18 ms·

U.S. faculty job market tanks

258 points by SQL2219 6y ago

medymed 6y ago
This might be a good time to be in grad school to weather the storm for a year or two, and then benefit from the likely upswing afterwards (if someone is intent on academia). Unless a substantial proportion of colleges go bankrupt and the number of job seekers increase even more.
- UncleMeat 6y ago
  Hard to say. The humanities job market never recovered after 2008. Its not clear that there will be an upswing in the near future.
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    I place great value in the humanities, but from a practical jobs perspective they don't do a lot more than check the box marked "degree required" on a job application. I'm all for people focussing on the humanities in their college career, but most should also be looking at a minor that gives them more concrete job prospects. Or reverse it, and minor in the humanity subject of choice.
    - yes-the-day 6y ago
      This was the advice I gave my sister: one major for passion, one for future employment. I graduated during 2010 with a humanities degree, and while I loved the things I learned and did really well academically, I was auto-rejected from a lot of interesting job opportunities during a really shitty economy because I simply didn't have a resume that distinguished me from anyone else and said "this guy could be valuable." My sister studied something she loved but also tried accounting, realized she hated it, and switched to something else practical, which got her a great job right out of school and put her way ahead of me financially and career-wise. I would give the same advice to any young person. You may not love every single class you take, but the investment will pay off immensely in terms of overall lifetime happiness, financial security, and career growth. You might also discover some passion in an unexpected place. On the flip side, don't study only for practicality. College is one of the few times in life you will have total intellectual freedom to follow your curiosity without restriction. Don't squander it only learning a trade. Find some subject that piques your curiosity, practicality be damned.
  - gnicholas 6y ago
    It may not have returned to its previous high, but it definitely bounced back. I know people who were hired into positions that were frozen unfilled during the recession and subsequently reopened.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  If you can afford to go to grad school without borrowing to do it, maybe that would be a good idea for some people. But this is probably a terrible, terrible time to bet on getting a well paying job in the future based on current degree programs (edit: by "bet" I mean for purposes of repaying student loans). The pandemic has upended the economy and the economy was already something of a mess. We don't know what the future of work looks like and people are pretty bad at predicting the future under the best of circumstances.
  - laretluval 6y ago
    If it's a good PhD program then they will pay you to attend. No need to take out loans.
    - throwawaygh 6y ago
      Raising 2 kids on $30K/yr requires loans.
      - engineer_22 6y ago
        Or a lifestyle change. Take your pick.
        throwawaygh 6y ago
        Literal poverty isn't a "lifestyle".
        barumi 6y ago
        Smart people don't take out loans to finance a lifestyle that's not compatible with their income.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
        6y ago
- whyenot 6y ago
  I actually think it's not a great time to be in grad school in the sciences. With everything remote and on Zoom, you miss out on much of the networking that is so important if you want to stay in academia.
HarryHirsch 6y ago
Enrollment is down ~ 20 % this year at my regional institution, even at community colleges, which usually experience an upswing in enrollment during recessions enrollment is down. Even at top-100 institutions, like the University of Vermont, enrollment is down ~ 20 %. Must be a good year to get into Harvard or Stanford. There's also the secular trend of decreasing student numbers, the echo of the baby boom is wearing off. It's bad. Neither party has a political response to the coronarecession, public institutions had their funding cut severely because states can't print money, they have to balance their budgets. Private institutions will drop dead like bogflies. Ordinarily one wouldn't cry for any of the many low-ranked sectarian colleges that will bite the dust, but their faculty will compete in the labour market. And no political response is to be seen. Traditionally, under Democratic leadership the science budget is bigger, but we haven't heard anything about that from the incoming Harris-Biden administration. It's really bad and makes you want to vote Republican because of protectionism and reduced immigration. The only safe funding now is soft money.
- seibelj 6y ago
  Universities became bloated over the decades as federally guaranteed loans ballooned and tuition creeped ever upwards. Assistant to the Assistant Dean of Water Aerobics positions multiplied. Now universities have to operate like a business. Revenue is down and isn’t going to come back for a long time. Consolidation for the lucky and bankruptcy for the unlucky. Honestly it’s a good thing to happen, the sector produces way too much nonsense (we don’t need more papers on 19th century fiction authors that no one reads but other academics) and costs far too much. Society simply doesn’t need this waste anymore with the internet able to provide esoteric knowledge to the masses for free. I’m fine with my tax dollars funding fundamental scientific research, but an online study group can enable people to study the classics and debate what it means to be a good person. A lot of these majors should not be funded by the state anymore.
