Geoffrey MillerVerified account

Geographical stability and empathy with local students are as central to the ethos of higher education as trigger warnings and social justice activism.

Recruit more aggressively locally, but when it is actually time to compare candidates for a position don't take where they are from into account.

Wrong end of the camel. Promote those things by teaching their value (of course that necessarily means selecting faculty and staff who support those good values), not by further degrading merit based hiring.

Depends on the school's objective. World class and local preferences are opposing forces

Doesn't work well in the SF Bay Area because people are willing to suffer from a daily 2 hr commute to have both a well paying job and a decent and inexpensive home to live in. And this phenomenon is the same for even low entry level position workers.

Not sure there is workable for all departments. The academic system doesn't work that way. Especially in highly specialized fields or highly exclusive universities.

Most places would not have qualified candidates. We are too specialized.

It would probably work toward achieving those worthy goals, but I suspect it might make academic tribes, academic groupthink, significantly worse. (Though that is probably debatable.)