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Completely agreed with the fundamental point that it's all about the "funnel" from ~100 (arbitrary number) grad school hopefuls to ~1 tenured role. Unless the n

Completely agreed with the fundamental point that it's all about the "funnel" from ~100 (arbitrary number) grad school hopefuls to ~1 tenured role. Unless the number of hopefuls changes, the only design choices correspond to a bunch of "selection events" where the group could be winnowed: grad school admission, qualifiers, granting degree, offer postdoc1 after degree, offer postdoc2 after postdoc1, offer tenure track after postdoc2, offer tenure after tenure review. The "shape" of the funnel will reflect the design choices we make, based on which groups to be "kind" towards, and which groups to be "brutal" towards. I think prevalent mindset is that it's acceptable to be most brutal in grad school admissions, or after granting PhDs -- because then people have a degree to take away and get to leave with a sense of closure, without much sunk cost worry. The system of each faculty member graduating significantly more than one student is fundamentally unsustainable, and will lead to all kinds of problems. They can only be shuffled around and partially hidden, but never fully solved. It's amazing how many otherwise smart people don't want to understand this.

knzhou 7y ago
Absolutely. I helped to write a series of tests that had to create a 200:1 funnel. There was some debate over whether it was less brutal to cut, say, 20:1 and then 10:1, or 10:1 and then 20:1, or perhaps add another stage and cut 10:1, 5:1, 4:1. For every argument for early cuts there was an equal and opposite argument for late cuts. But I think every cut was still equally cruel, since multiplication is commutative.
Dumblydorr 7y ago
100 is not bad. My friend got a PhD in humanities with the goal of professorship. He applied to positions where literally 150 other PhDs applied, so your chance is much less than 1%. And now, that friend is doing ad junct slavery, 10k a year for 15 hours a week, no benefits, plus only 3/15 students at this school do the homework and participate in class. And did I mention he had 300k in loans?

knzhou 7y ago

Absolutely. I helped to write a series of tests that had to create a 200:1 funnel. There was some debate over whether it was less brutal to cut, say, 20:1 and then 10:1, or 10:1 and then 20:1, or perhaps add another stage and cut 10:1, 5:1, 4:1. For every argument for early cuts there was an equal and opposite argument for late cuts. But I think every cut was still equally cruel, since multiplication is commutative.

Dumblydorr 7y ago

100 is not bad. My friend got a PhD in humanities with the goal of professorship. He applied to positions where literally 150 other PhDs applied, so your chance is much less than 1%. And now, that friend is doing ad junct slavery, 10k a year for 15 hours a week, no benefits, plus only 3/15 students at this school do the homework and participate in class. And did I mention he had 300k in loans?