligns with recent research on career progression in the United States (Stansbury and Rodriguez 2024). It also aligns with observations in elite sectors of the business world, where upwardly mobile individuals often earn considerably less than their counterparts of high-status origins, indicating that they face challenges beyond mere entry into elite professions (Friedman and Laurison 2020).

Although we leverage population-wide data from Norway, our study has some limitations. Our analysis is confined to describing the likelihood of holding faculty positions by social origins and does not distinguish between whether these differences stem from individual choices or barriers such as discrimination. Thus, our results should be interpreted as descriptive, as we naïvely compare individuals from different social origins with similar educational qualifications. Individuals from less advantaged backgrounds pursuing academic careers may be more positively selected on attributes such as academic talent and motivation, which are not fully captured in our analysis. This unmeasured heterogeneity may bias the perceived impact of social origins on career success within academia (Elwert and Winship 2014; Mare 2011), likely resulting in an underestimation of the barriers facing members of disadvantaged groups.

In conclusion, although our findings indicate socioeconomic diversity among faculty members, persistent differences in the likelihood of becoming a faculty member on the basis of social origins, particularly at more prestigious institutions, remain. The Norwegian case, often viewed as a model of low inequality and high social mobility, shows that even in highly egalitarian settings, family background continues to matter for access to and progression within academia. Further research is needed to understand how social origins influence navigation within academic careers. However, since the differences in the likelihood of becoming faculty members are primarily explained by individual educational attainment, efforts to enhance diversity among academic faculty should prioritize equalizing educational opportunities, including ensuring fairness in the recruitment process for PhD positions.

Supplemental Material

sj-pdf-1-srd-10.1177_23780231251377209 – Supplemental material for Who Climbs the Ivory Tower? Social Origins of Academic Faculty in an Egalitarian Welfare State

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-srd-10.1177_23780231251377209 for Who Climbs the Ivory Tower? Social Origins of Academic Faculty in an Egalitarian Welfare State by Nicolai T. Borgen, Are Skeie Hermansen and Astrid Marie Jorde Sandsør in Socius

Footnotes

The Norwegian registry data was used via the project SUBPU,which is approved by the Regional Committees for Medical and Health Research Ethics (ref. 2017/2205). The University of Oslo is responsible for the data handling in SUBPU and has conducted a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) in collaboration with the Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research (Sikt;ref. 962088). The data access and management of SUBPU is financed by the Research Council of Norway (RCN),the European Research Council (ERC),and the Department of Psychology at the University of Oslo. This work was performed on the TSD (Services for sensitive data) facilities,owned by the University of Oslo,operated and developed by the TSD service group at the University of Oslo,IT-Department (USIT). The work was performed on resources provided by Sigma2—the National Infrastructure for High-Performance Computing and Data Storage in Norway (ref. NS9867S).

Authors’ Note

Earlier versions of this article were presented at the European Consortium for Sociological Research 2024 conference in Barcelona,Spain;in seminars at the University of Oslo;and for the Norwegian Committee for Gender Balance and Diversity in Research. We thank the participant at the aforementioned events for their helpful comments.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research,authorship,and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by funding from the European Research Council (SEGOP,grant 101115949) and the Research Council of Norway (grant 325245),as well as the Research Council of Norway’s Centres of Excellence scheme (grant 331640).

ORCID iDs

Nicolai T. Borgen

Are Skeie Hermansen

Astrid Marie Jorde Sandsør

Research Ethics

Data collection for this study was in accordance with legislation and approved by the Norwegian Data Protection Authority. The research was conducted in line with ethical guidelines set by the National Committee for Research Ethics in the Social Sciences and the Humanities in Norway. The Personal Data Act in Norway makes exceptions from informed consent regarding the use of existing register data because it is not feasible to obtain consent from all persons whom the registers cover.

Data Availability Statement

The study used Norwegian administrative data provided by Statistics Norway. For confidentiality reasons,these data are not publicly available but can be accessed upon receiving relevant approvals.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

1

Relatedly,several older studies have looked at the transition from undergraduate to graduate studies,finding that social origin has a small,if any,influence on such transitions ( Mare 1980;Stolzenberg 1994 ). However,looking at Master’s and PhD degrees combined,

found a large difference by class origin in the likelihood of obtaining postgraduate degrees among first-degree graduates for younger but not older cohorts.

2

Short-term visiting faculty members are not considered faculty members,as they are not registered with employment codes unless hired by the host institution.

3

Gender differences are briefly discussed in

4

Figures A4 and A5 show the percentage of academic faculty members by combinations of father’s and mother’s education.

5

Note that these cohorts are all observed between 2015 and 2023,which means that they differ in age. Figures A6 and A7 show the likelihood of becoming a faculty member between 2015 and 2023 by age and birth cohort.

6

The same pattern occurs when dividing parental income into percentile ranks. That is,those in the top one percentile are about 7 times as likely to become faculty members than those at the bottom one percentile (

7

reports corresponding figures for parental earnings.

Author Biographies

Nicolai T. Borgen is an associate professor at the Center for Research on Equality in Education and the Department of Special Needs Education,University of Oslo.

Are Skeie Hermansen is a professor in the Department of Sociology and Human Geography,University of Oslo,and a researcher at the Swedish Institute for Social Research,Stockholm University.

Astrid Marie Jorde Sandsør is a professor at the Center for Research on Equality in Education and the Department of Special Needs Education,University of Oslo.

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