  - wbl 6y ago
    Those papers you deride aren't what college professors mostly produce. What they should produce are citizens via the study of what great minds have thought in the past. The increasing narrowness of scholarship has destroyed the liberal arts.
stanrivers 6y ago
I wonder what about administrator job openings? Something tells me that they justified to themselves that all that bureaucracy still needs to be shuffled here and then shuffled there.
- Daub 6y ago
  The amount of admin jobs in universities is many times what it was ten years ago. In my last uni, the tek support staff was calculated to be 50% over what was required. The reason was that a large proportion came into work and did the bare minimum to scrape past a performance review. This was a calculated ploy on their behalf. Elsewhere, somewhat pointless positions and departments abound. On a whim, a HOD bought a massively expensive 3D milling machine. For an undergrad Product Design program? Crazy. Of course, we had to hire a dedicated person to operate it. Also, tons of 'quality assurance protocols' require another layer of staff to oversee and manage. A quick search found this: https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-uc-spending-20151011-story.html https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-uc-spending-20... Check out the graph of admin vs faculty hires. Its a horror story.
  - patagurbon 6y ago
    Having student accessible tools is really great. That's hardly the issue. The issue is the hundreds-thousands in the billing departments etc.
  - bcrosby95 6y ago
    Yep, things have been trending this way for a while. From 2001: https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/Where-do-CSU-dollars-go-2866450.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/Where...
- justinzollars 6y ago
  Administrations should be a subscription based centralized service. AAS (Administration as a Service)
  - 6y ago
Simulacra 6y ago
I’m more interested to see how COVID will change, or perhaps do say with, the tenure system.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- azhenley 6y ago
  So far the direct impact for me, a third year tenure-track prof: a one year extension to my tenure clock, an extension to my startup account, and optionally excluding this semester’s course evaluations.
- HarryHirsch 6y ago
  We've had a few pestilence-related retirements before the start of fall term, and so far the extra load has been distributed over existing faculty. Nothing has been advertised for Spring, perhaps for Fall, but the administration is waiting on enrollment figures. Not holding my breath. I expect more adjuncts, less non-tenure-track teaching faculty and the same amount of tenured faculty, even at teaching institutions where tenure-track faculty members are not expected to bring in external funding. The caste system is as strong as always, and shit flows downhill.
- throwawaygh 6y ago
  Tenure is a thing of the past in low-industry-demand fields (e.g., the humanities and some life sciences). Nearly all full-time jobs are instructor or ad junct. This has been true for years. In CS and a few other fields (some applied math, biz, econ, finance), tenure is non-optional because universities can't pay. Every single decent candidate in CS can make $300K minimum in industry, but even the absolute best universities cannot afford more than $150K at the asst. prof rank (maybe 200 at the very best but also highest CoL places and even then only for the tippy-top candidates). NB: that's at the very, very best universities. The budget for a tenure line is closer to $65K or so at the vast majority of the country's ~1,400 colleges. If you're competing with a FAANG offer and your budget is $65K, tenure is your only chip to play. And even then you'll be super lucky to get a halfway decent candidate.
ycombonator 6y ago
More than 80% of the faculty at Liberal arts colleges are avowed communists. The parents of the students are sick and tired of paying for their propaganda. Like me for instance. So they are going down the tubes faster than you can flush.
claudeganon 6y ago
My sister-in-law works as an adjunct at a local college. A few professors have retired as a result of COVID concerns (they’re back in person). Instead of hiring new faculty, drawing from any of the pool of long-standing adjunct staff, they’re instead just replacing them with more, new adjuncts. I expect the future of American colleges and universities will follow this trend, where bloated administrations preserve their position and make the academic labor more and more precarious.
- Frost1x 6y ago
  It's a common trend because adjuncts can easily work near or below minimum wages when factoring in time commitments and nature of the job. It's not just universities and tenured professor positions, businesses are attacking labor and pushing hypercompetitive behavior on labor everywhere because it's become common acceptable business practice now. Many of these trends you see have been going on for quite some time, COVID has really just acted as an accelerant on the dumpsterfires raging through our country. When I worked at a research corporation connected to a university, one of the deans asked me to adjunct a few times. I checked the comp and it was laughable. I could make more money and have less stress and overtime working at a stable minimum wage position and this was for a doctoral position. The problem is, for some people it's the only option or the best option for their career.
  - engineeringwoke 6y ago
    > The problem is, for some people it's the only option or the best option for their career. Or the only option that lets them run away from real life for a few more years
Kevin_S 6y ago
I'll be on the academic market next year. In my field (business), the market has been better than expected, but we are quite priviliged. I'm hoping next year will be closer to normal, but I do have concerns about the long term future of the career I've chosen.
