8 ms·

I would start by cutting academic salaries at elite schools. These are $150k-$200k for a typical professor, and $1 million at the top. Maybe $100k at the bottom

by wegs 7y ago

I would start by cutting academic salaries at elite schools. These are $150k-$200k for a typical professor, and $1 million at the top. Maybe $100k at the bottom. I'd place these at $60k-$100k: enough to live on, but not enough to go into it for anything other than love-of-science. A university president might hit $200k. I'd hire many more academics, and given them much more freedom. Not as much publish-or-perish, and more intellectual exploration. Anyone qualified to do research should have the option to do so in their field of interest. That's kind of how academia used to work before massive endowments. I might also do something about tenure. It seems like an obsolete idea as structured right now. It's not a horrible idea, but it's obsolete in a lot of ways. It forces people to put in massive efforts early-career. That, for example, it doesn't line up with biological clocks, and puts in many other bizarre incentives. I don't mind someone gaining tenure if they've done fantastic work, mind you, but it shouldn't be a 7-year clock. For example, perhaps you're a professor with a 5-year renewable contract. If you do fantastic work, you become a professor-with-tenure, whether that's 4 years in or 40.

seanmcdirmid 7y ago
I don’t think you really understand what professors make already. Even a CS professor at UCLA is barely breaking $100k, and they would be in dire straights for their market if the university didn’t back their housing loan. Sometimes professors have the option of topping up their salary out of their research grants, but that has a few problems in itself.
- qchris 7y ago
  It's a little tough to generalize about salary in academia. Obviously, a 'professor' covers multiple ranks in the academic hierarchy, but if you look at the published pay scales for assistant professors (I believe the lowest professor ranking with tenure) at University of California, it looks like large majority of them are breaking $100k [1]. I don't see a way of breaking those results into discipline, I'd imagine that those individuals in fields like CS vs. more academia-exclusive fields like literature or geography (relatively, anyway) are making towards the higher scale of that. Some of them in with clearly medical-related title are making much more, but I think that's to be expected. Also, it's possible I'm mistaken, but I believe professors are allowed to be paid to act as advisors or "resources" for external organizations to act as a secondary revenue stream? Combined with topping off their salary with research grants as you pointed out, and the nice perks academia offers if you can get tenure (job security, etc.), I'm not sure that even this data fully encapsulates compensation either way [1] https://ucannualwage.ucop.edu/wage/ https://ucannualwage.ucop.edu/wage/ (type in "asst prof" to title search, with ALL location selected)
  - detaro 7y ago
    AFAIK an assistant professor typically is on the tenure track, but doesn't have it yet (= they'll get tenure if they meet certain goals during this time)
    - qchris 7y ago
      Ah, you're correct. I was thinking about associate professorship, which it looks like is usually accompanied by tenure. Sorry, I sometimes get a little mixed up between which one of those is on the tenured/non-tenured side of things.
- wegs 7y ago
  Tenured CS professors at MIT/Harvard/Stanford/Berkeley/etc. start at $180k, $200kish is probably median, and upper bound is much higher.
makerofspoons 7y ago
Wouldn't that pay scale push many talented people to work in private industry? At that pay it would be difficult to retain computer science faculty for example, where universities are already struggling with a shortage.
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
  Only the ones optimizing for money and not for passion.
  - lirazel 7y ago
    Not everyone can afford to pursue their passion at the cost of a cut salary. A common case would be the need to support a family, parents, relatives, etc.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    Wouldn't it be better to have skilled scientists than passionate scientists?
  - Nebasuke 7y ago
    I think that's a naive view. It's not just academics optimising for money. It's academics optimising for a balanced relationship, or a family, or even just friends (since the current academic system will also often mean displacement). I was very passionate about the work I did in academia, but I did not want to force my wife to live in a region where she could not really get a decent job, and my income would barely have been enough to support children in the early part of the academic career. I am strongly considering going back to academia in a few years, after the income doesn't matter as much anymore. Making the financial disincentive even stronger would filter out a certain type of person, and is not a great way of achieving diversity of people.
    - cinquemb 7y ago
      This is what I'm going to do, I left working in academia in 2015 even though I'm still super fascinated by the research we were doing (although I though our lab application was bit banal for my tastes, but it's what got the grants) and started expanding on it on my own in my free time while working in industry. I about to quit my job and work on it again for fun.
whatshisface 7y ago
>I'd place these at $60k-$100k: enough to live on, but not enough to go into it for anything other than love-of-science. Why shouldn't universities be able to compete for labor with corporations? >A university president might hit $200k. University presidents aren't scientists, nobody would take that job "for the love of science."
ramraj07 7y ago
I will disagree with every single suggestion you make: 1. Salaries should be -higher-, not lower! Why will any self respective smart person want to throw their intelligence away for a pittance? You want them to be smart with science and stupid with money is it? Live like Diogenes? 2. There shouldn't be more researchers, there should be less. My decade-long experience with academia has been that too many people who aren't exactly scientifically smart (more smart at socializing and grant writing) are too established. We need to recruit the type of minds that are truly capable of innovation and make sure they don't have to compete with beuraucrats who're there simply because they chose biology in undergrad and just kept making the default career choice every time they were presented one. These new people should also be REALLY smart, not just marginally better than public. Which means that there can't be too many of them anyways. They should then be given resources that don't inherently convert the entire system into a Ponzi scheme (like the phd system now does). In the grand scheme of things they can be given lower resources if they are given structures to manage things well. 3. I'd argue that the tenure system worked quite well despite its flaws. If anything tenure doesn't give the same guarantees it gave half a century ago, so people are still incentivized to continue running the rat race. If you still want to hold them accountable maybe a much longer cycle might be okay, perhaps 15 years? 5 year contract sounds like hell for most fields. Some of the most interesting work I did took more than that time to bear fruition and that's not uncommon. Only thing I'll agree with you is that we should make sure that whatever new process is conceived must try to correct perverse incentives for women, given how the current system plays against some common life choices they might want to make (having kids).
- naasking 7y ago
  > Why will any self respective smart person want to throw their intelligence away for a pittance? You want them to be smart with science and stupid with money is it? Because it buys them the freedom to do what they want in terms of research, rather than being a slave to a certain agenda, or a quota, or what have you. Science progresses by empowering curious people. If a researcher was interested in making money, then they would focus on money-making discoveries and spin off startups (which already happens plenty now). > There shouldn't be more researchers, there should be less. My decade-long experience with academia has been that too many people who aren't exactly scientifically smart (more smart at socializing and grant writing) are too established. That's because the academic and publishing incentives are all skewed, like the OP said, not because we have too many people doing research. If the low-hanging fruit has been plucked, then we need more eyeballs looking at things from all sorts of different perspectives to find pieces that don't quite fit our established theories.
catalogia 7y ago
> It forces people to put in massive efforts early-career. From what I understand and have heard, a lot of advancements in math and physics in particular have come from people that are quite young, often in their 20s. That's apparently when brains are at their peak; it seems to me that's the period in which massive efforts are most likely to pay off big. Einstein was 26 when he published his annus mirabilis papers. I believe Newton was in his mid-20s when he began developing calculus.
analog31 7y ago
In my view, $150k-$200k is already low. Anybody with the drive and focus to become a professor, can already earn more as a doctor, or even as a computer programmer. It's already the case that it only attracts people who are in it for the love of science. In a similar fashion, lowering the incomes of classical musicians won't make classical music any more creative.

