I think what we call academia isn’t really academia, but a system that’s subservient to the desires of the state. The dollars come from somewhere and there are always strings attached. Sure, a tenured professor has more freedom than the average federal employee, but only because the state hasn’t felt the need to tighten the screws. If policy interests ever diverged from interests of the universities, I think we’d quickly learn that academia of today is not at all what it presupposes itself to be. It’s more of less the Ministry of Truth, to extent required by those who hold the purse strings.
Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it
101–110 of 155 posts
Re: Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But at the same time, I only work 4 days a week, 28 weeks of the year, and those days I'm done at noon. TBH I have no idea what number of "bullshit hours" I work, but I spend the vast majority of my time working on things I'd probably be doing anyways. I certainly think what I'm working on is more interesting than what I'd almost certainly be doing if I had accepting one of my TT offers. > If it were, I think we'd…
> but I spend the vast majority of my time working on things I'd probably be doing anyways But is it your project? Or is it your employers, and do they actually own it? If you’re fired, do you still get to work on that project? > what I'm working on is more interesting than what I'd almost certainly be doing if I had accepting one of my TT offers I’m curious, why wouldn’t you just decide to work on a project that was…
> But is it your project? Or is it your employers, and do they actually own it? If you’re fired, do you still get to work on that project?
Varies. I optimize my employment situation for my personal ROI.
But it turns out that making money off of even excellent scientific work is often very hard and involves insane amounts of slog. Like 1 hour of science to 10 hours of not-science. So usually employment and assignment has better risk-adjusted return. Not always, but usually.
> So my question is: who is doing such independent work? Who are these researchers and how are they disseminating their work? If there aren’t very many of these people, can we not conclude this mode of research is not a viable alternative to mainstream research?
I know there are several people like this in my field. They publish a paper every year or three, often in smaller venues. Or just throw things on arxiv.
> So I wonder how viable this path is? Do people just not consider it? Or do they lose interest in research over those two decades? Does life get in the way?
I think the middle and latter options happen quite a lot. I meet a lot of early retirees on Tuesday mid-morning lifts. I think a lot of people lose their passion for research in their 30s. This happens in the academy as well. Sometimes after amassing wealth you realize "hey, you know what I enjoy more than doing world-class mathematics? Chilling in my cabin with my family and skiing."
> And so you’re saying they funded their own research with their wealth at that point?
They took the PoP positions to pay for their kids' college without spending down savings. A sort of middle ground between working and retirement, and also a good way to build some collaboration opportunities.
> I thought we were talking about funding a research agenda. From where I’m sitting, that costs millions.
To be clear, the premise that started this thread is the "a guy and his laptop/occasional cloud spend" style of research that's prevalent in CS and Math. Yeah, if you need $1M/yr then you need an income stream or a different level of wealth.
> I guess my overall point is that, most people who want to do research, just do it. Spending decades amassing resources just to get started seems backwards.
I think this is reasonable advice for people who (1) need something more than a laptop and modest cloud compute, and (2) are absolutely sure that they would rather pursue that particular research as opposed to retiring early, and (3) are certain they they will be able to retain funding streams for the duration of their career.
Re: Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it
#103Back when I was in grad school there was a whole set of research people who just lived at the university - but I noticed, they'd didn't really do a whole lot of work. They were just always there, always on hand when the tenured PI showed up to be noticed, and so on. They'd mastered the art of appearing to be dogged 24-7 nose-to-the-grindstone researchers, but it was really just a relaxed little club. Most of their en…
> They were often quite resentful of people who showed up, worked hard and got results, but who didn't hang around for the social interaction game as they had other things to do with their free time.
did they piss you off or something?
Re: Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it
#104May I ask, whats the difference of academia now vs old academia (the Greats, like Einstein or anyone else), economic wise?
Re: Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it
#105I think what we call academia isn’t really academia, but a system that’s subservient to the desires of the state. The dollars come from somewhere and there are always strings attached. Sure, a tenured professor has more freedom than the average federal employee, but only because the state hasn’t felt the need to tighten the screws. If policy interests ever diverged from interests of the universities, I think we’d qui…
I think it is easy to produce vague allegations of a lack of integrity, but I would really expect more substance to such a critique.
> ... desires of the state. The dollars come from somewhere and there are always strings attached.
Is this suggesting that the public funders influence the outcome of research? It is not something I have ever witnessed. They sometimes may seek to take influence on the direction of a research programme, especially when the performance is below expectations. but I have yet to see an example where a public funder has attempted to influence research results.
> I think we’d quickly learn that academia of today is not at all what it presupposes itself to be
What does it presuppose to be? Academia of today is 1) a place of teaching and knowledge dissemination, 2) a place of research and knowledge creation, 3) a multibillion dollar business that sells tickets to successful professional lives. The latter leads to overinflated self-marketing, and unfortunately this affects how research results are communicated.
