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Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it

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Re: Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it

#111

Post by Upvoter33 »

photochemsyn wrote: post #19

Back 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…

"Academic funding is all controlled by government bureaucrats and corporate executives...."

This is not really true in the US. For example, NSF review processes are basically determined by peers, panels of PhDs who are experts in the field. While their expertise may vary, they generally do a reasonable and fair and scientifically meaningful review. To claim this is all "controlled by government burearcrats" is lazy and mostly wrong.

Re: Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it

#112

Post by dkqmduems »

thwayunion wrote: post #102
ModernMech wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

How about those world class mathematicians working at subway?

Re: Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it

#113

Post by lizzardbraind »

sircastor wrote: post #23
hourago wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lifetime employment doing what you love should only go to those who are supremely dedicated Should people give their lives for a profession? That seems prone to create unhealthy societies prone to conflict and cheating. In my experience self described meritocratic societies usually are just cynic nepotist societies. The children of the poor have to work their asses off to get much less that what the children of the…

>Should people give their lives for a profession? I have recently begun to appreciate how much (in the US) we structure our entire existence around our jobs, and how we earn money. The puritan work ethic, extrapolated out across BS jobs encourages so many of us to identify as our jobs, and make that our sense of self. It's ridiculous.

It's not just the Puritan work ethic. The dearth of support and extreme scarcity of housing play a huge role.

If you won't center your entire life around work, there's a long line of people who will, and your employer would happily hire one of them and throw you into the proverbial wood chipper of being unemploymed in the US.

Re: Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it

#114

Post by Beldin »

thwayunion wrote: post #56
DonaldPShimoda wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're forgetting the cost of funding students, but also there are costs in securing prestige for your institution. The university benefits when your grants are large and plentiful, so they encourage research faculty to pursue those projects which earn more money, even if it's not exactly what they care most about.

> You're forgetting the cost of funding students, but also there are costs in securing prestige for your institution. But why does he need students to do his own research? I made a similar calculation and went into industry. I am now at the point where I could self-fund an indefinite post-doc (with benefits) at the risk-free rate of return. By the time I would be going up for Full Professor, I'll be able to self-fund…

> But why does he need students to do his own research?

That's a phenomenally good question. Short answer: because of incentives in academia().

To be high up in the academic hierarchy(), you want top-ranked publications. So you work on those and score a few - good on you! However, a researcher in the same field outdid you by publishing their own work AND supervising a student. That increased their output, so they get the promotion. Now they get more means to attract phd students and postdocs, all collaborating with them, further increasing output.

The nasty thing is that this cycle has knock-on effects. Do everything by yourself and you're stagnating; collaborate and you are rewarded with more recognition, promotion, more citations, more reviewer invitations, more invites to give talks/keynotes, etc. And: more quantity and quality in those trigger more and higher-valued of those. Suddenly you're growing into a "respected member of the community" - which strengthens your position at your instituting. Stronger position locally is more local options for growth, leading to the next cycle.

TL;DR: Because the direction of academia is in the hands of managers (uni admins, politicians, grant body admins), and managers need quantifiable data... so you're incentiviced to make your numbers go up.

Re: Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it

#115

Post by thwayunion »

Beldin wrote: post #114
thwayunion wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're forgetting the cost of funding students, but also there are costs in securing prestige for your institution. But why does he need students to do his own research? I made a similar calculation and went into industry. I am now at the point where I could self-fund an indefinite post-doc (with benefits) at the risk-free rate of return. By the time I would be going up for Full Professor, I'll be able to self-fund…

> But why does he need students to do his own research? That's a phenomenally good question. Short answer: because of incentives in academia( ). To be high up in the academic hierarchy( ), you want top-ranked publications. So you work on those and score a few - good on you! However, a researcher in the same field outdid you by publishing their own work AND supervising a student. That increased their output, so they g…

I totally agree. Academia is a prestige game. If you just want to do science, you're better off taking a non-traditional path.

