To get the best research, universities should stop favoring young faculty and give the AI budgets to senior professors instead.
March 24, 2026
Original Paper
Allocating Faculty Compute Budgets
SSRN · 6451858
The Takeaway
Standard academic policy gives extra support to 'up-and-coming' juniors to build their careers. However, this economic model shows that because AI acts as a substitute for labor, senior faculty's accumulated judgment makes the AI much more productive than when it is used by less experienced researchers.
From the abstract
A classic exchange between Tullock (1973) and Parks (1976) debated whether universities should concentrate research support on senior or junior faculty. This paper formalises both positions and then asks which conclusions survive when the scarce input is AI compute rather than secretarial help. Under complementary inputs, aggregate output maximisation favours juniors while minimum-output objectives favour seniors-recovering the original debate. With AI modelled as a more substitutable input, gre