- jcims 6y ago
  One thought. Find an adjacent domain that intersects yours, maybe an industry vertical, and develop a specialty aspect to your primary field. It can really be a differentiator and give you a fallback skilset and network should shit hit the fan.
tinyhouse 6y ago
The entire US university system is a joke. $40K/year for similar academics you get almost for free in Europe. Hundreds of universities who rely on foreigners who come to the US for studies for their survival. And most of these foreigners are only coming because they want to immigrate and student visa is an easy entry ticket.
- conception 6y ago
  40k/yr is above the average for private universities in the US. The average public is ~10k/yr. Community college 3-4K.
  - baoha 6y ago
    Welcome to California!
  - desert_boi 6y ago
    If you go to public school in the American West, it can be even cheaper. Boise State was $6K a year without room and board. It is a football team with a school attached though.
    - dimitrios1 6y ago
      Not just the west, plenty of states in the country have excellent public universities that are extremely affordable, and even more so when you go to community college for the first two years. I graduated with a degree in computer science from a pretty good state school a for around 14 grand in debt. My wife has 3 degrees and has no debt now. My student loan payments were 200 dollars a month, pretty affordable.
    - adventured 6y ago
      As another prominent example, Florida State is a top 20-30 public school, and is ~$5,600 in-state.
  - dilyevsky 6y ago
    UC is probably double that easily by now and all of them are that cheap for in-state only. Out of state is like 20-30k
crb002 6y ago
Direct link to sci-hub on the front page is so COVID-19.
advisedwang 6y ago
I've seen many postdocs creating & recording online class material. I wonder if this will be used to turn some classes into recorded classes, reducing staff forever.
- throwawaygh 6y ago
  I've been lead staff on a course with pre-recorded lectures, pre-covid. Teaching well is super labor intensive. Running a large-enrollment course is more like running a small business/group than most people realize. You need dozens of staff doing repetitive stuff that looks easy to automate from the outside but really isn't. Teaching doesn't scale well, even in CS where things like auto-graders can do a lot of the work. And even in the most automatable set of CS courses (intro programming courses). And teaching poorly has negative value add. The original SICP recordings have been online for decades and are 100x better than some random post-doc's first attempt at teaching python. For that matter, CS50 has been online for years. For most students in most subjects, learning requires active teaching. Active teaching doesn't scale.
  - NateEag 6y ago
    > Active teaching doesn't scale. This is so very true. > For most students in most subjects, learning requires active teaching. I strongly disagree with this. I was homeschooled through high school and taught myself for most subjects during high school - my parents gave me textbooks and teacher's manuals, said "ask us when you get stuck," and I went to town. That's largely how I approached college, too - attended lectures, did the assignments and read the textbooks. That was a big mistake on my part - I could have gotten so much more out of my education if I'd really developed relationships with my college professors and worked with them more. Nonetheless, I did manage to learn most of what was in my CS program that way. I'm no genius, and I really think anyone with a normal brain can do what I did (given the time and resources to focus on study). Is self-teaching plus active teaching better than self-teaching plus lectures? Absolutely. You'll spend far less time struggling and being stuck, and your teacher will be able to communicate new ideas directly to you so much better than they can to a whole crowd. Nonetheless, I think for most subjects it just isn't actually necessary. It's a luxury, lovely when you can get it, but not required for learning.
supernova87a 6y ago
I mean, isn't it clear, ever since the bulk creation / funding of so many colleges (and faculty positions) pre + post WW2, the US faculty job market has been on a decline ever since -- (that is, from the average postdoc's point of view of success % when seeking a faculty position). You do understand right, that the faculty system relies on a pyramid of people entering and leaving the system? And only a certain fraction getting to the top, and people having to vacate the top of the pyramid for anyone else to get there? (for stable, or in other words, stagnant fields) When the US was in a college-building phase (funded by economic stimulus / public programs), all these posts were new and empty, waiting to be filled. So it enabled a generation of new professors to fill those ranks. As that became stable, now instead of a fresh pyramid you fill with eager people (who think that's still how easy it is), you have grad students and postdocs seeing who can outlast each other (or publish more) to get to the top through attrition or publishing prowess. Certain fields, let's say, pure math, or history, until a professor retires or dies, there's just no spot for the people below even to compete for. That's why you see people going to Asia, Middle East, etc. where the new money and universities are. Follow the money. I mean this is pure population pyramid, demographic stuff that you can predict. You almost don't even need to know the student's thesis topic to say what chance he/she has of becoming a professor. And Covid put all this on hold now -- or at least the departure end of the pyramid. No one in their sane mind would retire or give up their faculty position in this environment. And colleges can barely bring in enough revenue to maintain their classes, let alone expand some department. And yet you see stories of more students going into grad school for this limbo period. Joining the climb up the ladder -- it's not going to end well. Or, it's going to be even worse than before, I'm guessing.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > Certain fields, let's say, pure math, or history, until a professor retires or dies, there's just no spot for the people below even to compete for Lots of research happens at government agencies, non-profits, museums, for-profit companies and international projects (e.g. ITER). As long as a grad student doesn’t insist on making faculty, they’re not necessarily constrained to a zero-sum field.