by wegs 7y ago

seanmcdirmid 7y ago

I don’t think you really understand what professors make already. Even a CS professor at UCLA is barely breaking $100k, and they would be in dire straights for their market if the university didn’t back their housing loan. Sometimes professors have the option of topping up their salary out of their research grants, but that has a few problems in itself.

qchris 7y ago
It's a little tough to generalize about salary in academia. Obviously, a 'professor' covers multiple ranks in the academic hierarchy, but if you look at the published pay scales for assistant professors (I believe the lowest professor ranking with tenure) at University of California, it looks like large majority of them are breaking $100k [1]. I don't see a way of breaking those results into discipline, I'd imagine that those individuals in fields like CS vs. more academia-exclusive fields like literature or geography (relatively, anyway) are making towards the higher scale of that. Some of them in with clearly medical-related title are making much more, but I think that's to be expected. Also, it's possible I'm mistaken, but I believe professors are allowed to be paid to act as advisors or "resources" for external organizations to act as a secondary revenue stream? Combined with topping off their salary with research grants as you pointed out, and the nice perks academia offers if you can get tenure (job security, etc.), I'm not sure that even this data fully encapsulates compensation either way [1] https://ucannualwage.ucop.edu/wage/ https://ucannualwage.ucop.edu/wage/ (type in "asst prof" to title search, with ALL location selected)
- detaro 7y ago
  AFAIK an assistant professor typically is on the tenure track, but doesn't have it yet (= they'll get tenure if they meet certain goals during this time)
  - qchris 7y ago
    Ah, you're correct. I was thinking about associate professorship, which it looks like is usually accompanied by tenure. Sorry, I sometimes get a little mixed up between which one of those is on the tenured/non-tenured side of things.
wegs 7y ago
Tenured CS professors at MIT/Harvard/Stanford/Berkeley/etc. start at $180k, $200kish is probably median, and upper bound is much higher.

makerofspoons 7y ago

Wouldn't that pay scale push many talented people to work in private industry? At that pay it would be difficult to retain computer science faculty for example, where universities are already struggling with a shortage.

JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
Only the ones optimizing for money and not for passion.
- lirazel 7y ago
  Not everyone can afford to pursue their passion at the cost of a cut salary. A common case would be the need to support a family, parents, relatives, etc.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  Wouldn't it be better to have skilled scientists than passionate scientists?
- Nebasuke 7y ago
  I think that's a naive view. It's not just academics optimising for money. It's academics optimising for a balanced relationship, or a family, or even just friends (since the current academic system will also often mean displacement). I was very passionate about the work I did in academia, but I did not want to force my wife to live in a region where she could not really get a decent job, and my income would barely have been enough to support children in the early part of the academic career. I am strongly considering going back to academia in a few years, after the income doesn't matter as much anymore. Making the financial disincentive even stronger would filter out a certain type of person, and is not a great way of achieving diversity of people.
  - cinquemb 7y ago
    This is what I'm going to do, I left working in academia in 2015 even though I'm still super fascinated by the research we were doing (although I though our lab application was bit banal for my tastes, but it's what got the grants) and started expanding on it on my own in my free time while working in industry. I about to quit my job and work on it again for fun.

whatshisface 7y ago

>I'd place these at $60k-$100k: enough to live on, but not enough to go into it for anything other than love-of-science. Why shouldn't universities be able to compete for labor with corporations? >A university president might hit $200k. University presidents aren't scientists, nobody would take that job "for the love of science."

ramraj07 7y ago

I will disagree with every single suggestion you make: 1. Salaries should be -higher-, not lower! Why will any self respective smart person want to throw their intelligence away for a pittance? You want them to be smart with science and stupid with money is it? Live like Diogenes? 2. There shouldn't be more researchers, there should be less. My decade-long experience with academia has been that too many people who aren't exactly scientifically smart (more smart at socializing and grant writing) are too established. We need to recruit the type of minds that are truly capable of innovation and make sure they don't have to compete with beuraucrats who're there simply because they chose biology in undergrad and just kept making the default career choice every time they were presented one. These new people should also be REALLY smart, not just marginally better than public. Which means that there can't be too many of them anyways. They should then be given resources that don't inherently convert the entire system into a Ponzi scheme (like the phd system now does). In the grand scheme of things they can be given lower resources if they are given structures to manage things well. 3. I'd argue that the tenure system worked quite well despite its flaws. If anything tenure doesn't give the same guarantees it gave half a century ago, so people are still incentivized to continue running the rat race. If you still want to hold them accountable maybe a much longer cycle might be okay, perhaps 15 years? 5 year contract sounds like hell for most fields. Some of the most interesting work I did took more than that time to bear fruition and that's not uncommon. Only thing I'll agree with you is that we should make sure that whatever new process is conceived must try to correct perverse incentives for women, given how the current system plays against some common life choices they might want to make (having kids).

naasking 7y ago
> Why will any self respective smart person want to throw their intelligence away for a pittance? You want them to be smart with science and stupid with money is it? Because it buys them the freedom to do what they want in terms of research, rather than being a slave to a certain agenda, or a quota, or what have you. Science progresses by empowering curious people. If a researcher was interested in making money, then they would focus on money-making discoveries and spin off startups (which already happens plenty now). > There shouldn't be more researchers, there should be less. My decade-long experience with academia has been that too many people who aren't exactly scientifically smart (more smart at socializing and grant writing) are too established. That's because the academic and publishing incentives are all skewed, like the OP said, not because we have too many people doing research. If the low-hanging fruit has been plucked, then we need more eyeballs looking at things from all sorts of different perspectives to find pieces that don't quite fit our established theories.

catalogia 7y ago

> It forces people to put in massive efforts early-career. From what I understand and have heard, a lot of advancements in math and physics in particular have come from people that are quite young, often in their 20s. That's apparently when brains are at their peak; it seems to me that's the period in which massive efforts are most likely to pay off big. Einstein was 26 when he published his annus mirabilis papers. I believe Newton was in his mid-20s when he began developing calculus.

analog31 7y ago

In my view, $150k-$200k is already low. Anybody with the drive and focus to become a professor, can already earn more as a doctor, or even as a computer programmer. It's already the case that it only attracts people who are in it for the love of science. In a similar fashion, lowering the incomes of classical musicians won't make classical music any more creative.