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The “Full Stack Professor” Who Left Academia for the Internet
- wand3r 6y agoSite is down
- otoburb 6y agoIt seems that the (summary?) blog on somebody else's infrastructure has been overwhelmed. So, I tracked down the professor, Justin Murphy, and what seems to be a series of blog posts[1] about his transition from academia to online teaching. [1] https://theotherlifenow.com/tag/jumping-ship/ https://theotherlifenow.com/tag/jumping-ship/
- GrantNissly 6y agoSorry about that! My site went down, but it's back up now. And yes, that's Justin's blog.
- lumberjack 6y agoAs a business model it is quite interesting. I don't think the spin of being an alternative to university is fitting though. It's either a service where you take classes for fun. I can see that working if marketed to the right people. Or it is a service where you take classes to improve your skills. I can see that working too. Lots of people in tech especially want to make the switch from DevOps to SWE to Data Science to Quant ...etc As for the whole "professor" thing. A professor does research and a big part of the appeal of taking their (graduate) classes is to be able to have a glimpse of the research they do and maybe get an opportunity to work with them. This seems to be missing here. I am not saying this to downplay the idea. I actually like the concept.
- jmrphy 6y agoJustin here, thanks for your interest. ;-) On the point of professors attracting grad students interested in seeing and participating in the prof's work... That's true and it is a major element of what I'm doing. Many of the people who take my courses do so to stimulate/improve some kind of personal creative or intellectual project; I write books and such alongside the courses, and we occasionally discuss strategy, tactics, workflows, etc. So it is very similar to the working relationships I had with grad students in the university. The only difference is now my students aren't hoping to land academic jobs, they just want to do meaningful work and make their dent on the world through the internet.
- kanobo 6y agoThe subject's google scholar page: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=1dhhMPkAAAAJ&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=1dhhMPkAAAAJ&hl=en I wasn't able to find which school he had held his professorship though.
- brian_herman__ 6y agoIt says on his blog it was The University of Southampton.
- inetsee 6y agoThe subject's actual webpage is here https://theotherlifenow.com/tag/jumping-ship/ https://theotherlifenow.com/tag/jumping-ship/ Thank you otoburb for this link. Third paragraph down in the first section lists "University of Southampton".
- kanobo 6y agoI think "Full Stack Academic/Educator" is maybe better title in this case? A professor is only one part of a large ecosystem and has a very specific role within academia. When I read "Full Stack Professor" I thought it would be about a professor who is well-versed at grant writing, research leadership, mentorship, and research lab setup/management.
- j7ake 6y agoA professor also does research, the article seems to only be talking about providing courses online. Where is the full stack? Maybe I missed it in the article.
- jmrphy 6y agoYep I write books too. I've only published one short one since leaving academia a year ago — in part because right now I'm hustling hard on the business model and infrastructure — but I expect that within a few years I'll be doing research for about 75% of my time, as "top of funnel" work that brings people into the courses and the rest. This is a well known business model, the only thing I'm doing that's new is making the "top of funnel" content legit disinterested research at a professional level (instead of an instrumental value proposition, e.g. take my course to earn X more dollars).