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Academia is a cult?

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Academia is a cult?

#41

Post by ilovecaching »

As a counter to this article I found my time as a grad student exceedingly productive and gave me great faith in the scientific institution. I definitely believe academics are underpaid; when most of the people in my department could have easy made 500k doing ML in the valley, they were making less than 100k as post docs or 30k as grad students.

Otherwise my advisors were always incredibly proud of their students, passing on their knowledge, and actively pushing them to succeed like proud parents. A lot of my colleagues went on to join other labs or even open labs of their own as PIs.

Re: Academia is a cult?

#42

Post by Myrmornis »

Yes, humanities academia is severely flawed, not only in the ways that the author describes but also in the prevalence of pseudo-intellectual quackery in literature studies, cultural studies and areas of social sciences, philosophy, etc.

The newspaper appears to have forgotten to qualify the title to make clear that they were not talking about all academia.

Re: Academia is a cult?

#43

Post by woodruffw »

daenz wrote: post #24

>It should come as no surprise that the professor who made that demand is a white male alumnus of the Ivy League, and the student an immigrant from a working-class background. I'm getting really tired of these kinds of racial and ethnic generalizations. If you substitute "asian" or "jew" in and you find it's racist, it's still racist if it says "white."

> I'm getting really tired of these kinds of racial and ethnic generalizations. If you substitute "asian" or "jew" in and you find it's racist, it's still racist if it says "white."

No. If you attended a civil rights march in 1962 and remarked at how white the counter-protesters were (and how the hoses never seem to get aimed at them), you would be making an accurate observation about race and power dynamics, not smearing white people. Observing that some (many?) of those same dynamics persist in our present enlightened age is not racism.

Re: Academia is a cult?

#44

Post by icelancer »

closeparen wrote: post #34
icelancer wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you mean within academia, I agree. If you mean in the private sector, absolutely not. Mathematics and physics majors have a ton of opportunity in CS-related fields. I hired a lot of them when I ran a data science team. Their understanding of software development from first principles usually seriously outranks CS graduates at the cost of not knowing how to program in advanced languages. I find it a lot easier to d…

Okay, people trained in science can more easily transition to software engineering. They are still not getting paid to do science.

This all depends on what you consider science, I suppose. If you define science as work with beakers and things, sure, yeah, those positions are dying out.

But genetic research is more of a CS-dominated field than it is a purely "scientific" field these days. nVidia pays technical geneticists mid-six figures to work on their projects.

Science is becoming more democratized and breaking out of the academic, federally-funded, very slow process model, and plenty of people are working in private science that have nothing to do with making drugs, but rather in brand new fields and exploding existing niche ones.

Some of this isn't great, I'll be the first to admit with a lot of experience on both sides of the aisle. But overall it's a massive net positive. For everyone.

Re: Academia is a cult?

#45

Post by dddddaviddddd »

maceurt wrote: post #40
_hardwaregeek wrote: post #14

Seems like this should be titled "Humanities Academia is a cult". Which is a conclusion with which I don't necessarily disagree. Frankly, the job numbers are out there. If you choose to get a PhD in history even after seeing them, you're probably delusional in some form. I'm not so certain about STEM however. While cults can pop up anywhere there is a leader with a non trivial power dynamic, I'd say that a fair porti…

Music academia is terrible and riddled with politics and infighting from my experience also. The number of actual livable jobs for classical musicians are very low. It makes me pissed off how public schools will still spend hundred of thousands of dollars and push kids into classical music when it is such a dead end, and competition is so high. It is a ponzi scheme where the students pay the teachers, then the studen…

Participating in music is personally fulfilling, but unlikely to give financial flexibility. Schools should emphasize the role that it will realistically play in students' lives.

Re: Academia is a cult?

#46

Post by dddddaviddddd »

closeparen wrote: post #28
BadassFractal wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen math / physics majors make an easy transition into software development. I bet that is much easier to pull off than switching to programming from say, sociology.

Okay, but the employable activity there is still software development and not science or mathematics.

Software is often a tool to perform science.

Re: Academia is a cult?

