Prestige and Statistics
Bill Long 11/21/05
On Numbers, Status and Success
I turned on "Monday Night Football" tonight while doing the laundry. The game didn't much interest me, though my ears always perk up when Al Michael or John Madden quote a statistic. There has been a veritable explosion of statistics in sport in the last decade or so, probably a function of the greater "numeralization" of our culture. Though the aim of statistics is to produce a more knowledgeable and informed spectator, in fact they are doled out when the boredom factor starts to overtake the entertainment factor in the games. Sometimes the statistics are interesting but the one that arrested my attention tonight was the following.
After a receiver caught a pass, it was announced that he was the first person in the history of Monday Night Football to have caught two or more passes for two different teams in the same year (and, I suppose, to have been on MNF for some of those catches). It doesn't take you long to realize that such a statistic is absolutely worthless--it tells you nothing that enhances your appreciation or understanding of the game. Rather than being manipulated for someone's benefit or provided to deepen understanding, this seemed to be a dreamed up by some 20-something nerd in the research department back in the trailer.
Numbers and Prestige
Like it or not, however, numbers are usually cited in our culture to describe or enhance a person's success. Numbers are a seemingly objective measure of someone's influence or status, a sort of neutral yardstick of that most subtle and elusive of qualities: prestige. Even high school kids know that an "objective" measure of the "best" colleges is either the average SAT score of its entering class or the percentage of applicants accepted to the school. But it doesn't stop with colleges and universities. The quest for prestige, along with appropriate numbers, continues throughout life.
Every year the Harris organization conducts a poll of the occupations with highest (and lowest) prestige in America. The 2005 survey of more than 1200 adults was recently released. Survey participants were asked which of the twenty-two following occupations were of "very great" prestige. The 2005 rankings were as follows.
1. Fireman 56%
2. Scientist 56%
3. Doctor 54%
4. Nurse 50%
5. Military Officer 49%
6. Teacher 47%
7. Police Officer 40%
8. Priest/Minister/Clergy 36%
9. Engineer 34%
10. Architect 27%
11. Member of Congress 26%
12. Athlete 23%
13. Lawyer 18%
14. Entertainer 18%
15. Actor 16%
16. Business executive 15%
17. Banker 15%
18. Union Leader 15%
19. Journalist 14%
20. Accountant 13%
21. Real Estate Broker/Agent 9%
22. Stockbroker 8%
What was significant to me was the performance of some of the groups over time. The most significant decline since Harris began to do these surveys in 1977 was with lawyers. In 1977 36% of people thought that lawyer was a high prestige job, but by 2005 only half that number agrees with that assessment. Clergy have taken an interesting dive, too. While a clergy occupation was seen as very prestigious by 41% of people in 1977, the number rose to 46% by 1998 before falling to 36% this year. As the social justice and crusading lawyer of the 1960s-1970s has morphed into the (perceived) greedy and money-hungry lawyer of the 2000s, his/her prestige ranking has declined. The clergy fall-off can probably be attributed to the clergy sex scandals in the Catholic Church, while the rise in firefighter prestige is no doubt tied to 9/11 heroics. What is most interesting, however, is that only one profession has steadily gained prestige since 1977, and that is the teaching profession. Only 29% of respondents in 1977 (28% in 1982) thought that teaching was a highly prestigious profession. Now, 47% do, even though that is down from 53% in 2000.
While I don't want to make much of these statistics, it seems to support the notion that America considers professions that help others, without regard to fame- or money-seeking, to be the highest prestige professions.
Looking at One Profession
You really can go quite crazy worrying about how prestigious you, your school, your business or your colleagues are at any one moment. I am in the profession of law teaching, and we are daily bombarded with literature and emails telling us about how prestigious this or that school is. One school put together a glossy, three-color postcard and sent it to all professors around the country, touting the fact that by "objective" measurements it now had the 31st highest quality faculty and the 31st highest quality student body of American law schools. I laughed almost as loud as I laughed at the Monday Night Football statistic. Is this anything other than striving after wind, as the Preacher would have it?
But it gets worse. Not only are there law journals in the profession, but these journals each have a "prestige" ranking, based on how many "prestige" people write for them on a regular basis. And, faculty members at other schools are judged prestigious by the number of times their names are mentioned in these "prestige" journals. The more often your articles are quoted or your name is named in these journals, the higher you have climbed on the ladder of prestige. But, when you think of it for a second, how much prestige can you really have if your profession has tanked in its national prestige ranking over the last 28 years? But law is so concerned with which school you attended, for whom you clerked, for which federal department you worked, and in which journals you have published your papers, that it is fairly blind to other measures of accomplishment that arise outside of its narrow world.
Conclusion
Focusing on prestige is like trying to capture the wind in your hands or trying to squeeze a burnt branch and realizing that you have nothing left but ashes on your fingers. Perhaps the most telling critique of prestige occurred for me as I was doing my research for this article. I did internet searches on prestige measurements or prestige occupations and got some good data. Then I did a search on prestige markers, and I came up with "Bronze and Granite Headstones and Grave MARKERS by PRESTIGE Memorials." Maybe that says it all.
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