The comments for this article are loading on top of the article itself. It's completely unreadable. Anyone else seeing this?
Academia Is Eating Its Young
11–20 of 112 posts
Re: Academia Is Eating Its Young
#12The comments for this article are loading on top of the article itself. It's completely unreadable. Anyone else seeing this?
Yes, but Safari Reader saved the day for me.
Re: Academia Is Eating Its Young
#13The comments for this article are loading on top of the article itself. It's completely unreadable. Anyone else seeing this?
Sorry, someone else mentioned this. It's working on mine, but I'll get a fix in later.
Re: Academia Is Eating Its Young
#14The reward structure we live by is oriented towards extrinsic motivation even when work produced by intrinsic motivation is known to be of higher quality. There goes a story that Edison was taught this lesson when he tried to sell his very first voting machine. He was told, "we don't want it if we can't mess with it". That's when he is suppose to have decided to only work on projects that people wanted. Then there is…
The problem with intrinsic motivation is that people use it as an excuse to exploit other people.
Re: Academia Is Eating Its Young
#15I think you're touching on a really interesting subject, which namank elaborated on in his comment. It's too early to tell, but it seems education is heading in a more 'intrinsic' direction, with less structure and more exploration. On the issues of publishing and funding scientific work, these are kind of the same problems facing all creators now. The rate of creation has gone up tremendously quickly, and we are still developing the tools to improve efficiency.
Re: Academia Is Eating Its Young
#16The one person I feel most strongly about this is Elizabeth Iorns. Elizabeth was named one of the 10 most important people by Nature last year, for her work in the Reproducibility Initiative and with Science Exchange ( http://www.nature.com/news/366-days-nature-s-10-1.11997 ). She is one of the most genuinely passionate researchers I know, and she cares deeply about doing good science. If she is not teaching the next…
The entire college/university ecosystem is poised for collapse over the next couple of decades. After centuries of monopoly in the collection and dissemination of knowledge, they are being challenged by higher value free market alternatives on the internet, and they have absolutely no cultural or instinctive capability to react to it. I'm not sure where Research will end up, but I don't think academic institutions as…
Traditional academic institutions serve two purposes:
1) Credentialing 2) Capital-intensive research
There is nothing on the internet that is a threat to these two core functions.
Re: Academia Is Eating Its Young
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
The entire college/university ecosystem is poised for collapse over the next couple of decades. After centuries of monopoly in the collection and dissemination of knowledge, they are being challenged by higher value free market alternatives on the internet, and they have absolutely no cultural or instinctive capability to react to it. I'm not sure where Research will end up, but I don't think academic institutions as…
There is no higher value free market alternative to academic research. This does not exist. Publication is a different issue altogether. What do you have in mind - huge companies like Microsoft trying things and occasionally letting out crumbs? People blogging their speculations about the cause of autism? The problem with depending 100% on non-academic research is that either real information is not being produced in…
Perhaps you have not heard of Microsoft Research. [1]
Re: Academia Is Eating Its Young
#18I always wonder when reading these just how much the author is rationalizing their choice to leave. If( and I'm assuming here) they were in grad school for CS and left , most of those problems really don't apply. There isn't the glut of adjuncts and postdocs one sees in e.g Micro biology because industry absorbs most of them. Tech transfer isn't nearly as big a problem (though may still be a problem). And reproducibi…
Not sure how to answer your question, but one thing's for sure: CS is no longer just CS, isolated by itself.
CS is increasingly interdisciplinary, with cross pollination of students and teachers in other fields like bioinformatics, physics, math, economics, ecology, public health, etc. At least in these fields, it's pretty dinosaur like to just think of CS as its own thing instead of applied CS.
And per your assumption, I actually studied biochemistry and economics in college. I taught myself how to code as a way to get out of academia, but I'm pretty useless in anything related to CS research.
Re: Academia Is Eating Its Young
#19I always wonder when reading these just how much the author is rationalizing their choice to leave. If( and I'm assuming here) they were in grad school for CS and left , most of those problems really don't apply. There isn't the glut of adjuncts and postdocs one sees in e.g Micro biology because industry absorbs most of them. Tech transfer isn't nearly as big a problem (though may still be a problem). And reproducibi…
For all but the superstars with a desire to pursue academia, it is irrational to stay. Especially outside CS, a lot of quality people are heading towards oblivion (middle age with no job, no prospects) by doing a PhD. I know some of them, and it makes me sad to think about it. There just aren't enough jobs and funding dollars to go around. It's not to humanities adjunct-hell level yet, but it stopped being a sound economic decision a long time ago.
When people criticize academia I listen because I think everybody's got something to say, even if part of their message is self-justification. In non-CS sciences with fewer pathways to industry, it takes guts to speak out about the truth of the situation because the culture selects so strongly against it.
Re: Academia Is Eating Its Young
#20For a while now, I've pondered the creation of a new scientific society, something which has the same 'vibe' as the Royal Society did in the late 1800 early 1900's. Sort of a 'gentlepersons group' of critical thinkers. The promise is freeing science to once again flourish, the danger is something like TEDx. A society to promote the pursuit of science by the common man or woman, with rigorous debate and discussion. A…
Did a search and found this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Amateur_Scientists