Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

nature.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 242 posts

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#131

Post by LightG »

adamsmith143 wrote: post #47
joshgroban wrote: post #21

This is actually really scary. As American universities become less powerful I shudder to think of what kind of radical politics and cultural narratives will sweep the nation.

Isn't this exactly the opposite of the current state? That the overwhelming power of Universities in the US is what spreads cultural and political movements? I think you could argue that the entire Woke enterprise is centered on Universities particularly elite ones.

/Start

Subroutine: auto-detect use of 'Woke'; start flush opinion routine.

Set recurring reminder note to user - don't ever get this intellectually cringe.

/End

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#132

Post by pvaldes »

JacobThreeThree wrote: post #92
nonrandomstring wrote: post #18

Universities are in trouble. I know of three that are unable to hire for senior and middle positions. They've been advertising for months. Here (UK), Brexit is partly to blame, along with post Cov19 fatigue, and aging population with many retiring. As I've said in other comments, the main problem is that academia has become hideously corrupted by "professional management" values leading to de-skilling as good people…

>unable to hire for senior and middle positions As usual with these claims, chances are it's due to the fact that these positions don't pay enough to be competitive.

And the surrealist list of artificial obstacles and requisites unrelated with the job, (but copy-pasted since middle ages by inertia in each job offer) will alienate your desired target

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#133

Post by anonymousDan »

13415 wrote: post #108

I'll leave for sure, but for other reasons than in CS. In CS people leave because they get better salaries and have better job prospects outside academia. In my area, people leave because of lack of career prospects, almost no tenure-track positions, favoritism and corruption. But the decisive reason for me is that our small & poor European country has switched to the new "Pan S" for open science publications. This m…

What is your discipline and country? That sounds like some ridiculously narrow minded thinking on the part of the funders.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#134

Post by xtracto »

RandomWorker wrote: post #41

I left academia for a software company, not midway my career but at the early start. The decision is easy when you have mouths to feed, wages don’t keep up, and I can earn double my salary doing the fun part of my work (ML+optimization+data/energy modelling in civil engineering space) literally the next day. I was working with all kinds of companies to help them get started with this kind of work. Instead of sending…

I left academia after 8 years (4 PhD, 4 Postdoc) to go into a startup (non US). For me, I was disillusioned with what being in academia meant: Publish or Perish meant publishing whatever crap mid-work you had for the sake of putting something out. At the time I was also a blind-reviewer in a couple of publications, and the amount of trash papers that arrived due to the same issue was astounding (and no, I didn't get paid to do that).

I would love to do research and science, but I just hate the current status of that "industry".

And this is considering that I traded a "comfortable" life in Germany, with all the great social safeties in there (I didn't have a problem with the language) for a Mexican based startup with very high risk. And the pay was even not that different. After 10 years of my decision, I can say I took the best path, given that it took me to work in other startups that have been doing amazingly well and for which I've got some good amount of stocks.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#135

Post by blahblarblar »

SantalBlush wrote: post #86
blahblarblar wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not that they weren’t paying attention. It’s more that academics egos can’t handle the loss to their identity of not being an academic anymore.

That's not entirely the individual's fault. With many (or most) academic fields, leaving academia for industry is seen as failing, and leaving the institution means leaving the network.

It’s definitely partially academia that does this. When you are a grad student you are paid so poorly and worked so hard it is difficult to build a substantial identity outside of being an academic. Academia is good at marketing itself as a noble cause that imbues very high status if you can ever “make it” so quiting is giving up on that lofty dream. Where in industry it is definitely “not cool” if you build your identity around your job. That creates a helpful firewall that pushes people to develop something outside their work.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#136

Post by freyr »

seydor wrote: post #128
ska wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit over-egged, but there is not denying there are a raft of problems in academia. On the other hand, observant or not, it's still (nearly ) the only game in town for some sorts of things that people want to do. Some people pursue that for a long time hoping things will shake out ok for them... as it does very much for some.