  - 6y ago
scop 6y ago
I was very close to entering graduate school for a particular field as I was absolutely in love with the research. My teachers considered me to be very talented and were grooming me for the elite schools for said field. However, the more research I did the more I realized how much hot air was being blown and how much ego was involved. I chose to not add my own ego and voice to that self inflated hall and instead taught myself to code (painfully and reluctantly). Coding isn’t my passion and I still love that field. However, I just couldn’t in good conscience participate in it as I knew my ego would drive me far too much. Coding isn’t particularly pleasant, isn’t something I would do in my free time, but it is interesting, keeps me humble, and pays the bills.
- csa 6y ago
  Well done on your part. I started noticing the hot air when I was in my doctoral program at the #1 school in my field. It still took me 10+ years to change careers. I erroneously thought that I could at least steer part of my field into a non-BS direction. Maybe someone could, but that someone was not me. The good thing is that I had a lot of fun during that time, I learned a lot, and the money was quite good for a professor. That said, I often wonder think about what I could have done better.
  - cyberdrunk 6y ago
    I suspect that all sufficiently complex fields are extremely susceptible to fads, egos and cliques. It's the worst in humanities, since they deal with hopelessly complex subjects (i.e. humans), but even science can commonly become like this. Heck, even coding is like this, as we've probably all experienced in our jobs. With this in mind, my plan to retain my integrity is to leave fields with an intellectual component and live simply on much less.
    - csa 6y ago
      > I suspect that all sufficiently complex fields are extremely susceptible to fads, egos and cliques. I completely agree. > With this in mind, my plan to retain my integrity is to leave fields with an intellectual component That’s an interesting solution. Given my personality, I’m not sure it’s one I could do. What I have done is transition to an area in which my skills can be used to make money for me and others. It’s interesting that when money is involved, there are people who are willing to support less-than-trendy ideas.
tha0xb 6y ago
Can't wait for the womens studies and social justice departments to disintegrate in the wake of this. They were riding in the wake of other liberal arts degrees that are actually bring some value to society. Now that these colleges actually have to make cuts, it should be to the degrees and departments that provide no value to society. I can't wait for the future where roles like "VP of diversity" at companies no longer exist. Hopefully the lack of SJWs inventing battles and enemies to fight once they get out of college ushers that in.
ternaus 6y ago
I feel the pain of people that want to stay in science and do not want to move to software engineering. At the same time, at the end of the graduate school many people loose their passion for science. I would recommend these people to learn how to write code and move to industry. The demand for programmers is pretty high. P.S. I got PhD in theoretical Physics at UC Davis, but moved to Bay Area for a Machine Learning job. I love Physics, and can get back to it after retirement, but right now now I am paid well, and more flexible. I like that I can choose company and geography. Postdocs and faculty members do not have this luxury.
- petermcneeley 6y ago
  Where would you put the recent work of Steven Wolfram? Crank? PS. Undergrad Physics so that means I only have a vague understanding of anything post 1940s.
- hart_russell 6y ago
  Did the math-y parts of Physics translate well to AI?
  - ternaus 6y ago
    Good question. Let me quote myself from https://www.toolbox.com/tech/big-data/articles/lyft-on-why-ridesharing-is-the-future-of-mobility/ https://www.toolbox.com/tech/big-data/articles/lyft-on-why-r... > I believe Physics and Machine Learning are really well aligned. > First, the level of Math that you learn in Physics is a few decades away from what you use in modern Machine Learning. This makes the theory behind machine learning easy to understand. > Second, and the most important is the mindset. In Physics, people are maneuvering between rigorous theory and actual data, trying to connect them sensibly. Machine Learning is very similar. > I may be biased about the alignment of Physics and machine learning. Still, I know at least 20 Kaggle Grandmasters that have Physics majors.
autocorr 6y ago
The Science news article reports that new STEM faculty jobs are at about a third of what they were last year. Like they say, universities, especially big public ones have had their finances nuked by the pandemic and imposed hiring freezes. The other aspect isn't mentioned but I feel has to be the case, which is that if any faculty consider their retirement portfolio hurting they won't elect to retire. That was certainly true last Spring when they would need to initiate the process to retire and create an opening for this cycle. I'm glad I'm only finishing my first postdoc. It really sucks for people who are at the end of their second postdoc (year six post-PhD), which is effectively the limit for faculty hiring or additional postdocs. For them this is really the worst timing for the one critical year in their perhaps 15 year run-up from entering undergrad.
