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An Aspiring Scientist’s Frustration with Modern-Day Academia

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Re: An Aspiring Scientist’s Frustration with Modern-Day Academia

#91

Post by tensor »

jaynos wrote: post #48
chuckkir wrote: post #46

I have my PhD, and this is the standard angst that many aspiring students face. There's a reason we have the term "ABD" for All But Dissertation. If he got that far into grad school without realizing that a Professor is an entrepreneur - hiring employees (grad students) to produce his product (knowledge) which he sells to customers (government and industry) through sales and marketing (conferences and papers) - then…

Exactly. My brother cut short his PhD and got a M.S. when he realized the life of a professor was basically being a manager with employees that were harder to fire. If he wanted to be a manager, he'd have gotten an MBA.

I can't help but feel that the MBA is the scourge of the modern world. People in leadership positions need to be experts in the field they lead.

Re: An Aspiring Scientist’s Frustration with Modern-Day Academia

#93

Post by NhanH »

betterunix wrote: post #73
NhanH wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same reason that people don't drop everything in their life to pursue their ideals: the odd of succeeding following the established path may be awful, but the alternatives' odds are even worse. Even without regard to the practicality of the choices (ie economic aspect of it) , you basically have two choices: go to grad school and have ~25-50% of getting somethings out of it (and I'm talking about knowledge/…

Eh... In theory, the PhD is this fantastic credential that opens all kinds of doors. In practice it might make a small difference in your starting salary in industry. The only place where having a PhD is truly important is in a research position, which basically means academia. Even then it is not the last word -- tenure track positions might be out, but there are a number of schools who are willing to hire a good re…

I wasn't talking about PhD as a credential, I was talking about how for the normal good-but-not-Feynman aspiring scientists, going for a PhD is one of the few ways you can properly learn how to do research.

Re: An Aspiring Scientist’s Frustration with Modern-Day Academia

#94

Post by reillyse »

dnautics wrote: post #11
gajomi wrote: post #8

Can someone please change `wity' to `with' in the title? This critique is well written and was interesting for me to read, having just finished my PhD a few months ago. I can relate to a number of the issues he raised. However, I must take issue with his point (8). While I think it certainly is important to make sure that academics contribute back to larger society in some capacity, I think it is a bit premature to c…

the difficulty with 'basic research with seemingly no value' (a good example is the fourier transform, which at the time was seen as a mathematical curiosity) - is that it lacks accountability. How do you make sure that the academe that is selling their project as 'basic research' isn't just pulling a fast one on you and sucking your funds to tickle their intellectual jollies? This problem is even worse when you take…

I don't agree with the taxpayer funds aspect. Why can we not agree that employing people to perform research is a good thing? There are lots of things that are taken as good investments by governments based on the fact that it will be useful in future years. Take for example teaching people to read and write, preventative healthcare, disaster planning, Sex education (it's a long list when you think about it). My point is that research for research's sake isn't actually a bad thing. It's generally cheap (when compared to employment ,social welfare or institutions like Prison or Hospitals) and provides useful outputs(I think everyone can agree that at least some positives come out of research). Anyway, I think in future years people will consider the fact that people aren't freely educated to 3rd & 4th level in much the same way as we view not getting educated to secondary level(18) in days gone by.

Re: An Aspiring Scientist’s Frustration with Modern-Day Academia

#96

Post by skylan_q »

jostmey wrote: post #5

Real scientific progress does not happen overnight. It takes years of hard work. Sadly, modern day scientist are expected to constantly produce amazing results or face losing funding. And what do you think happens?

Let me try a guess:

They draw radical conclusions from their research which cause alarm/concern/interest to those who have no idea about the body of research but grant funding in order to get more funding?

