4 ms·

Former students too. Talk to them, and look up what they're doing. If a lot of former students ended up where you see yourself in 10 years, that's a great sign

by wegs 6y ago

Former students too. Talk to them, and look up what they're doing. If a lot of former students ended up where you see yourself in 10 years, that's a great sign. If a lot of former students are in dead-end careers, that's a bad sign. Of course, that discriminates against tenure-track faculty, but avoiding tenure-track faculty is good advice too. Tenured professors have the luxury of being able to care about you. Tenure-track need to do what it takes to succeed.

dgacmu 6y ago
Speaking as a tenured professor, I disagree with this -- the trade-offs are more varied than you present them, and the individual differences are probably larger than the categorical differences. It's probably true in general that the younger professors are more likely to both stay up until 3:00 in the morning writing a paper with you and expect you to stay up until 3:00 in the morning writing that paper, but I don't think there is any difference in how much they care or don't about their students. (The flip side of this advice is often presented as the junior faculty are more likely to help you write a lot of papers, if that's your goal. But again, look at the person. ) (I agree completely with talking to former students, of course. More information is always good. )
- wegs 6y ago
  I agree the individual differences are larger than the categorical differences. From my time in grad school, I don't mind working at 3 am (and most other grad students I knew, at least without families, didn't mind that either). The problem was the abusive nastiness. You're presuming student and faculty interests are otherwise aligned. They're not. The most successful paths to academic success I've seen include: * Spending time raising money, hiring a ton of students, and getting a few good publications by law of large numbers * Attaching students to many projects, and when one shows promise, sprinting to do most of the work to claim first authorship on a breakthrough result (at the expense of collaborators), and neglecting the rest of the projects / students (at the expense of the rest of the lab). * ... and so on. There is also a question of who becomes associated with the breakthrough: the student or the advisor? Yes, the first/last author split in publication helps, but at the end of the day, someone goes out and gives talks, media interviews, etc. I've seen plenty of student s-ed because the faculty member (who often did minimal work) takes credit for their work. And there are megaprojects, where there's one nice result at the end, and a half-dozen graduate students who work on it doing menial engineering/lab work. Labs like that end up with zero students going for faculty (or other highly-competitive) jobs. In other words, aside from baking data, most tactics to academic success involve carefully optimizing the odds, and burning a number of students and/or collaborators to have tenure-granting results associated with the faculty member. As a footnote, back in the day, I was blessed with a terrific advisor, but the MAJORITY of faculty at MIT are abusive douche bags, and the system is set up entirely to protect them. And most students I know who left MIT into faculty slots did that by cheating at least a little bit, whether through credit theft, baking research results, or otherwise. Most MIT grad students don't cheat, mind you, but most highly successful ones do (and yes, I am in a position where I've seen many of these case play out at MIT, and a few at other institutions). Those go into tenure-track positions, and abuse their students the same way they were abused. Former students also have a better viewpoint. Many people don't realize they were abused until years later, when they can look back on an experience objectively. Among my cohort, the number of people who would say they were abused today are much greater than the number of people who would have said it at the time.

by wegs 6y ago

dgacmu 6y ago

Speaking as a tenured professor, I disagree with this -- the trade-offs are more varied than you present them, and the individual differences are probably larger than the categorical differences. It's probably true in general that the younger professors are more likely to both stay up until 3:00 in the morning writing a paper with you and expect you to stay up until 3:00 in the morning writing that paper, but I don't think there is any difference in how much they care or don't about their students. (The flip side of this advice is often presented as the junior faculty are more likely to help you write a lot of papers, if that's your goal. But again, look at the person. ) (I agree completely with talking to former students, of course. More information is always good. )

wegs 6y ago
I agree the individual differences are larger than the categorical differences. From my time in grad school, I don't mind working at 3 am (and most other grad students I knew, at least without families, didn't mind that either). The problem was the abusive nastiness. You're presuming student and faculty interests are otherwise aligned. They're not. The most successful paths to academic success I've seen include: * Spending time raising money, hiring a ton of students, and getting a few good publications by law of large numbers * Attaching students to many projects, and when one shows promise, sprinting to do most of the work to claim first authorship on a breakthrough result (at the expense of collaborators), and neglecting the rest of the projects / students (at the expense of the rest of the lab). * ... and so on. There is also a question of who becomes associated with the breakthrough: the student or the advisor? Yes, the first/last author split in publication helps, but at the end of the day, someone goes out and gives talks, media interviews, etc. I've seen plenty of student s-ed because the faculty member (who often did minimal work) takes credit for their work. And there are megaprojects, where there's one nice result at the end, and a half-dozen graduate students who work on it doing menial engineering/lab work. Labs like that end up with zero students going for faculty (or other highly-competitive) jobs. In other words, aside from baking data, most tactics to academic success involve carefully optimizing the odds, and burning a number of students and/or collaborators to have tenure-granting results associated with the faculty member. As a footnote, back in the day, I was blessed with a terrific advisor, but the MAJORITY of faculty at MIT are abusive douche bags, and the system is set up entirely to protect them. And most students I know who left MIT into faculty slots did that by cheating at least a little bit, whether through credit theft, baking research results, or otherwise. Most MIT grad students don't cheat, mind you, but most highly successful ones do (and yes, I am in a position where I've seen many of these case play out at MIT, and a few at other institutions). Those go into tenure-track positions, and abuse their students the same way they were abused. Former students also have a better viewpoint. Many people don't realize they were abused until years later, when they can look back on an experience objectively. Among my cohort, the number of people who would say they were abused today are much greater than the number of people who would have said it at the time.