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> Life is too precious and too fleeting to waste my time on bullshit like tenure. I didn’t become a professor to get tenure. I became a professor to make the wo
by kkkkllll 11y ago
> Life is too precious and too fleeting to waste my time on bullshit like tenure. I didn’t become a professor to get tenure. I became a professor to make the world better through science. From this day forward, I will spend my time on problems and solutions that will matter. I will make a difference.
This is hypocritical and heartless to those who are now starting their careers as scientists. You spent a decade of your life to get to a tenure-track position, and now that decade and the rest of your life are on the balance. You can bullshit all you want about making the world a better place, but you'll be teaching Java Programming 101 in Podunk state college unless you deliver publications and grants.
- kaitai 11y agoA lot of the people teaching Java Programming 101 at Podunk Directional University are making the world a better place. Compare that to actually doing Java programming 101, for instance: teaching is about a lot more than communicating the meaning of syntax.
- ninjaboy 11y agoIt actually turns out that Matt Might got tenure through the research lab model: he's got a group of post-docs that manage a group of graduate students that sometimes oversee undergraduates. When you have a team of 15 people publishing papers with your name on them, only managing the top 3-4, then you'll have the publication record and time to write grants to bring in money and thus make tenure. This isn't even uncommon in today's academic environment: many of the most successful professors run these business-structured research labs, producing amazing results they oversaw the people overseeing. I think it's a lousy way to treat academia, but hey, it gets you tenure.