I left after being continually relegated to low-academic value technical support work for established academics. Last year I turned down four opportunities to participate in NSF grants, and this year three so far. It is impossible to advance in an academic career on the basis of the technical skills you used to help your colleagues. Academia is winner-take-all. I decided it was pointless to compound my losses by supporting the winners.
How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)
51–60 of 114 posts
Re: How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Outside of post-doctorate positions, there's neither funding nor desire for the kind of research that you need to further an academic career. But why not? If academic work is for the benefit of mankind, there should be a desire in society for that kind of research[0]. This desire is only muted because of commercial interests having increased influence (directly and indirectly) over academia. [0]Perhaps there is a mi…
I appreciate your point, but this kind of attitude often (intended or not) leaves humanities PhDs out in the cold. Sure, for a PhD in computer science you might convince the public that your work is worthwhile (there may be some practical application). My PhD is in the field of music theory...a field which has practically zero real-world applications. It's still important as an academic field, but the long-term benef…
Having a practical, real-world application is not what I equate with having long-term value for mankind.
I feel comfortable taking the opposite position - if work with a practical application is worthwhile it should be commercially viable and we don't need to make any special effort to fund it academically - corporations and capitalism will surely cover it.
On the other hand, the humanities require investment that corporations are less willing to make - therefore the public should make more effort to fund these.
Re: How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)
#53Re: How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)
#54The 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 r…
This is correct. In retrospect my math Ph.D. was a waste of time. There have been proposals over the years on how to address the overabundance of PhDs. One approach seems to have been widely and independently adopted: advise those responsible for easing out the exploited to read Erving Goffman's On Cooling the Mark Out: Some aspects of adaptation to Failure [1, 2].
1. http://www.tau.ac.il/~algazi/mat/Goffman--Cooling.htm
2. http://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2002/10/31/cooling-the-...
Re: How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)
#55If 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.
"If someone comes up with a better system, it will be adopted."
Academia moves very, very slowly. Stuff remains unchanged for centuries, just because that's the way it's always been done.
For instance, the lecture model was adopted when books were hand-written and very expensive -- basically the lecturer (in some institutions, actually called "reader") would read the text very slowly and distinctly, while the students would copy it down verbatim. At the end of the term the students would have their own copy of the text.
We've had printing presses for quite some time now, but the lecture lives on.
Law and religion are similar. Note that those institutions also still retain many medieval trappings, both intellectual and physical (robes, funny hats, etc.)
Re: How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
What alternative are you suggesting? salesman who sells $100,000 in product a year should get paid $150,000 a year? Unless you are part of a cost center, it seems to me the assumption is that you are producing more value than you cost to employ.
Or people get paid their value, and we stop thinking it's okay for a select few to reap the surplus value of others... you know, kind of like how we got rid of slavery (except we didn't, we just paid a little more for it).
An employer making a profit beyond the cost of paying their employees a (decent in many cases, especially in software) salary is not slavery...
Re: How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)
#57As some one who managed to succeed in the academic rat race (tenured professor) and who quit to do more productive things, my feeling is academia is more like cult. When inside it you believe you are doing important things, and on occasion you actual do (i.e. teaching and research), but the important activities are basically a hobby you fit around your full-time job of administration and politics. Once outside you re…
What do you get when you combine the economic mechanism of a drug gang with the mind control technology of a cult, used to keep people in the system?
A multi-level marketing scheme.
Re: How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)
#58I think this article is reaching a bit. There are some interesting things about this drug dealer model though. Why do the bottom rungs agree to play this game? I think the dynamic manifests in a lot of highly aspirational industries. The money, prestige and such going to the slim top layer can act in lieu of benefits going directly to participants. Many one-on-one sports are examples. Floyd Mayweather might make clos…
All the arts have brutal power law income distributions, with a handful of winners making $$$$$ while most people don't break even.
People who do well in the arts have a rare combination of charisma, marketing/networking skills, existing social contacts, persistence, location, luck, and talent - which often belongs at the end of the list, unfortunately.
Ironically, academia is one of the few places where you can work in the arts and do better than average. You can get real funding for arts research, especially if there's a technical angle.
Of course you don't usually have an audience - unless you count other academics - but not everyone loses sleep over that. And there's often a special policy niche for academic art. It's a kind of "Look at us as a country - we totally do serious difficult art" cultural brag.
It seems to be important to fill that niche. What it gets filled with isn't so important.
Re: How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)
#59Interesting - 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 belo…
I find it strange, this claim that PhDs have more diverse and subtle motivations than members of drug gangs.
In the first bullet point you can replace "doing PhD" with "working for a drug gang" and nothing is different;
The second bullet point may not apply exactly to drug gangs and industry, but surely many people view drug gangs as a means to an end, a place where they can gain unparalleled experience.
Re: How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
With startups, you can pivot (with academia you can too, but it's rather 3-5 years). With startups, you can fail (and try again); in academia, if you fail, you fail. In short: with startups, if something is not working (or you totally lost belief in it), you can quit a project without quitting startups for good. In academia, if you want to stay, you often need to stay in a miserable conditions 1-3 more years (e.g. to…
I have several friends who have successfully navigated switching research groups and even departments in the middle of their PhD work. I also know a few who didn't manage such a graceful transition, but it's definitely possible to pivot during the PhD without giving up on the degree and research career.
Perhaps it's possible under some circumstances. But I spent 3 years more than I wished to (as I see it now, I should have quitted, but by that time I thought that academia was the only intellectually stimulating option).
Change universities (Europe) would cost me at least a year, plus scrapping all previous progress. Plus, with getting a poor recommendation letter (more than likely when resigning) I would need to go a tier down.
I envied software engineers, who (if things do not work) could change their place in mater of weeks... and have money to support them for much longer, if there were need.
I know people who change, but it was never a trivial thing. (Maybe except when within a department.)
Now (living as a freelancer) I lover the freedom and flexibility. And, curiously enough, I get more of intellectual inspiration.