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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

#141

Post by ModernMech »

maximus-decimus wrote: post #138
ModernMech wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really have to draw the line at Ph.D. students being compared to slaves. Doing a Ph.D. Is an amazing opportunity, and a voluntary one at that. Far beyond being uncompensated, Ph.D. student are in fact compensated with a stipend, tuition, and mentorship. To compare this arrangement to slavery is to both cheapen the experience of a Ph.D. and to minimize the horrors of slavery.

I didn't meant to call Ph.D. student slaves, I'm just trying to point out that by your definition even slaves are not free labour, which I think we all agree is wrong. I just couldn't think of another situation where people aren't getting paid, but in retrospect I guess volunteers would have been a less insulting example and convey my point better.

Okay, even so, I must push back stronger on the point you made initially, that professors are looking to exploit free labor and therefore would never cut Ph.D. enrollments in half.

The first notion I would like to dispel is that we are looking for employees of any kind. To be clear, a Ph.D. is closer to an apprenticeship than it is to employment, so benchmarking it against employment leads to all kinds of wrong conclusions about the arrangement.

In fact, we are looking for students, which is to say that when admitted to a Ph.D., students lack the skills necessary to undertake the work, and the expectation is that they will be trained as a matter of course. How this differs from typical on-the-job training is that the training period can last years.

The flip side is that business has adopted the philosophy "fire fast", meaning that that if some employee isn't working out, it's best to just let them go rather than let the issue persist. With a student, the philosophy is reversed; a student who isn't working out should be mentored.

All this training and mentorship does not come cheap. For one, the facilities they use are expensive. For another, faculty time is expensive as well. Students don't appreciate this because the economics are hidden from them, and it often leads to perceptions that they are only paid the small fraction of their compensation that flows into their bank accounts. But to be clear, this training is in fact compensation to the student. It's not given to them at zero cost to the university. I can charge up to $300 per hour to give advice and training as part of my consultancy, but my students as part of my regular employment get carte balance access. They don't ever see an invoice from me, but that doesn't mean my time was spent with them out of the goodness of my heart. It certainly doesn't mean I'm exploiting them by not paying them market rate. If they want market rate, they should have marketable skills relevant to the position.

The slavery comparison falls apart for obvious reasons. The volunteer comparison also falls apart because volunteers act as such to give, whereas students start a Ph.D. to get something out of it. And they do, it's just not all money. It's not even mostly money, and I think this should be clear to anyone thinking of starting a Ph.D. at this point. So for a Ph.D. student to complain that they were paid a small amount compared to someone who was employed, while eliding the vast array of other compensation they got, and simultaneously ignoring all the privileges afforded to students that aren't to employees, that to me is missing the entire value of the degree.

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

#142

Post by tpoacher »

wthomp wrote: post #106
tpoacher wrote: post #58

As 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.

Yes but I'd be very surprised if this isn't a heavily "clapped" post on their LinkedIn profile already :p

Also, it's citable, if I'm not mistaken. Still counts.

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

#143

Post by DonaldPShimoda »

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?

What a... weird way to phrase this.

"Need"? All the faculty I've worked with have wanted students to work with them. Science is frequently a collaborative effort, and having more than one person working on a project is often a good way to make the project better. They generally do not see students as a burden, but as an investment into the future of the field (and their own success, of course, but in a collaborative sense).

It's fine if you decided academia wasn't for you, and I don't doubt even a little bit that people do exist who see students as a burden to be dealt with. But my own experience has been vastly different from that, so it strikes me as odd that you simply assumed a cynical stance off the bat.

Anyway, your general stance seems very cynical. I like doing my own work, but I also like collaborating with people, and I know I'm not alone in that.

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

#144

Post by plonk »

bumby wrote: post #82
sideshowb wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want to maximize autonomy, great, but it’s unlikely you’ll also maximize pay And that's the literal trade off gp was referring to

Right, and it was phrased with "unfortunately" and as a "dystopia" which I took to mean "it shouldn't be this way." I wasn't trying to refute their point that tradeoffs exist, but rather indicate that's exactly how one should expect the system to operate. (Possible I misread their intent, though.) The idea that someone would expect to 1) land a job they love while 2) making gobs of money and 3) have it generalizable…

> The idea that someone would expect to 1) land a job they love while 2) making gobs of money and 3) have it generalizable across an oversaturated market like academia seems to indicate a lack of understanding of the incentive structure within the system.

I think that’s a strawman, even if unintended. The idea is that academia means a pay cut in exchange for a job one loves and more research freedom. The worsening situation of research funding makes the academic track pointless.

Again adding that I mostly mean in STEM, I don’t know the other fields that much.

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

#145

Post by type0 »

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…

There are certainly some pockets of academic circles that only try to appear to be working hard 12h every single day and only care for having you rub my back I'll rub yours kinda deals. But many of Ph.D students that are monkeying around in STEM doing seemingly useless stuff actually expand their areas of expertise and encourage each other, gain curiosity, become creative and it helps them to make progress. You have to look for certain clues, they can't be having too much fun -then they are not doing any good work, if they appear too bogged down -they don't know what they are doing and shouldn't be there in the first place.

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

#146

Post by ModernMech »

polygamous_bat wrote: post #84
ModernMech wrote: post #77

Earlier 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…

Personal experience: my advisor brings in somewhere between 2-3x my nominal pay as a Ph.D. student just to employ me. In his words, the excess goes into the "university", which I believe is just the org structure/bureaucracy that we at HN love to hate. So, all I want to say is > was a Ph.D. student who complained about being underpaid, now a professor who sees how expensive they actually are. They both can be true! Y…

> In his words, the excess goes into the "university", which I believe is just the org structure/bureaucracy that we at HN love to hate.

