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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tenure-track-faculty Life

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Re: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tenure-track-faculty Life

#61

Post by RogerL »

mathattack wrote: post #53
jforman wrote: post #3

This strategy would quickly lose its merit outside of Harvard. Failing to gain tenure at Harvard is the expected outcome, so a) the sense of rejection is less, and b) your remaining job prospects are good because this is generally recognized (and it's Harvard). Asking somebody at a high-tenure-rate, second-tier school to treat their tenure track position as an extended post-doc is essentially asking them to have a fa…

It would seem like anyone worth their salt in computer science could get a corporate job after 7 years at any school, especially Harvard. It seems like the concept of having a failed career is much less than if the Phd was in Philosophy.

I honestly don't know what the job market is like for a CS PhD, so I can't rebut this statement. On the other hand, we interview a lot of PhD.s, and by and large they have little clue about how to provide value. They want to sketch out ideas in Matlab, and throw it over the wall to a bunch of programmers (which in the academic world are postdocs and grad students) to deal with the "implementation details". Many can't write a simple for loop.

That's sweeping, overstated, and unfair of me, but the job skills are quite different. Applied, directed research aimed at producing tangible and sell-able results is very hard, and by-and-large not what they do, at least based on who applies and interviews (which is of course a terribly biased and perhaps non-representative selection).

Re: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tenure-track-faculty Life

#62

Post by vsbuffalo »

As someone headed into academia, I ponder how the tenure-track process filters out folks. Simply put, I think many of the best scientists have been nerds, and many smart nerds really don't see the utility in playing the political tenure game. I'd argue that the competition is fiercer now than it's ever been in the sciences, so these selectionary forces against nerd-types are getting stronger.

We end up with the situation where scientists in academic jobs are enriched for those good at politics and playing the game, and we lose brilliant minds to companies. Companies also do their part, and offer alluring salaries and job security (I've had quite a few recruitment attempts for wonderful companies, and almost left academia on several occasions).

With the folks in academic positions being political (and sometimes downright manipulative), it's no surprise that some make terrible mentors. Their success quite often relies on extracting work from postdocs that will never have their success. Sadly, there's no incentive for symbiotic relationships sometimes. Luckily, finally, I have met mentors that are exceptions to this, and are nerds like me (and quite frankly, keep me in the sciences). But it took a long time to find such mentors, and other very smart people are not so lucky as to find these types of mentors and they leave the sciences. Sadly, this enriches for more bad mentor types. I think the role my mentors' mentors had is huge too; often my mentors talk about how important their mentors were.

Re: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tenure-track-faculty Life

#63

Post by willsun »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #40
mdwelsh wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true in computer science at Harvard - I speak from experience, having gone through the tenure process there myself. Being denied tenure in CS at Harvard is about as bad as being denied tenure anywhere else; people don't usually end up in very good jobs afterwards. In my 8 years at Harvard, we awarded tenure to 5 junior faculty, and denied tenure to two.

How does Harvard CS even work in the shadow of MIT and its own very strong liberal arts program? I mean, it is a good department, definitely a top 20.

From an undergraduate standpoint, there certainly isn't a lack of interest in the program - the intro CS course is consistently one of the largest undergraduate courses. Though the smaller department size means certain courses aren't always offered, the quality of instruction tends to make up for this (as well as the possibility of cross-registering at MIT). A side effect of CS being an up-and-coming department is that many CS undergrads come to Harvard intending to study something else (say math, physics, or economics) and thus bring with them their diverse interests and skills to the classroom.

Re: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tenure-track-faculty Life

#64

Post by at-fates-hands »

edtechdev wrote: post #48
spartango wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harvard is somewhat peculiar in the way it selects and impresses upon faculty the importance of teaching. That's not to say that all Harvard professors are great teachers, but there's certainly an emphasis on it that is less common.

6 years ago there was an initiative at Harvard to focus on teaching and not just research, but I don't know what came of it: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2007/02/task-force-pro... http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/education/10harvard.html?_... But yes, the general state of things at virtually all universities (except community colleges) is that teaching is very much secondary to research, and as a result, as…

>>>6 years ago there was an initiative at Harvard to focus on teaching and not just research, but I don't know what came of it.

This is actually fascinating to me. I attended a large Midwestern college in the late 1990's and contemplated a career in academia. At the time, there was a huge debate over the effectiveness of tenure.