Those who hold the "purse strings" have little interest in influencing research outcomes. Rather, they care about the reputation of their course (students), their own reputation (alumni), recruiting talent and/or outsourcing research (businesses), or actual research results (public funders).
This is at least the case in most institutions in the US and the UK, and most of western Europe.
Re: Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it
#106As an aside, I'm impressed someone treated Nature as their personal blogpage and now has a nature publication on their CV as a result. I would never have thought if that. Hell, I just saw it happen, and I still wouldnt have thought of it.
This is not a “nature publication” in the common sense. It’s in their commentary section.
Re: Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But at the same time, I only work 4 days a week, 28 weeks of the year, and those days I'm done at noon. TBH I have no idea what number of "bullshit hours" I work, but I spend the vast majority of my time working on things I'd probably be doing anyways. I certainly think what I'm working on is more interesting than what I'd almost certainly be doing if I had accepting one of my TT offers. > If it were, I think we'd…
> A STEM PhD, after 10-20 years in tech or finance, IS an independently wealthy person... that's the whole point. Was an independently wealthy person, as the US job market was rigged to favor upper middle class professionals. Nobody knows if that's going to be the case for the fresh PhDs entering the job market today. Those lucrative careers may be threatened by any number of reasons, including political pressure and…
This is a good point. I think there are still opportunities, and will be for the next 10 years, at least for good CS PhDs. Certainly not for all PhDs in all disciplines.
> rigged to favor upper middle class professionals... remote work
In the case of PhDs, it's exactly the opposite. Those jobs have very weak immigration moats compared to eg law, medicine, engineering, even software devekopment. The vast majority of phd students in CS are already non-residents and that's been true for decades at this point.
For the same reason, PhD labor is probably the least effected by remote work.
Re: Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be clear, Ph.D. students are very expensive. I don't know where you would get the idea that they are "free labor". Sure they're not as expensive as software engineers, but they also can't (or shouldn't) be "fired" per se. There's a certain latitude you are afforded as a student, and that's something that I think a lot of Ph.D. candidates don't appreciate when they complain they are underpaid compared to their indu…
I think I was paid like 18K a year when I got my STEM PhD in 2018. So, when you say that PhD students are not as expensive as SWEs, you could be making the understatement of the year. I bet the Mcdonalds workers made more than me.
That’s what you were paid, it’s not what you cost.
Re: Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it
#109The author is too optimistic. There are going to be continuous waves of mass firings of tenured faculty in the 2030s and 2040s. The overwork and stress culture are going to get much worse over the next quarter century. The problem is structural, not cultural, and there isn't much that academics are going to be able to do in order to combat the problem. Specific to the USA, but also true in much of the west: 1. Revenu…
> 1. Revenue is a huge problem, which means academia will become a zero-sum game even (especially!) for higher-compensated labor. Academia's revenue streams come from three sources that are decreasing in real terms. Those revenue streams will likely begin decreasing even in nominal terms even as inflation reaches a higher steady-state! Government budgets for higher education and academic R&D are more likely to decrease than to increase, and even if they increase almost certainly won't keep up with inflation. Meanwhile, due to demographics, the USA in particular is about to enter a period of decreasing college enrollments (unless the percent of the college-going population can increase substantially, which is unlikely).
On the other side, spending is a huge problem as well. Like... professional grade sports teams? As an European: WTF does that kind of shit have to do with universities? Yes, I get it, it attracts students, but you could also carve out the sports teams into separate commercial entities. And the bill isn't small either - the US government helped out with 6.5 billion dollars and student fees with another 1.5 billion dollars [1] in 2018! That is, frankly, insane.
Also, at least Ivy League universities have endowments valued at literally dozens of billions of dollars [2]. The US needs a complete reform of university financing.
[1] https://www.axios.com/2020/03/11/college-sports-financing-st...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universit...
Re: Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it
#110The author is too optimistic. There are going to be continuous waves of mass firings of tenured faculty in the 2030s and 2040s. The overwork and stress culture are going to get much worse over the next quarter century. The problem is structural, not cultural, and there isn't much that academics are going to be able to do in order to combat the problem. Specific to the USA, but also true in much of the west: 1. Revenu…
> 1. Revenue is a huge problem, which means academia will become a zero-sum game even (especially!) for higher-compensated labor. Academia's revenue streams come from three sources that are decreasing in real terms. Those revenue streams will likely begin decreasing even in nominal terms even as inflation reaches a higher steady-state! Government budgets for higher education and academic R&D are more likely to decrea…
> On the other side, spending is a huge problem as well.
Of course. But universities will 100% fire tenured faculty before they kill off a D1 football program or spend down endowment principal. So from the perspective of academic laborers, it's a moot point.