Yes, we all love to complain about paying overhead, the same way we all love to complain about paying taxes. "If only I didn't have to pay this chunk of money, imagine what more I could do for myself!"

And yet, we all know that it's not as simple as that. Yes, it's a shame that your advisor can't keep all his grant money and pay you 2-3x more. At the same time, the overhead money he pays is going to fund (among many other things) teaching assistantships, which will fund some other grad student whose advisor isn't as fortunate to have landed a lucrative grant. Or it will fund a new professor's startup package who is just starting out. Or it will fund startup research internal to the university. That same fund could support you in the future, if your funding runs dry; typical projects are funded for 4-5 years, whereas a Ph.D. can be longer (up to a decade even).

There are a million excellent uses for that money. Honestly this wouldn't be much of a discussion if the housing and healthcare markets were more sane; most of the stipend money is spent on rent anyway. My institution is able to subsidize housing for many grad students, but when a 2 bedroom apartment costs $3000/mo on the open market, it's true that it can be tough to be a grad student. Especially with a family.

But at the same time, those who seek to pursue a Ph.D. are often young and unencumbered. This can be a great option for many, as you are aware. I don't see the need to make it more like employment, when employment is already an option.

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

#147

Post by polygamous_bat »

ModernMech wrote: post #146
polygamous_bat wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personal experience: my advisor brings in somewhere between 2-3x my nominal pay as a Ph.D. student just to employ me. In his words, the excess goes into the "university", which I believe is just the org structure/bureaucracy that we at HN love to hate. So, all I want to say is > was a Ph.D. student who complained about being underpaid, now a professor who sees how expensive they actually are. They both can be true! Y…

> In his words, the excess goes into the "university", which I believe is just the org structure/bureaucracy that we at HN love to hate. Yes, we all love to complain about paying overhead, the same way we all love to complain about paying taxes. "If only I didn't have to pay this chunk of money, imagine what more I could do for myself!" And yet, we all know that it's not as simple as that. Yes, it's a shame that your…

> Yes, we all love to complain about paying overhead, the same way we all love to complain about paying taxes. "If only I didn't have to pay this chunk of money, imagine what more I could do for myself!"

I agree with you! I believe a tax rate of 0% OR 100% is insane, and the right number is somewhere in the middle. Right now, paying 67-50% "taxes" to the university and then also paying ~30% in real taxes just seems unfair/inefficient/unjust.

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

#148

Post by ModernMech »

polygamous_bat wrote: post #147
ModernMech wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In his words, the excess goes into the "university", which I believe is just the org structure/bureaucracy that we at HN love to hate. Yes, we all love to complain about paying overhead, the same way we all love to complain about paying taxes. "If only I didn't have to pay this chunk of money, imagine what more I could do for myself!" And yet, we all know that it's not as simple as that. Yes, it's a shame that your…

> Yes, we all love to complain about paying overhead, the same way we all love to complain about paying taxes. "If only I didn't have to pay this chunk of money, imagine what more I could do for myself!" I agree with you! I believe a tax rate of 0% OR 100% is insane, and the right number is somewhere in the middle. Right now, paying 67-50% "taxes" to the university and then also paying ~30% in real taxes just seems u…

unfair - what is the fair amount? I think if we were to decrease university overhead, anyone whose stipend may be affected by that would be right to say that it's unfair they are left without a stipend while you not only maintain yours, it might even increase.

inefficient - yes, probably. But I'm not sure that many universities' missions are related to efficiency. This of course makes it a bad profit maximizing organization, which is fine because it was never intended to be one. For instance, it might be more efficient for a university to cut all the under-enrolled programs and to only focus on STEM. But the mission statement of the university precludes that, so STEM is heavily taxed to support the philosophy department. It's not efficient, but I'm happy we have a philosophy department.

Also there's another degree of efficiency here, which is economies of scale. Overhead goes to pay for administration (the one HN loves to hate) which to a large degree increases my efficiency. For example, research overhead goes to fund the research office, which helps me get grants and stay compliant. They help me file for patents, and publish my work. Professors wouldn't be able to afford the staff at the research office with our individual grants, and even if we could we would be inefficiently duplicating the office in each of our individual labs. But by pooling our money (paying the overhead tax), we can afford a number of support staff who can help us all write better grants.

unjust - what is the just amount? The PI knows ahead of time all the taxes, and can request as much as they need from the funding organization to conduct the research. The only limit here is the total budget of the funding organization. If it's a public organization like the NSF, that budget is set by Congress, which is democratically elected. Your stipend is only limited due to the public's willingness to fund research. Since all of this follows the rule of law which has been democratically decided upon, I don't agree that the system is unjust.

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

#149

Post by Viliam1234 »

tpoacher wrote: post #142
wthomp wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a “nature publication” in the common sense. It’s in their commentary section.

Yes but I'd be very surprised if this isn't a heavily "clapped" post on their LinkedIn profile already :p Also, it's citable, if I'm not mistaken. Still counts.

Work smarter, not harder :)

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

#150

Post by dkqmduems »

thwayunion wrote: post #127
dkqmduems wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about those world class mathematicians working at subway?

What about them? There’s no way they would be able to get an academic position, which requires orders of magnitude more mental health fortitude than an industry position.

Look up Zhang.
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