Post <blockquote>"Whether it scares away hires is a different question." Would an ambitious pol sci AP want to be in a college room rather than in a department room? It seems to me problematic. The strange thing is that DPIR invested in a building and moved to a departmental structure in 2000 with a view, presumably, to having more of a departmental culture. I guess that there is a sort of chicken and egg / coordination failure problem in which they are at the "bad" equilibrium: people would work in the department if everyone else did (first best equilibrium), but given nobody else does they don't (bad equilibrium). Oh ya it's definitely a *problem* and one they should try to solve for sure, but I'm not sure your standard person offered an Oxford job is going to turn it down for that reason. Maybe they should and maybe it's the straw that breaks the camel's back when it mixes with lower pay, no tenure system for the lecturers, and high teaching loads. But, it seems like they fill those mid-level posts with qualified, good academics pretty easily. I think the draw of staying in your college is generally the ease of having college tutorials there, and the offices are almost always better.</blockquote>

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