How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)
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How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)
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Re: How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)
#2Please update the title, article is from 2013.
Re: How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)
#3Please update the title, article is from 2013.
Nothing of note for the analysis has changed.
Re: How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)
#4One thing that should also be emphasized is that there is a great number of PhD candidates that never actually finish, in some universities that number is more than half.
Many of these, before quitting, teach to help pay tuition and do all sorts of tasks for their department/supervisor that are not related or help them finish their PhD.
Re: How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)
#5The article claims a problem is that there aren't enough mid-tier positions, for those who have just acquired a PhD but aren't yet suitable for a professorship.
What sort of solution could one imagine? Outside of post-doctorate positions, there's neither funding nor desire for the kind of research that you need to further an academic career.
Re: How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)
#6If someone comes up with a better system, it will be adopted. It is very hard to determine who has the capacity to be a Professor. The current system works fine most of the time. It is true that crackpots get through on occasion, but the vast majority of professorial appointments are reasonable.
Re: How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)
#7The article claims a problem is that there aren't enough mid-tier positions, for those who have just acquired a PhD but aren't yet suitable for a professorship. What sort of solution could one imagine? Outside of post-doctorate positions, there's neither funding nor desire for the kind of research that you need to further an academic career.
Reduce the number of graduate programme places so the over supply is less, either by reducing the number of places reasonably evenly across the system or by closing marginal doctoral programmes altogether. There are a lot of universities that graduate Ph.D.s who have virtually no chance of a decent academic position. The first tier universities graduate more than 5 times as many Drs. each year than are necessary to replace their own staff, some much more than that. You need to be an extremely strong second tier graduate to have a chance of getting a position at the same level, never mind going up. Third tier or below are basically exploited for teaching and research labour and then gradually eased out of the system. People should not enter these programmes expecting to get an academic job. Those who enter those programmes would be better off getting a J.D., which is damning. A J.D. is a horrible idea for most people but at least it only wastes 3 years and less than $200K. Most people who enter a Ph.D. programme drop out, in most disciplines, and some people who do graduate take up to ten years.
Re: How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)
#8The article claims a problem is that there aren't enough mid-tier positions, for those who have just acquired a PhD but aren't yet suitable for a professorship. What sort of solution could one imagine? Outside of post-doctorate positions, there's neither funding nor desire for the kind of research that you need to further an academic career.
As a start, remove the bureaucratic administrative layers which have grown wild due to managerialism?
"My own knowledge comes from universities, both in the United States and Britain. In both countries, the last thirty years have seen a veritable explosion of the proportion of working hours spent on administrative tasks at the expense of pretty much everything else. In my own university, for instance, we have more administrators than faculty members, and the faculty members, too, are expected to spend at least as much time on administration as on teaching and research combined. The same is true, more or less, at universities worldwide." http://www.thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-decl...
Articles like this indundate the reader with chart upon chart. High-res pictures with a scope too narrow to find serious solutions. What do these charts leave out?
Re: How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)
#9Interesting - some important points overlooked:
- They assume that for everyone doing a PhD there is an equivalently attractive job waiting for them. However, many young people going doing PhDs (especially in the countries highlighted, Portugal, Greece, Slovakia) aren't choosing between a steady job and the uncertainty of PhD - there are often either no jobs available or very unattractive ones (e.g. working well below your skill level, poor working conditions, etc). A PhD offers an interesting hybrid of employment and training while offering more intellectual freedom and stimulation than your average desk job (note to Americans - most PhDs in Europe come with some form salary/scholarship/stipend).
- They seem to assume that everyone going into academia from the PhD level up is aiming to remain there. Many people do PhDs and then go to industries - certain industries (e.g. biosciences) pretty much require a PhD if you want to get anywhere interesting.
Both these significantly weaken the drug gang analogy, since it rests on the premise that there is a big pool of people joining at the bottom of the pyramid with the principal aim of clawing their way to the top. The motivations for doing a PhD however are far more diverse, from being simply a more interesting (or simply available) option that regular work (flexible hours, intellectual freedom, and a prestigious title at the end of it) to being a requirement to work in a particular industry. Certainly in my experience, only a minority of people starting PhDs do so with the explicit goal of attaining tenured professorship.