4 ms·
Surprised to see researchers from big name universities. I was under the impression that those universities took good care of their researchers.
by curiousgal 7y ago
Surprised to see researchers from big name universities. I was under the impression that those universities took good care of their researchers.
- jseliger 7y agoI was under the impression that those universities took good care of their researchers. I'm under the impression that most university researchers's reputation, labs, and tenure cases rely heavily on grants, and that most university "scientists" today are really grant writers and grant managers. That might be a little too cynical a take, but I've heard variations of it enough times to take the view pretty seriously.
- dev_tty01 7y agoNot cynical at all. Speaking from experience, it is just reality. They are still scientists, but in practice it is more like the technical lead who also does the fundraising. At least in the US, universities do not take "good care" of their researchers. Researchers take care of the university. Direct funding and overhead income from grants is super important to university budgets.
- nkrumm 7y agoNot cynical. Also, academic institutions take "overhead" from grants, sometimes up to 100%, ostensibly to provide infrastructure, keep the lights on, etc. (this means the $5m grant from NIH for the researcher really costs the NIH $10m).
- cycomanic 7y agoUnfortunately it's not cynical but the reality. Most people would be shocked how much time academics have to spend on grant writing and other administrative things. The whole system is completely broken, essentially we are applying for money to spend time on writing grants to apply for more money. The unfortunate reality is that in the experimental sciences there is no way around this. You need the funds to be able to run experiments (grad students are part of this as well) and if you ever stop you will never be able to start back up again. Essentially you need to be able to show a track record & preliminary results to be successful at getting a grant, if you stopped applying for grants you have neither. Moreover often universities will give you more teaching duties because you are not bringing in research funding. It is a vicious circle.
- dannykwells 7y agoUm, the better the university the more money you have to bring in, not less. Stanford and the like have minimums for faculty to bring in money. They do take good care of them, though, by giving them good lab space, great grad students, modern cores etc.
- selimthegrim 7y agoModern chores?
- dannykwells 7y agoFixed!!
- fjeifisjf 7y agoWhat are cores?
- nkrumm 7y ago"cores" in an academic setting refer to shared institutional resources, e.g. for DNA (or other) sequencing, mass spectrometry, computing resources, cell lines, etc.