- abandonliberty 6y ago
  I'm mildly amused. When I was an undergrad TA, there was no shortage of disdain for undergrad 'vermin'. Seems like those above the base of the pyramid often forget what they're standing on.
  - barumi 6y ago
    > I'm mildly amused. When I was an undergrad TA, there was no shortage of disdain for undergrad 'vermin'. It's no secret that graduates tend to suffer from a false sense of entitlement. However, that sentiment quickly goes away after their first half dozen job interviews.
aborsy 6y ago
I spoke with a famous dean who told me, to the effect that, we have been instructed to focus heavily on candidates with the right gender and certain attributes (that you may imagine). Basically if you are not born in this pool, forget it. By the way, politics has got really extreme. Networks are super important. I see a lot of local hires. In some places, they only hire their own students or swap with students at partner labs. With these developments, I doubt funding academia is efficient allocation of public resources. I support cutting funds. This system will not produce science. It’s shocking how much money is spent, and how many people are in the chain, each outsourcing the problem to someone below, until a graduate student typically an immigrant will simulate something.
- tqi 6y ago
  I'm pretty sure the Terry Taos of the world are still getting their pick of faculty positions, regardless of their "pool". The people who are being displaced, while certainly talented, are not indisputably more talented than the people who "are born in this pool". So it's probably not the case that we're missing out on any major breakthroughs. > It’s shocking how much money is spent, and how many people are in the chain, each outsourcing the problem to someone below, until a graduate student typically an immigrant will simulate something. Have you ever worked at a company?
  - aborsy 6y ago
    Oh, no. I assure you your understanding of the academic environment is flawed. The politics is only intensified at the top. You need to have some skills, but much of it is politics and it is as intense as in industry if not more. You will be surprise if I tell you stories about major awards and recognitions. These are becoming norms than exceptions. I have worked partly in industry.
    - arethuza 6y ago
      "is as intense as in industry if not more" That wasn't my experience - I've never seen anything like the politics I saw in an academic department in industry. It was one of the reasons I left as I got the distinct impression that you have to politic like mad to get ahead and that really didn't interest me. UK rather than US though. You know what they say: "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low."
m0zg 6y ago
Would be interesting to see a more detailed breakdown, as in STEM vs "underwater basketweaving" faculty. Could be that schools are trying to shed some dead weight and using COVID as an excuse to do so.
addicted 6y ago
Isn’t the fundamental problem here that old people are living a lot longer than we thought they would? So you have granted tenure (and pensions and retirement) to people who are gonna seek it for longer than you thought they would so you don’t have place and money for younger people. The same thing applies in the job market, where there is literally no place for someone hired in the last decade or two to grow in management because no one above them in the hierarchy is retiring. Then you have government jobs that are paying out pensions for way longer than anyone expected them to. Over and above this the the government will not dare to cut any policies that would adversely affect old people because they are the only age cohort that votes reliably. What they will try and do is mess around with social security, which, ironically, is one of the few programs that both predicted the baby boomer issues and accordingly created a trust fund to handle that and is actually paid for. All these costs are being picked up by younger generations and all they get in return are the olds complaining about why they can’t just do a part time job to pay for their college degrees like they did in the 60s (nvm that the changing pricing and salaries mean students today could work multiple full time jobs and not be able to pay their college tuition without loans while the boomers complaining could pay their college fees with their weekend burger flipping positions with no debt).
RickJWagner 6y ago
It was inevitable. Higher education has become an escalator for the wealthy. The value of the advanced degree has lost the shine it once had. Education as a whole is due for a massive realignment. Courses can largely be taught online and at a fraction of the cost. Fitting butts into expensive seats and selling pricey books that are constantly re-written is not sustainable.
stevespang 6y ago
How cool. Author posts directly on Sci-Hub to avoid paywall BS
TheMightyLlama 6y ago
A few comments (if memory serves from my earlier reading of this thread) the faculty job market is a pyramid. With the number of people exiting the pyramid being very high due to the few positions at the top. Is there another structure that would encourage a less severe forced exodus of people while maintaining their jobs? As an aside this pyramid seems to me to function a lot like the government with the leader/president at the top. Only the president has limited tenure. Should professors with tenure have a term limit too?