Re: Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it

#116

Post by mschuster91 »

thwayunion wrote: post #110
mschuster91 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Government could enforce both of these. Threaten universities to either split off their commercial activities or to lose tax benefits. And tax endowments.

Re: Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it

#117

Post by cma »

zdyn5 wrote: post #40
cma wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Debt-to-GDP ratios and the cost of servicing existing debt together mean that there are difficult budgeting decisions on the horizon for many western governments. Academic R&D just doesn't have the constituency needed to save it from cuts. Wouldn't this be a plausible story immediately post-WWII?

What was the scale of academic research post WW 2 compared to now? I’d imagine our research budgets are a significantly higher fraction of GDP now.

The fourth sector is still growing though:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_sector_of_the_eco...

I don't see things going back towards the first and second sectors human labor wise, so it would have to all be taken up in the third sector (service sector)? I guess it is plausible with healthcare.

Re: Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it

#118

Post by kirsebaer »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #69
avn2109 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you not have access to Sci-Hub somehow? Or have I misunderstood the problem here?

Sci-hub has become significantly less useful because all new uploads are paused pending resolution of a court case in India. That includes anything published in the last year. A large portion of a working academic's reading load will be keeping up with recently published literature.

But for papers published recently you can email an author and they will send you a PDF.

Re: Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it

#119

Post by filoleg »

Upvoter33 wrote: post #111
photochemsyn wrote: post #19

Back 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…

"Academic funding is all controlled by government bureaucrats and corporate executives...." This is not really true in the US. For example, NSF review processes are basically determined by peers, panels of PhDs who are experts in the field. While their expertise may vary, they generally do a reasonable and fair and scientifically meaningful review. To claim this is all "controlled by government burearcrats" is lazy a…

> This is not really true in the US.

Maybe not in the most technical sense, but what funds most of the research projects? Government (with NIH being the largest funder of biomedical research in the world), private companies, and non-profits[0]. US government dumps absolutely enormous amounts of money on research funding.

The difference in numbers can be pretty stark. I don't have data on hand for the exact breakdown for all research funding in general, but I have numbers for health research specifically (and I expect the trend overall to stay the same regarding research funding overall). Top 3 funders in the world are NIH ($26.1bn), European Commission ($3.7bn), and UK Medical Research Council ($1.3bn). For comparison, the largest non-profit contribution comes from Welcome Trust and is sitting only at $909.1mil, with WHO coming in third at $135mil.

Here is a published paper[1] from 2016 containing all these numbers.

0. https://undsci.berkeley.edu/who-pays-for-science/

1. https://health-policy-systems.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Re: Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it

#120

Post by rsfern »

filoleg wrote: post #119
Upvoter33 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Academic funding is all controlled by government bureaucrats and corporate executives...." This is not really true in the US. For example, NSF review processes are basically determined by peers, panels of PhDs who are experts in the field. While their expertise may vary, they generally do a reasonable and fair and scientifically meaningful review. To claim this is all "controlled by government burearcrats" is lazy a…

> This is not really true in the US. Maybe not in the most technical sense, but what funds most of the research projects? Government (with NIH being the largest funder of biomedical research in the world), private companies, and non-profits[0]. US government dumps absolutely enormous amounts of money on research funding. The difference in numbers can be pretty stark. I don't have data on hand for the exact breakdown…

The point isn’t that the government doesn’t fund the research or set the big picture priorities, it’s that funding decisions aren’t really made by some random bureaucrat in isolation. In my experience NSF/DOE/DOD program managers are pretty sharp, often moving into that line of work after doing scientific research of their own, and they’re really good at eliciting and synthesizing technical feedback from reviewers (mostly academics and researchers from the national labs).

That’s not to say that there are no problems with the funding model, but I think it’s more that it’s difficult to get funding for new high risk ideas either already having funding and attention

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