#47

Post by smallnamespace »

maceurt wrote: post #40
_hardwaregeek wrote: post #14

Seems like this should be titled "Humanities Academia is a cult". Which is a conclusion with which I don't necessarily disagree. Frankly, the job numbers are out there. If you choose to get a PhD in history even after seeing them, you're probably delusional in some form. I'm not so certain about STEM however. While cults can pop up anywhere there is a leader with a non trivial power dynamic, I'd say that a fair porti…

Music academia is terrible and riddled with politics and infighting from my experience also. The number of actual livable jobs for classical musicians are very low. It makes me pissed off how public schools will still spend hundred of thousands of dollars and push kids into classical music when it is such a dead end, and competition is so high. It is a ponzi scheme where the students pay the teachers, then the studen…

> It is a ponzi scheme where the students pay the teachers, then the students become teachers and the cycle starts over again. Barely anybody who does not play an instrument ever listens to classical music it is a joke

Or, this is the normal way traditional arts and crafts of all sorts are transmitted through the generations? It's not a Ponzi scheme unless it promises supranormal exponential growth.

I learned a classical instrument and it taught me many lessons that I don't I would've learned elsewhere (or at least not until much, much later in life):

- rote repetition and practice isn't sexy, but it works and will lead to steady improvement, no matter how bad you are initially

- there is an effective technique to rote practice, and you can put it to use for any skill that you wish to acquire

- failing many times is part of the road to success

These are all skills that are very applicable to software developers as well.

I'm sure there are people who tried very hard to become classical musicians and now regret that choice, and perhaps some resent those who encouraged them along that path, but I never expected to become a professional and continue to happily play in my free time. Same goes for many of my music acquaintances.

Re: Academia is a cult?

#48

Post by analog31 »

dddddaviddddd wrote: post #45
maceurt wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Music academia is terrible and riddled with politics and infighting from my experience also. The number of actual livable jobs for classical musicians are very low. It makes me pissed off how public schools will still spend hundred of thousands of dollars and push kids into classical music when it is such a dead end, and competition is so high. It is a ponzi scheme where the students pay the teachers, then the studen…

Participating in music is personally fulfilling, but unlikely to give financial flexibility. Schools should emphasize the role that it will realistically play in students' lives.

This is definitely the emphasis in music education at the K-12 level, and to a growing extent at the college level as well. I came across this page recently:

https://www.music.wisc.edu/areas/jazz-studies/

Note that it drops a pretty strong hint that you should not major in music exclusively.

Re: Academia is a cult?

#49

Post by daenz »

woodruffw wrote: post #43
daenz wrote: post #24

>It should come as no surprise that the professor who made that demand is a white male alumnus of the Ivy League, and the student an immigrant from a working-class background. I'm getting really tired of these kinds of racial and ethnic generalizations. If you substitute "asian" or "jew" in and you find it's racist, it's still racist if it says "white."

> I'm getting really tired of these kinds of racial and ethnic generalizations. If you substitute "asian" or "jew" in and you find it's racist, it's still racist if it says "white." No. If you attended a civil rights march in 1962 and remarked at how white the counter-protesters were (and how the hoses never seem to get aimed at them), you would be making an accurate observation about race and power dynamics, not sme…

Even if I accepted the modern re-branding of the word "racist" to mean the new "power + privilege", which I don't accept, but I understand many people use that definition, the author's statement is still loaded with racial prejudice. He literally said that bad behavior X is "no surprise" because the person behaving badly is white and a man.

You trying to justify this language as not only tolerable but acceptable is part of the problem society has wrt treating people as individuals. And the fact that you're using historical injustices against people to tell me why I need to accept negative language around two immutable physical characteristics that I possess is really over the line. We're supposed to be moving away from that kind of society.

Re: Academia is a cult?

#50

Post by analog31 »

closeparen wrote: post #28
BadassFractal wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen math / physics majors make an easy transition into software development. I bet that is much easier to pull off than switching to programming from say, sociology.

Okay, but the employable activity there is still software development and not science or mathematics.

Most math and science students are aware that we aren't headed for academic research careers in those fields. But that's true for computer science students as well.

I have a physics degree, and while I'm not employed as a programmer per se, programming is my main problem solving tool. It wouldn't be a quantum leap for me to move into a programming job if I wanted to do it.

On the other hand, I also have two friends whose college degrees were in philosophy and music performance, and both became programmers.

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