258 points by SQL2219 6y ago

This might be a good time to be in grad school to weather the storm for a year or two, and then benefit from the likely upswing afterwards (if someone is intent on academia). Unless a substantial proportion of colleges go bankrupt and the number of job seekers increase even more.

UncleMeat 6y ago
Hard to say. The humanities job market never recovered after 2008. Its not clear that there will be an upswing in the near future.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  I place great value in the humanities, but from a practical jobs perspective they don't do a lot more than check the box marked "degree required" on a job application. I'm all for people focussing on the humanities in their college career, but most should also be looking at a minor that gives them more concrete job prospects. Or reverse it, and minor in the humanity subject of choice.
  - yes-the-day 6y ago
    This was the advice I gave my sister: one major for passion, one for future employment. I graduated during 2010 with a humanities degree, and while I loved the things I learned and did really well academically, I was auto-rejected from a lot of interesting job opportunities during a really shitty economy because I simply didn't have a resume that distinguished me from anyone else and said "this guy could be valuable." My sister studied something she loved but also tried accounting, realized she hated it, and switched to something else practical, which got her a great job right out of school and put her way ahead of me financially and career-wise. I would give the same advice to any young person. You may not love every single class you take, but the investment will pay off immensely in terms of overall lifetime happiness, financial security, and career growth. You might also discover some passion in an unexpected place. On the flip side, don't study only for practicality. College is one of the few times in life you will have total intellectual freedom to follow your curiosity without restriction. Don't squander it only learning a trade. Find some subject that piques your curiosity, practicality be damned.
- gnicholas 6y ago
  It may not have returned to its previous high, but it definitely bounced back. I know people who were hired into positions that were frozen unfilled during the recession and subsequently reopened.
DoreenMichele 6y ago
If you can afford to go to grad school without borrowing to do it, maybe that would be a good idea for some people. But this is probably a terrible, terrible time to bet on getting a well paying job in the future based on current degree programs (edit: by "bet" I mean for purposes of repaying student loans). The pandemic has upended the economy and the economy was already something of a mess. We don't know what the future of work looks like and people are pretty bad at predicting the future under the best of circumstances.
- laretluval 6y ago
  If it's a good PhD program then they will pay you to attend. No need to take out loans.
  - throwawaygh 6y ago
    Raising 2 kids on $30K/yr requires loans.
    - engineer_22 6y ago
      Or a lifestyle change. Take your pick.
      - throwawaygh 6y ago
        Literal poverty isn't a "lifestyle".
        barumi 6y ago
        Smart people don't take out loans to finance a lifestyle that's not compatible with their income.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
        6y ago
whyenot 6y ago
I actually think it's not a great time to be in grad school in the sciences. With everything remote and on Zoom, you miss out on much of the networking that is so important if you want to stay in academia.

HarryHirsch 6y ago

Enrollment is down ~ 20 % this year at my regional institution, even at community colleges, which usually experience an upswing in enrollment during recessions enrollment is down. Even at top-100 institutions, like the University of Vermont, enrollment is down ~ 20 %. Must be a good year to get into Harvard or Stanford. There's also the secular trend of decreasing student numbers, the echo of the baby boom is wearing off. It's bad. Neither party has a political response to the coronarecession, public institutions had their funding cut severely because states can't print money, they have to balance their budgets. Private institutions will drop dead like bogflies. Ordinarily one wouldn't cry for any of the many low-ranked sectarian colleges that will bite the dust, but their faculty will compete in the labour market. And no political response is to be seen. Traditionally, under Democratic leadership the science budget is bigger, but we haven't heard anything about that from the incoming Harris-Biden administration. It's really bad and makes you want to vote Republican because of protectionism and reduced immigration. The only safe funding now is soft money.

seibelj 6y ago
Universities became bloated over the decades as federally guaranteed loans ballooned and tuition creeped ever upwards. Assistant to the Assistant Dean of Water Aerobics positions multiplied. Now universities have to operate like a business. Revenue is down and isn’t going to come back for a long time. Consolidation for the lucky and bankruptcy for the unlucky. Honestly it’s a good thing to happen, the sector produces way too much nonsense (we don’t need more papers on 19th century fiction authors that no one reads but other academics) and costs far too much. Society simply doesn’t need this waste anymore with the internet able to provide esoteric knowledge to the masses for free. I’m fine with my tax dollars funding fundamental scientific research, but an online study group can enable people to study the classics and debate what it means to be a good person. A lot of these majors should not be funded by the state anymore.
- wbl 6y ago
  Those papers you deride aren't what college professors mostly produce. What they should produce are citizens via the study of what great minds have thought in the past. The increasing narrowness of scholarship has destroyed the liberal arts.

stanrivers 6y ago

I wonder what about administrator job openings? Something tells me that they justified to themselves that all that bureaucracy still needs to be shuffled here and then shuffled there.

