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Most depts do have some kind of official review, but it's more of a formality. I think they're also concerned about how students would react if they suggest that academia isn't for…

This. Most grad school classes are poorly taught and the professors indifferent or discouraging to actually helping you learn. PhD students are assumed to be capable of learning th…

I actually really like the analogy. You are running a "business" of ideas. You are competing against a lot of other very smart people who are also trying to start their own ideas b…

I'm not sure the salaries are better. Most R1s are now offering 90-120k starting in my field, but regional teaching Us start around 50-60k, with liberal arts colleges in the 50-80k…

Generally, the focus here should be on: 1) Not bombing any classes (i.e. A/A- in all, maybe a B+ in one; a B or below is failing) 2) Doing very good work and trying to write an ori…

"Honestly it really just seems like the world’s PhD programs are designed to ritually haze students and sort them into academic society based on unsustainable and barely acceptable…

Some of the most interesting recent academic work has come out of adversarial collaborations, e.g. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/152910062311631... The list of resea…

I keep seeing people swear by the NY Times' Wirecutter and they do have a much more upfront set of standards for reviewing products, but I've actually been pretty underwhelmed by t…

I agree, though the other issue for smaller places is that they are more susceptible to review-bombing by one disgruntled party (do we really need 6 reviews from 6 different people…

The professor who wrote that book, interestingly, ended up being denied tenure and was subsequently unable to get another academic job despite years of trying. Here's a recent podc…

All it takes is one or two very angry people to start a mob online and destroy someone's entire career. I'm not surprised that authors, especially in a field as precarious as writi…

It's not just academia, it's the modern "meritocracy" more broadly. When getting into a campus club at a top college requires four rounds of interviews, you look for easy ways to s…

Many codes of conduct and various other speech codes do, in fact, violate freedom of speech and have often been struck down as violations of freedom of expression. Appeals to "cour…

And in other contexts, you can imagine supporting the right of Communists to speak and organize even if you find Communism abhorrent and misguided. Note too the benefits of allowin…

1. There are already pretty good definitions out there for speech that rises to the level of "harassment" if it is severe, pervasive, and/or repeated. There are also ways to restri…

I once met a local winemaker from a tiny winery in a foreign country who was proud to say that their wine was being served a restaurant in the US. I asked them how much they though…

I really wonder how much of the suspicion of wine comes from the class-conflict accoutrements and marketing. I used to be a big wine skeptic. It seemed pretentious, overpriced, and…

I don't think that you are truly "in charge of your own destiny" at many programs. I get the comparison, but it's more like you're a startup in an oversaturated market with funders…

Wow, Pine Bluff is quite a place to move to out the blue. Still, there's good interstate access and a local state U. Curious why the city is so reluctant to support new businesses.…

Flawed characters are simpler more interesting to read about than people who aren't flawed. Stories of the lives of saints tend to be didactic and boring; those of flawed sinners a…

Don't think this attitude is just limited to STEM though as Gioia implies. Humanities majors have plenty of hubris themselves, though it may have a different moral flavor than in t…

Amazing work from Bret as usual, but very sad that this kind of popular/actually useful history is completely unrewarded in academia. This is far more valuable than whatever top un…

Plus the highest suicide rate in the US by far comes from white men: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7108a7.htm And women not only outnumber men in college, but that divid…

I would recommend taking a moment to read the actual articles instead of dismissing the sources offhand. The City Journal article has links to the actual documents in question. The…