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Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

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Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#231

Post by jpeloquin »

rsfern wrote: post #164
jpeloquin wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> One of the most important papers in fracture mechanics was published in a campus newsletter. The publication venue doesn't matter that much. I’d be very interested in a link, that sounds cool! One of the more important contributions in grain growth theory (crystalline materials, not food) is a short comment by John von Neumann, where I guess he attended a conference talk and just came up with this elegant topologic…

> I’d be very interested in a link, that sounds cool!

Paris' Law, which predicts fatigue crack growth rate, was published in "The Trend in Engineering", which is the University of Washington College of Engineering alumni newsletter.

“Though Paris’s ideas presented a way to quantify and predict structural integrity, his approach was considered unconventional, and none of the leading journals published it. So, in January 1961, after leaving the UW to return to Lehigh for his Ph.D., Paris published his paper, ‘A Rational Analytic Theory of Fatigue,’ in The Trend.”

https://www.engr.washington.edu/news/article/2021-05-24/pari...

https://www.engr.washington.edu/news/trend

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#232

Post by meling »

muldoc wrote: post #216
meling wrote: post #101

Prof. from Norway here. While it sounds like the situation in the US and UK is worse than our own, I’m seriously considering moving to industry after 20 years in academia. Mainly fed up by ever growing admin, and stupid financial oversight regulations, and the general workload… and many other things that isn’t wise to complain about publicly.

Non-academic. Can you list some examples of what you mean by admin?

I could probably list ten examples, but I will limit myself to two easy (or not) to explain examples.

1. To take my research group to dinner, e.g., if a visitor comes to town, requires that I submit a form with about ten fields. We have to name all attendees, date and time of dinner. When the form is submitted, some admin will call the restaurant to organize that the bill is sent to the university. But before all this, I have to call the restaurant to make a reservation. (One time I forgot this and it caused a lot of confusion… I thought the whole idea was to get approval before booking.) Then if the admin approve, it goes to my department head who also has to approve. Actually, before the whole process I have to get an informal approval from my HoD. All this requires a lot of careful planning with all attendees and so forth… it may not sound so bad, but I didn’t mention that the admins require that we submit the form at least five work days in advance to be guaranteed processing in time for the dinner… that’s a lot of hassle pre-dinner… compared to the previous approach; ask HoD if ok, go to dinner, pay with CC, submit receipt and get reimbursed.

(Sorry the explanation became more complicated than necessary because I couldn’t remember the ordering of the steps off the top of my head… goes without saying — we spend a lot less funds on dinners after this system was introduced, which is why I keep forgetting the steps…)

2. Our travel reimbursement system is based on the infamous SAP platform… last time I traveled I spent four hours filling the form. We need to provide loads of unnecessary details. And every minor change to a form field requires a save to the database, which typically takes about a second or two in the best case. The system is broken.

They keep hiring more admins that are supposed to help. The result is more admin tasks being pushed down to the faculty…

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#233

Post by cyrksoft »

foldr wrote: post #221
cyrksoft wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Number of papers published or number of citations isn't a measure of the value of someone's research. This over-reliance on metrics is a big part of what's going wrong with academia. A hundred years ago people published when they had something to say, and authors of journals had to literally beg people for submissions. It is the universal measure of how useful your research is. How do you measure it otherwise? Rese…

You can’t measure how useful someone’s research is. That’s what drives business school graduates nuts about academics :) Research isn’t a product, and researchers can’t be managed like assembly line workers. The fact that almost all governments of developed countries subsidize their university sectors means that the burden of argument lies squarely on those who think that they should not. I understand that you’re one…

I've given you my arguments, but you don't like them. And all your arguments are 'things have been done this way for centuries, let's keep the status quo as it is' and 'you cannot measure what I do'. Governments don't subsidise sectors, tax payers do. And you are saying we should keep giving money to those producing nothing, or something so valuable that can't be measured, because that is how we've been doing things so far. You should tell me why we should keep giving people money, not the other way around. Specially in the current situation where lots of people are really struggling.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#234

Post by stereoradonc »

meling wrote: post #101

Prof. from Norway here. While it sounds like the situation in the US and UK is worse than our own, I’m seriously considering moving to industry after 20 years in academia. Mainly fed up by ever growing admin, and stupid financial oversight regulations, and the general workload… and many other things that isn’t wise to complain about publicly.