By the time I graduated, the normal "right of passage" of getting tenure had turned into a multi-year process which focused entirely on what research you had conducted, the amount of money you were bringing into the school, how many articles you had published, how current those articles were, etc. It had absolutely nothing to do with how good of a teacher you were - and everything to do with how much research you were doing and where your articles were published.

Needless to say, I opted not to enter academia, mainly for this reason. Tenure became the carrot they dangled out in front of you so you'd bust your ass for the university while not receiving much in return. As one long tenured professor told me, "They've turned tenure from something that was seen as prestigious, into a mafia racket."

Re: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tenure-track-faculty Life

#66

Post by mathattack »

ams6110 wrote: post #58
mathattack wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would seem like anyone worth their salt in computer science could get a corporate job after 7 years at any school, especially Harvard. It seems like the concept of having a failed career is much less than if the Phd was in Philosophy.

Transitioning to a corporate job after 7 years in academia would be a culture shock for most people, to say the least.

It would, but people pull it off. Here's one example, also from Harvard. http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-im-leaving-harvar...

I think it's much easier in Computer Science than other fields - say the humanities, or biology or chemistry.

Re: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tenure-track-faculty Life

#67

Post by mathattack »

RogerL wrote: post #61
mathattack wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would seem like anyone worth their salt in computer science could get a corporate job after 7 years at any school, especially Harvard. It seems like the concept of having a failed career is much less than if the Phd was in Philosophy.

I honestly don't know what the job market is like for a CS PhD, so I can't rebut this statement. On the other hand, we interview a lot of PhD.s, and by and large they have little clue about how to provide value. They want to sketch out ideas in Matlab, and throw it over the wall to a bunch of programmers (which in the academic world are postdocs and grad students) to deal with the "implementation details". Many can't…

Based on personal experience (small sample size), Phds in Computer Science can find homes at consulting firms (hired for "being smart"), and software and hardware firms that utilize their speciality, and even hedge funds. It can be hard to unlearn habits over 6 or 7 years, but I've seen it happen.

The real point though is it's a lot easier than many other fields.

Re: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tenure-track-faculty Life

#68

Post by hondje »

jimmahoney wrote: post #42
jamesaguilar wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People optimize for the metrics they are set. To the degree teaching is rewarded, they will focus on teaching. I know a number of PhDs with aspirations of tenure. Not one has said they went into it to teach.

You may be looking for us in the wrong places. I'm an MIT Physics PhD who aimed at teaching from early on. I agree that we're in the minority, but folks like us aren't typically looking for jobs at R1 universities but instead at small schools where teaching is actually valued. Unless you're part of that culture, we may not be the PhDs that you know. I have a number of PhD friends like me, teaching at small liberal ar…

I studied math/physics at Colorado State Pueblo, a small school with very minimal focus on research. I would absolutely recommend it to my kids when they're deciding on a school, because having actual professors teach what they love in a dept that actually cared if the students learned was wonderful.... And the professors were happy, too.

Re: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tenure-track-faculty Life

#69

Post by dnautics »

spartango wrote: post #60
dnautics wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Then, as a biologist, it can be incredibly difficult to restrict your working hours, as experimental (e.g. cell culture) work can operate with delays or intervals. Stepping out at the wrong time means your cells die. That's where personnel management comes in. I've got an undergrad intern at the moment, who has only a modest amount of lab research experience. In a month and a half, I've taught him molecular biology…

You're absolutely right, it is possible and even important to structure your experiments in such a way that they don't dominate your life. It's something that I've learned to do pretty effectively (and my chosen discipline makes it easier). I think there are certainly organizational things that can be done to facilitate more reasonable working hours, and I've seen this done well in industrial settings. From pipelined…

I think the reason why it's not easy is because the academic selection process does not select for good managers.

Re: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tenure-track-faculty Life

#70

Post by dnautics »

vsbuffalo wrote: post #62

As someone headed into academia, I ponder how the tenure-track process filters out folks. Simply put, I think many of the best scientists have been nerds, and many smart nerds really don't see the utility in playing the political tenure game. I'd argue that the competition is fiercer now than it's ever been in the sciences, so these selectionary forces against nerd-types are getting stronger. We end up with the situa…

>I think many of the best scientists have been nerds, and many smart nerds really don't see the utility in playing the political tenure game.

I think this is 75% of the "problem". It gets worse because the smart nerds who do like to play the political game are often so solipsistic and selfish that they are really spectacularly atrocious managers, many of whom take a scorched earth attitude to solving their scientific problems. This becomes a vicious cycle as that becomes the percieved way to act within the culture.

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