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As professors struggle to recruit postdocs, calls for change in academia

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Re: As professors struggle to recruit postdocs, calls for change in academia

#261

Post by titanomachy »

quantum_magpie wrote: post #253
screye wrote: post #223

I have always seen Postdocs as a 'desperation' position. The struggle to recruit post-docs might indicate healthier alternatives for phds instead of living life as white-collar slaves. I am surprised that universities haven't created formal part-academia-part-industry partnerships with nearby companies just yet. Instead we are stuck with post-docs and adjunct roles, which get you the worst of both worlds. Good Riddan…

>I am surprised that universities haven't created formal part-academia-part-industry partnerships with nearby companies just yet. These do exist. I was offered to do a so-called 'Industrial PhD' at University of Copenhagen, where you get funded by a company, you do research split between university labs and the company labs, and work at the company at the same time. Should be noted that the time crunch is brutal, as…

Does the "industry work" part of it produce publishable research that could be used towards a thesis?

Re: As professors struggle to recruit postdocs, calls for change in academia

#262

Post by doliveira »

LegitShady wrote: post #211
pfortuny wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No: the will to power is greatest because you have (supposedly) power over the creme of the creme. As silly as that but Nietzsche had it right: the will to power is one of the primordial forces.

the creme of the creme are all working for big companies making big dollars. But I could imagine people in academia thinking they are the a big deal.

That's just for very, very specific fields.

For instance, for something very practical, market-ready, basically Engineering I'd say you're correct. For basic research, not at all.

Re: As professors struggle to recruit postdocs, calls for change in academia

#263

Post by titanomachy »

epvgwwqe wrote: post #199

I did a postdoc at a top 5 institution and found it to be an ideal transition point into the startup world. I was pretty sure a few months into it that I would leave academia, and spent as much time as possible beefing up my coding skills and doing a startup on the side/finding a cofounder. I even hedged my bets and applied for tenure track jobs in the meantime. This may not work for everyone but it was definitely be…

I'm pretty sure that most of what's said in this article doesn't apply to "top 5" universities. There will always be people willing to put up with a couple years of shitty pay in exchange for being able to work with a Nobel laureate and put "MIT" on their resume.

Re: As professors struggle to recruit postdocs, calls for change in academia

#264

Post by titanomachy »

Moggie100 wrote: post #18

Current UK CompSci PostDoc here - and yeah, pretty much what everyone says here is correct. My contract is 'contingent on funding' (so casual/short-term by any other name, but 'perminant' so HR can fudge their short-term employment numbers down) and my pay is well below what I could get in the wider industry. I stay because I'd like to think I can improve things (I'm very active in management talks, where I can be) b…

No post body was provided.

Re: As professors struggle to recruit postdocs, calls for change in academia

#265

Post by fleetwoodsnack »

LegitShady wrote: post #211
pfortuny wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No: the will to power is greatest because you have (supposedly) power over the creme of the creme. As silly as that but Nietzsche had it right: the will to power is one of the primordial forces.

the creme of the creme are all working for big companies making big dollars. But I could imagine people in academia thinking they are the a big deal.

Ehh, I’m old enough now that I can LinkedIn/Facebook search my old classmates and see how the crème of my crop turned out. Everyone was smart but the genuine honest-to-god genius from our class is a research chemist at MIT. The richest is a former childrens’ toy maker (STEM-education startup exit).

Re: As professors struggle to recruit postdocs, calls for change in academia

#266

Post by mbaytas »

> “Ph.D.s are looking at the labor market, seeing opportunities out there, and taking them,” she says. “Those skills that we teach our Ph.D. students are in demand.”

LoL.

Among all the stereotypes in academia perhaps the truest one is profs taking credit for what their students achieve.

Not even bothering to hide it anymore.

Re: As professors struggle to recruit postdocs, calls for change in academia

#267

Post by physicsguy »

Oh yeah, I wonder why people aren’t biting off the hand of academics for 6-12 month contracts with no control over what type of project you’d actually work on in many labs. And of course the salaries haven’t kept up with the rest of the job market.

Re: As professors struggle to recruit postdocs, calls for change in academia

#268

Post by mr_gibbins »

slurpmaker wrote: post #42

Make it make sense. Offer Postdocs an actual career path not based on broken tenure and disposable adjunct professor roles, with hundreds if not thousands of applicants. Why would someone, with any field of study, be a "scum of the earth" post doc for 1/5th the salary and double the hours required as a junior python developer role? Moreso, post doc'ing for the wrong professor can ruin your career, why risk that eithe…

I've posted on this before but I make twice as much, more, as an industry pro than in my work as a non-tenured academic. I've been offered tenure and turned it down, because if I took it, my family would starve. It needs to change.

But imagine the displacement of those ivory-tower academic greybeards who will suddenly have to compete with actual professionals? They're still teaching HTML/CSS in my university, for example; cloud is largely pooh-poohed; AI and ML are barely on the curriculum, and sub-par at that; more interesting subjects, like e.g. computational neuroscience, or any software engineering that isn't Python, simply doesn't feature. They'll be out on their ear.

Re: As professors struggle to recruit postdocs, calls for change in academia

#269

Post by bsder »

mr_gibbins wrote: post #268
slurpmaker wrote: post #42

Make it make sense. Offer Postdocs an actual career path not based on broken tenure and disposable adjunct professor roles, with hundreds if not thousands of applicants. Why would someone, with any field of study, be a "scum of the earth" post doc for 1/5th the salary and double the hours required as a junior python developer role? Moreso, post doc'ing for the wrong professor can ruin your career, why risk that eithe…

I've posted on this before but I make twice as much, more, as an industry pro than in my work as a non-tenured academic. I've been offered tenure and turned it down, because if I took it, my family would starve. It needs to change. But imagine the displacement of those ivory-tower academic greybeards who will suddenly have to compete with actual professionals? They're still teaching HTML/CSS in my university, for exa…

Careful. Not every PhD is STEM. There are lots of humanities PhDs.

In addition, most of my EE professors were from industry and would smoke their contemporaries. They knew their shit cold and then some.

Re: As professors struggle to recruit postdocs, calls for change in academia

#270

Post by bsder »

Spivak wrote: post #215
jjoonathan wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There's a shortage of Lamborghinis!" "Oh? At which price point?" "At the $4000 price point! It's a travesty!"

There's some nuance here because the reason this logic works is that labor is special (to me at least) because measures to forcibly reduce the cost of labor increase human suffering. But for basically every other good prices being driven well beyond the norm (during normalish market conditions) is basically the definition of a shortage. It doesn't really matter if it's a "luxary" good or not (since that category is i…

> If the price of milk shot up from $2/gal to $20/gal that's a shortage.

Erm, exactly?

If there were a real shortage, salaries would be going up. The fact that salaries aren't going up to counteract that "shortage" tells me that there really isn't one.

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