Does anyone else see the contradiction: the amount students are spending on college keeps going up, but the budget for professors seems to keep going down. What accounts for the discrepancy?
When tenure never comes
61–70 of 144 posts
Re: When tenure never comes
#62Does anyone else see the contradiction: the amount students are spending on college keeps going up, but the budget for professors seems to keep going down. What accounts for the discrepancy?
Administration. More and more money going to committees for every little thing.
Re: When tenure never comes
#63Does anyone else see the contradiction: the amount students are spending on college keeps going up, but the budget for professors seems to keep going down. What accounts for the discrepancy?
Facilities and administrators. Schools get ranked based on their facilities and the types of programs and activities they offer so they keep outspending each other in this area to remain competitive. It's a tragedy.
Re: When tenure never comes
#64My experience in finance was that 50% of quants (especially physics PhDs from the 90s, when all the Cold War-era funding dried up) were failed academics. Most of the rest were PhDs jumping straight to industry to avoid chasing tenure for years.
It depends on how you define "failed". Even the best academics may think it rational to make millions of dollars as a quant over a more conventional salary as an academic. I am not a "failed mcdonalds cashier" if I choose to quit and something that pays more, even if I started out in that particular field.
Sort of funny that the recently deposed McDonald's CEO was an EE. That demonstrates the true value of STEM jobs in our society rather than the phony "shortage" hype.
Re: When tenure never comes
#65Many people have pointed to an overpopulation being the root cause for this, but I believe that ignores the increasingly inflating administrative staff at universities. That is, it is also a budget problem. The budget for the increase in professor staff is being diverted into additional administrative positions that do... something, apparently. I'm not convinced that the administrative bloat is worth a fraction of wh…
You'd be appalled at how much overhead universities take out of research grants (from NSF, DARPA, NIH, etc.) to maintain these administrations (along with legitimate uses, like paying utility bills). 40-50% is not uncommon.
Harvard's common indirect rate is as high as 69%: http://osp.finance.harvard.edu/fa-cost-rates-federal-sponsor...
I've long been expecting someone like the NYT to do an exposé on the "dark money" of F&A. It would seem to be ripe given he current discussion of the cost of education.
Re: When tenure never comes
#66It's interesting to see this story on the front page at the same time with another one titled "We Should Not Accept Scientific Results That Have Not Been Repeated". It's easy to solve both problems (killing two birds with one stone?) by implementing protocols of purging scientists with track records of non-repeatable results from "personal opinions" and fraudulent scholars gaming publishing systems, including titles, positions, degrees and/or grant money ever awarded. This should at least release some vacancy in the academia (given a 11% repeatable rate from the Amgen study).
Re: When tenure never comes
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Academia expanded enormously between 1945 – 1975, when virtually everyone who got a PhD could get an academic job. Since then, time-to-degree for PhDs in all subjects has increased dramatically, post-docs have become the norm, and academic jobs have become scarce. I wrote about this in "What you should know BEFORE you start grad school / PhD programs in English Literature: The economic, financial, and opportunity cos…
One of my most infuriating moments at Berkeley was when I attended a symposium on pursuing an academic career (I was interested in one at that point) and a professor complained that students were too concerned with academics and weren't spending enough time protesting, like she had. It was the academic equivalent of Old Economy Steven. Very triggering.
>a professor complained that students were too concerned with academics and weren't spending enough time protesting, like she had.
Given that one of the few factors capable of really changing an exploitative labor market is labor organizing, she might have a point.
Re: When tenure never comes
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I have never seen this happen" =/= "This has never happened"
I'm not questioning whether it happened or not, I'm curious about the reasons their presentation was cut short. "There’s nothing quite like having an established academic decide that hearing eight minutes of the allotted twenty would be sufficient. As a self-funded under-employed contingent, I wasn’t going to say anything useful anyway." How would this established academic know they're self-funded and under-employed?
The author's job title might have given this away. In Canada (assistant|associate|full) professors are tenured or tenure track, and hence higher status. Any other title could be assumed to mean non-tenure track and under-employed, hence lower status.
Re: When tenure never comes
#69As somebody looking to go into research (in a STEM field), this is a rather chilling article... And it's by far not the first time I have heard about this problem of getting a long-term job in academia.
I'm just wondering: this guy was from Canada. What's the situation like in Europe? Especially Germany?
Re: When tenure never comes
#70UK University chair of a STEM dept graduate school chipping in here: Every September during induction I point out to the PhD students that there are (around) ten of them in the room and our department advertised (around) 1 job last year. We also tell them this when they are applying for the PhD in the first place. They seem unfazed. Our PhD course lasts no longer than 4 years (good students are out in 3) and they appear to be highly employable at the end of it - both as postdocs and in industry. Having seen the US system at first hand as well, I'd say that the lower opportunity cost (time to finish) makes the whole process fairer on the students - graduating with a PhD at 25 still seems like a great opportunity. Doing the same at 32 is a very different prospect. I have no idea what the situation in the humanities is like.
Finally - UK research councils (who often fund PhD students) are very open about the fact that PhD students must now be taught a host of 'transferrable skills' to equip them for non-academic jobs.