Re: An Aspiring Scientist’s Frustration with Modern-Day Academia

#97

Post by skylan_q »

dnautics wrote: post #13
rhythmvs wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or someone speaking out of experience? I can testify[1] on the nefarious influence of MBA-like groupthink in academia: gigantic counterproductive bureaucratic overhead, obsession with pseudo-measurability of everything, from impact factors over “quality assessment” to “standardization” of examination and “competence matrices”. Top-down bogus coming from people who failed in the corporate world and met their Peter’s p…

while your characterization rings true for academia, I hardly believe that those attributes are the provenance of MBAs. The irony is that we are in an age of scientism (as Feynman would say) and it's precisely the popularization of science itself that has led to 'pseudo-measurability' that you speak of. I remember chuckling that my humanities classes were grading essays via mathematical rubric at a time when the math…

The irony is that we are in an age of scientism (as Feynman would say) and it's precisely the popularization of science itself that has led to 'pseudo-measurability' that you speak of.

Metrics, metrics, metrics... even if your metrics mean nothing at all, they're still very convincing!

Re: An Aspiring Scientist’s Frustration with Modern-Day Academia

#98

Post by ChristianMarks »

I would not dismiss the author's complaints out of hand with the ad hominem remark that the author is burnt out. It may even be true, but the author's points remain.

Academia has become a business, in which the priorities for research institutions are grants first, publications second and teaching a distant third. But this development does not imply that the way the university conducts business is optimal or desirable. (One sees this smug attitude in the comments in the form, "academia is a business, get over it.")

Graduate students, postdocs and research staff are exploited. One can legitimately ask whether the institutionalized scientific method must necessarily exploit graduate students, postdocs and research staff to maintain standards of scientific rigor. Cannot the the university act as a gatekeeper without requiring inexpensive contingent laborers to subsidize faculty and administrator salaries? Why must limiting access to networks of scholars and scholarship involve such oppressive opportunity costs?

Re: An Aspiring Scientist’s Frustration with Modern-Day Academia

#99

Post by jleyank »

In an admittedly fast read of the parent article, I don't recall seeing what field the PhD was in. FWIW, in chemistry, there is a very large difference in starting salary, job requirements and career potential between PhD and non-PhD. This is true in academia as well as industry. Non-PhD's tend to be technicians, pairs of hands, or sales. PhD's tend to be researchers and have a far better chance of going into middle management.

Is it relevant? Not sure any more given the loss of jobs to Asia and when the worker crosses 40. But it's been this way for as long as I've been aware.

Re: An Aspiring Scientist’s Frustration with Modern-Day Academia

#100

Post by dnautics »

gajomi wrote: post #38
dnautics wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the difficulty with 'basic research with seemingly no value' (a good example is the fourier transform, which at the time was seen as a mathematical curiosity) - is that it lacks accountability. How do you make sure that the academe that is selling their project as 'basic research' isn't just pulling a fast one on you and sucking your funds to tickle their intellectual jollies? This problem is even worse when you take…

This is a very good point and I think I would like to refine my comment in response to it. I think it is important to distinguish between individual vs collective accountability, as well as accountability within a field and the accountability of the field to larger society. My argument for supporting basic research in a field assumes that there is internal accountability within that field and that the research makes…

>assumes that there is internal accountability within that field

Yeah, that is a huge, and completely wrong assumption about the sciences.

I could rattle off a list of names just in my field (you should google them to find out exactly what they did): Dalibor Sames/Bengu Sezen. Leo Paquette. Homme Hellinga. Peter Schultz/Jonathan Zhang. Geoffrey Chang. Armando Cordova. To varying degrees of fraud, or negligence (e.g. Chang wasn't fraudulent, just almost criminally[0] negligent) And those are the people who got caught, and the ones I know about. Guess how many of them still have faculty positions?

[0]I feel safe saying this (with the "almost" qualification) because misappropriation of federal funds is a crime.

Irrespective of your assumption, you still need some sort of justfication for giving taxpayer money to science. Presumably, because it's good for society. Well fine. If it's so good for society, why can't you find people to give money to science as a free-will donation?

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