Thanks for clarifying your country! I was under the impression that you were part of Europe was relatively well insulated from the nonsense everywhere else. I was contemplating PhD, but reading the comments, I think it's wise to refrain from it.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#235

Post by stereoradonc »

inglor_cz wrote: post #219
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #68

My niece left academia for Draper Labs, where she has had a very productive career. Done far more for society than she would have, at a school. Instead of struggling for grants for her basic and applied research, often finding herself unfunded for a term or year unexpectedly, she's funded liberally and makes quick progress on important issues. Never looked back. Something is broken in Academia.

Altos Labs, the billionaires' longevity moonshot, seems to be able to recruit from the academia very efficiently with three promises: good money, no unnecessary paperwork and the ability to choose your research topics freely, without a "publish or perish" sword of Damocles hanging over your head.

https://altoslabs.com

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#236

Post by stereoradonc »

pojzon wrote: post #30
ghaff wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In professional circles, maybe you see some people retiring sooner than they would otherwise would have. Don't know. I haven't really seen that myself though. [ADDED: That's not really true in healthcare. I had two primary care doctors retire on me over the course of a year.] Certainly I've seen a fair bit of motion among fairly senior employees between companies but I don't know how it compares to the baseline. What…

> 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…

It is primarily to keep the populace "under-educated" to keep them on the "universal basic income" and remove all motivation to "work".

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#237

Post by foldr »

cyrksoft wrote: post #233
foldr wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t measure how useful someone’s research is. That’s what drives business school graduates nuts about academics :) Research isn’t a product, and researchers can’t be managed like assembly line workers. The fact that almost all governments of developed countries subsidize their university sectors means that the burden of argument lies squarely on those who think that they should not. I understand that you’re one…

I've given you my arguments, but you don't like them. And all your arguments are 'things have been done this way for centuries, let's keep the status quo as it is' and 'you cannot measure what I do'. Governments don't subsidise sectors, tax payers do. And you are saying we should keep giving money to those producing nothing, or something so valuable that can't be measured, because that is how we've been doing things…

It’s difficult to have a sensible argument when there’s a fundamental difference in values. As far as I can see, you think education should ‘produce’ something of monetary value or it is worthless. Historically, universities have operated under very different assumptions.

Take the example of historical research. Either you want a society which knows its own history of you don’t. You can’t put a price on that. To try to reduce the value of such research to citation numbers or some kind of financial measure is just nonsense.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#238

Post by cyrksoft »

foldr wrote: post #237
cyrksoft wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've given you my arguments, but you don't like them. And all your arguments are 'things have been done this way for centuries, let's keep the status quo as it is' and 'you cannot measure what I do'. Governments don't subsidise sectors, tax payers do. And you are saying we should keep giving money to those producing nothing, or something so valuable that can't be measured, because that is how we've been doing things…

It’s difficult to have a sensible argument when there’s a fundamental difference in values. As far as I can see, you think education should ‘produce’ something of monetary value or it is worthless. Historically, universities have operated under very different assumptions. Take the example of historical research. Either you want a society which knows its own history of you don’t. You can’t put a price on that. To try…

I never said all education should produce something of monetary value. There are many non-monetary value things that can nonetheless be measured.

You keep talking about how things have been historically. Things can change, and historically not everything was done correctly.

> Either you want a society which knows its own history of you don’t.

You don't need hundreds or thousand of History PhDs for that.

There is no point on people studying things nobody cares and nobody will ever care about. If your work never gets used, why force a subsidy on it? Do it with your own means if you like. Or accept the fact that you will have to do it for a very low wage no matter how many PhDs you have.

You seem unable to defend your position other that 'historically it's been this way' and 'unmeasurable value'. There is no point in keeping going with this discussion.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#239

Post by the_biot »

q-big wrote: post #190
_Wintermute wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in academia in London at the moment and this really struck true. All the senior staff bought their houses for pennies 30 years ago which are now worth millions, and don't seem to understand why the more junior staff are so worked up about salaries. Rent is 50% of our pay cheque and any house within an hours commute is 10x annual salary.

A potential alternative could be that the university provides lodging to its staff for a subsidized rent. This way, salaries don't have to be increased. I mean: a lot of universities provide dorms for their students, why not for parts of their staff, too?

Would you want your employer to have full control of not only your income, but also the roof over your head?

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#240

Post by ska »

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

> you can't publish in a journal without being affiliated to a university

this is not true.

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