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Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

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Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#191

Post by j7ake »

cyrksoft wrote: post #183
j7ake wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t VC funds structured such a way that one or two startups make it while 90 percent fail? University outputs seem to be comparable in this sense. The patent for Gatorade alone has brought in probably 100 million to U of Florida.

That might be the case. But universities are not startups. In one of the universities I worked at they had a four-year long History undergraduate degree. Between 5 and 10 students chose it each year (the entire university has around 5,000 students, give or take). That means that there are around 30 students combined. For these 30 students, there were more than 40 full time academics! There are more professors than st…

Universities are not startups but the basic research since WW2 has enabled the startup culture that is so vibrant today in California and Boston.

The success of this basic research feeds back into society with substantially increased tax revenue and reputation to attract the best minds in the world.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#192

Post by workingon »

seydor wrote: post #128
ska wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit over-egged, but there is not denying there are a raft of problems in academia. On the other hand, observant or not, it's still (nearly ) the only game in town for some sorts of things that people want to do. Some people pursue that for a long time hoping things will shake out ok for them... as it does very much for some.

Some of these things can be done by anyone yet academia gatekeeps the academic creds for itself. E.g. anyone can do machine learning research, but you can't publish in a journal without being affiliated to a university

I have multiple papers and none of them have university affiliations. The publishers are more than happy to take basically anyones money to just post your pdf online.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#193

Post by workingon »

seydor wrote: post #142
jpeloquin wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Start your own journal? It doesn't necessarily matter that citations to it won't be tracked in Scopus or whatever when it's first launched. Even the gatekept academic journals aren't automatically accepted into citation databases and academic search engines, it usually takes several years after they're launched to be fully accepted. Or discard the journal framework entirely—as long as people who are interested in the…

yeah machine learning was not the best example because it does not depend on journal prestige, but pretty much everything else is the publication venue matters very much in most fields. it is rare exception when something is published elsewhere. the bulk of papers need to make it to goodish journals to be ever seen and considered when deciding about funding. Open access misses the target because it only replaces the…

Are you a late career researcher by chance? Your comments feel like how things used to be done. I think the most important thing to getting your paper read now (other than being in a nature level journal) is being indexed on google scholar.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#194

Post by cyrksoft »

foldr wrote: post #189
cyrksoft wrote: post #179

I'm surprised how very few departments within most universities actually make money. If you had a company where most products lost money you would stop producing them. Universities have a lot of departments and degrees that bleed money. I don't understand how anybody thinks that you can have good wages like this. I worked as an Econ professor and visiting academic in top Business Schools in Latin America and the East…

> If you want to run universities as some type of public good, then good luck. Pay everybody the same and offer as many degrees as you'd like. Good luck hiring competent people... This is quite a bizarre statement, since universities have been run as a public good for centuries. The idea that they should be profitable businesses is relatively recent. I doubt that the classicists at Magdalen college have ever turned a…

You are using one Oxford college as an example, that is not representative at all. Most universities have very little (if not null) prestige associated to them. If you will only recruit top talent at Oxford and Cambridge, why have the rest of the universities? How do you plan on funding them?

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#195

Post by cyrksoft »

j7ake wrote: post #191
cyrksoft wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might be the case. But universities are not startups. In one of the universities I worked at they had a four-year long History undergraduate degree. Between 5 and 10 students chose it each year (the entire university has around 5,000 students, give or take). That means that there are around 30 students combined. For these 30 students, there were more than 40 full time academics! There are more professors than st…

Universities are not startups but the basic research since WW2 has enabled the startup culture that is so vibrant today in California and Boston. The success of this basic research feeds back into society with substantially increased tax revenue and reputation to attract the best minds in the world.

> The success of this basic research feeds back into society with substantially increased tax revenue and reputation to attract the best minds in the world.

I would love to see a source on that, particularly the tax revenue increase and return on investment.

