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We expect senior professors to train students. How do you train students? By getting them to do work and write papers. If they haven't published by graduation

We expect senior professors to train students. How do you train students? By getting them to do work and write papers. If they haven't published by graduation time, they can't prove they can get the job done. This is the main reason that senior people produce a lot of papers - they have a lot of students. I've written a bunch of papers - I don't care any more about quantity. But I want each of my graduating students to have a publication or two so they can get a job. So we turn out a bunch of papers every year, and no, not every one is earth-shaking, partly because roughly every second paper is a student's first one and that's what they were capable of at the time. It's easy to miss this kind of dynamic from the outside.

Tomminn 10y ago
This is a great point. Although I would wager that the large quantity of mediocre papers your students have produced have not exactly harmed your own career. So, while your personal motives may be beyond repute, there will be many academics who think "This is the main reason senior people have a lot of students- they produce a lot of papers." Which is one of the dynamics that is troublesome. The marginal value of another PhD student to a senior professor is almost always fairly positive. Which means senior professors have an incentive to maximize the number of PhD students. This has two problems: 1) The value of the senior professor's mentorship to each PhD student diminishes (maybe almost linearly) with each PhD student added. 2) If each senior professor hires on average X PhD students per generation, approximately (1/X) of the those PhD students can become senior professors if the rate that academia grows is negligible compared to growing X times as large per generation. (And right now, X must be at least 20.)
- robotresearcher 10y ago
  Don't forget that a prof has to raise the money in ferocious competition to fund every student. Only successful profs can get enough money for a lot of students.
  - hueving 10y ago
    Not if they make the students teach.
  - Tomminn 10y ago
    Success defined how? By publication record. Which leads to the rich get richer dynamic I think is troublesome. The more students you have, the easier it is to get funding for more students.
    - robotresearcher 10y ago
      Rich-get-richer sounds unfair, but if you controlled studio time, would you give it to Radiohead or Vanilla Ice? Some people have proven themselves to be really good at things, and it makes sense to give them the resources to do it well. Most countries also have special funding contests only for young researchers to bootstrap themselves into the main contests.

Tomminn 10y ago

This is a great point. Although I would wager that the large quantity of mediocre papers your students have produced have not exactly harmed your own career. So, while your personal motives may be beyond repute, there will be many academics who think "This is the main reason senior people have a lot of students- they produce a lot of papers." Which is one of the dynamics that is troublesome. The marginal value of another PhD student to a senior professor is almost always fairly positive. Which means senior professors have an incentive to maximize the number of PhD students. This has two problems: 1) The value of the senior professor's mentorship to each PhD student diminishes (maybe almost linearly) with each PhD student added. 2) If each senior professor hires on average X PhD students per generation, approximately (1/X) of the those PhD students can become senior professors if the rate that academia grows is negligible compared to growing X times as large per generation. (And right now, X must be at least 20.)

robotresearcher 10y ago
Don't forget that a prof has to raise the money in ferocious competition to fund every student. Only successful profs can get enough money for a lot of students.
- hueving 10y ago
  Not if they make the students teach.
- Tomminn 10y ago
  Success defined how? By publication record. Which leads to the rich get richer dynamic I think is troublesome. The more students you have, the easier it is to get funding for more students.
  - robotresearcher 10y ago
    Rich-get-richer sounds unfair, but if you controlled studio time, would you give it to Radiohead or Vanilla Ice? Some people have proven themselves to be really good at things, and it makes sense to give them the resources to do it well. Most countries also have special funding contests only for young researchers to bootstrap themselves into the main contests.