Some of these things can be done by anyone yet academia gatekeeps the academic creds for itself. E.g. anyone can do machine learning research, but you can't publish in a journal without being affiliated to a university

That’s not true at all. Papers come from industry all the time. I know of independent researchers who make up an LLC name and use that as their affiliation.

Most people who publish in journals are affiliated with academia simply because that’s where the vast majority of basic research happens.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#137

Post by blahblarblar »

foldr wrote: post #113
SantalBlush wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not entirely the individual's fault. With many (or most) academic fields, leaving academia for industry is seen as failing, and leaving the institution means leaving the network.

This is very true. The only way I coped with it was by basically just cutting off any contact I had with people in my former field, with the exception of a couple of friends. Or at least, I like to think that I cut off contact. A more realistic assessment is that I simply ceased to exist to most of those people as soon as I left the field.

I did the same thing. It wasn’t conscious, it was more that they lived in a completely different world from where I went. We couldn’t really relate as much anymore. Like we now had very different approaches to life. Academy moves so slow. When I check up on people I’m just shocked at how little has changed with them.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#138

Post by jpeloquin »

seydor wrote: post #128
ska wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit over-egged, but there is not denying there are a raft of problems in academia. On the other hand, observant or not, it's still (nearly ) the only game in town for some sorts of things that people want to do. Some people pursue that for a long time hoping things will shake out ok for them... as it does very much for some.

Some of these things can be done by anyone yet academia gatekeeps the academic creds for itself. E.g. anyone can do machine learning research, but you can't publish in a journal without being affiliated to a university

Start your own journal? It doesn't necessarily matter that citations to it won't be tracked in Scopus or whatever when it's first launched. Even the gatekept academic journals aren't automatically accepted into citation databases and academic search engines, it usually takes several years after they're launched to be fully accepted. Or discard the journal framework entirely—as long as people who are interested in the work can find the work, it's fine.

Edit: One of the most important papers in fracture mechanics was published in a campus newsletter. The publication venue doesn't matter that much.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#139

Post by vkou »

mcshicks wrote: post #57
pojzon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In professional circles, maybe you see some people retiring sooner than they would otherwise would have. Mother was working as a teacher for over 40 years. A real teacher by calling. Kids loved her, always got the most flowers and chocolades etc. Unfortunately she had to retire prematurely because the work conditions became terrible. Goverment wants you to do more and more for the same pay. On top of that ppl quit…

America spends more per Capita than any other nation. https://www.statista.com/statistics/236541/per-capita-health...

Sports stadiums and elite coaches, and doctors' third summer homes don't pay for themselves.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#140

Post by bsder »

prepend wrote: post #122
bsder wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teachers are not waiting. I know of several who retired mid-year. That NEVER used to happen. Covid didn't break their back--shitty parents did. Covid just ran the parental shittiness meter up to max. And, to put a cherry on top, practically all teachers now have multiple students who actually had a parent die . In a normal year, that would be rare and that child would get lots of counseling. With Covid--it's too comm…

> practically all teachers now have multiple students who actually had a parent die. This is extremely unlikely and if you know multiple teachers with this condition you just have really bad luck. Only about 60k COVID deaths are 30-49 [0] with another 200k for 50-64. This is about 25% of COVID deaths in the US. There’s 50M school kids between k-12 [1] so the odds of a kid having a parent who died is really low: 1:50M…

Okay, let's grab Texas:

We'll roll with 20-59 which totals to: 20,765 confirmed deaths https://dshs.texas.gov/coronavirus/TexasCOVID19Demographics_...

Texas has 1,247 school districts: https://tea.texas.gov/texas-schools/general-information/over...

That's roughly 16 parent Covid fatalities per school. This, of course, ignores population clustering which is going to mean more deaths in larger school districts. And there's some fuzziness because not everybody in the demographic has children (although Texas is probably higher in that regard).

Granted this probably overcounts a bit because 55-59 may not have children in school anymore. However, this also doesn't count people who survived but are in bad shape (who probably outnumber deaths by quite a bit) which may be worse from a student mental health point of view.

I see no contradiction to what I have said and I stand by it.

Post reply on HN