I think it is wrong to fund so many researchers that contribute almost nothing to society with tax payers money. Why force minimum wage workers to give part of their income for academics to sit around and think about something that will probably have zero to no impact, while risking nothing. Let's face it, most academics accomplish nothing and have no impact whatsoever with their research. And I am saying this as an Econ researcher. I believe I contributed nothing to research in Economics while working in academia for 30 years. If I had any contribution whatsoever, it was either by teaching or by my consulting jobs.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#196

Post by Phyanak »

kd913 wrote: post #22

At some point, this nonsense has to stop. Both in the UK and the US. 1) Student loan plans (especially in the UK) are gonna cripple the economy and are vastly unsustainable. Especially given the ridiculous payback terms that change on a whim every year, and vastly unsustainable interest rates. People aren't earning enough to pay them back either. 2) Grants are being used as a negotiation tactic, with EU horizon fundi…

Of course you wouldn't run the system off VHS tapes 30 years ago but it is just absurd to me we have no change in the system when I can literally find all the lectures, the textbook and notes for basically any class in the next 5 minutes.

Not only any class but I can probably find multiple different professors teaching the class and take my pick of who I like the best.

To me, it can only be explained by our cultural obsession with education as credentials and the total disregard that classes have actual valuable information. We have had an absolute revolution in education that we are not taking any advantage of. Instead the classes mostly rot on youtube and the education racket collects rents no differently than in 1980 other than charging way more.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#197

Post by foldr »

cyrksoft wrote: post #194
foldr wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want to run universities as some type of public good, then good luck. Pay everybody the same and offer as many degrees as you'd like. Good luck hiring competent people... This is quite a bizarre statement, since universities have been run as a public good for centuries. The idea that they should be profitable businesses is relatively recent. I doubt that the classicists at Magdalen college have ever turned a…

You are using one Oxford college as an example, that is not representative at all. Most universities have very little (if not null) prestige associated to them. If you will only recruit top talent at Oxford and Cambridge, why have the rest of the universities? How do you plan on funding them?

Again, your rhetorical questions are straightforwardly answered by history. Humanities departments have survived for centuries at relatively non-prestigious institutions. It is clearly possible for societies to fund such things if there is the social and political will to do so. It may be that there is not, at present. Nonetheless, it is a vast oversimplification to suggest that recruiting talented academics in the humanities is essentially impossible merely because humanities departments are not profitable businesses. You might as well say that a country can't have armed forces because the soldiers don't turn in a profit.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#198

Post by culopatin »

JacobThreeThree wrote: post #92
nonrandomstring wrote: post #18

Universities are in trouble. I know of three that are unable to hire for senior and middle positions. They've been advertising for months. Here (UK), Brexit is partly to blame, along with post Cov19 fatigue, and aging population with many retiring. As I've said in other comments, the main problem is that academia has become hideously corrupted by "professional management" values leading to de-skilling as good people…

>unable to hire for senior and middle positions As usual with these claims, chances are it's due to the fact that these positions don't pay enough to be competitive.

And yet they require a PhD.

I’m back in school and my programming professors have been awful. Really high failure rates even in intro to programming. I already have the knowledge but not the degree and I felt bad for the students so I was wondering if I could teach COP1000 part time. They had a similar opening for an intro to IT class and I started laughing as soon as I saw the requirements and the pay.

They were asking for a PhD and they were paying 40k a year. I’m pretty sure you can make more than that working at Costco, Apple retail, administrative paper pusher or as a server, which require no degree at all.

It’s ridiculous.

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#199

Post by culopatin »

cudgy wrote: post #185
wmeredith wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They jacked up tuitions and caused an entire generation of people to carry lifetime of crippling debt. Please dig deeper if you care about this issue. My wife works at a state school and by far the overwhelming factor on rising tuition has been the systematic defunding of state schools since the 1980's. Our state university currently receives about 20% of what it once did from the state 40 years ago.

However, I bet the buildings are fancy, the gym is lavish, and the cafeteria looks like a upscale food court with chefs to cook your custom ramen or stir fry. I also bet there are twice as many administrators as there were 40 years ago and far more expenses to maintain the high end buildings and sporting venues. More schools, more competition means more administrators, more marketing, more fancy dorms and facilities…

And rock climbing walls, stadiums, courts, parking enforcement tech, regulations over regulations of the smallest crap.

Imagine if the school was just a building with rooms for teachers to meet with students and labs to do research in. Maybe it wouldn’t be fun for the sporty people and their name wouldn’t be in a cheerleader chant but it would be very focused and efficient

Re: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?

#200

Post by culopatin »

upupandup wrote: post #102

For someone with decades experience in software industry, is it possible to take on part-time teaching positions in universities? Is it worth the balance? Seems kinda cool to teach students and come up with course materials.

You’ll find that many will want a PhD for you to teach an if else regardless of your experience and will pay you 20k for part time.
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