Daub 6y ago
The amount of admin jobs in universities is many times what it was ten years ago. In my last uni, the tek support staff was calculated to be 50% over what was required. The reason was that a large proportion came into work and did the bare minimum to scrape past a performance review. This was a calculated ploy on their behalf. Elsewhere, somewhat pointless positions and departments abound. On a whim, a HOD bought a massively expensive 3D milling machine. For an undergrad Product Design program? Crazy. Of course, we had to hire a dedicated person to operate it. Also, tons of 'quality assurance protocols' require another layer of staff to oversee and manage. A quick search found this: https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-uc-spending-20151011-story.html https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-uc-spending-20... Check out the graph of admin vs faculty hires. Its a horror story.
- patagurbon 6y ago
  Having student accessible tools is really great. That's hardly the issue. The issue is the hundreds-thousands in the billing departments etc.
- bcrosby95 6y ago
  Yep, things have been trending this way for a while. From 2001: https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/Where-do-CSU-dollars-go-2866450.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/Where...
justinzollars 6y ago
Administrations should be a subscription based centralized service. AAS (Administration as a Service)
- 6y ago

Simulacra 6y ago

I’m more interested to see how COVID will change, or perhaps do say with, the tenure system.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
azhenley 6y ago
So far the direct impact for me, a third year tenure-track prof: a one year extension to my tenure clock, an extension to my startup account, and optionally excluding this semester’s course evaluations.
HarryHirsch 6y ago
We've had a few pestilence-related retirements before the start of fall term, and so far the extra load has been distributed over existing faculty. Nothing has been advertised for Spring, perhaps for Fall, but the administration is waiting on enrollment figures. Not holding my breath. I expect more adjuncts, less non-tenure-track teaching faculty and the same amount of tenured faculty, even at teaching institutions where tenure-track faculty members are not expected to bring in external funding. The caste system is as strong as always, and shit flows downhill.
throwawaygh 6y ago
Tenure is a thing of the past in low-industry-demand fields (e.g., the humanities and some life sciences). Nearly all full-time jobs are instructor or ad junct. This has been true for years. In CS and a few other fields (some applied math, biz, econ, finance), tenure is non-optional because universities can't pay. Every single decent candidate in CS can make $300K minimum in industry, but even the absolute best universities cannot afford more than $150K at the asst. prof rank (maybe 200 at the very best but also highest CoL places and even then only for the tippy-top candidates). NB: that's at the very, very best universities. The budget for a tenure line is closer to $65K or so at the vast majority of the country's ~1,400 colleges. If you're competing with a FAANG offer and your budget is $65K, tenure is your only chip to play. And even then you'll be super lucky to get a halfway decent candidate.

ycombonator 6y ago

More than 80% of the faculty at Liberal arts colleges are avowed communists. The parents of the students are sick and tired of paying for their propaganda. Like me for instance. So they are going down the tubes faster than you can flush.

claudeganon 6y ago

My sister-in-law works as an adjunct at a local college. A few professors have retired as a result of COVID concerns (they’re back in person). Instead of hiring new faculty, drawing from any of the pool of long-standing adjunct staff, they’re instead just replacing them with more, new adjuncts. I expect the future of American colleges and universities will follow this trend, where bloated administrations preserve their position and make the academic labor more and more precarious.

Frost1x 6y ago
It's a common trend because adjuncts can easily work near or below minimum wages when factoring in time commitments and nature of the job. It's not just universities and tenured professor positions, businesses are attacking labor and pushing hypercompetitive behavior on labor everywhere because it's become common acceptable business practice now. Many of these trends you see have been going on for quite some time, COVID has really just acted as an accelerant on the dumpsterfires raging through our country. When I worked at a research corporation connected to a university, one of the deans asked me to adjunct a few times. I checked the comp and it was laughable. I could make more money and have less stress and overtime working at a stable minimum wage position and this was for a doctoral position. The problem is, for some people it's the only option or the best option for their career.
- engineeringwoke 6y ago
  > The problem is, for some people it's the only option or the best option for their career. Or the only option that lets them run away from real life for a few more years

Kevin_S 6y ago

I'll be on the academic market next year. In my field (business), the market has been better than expected, but we are quite priviliged. I'm hoping next year will be closer to normal, but I do have concerns about the long term future of the career I've chosen.

jcims 6y ago
One thought. Find an adjacent domain that intersects yours, maybe an industry vertical, and develop a specialty aspect to your primary field. It can really be a differentiator and give you a fallback skilset and network should shit hit the fan.

tinyhouse 6y ago

The entire US university system is a joke. $40K/year for similar academics you get almost for free in Europe. Hundreds of universities who rely on foreigners who come to the US for studies for their survival. And most of these foreigners are only coming because they want to immigrate and student visa is an easy entry ticket.

