5 ms·
Saddening story. However, as an academic myself, some bits were misleading or odd: > funding regulations meant the grant couldn’t pay my salary as its lead res
by arcanus 10y ago
Saddening story. However, as an academic myself, some bits were misleading or odd:
> funding regulations meant the grant couldn’t pay my salary as its lead researcher
I've never, ever heard of anything like this occurring. The most I have seen are cost sharing pieces where a grant cannot more than a certain % of your salary. But these are often known upfront by the PI!
> The two disclosed who had submitted a grant proposal and whose book was near publication—all of which are needed for tenure. I was the only one in the room with books, articles, and a recently awarded grant.
This strikes me as a highly bitter position to take. There is far more to tenure than only the number of grants, books, articles, etc. Were the articles published in high impact journals? How much $$ was the grant for? A researcher 5 years younger might get a tenure-track position with no prior grants, but a hot research topic, a few good publications and an excellent pedigree.
> My financial reality still makes it hard to keep up with conferences. I haven’t had access to professional development funds since 2010
The author states he has funding grants but these did not explicitly cover several conferences? I'm very surprised by this, and this is not at all consistent with my experience. I had funding to attend conferences as a first year graduate student.
> There are jobs in the southern US and in the UK, which would take me away from family and a new relationship that I cherish. I don’t need to start building a life from scratch in my late thirties. I definitely don’t need to do it for a nine—or three-month contract without benefits, or costs of moving. And if we’re talking about the US, I don’t need to be dealing with signing religious codes of conduct or dealing with campuses where eighteen-year-olds can carry concealed guns.
The sad truth of the matter is: if you want to get a tenure track job, 99% of us will not truly have a choice in location where you live. Expect to move across the country (or across countries!). That is quite apparent when you sign up. You take what you can get. A friend took a position in upstate NY, and he hates the cold...
- scott_s 10y agoI suspect the author is from the humanities, which have starkly different funding realities than what you and I are used to. (Your profile says you are a computational scientist, and while I work in industry, I still publish in computer science academic conferences.)
- schoen 10y ago> I still publish in computer science academic conferences Having just recently attended an academic conference as a non-academic (but not submitted anything this time), I was wondering whether non-academics do, or should, feel guilty about publishing at these venues. It was very apparent how other people there were looking for jobs and using their publications and presentations as a part of that process. If non-academics publish in journals and conferences, should we feel bad that we're potentially taking away spots from those these venues are "meant for"?
- scott_s 10y agoI don't feel bad at all, and in computer science systems conferences, there's usually a mix of people from industry and academia. (Both attending and even on the program committee.) I think a good mix is healthy for such conferences. Personally, I do both research and development, and I want to be able to publish the research I do.
- Al-Khwarizmi 10y agoI don't think you should feel bad about that at all. The amount of jobs available is not going to decrease due to you publishing papers. If you "take away a spot" for someone's paper it might mean that that person doesn't get a job, but some other academic will get it instead (and none of them will know). In fact I'd say non-academics publishing in conferences and journals can be good for academics even from an egoistic standpoint, as it can help break the popular perception of science/academia as an ivory tower of self-absorbing smartasses out of touch with reality. And better popular perception of science indirectly means more funding. So as an academic I would definitely see an increase of submissions by non-academics as good news for my interests.
- gumby 10y ago>> funding regulations meant the grant couldn’t pay my salary as its lead researcher > I've never, ever heard of anything like this occurring. It's a Canadian academic, so perhaps Canadian federal conditions are different from what you're used to?
- mattkrause 10y ago> I've never, ever heard of anything like this occurring. There are some really odd interactions between funders' and universities' rules. Many places won't let non-permanent staff be the "lead researcher"/PI/whatever on grants, particularly if the grant or contract has specific "deliverables" or if the grant runs longer than than employee's contract. These policies are probably well-intentioned--you can't really commit to an employee doing three years of research if they may not even be employed here next year--but they can lead to aggravating catch-22 situations where people could have the job if there was funding, but they can't get the funding because they don't have the job...