conception 6y ago
40k/yr is above the average for private universities in the US. The average public is ~10k/yr. Community college 3-4K.
- baoha 6y ago
  Welcome to California!
- desert_boi 6y ago
  If you go to public school in the American West, it can be even cheaper. Boise State was $6K a year without room and board. It is a football team with a school attached though.
  - dimitrios1 6y ago
    Not just the west, plenty of states in the country have excellent public universities that are extremely affordable, and even more so when you go to community college for the first two years. I graduated with a degree in computer science from a pretty good state school a for around 14 grand in debt. My wife has 3 degrees and has no debt now. My student loan payments were 200 dollars a month, pretty affordable.
  - adventured 6y ago
    As another prominent example, Florida State is a top 20-30 public school, and is ~$5,600 in-state.
- dilyevsky 6y ago
  UC is probably double that easily by now and all of them are that cheap for in-state only. Out of state is like 20-30k

crb002 6y ago

Direct link to sci-hub on the front page is so COVID-19.

advisedwang 6y ago

I've seen many postdocs creating & recording online class material. I wonder if this will be used to turn some classes into recorded classes, reducing staff forever.

throwawaygh 6y ago
I've been lead staff on a course with pre-recorded lectures, pre-covid. Teaching well is super labor intensive. Running a large-enrollment course is more like running a small business/group than most people realize. You need dozens of staff doing repetitive stuff that looks easy to automate from the outside but really isn't. Teaching doesn't scale well, even in CS where things like auto-graders can do a lot of the work. And even in the most automatable set of CS courses (intro programming courses). And teaching poorly has negative value add. The original SICP recordings have been online for decades and are 100x better than some random post-doc's first attempt at teaching python. For that matter, CS50 has been online for years. For most students in most subjects, learning requires active teaching. Active teaching doesn't scale.
- NateEag 6y ago
  > Active teaching doesn't scale. This is so very true. > For most students in most subjects, learning requires active teaching. I strongly disagree with this. I was homeschooled through high school and taught myself for most subjects during high school - my parents gave me textbooks and teacher's manuals, said "ask us when you get stuck," and I went to town. That's largely how I approached college, too - attended lectures, did the assignments and read the textbooks. That was a big mistake on my part - I could have gotten so much more out of my education if I'd really developed relationships with my college professors and worked with them more. Nonetheless, I did manage to learn most of what was in my CS program that way. I'm no genius, and I really think anyone with a normal brain can do what I did (given the time and resources to focus on study). Is self-teaching plus active teaching better than self-teaching plus lectures? Absolutely. You'll spend far less time struggling and being stuck, and your teacher will be able to communicate new ideas directly to you so much better than they can to a whole crowd. Nonetheless, I think for most subjects it just isn't actually necessary. It's a luxury, lovely when you can get it, but not required for learning.

supernova87a 6y ago

I mean, isn't it clear, ever since the bulk creation / funding of so many colleges (and faculty positions) pre + post WW2, the US faculty job market has been on a decline ever since -- (that is, from the average postdoc's point of view of success % when seeking a faculty position). You do understand right, that the faculty system relies on a pyramid of people entering and leaving the system? And only a certain fraction getting to the top, and people having to vacate the top of the pyramid for anyone else to get there? (for stable, or in other words, stagnant fields) When the US was in a college-building phase (funded by economic stimulus / public programs), all these posts were new and empty, waiting to be filled. So it enabled a generation of new professors to fill those ranks. As that became stable, now instead of a fresh pyramid you fill with eager people (who think that's still how easy it is), you have grad students and postdocs seeing who can outlast each other (or publish more) to get to the top through attrition or publishing prowess. Certain fields, let's say, pure math, or history, until a professor retires or dies, there's just no spot for the people below even to compete for. That's why you see people going to Asia, Middle East, etc. where the new money and universities are. Follow the money. I mean this is pure population pyramid, demographic stuff that you can predict. You almost don't even need to know the student's thesis topic to say what chance he/she has of becoming a professor. And Covid put all this on hold now -- or at least the departure end of the pyramid. No one in their sane mind would retire or give up their faculty position in this environment. And colleges can barely bring in enough revenue to maintain their classes, let alone expand some department. And yet you see stories of more students going into grad school for this limbo period. Joining the climb up the ladder -- it's not going to end well. Or, it's going to be even worse than before, I'm guessing.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> Certain fields, let's say, pure math, or history, until a professor retires or dies, there's just no spot for the people below even to compete for Lots of research happens at government agencies, non-profits, museums, for-profit companies and international projects (e.g. ITER). As long as a grad student doesn’t insist on making faculty, they’re not necessarily constrained to a zero-sum field.
- 6y ago

scop 6y ago

I was very close to entering graduate school for a particular field as I was absolutely in love with the research. My teachers considered me to be very talented and were grooming me for the elite schools for said field. However, the more research I did the more I realized how much hot air was being blown and how much ego was involved. I chose to not add my own ego and voice to that self inflated hall and instead taught myself to code (painfully and reluctantly). Coding isn’t my passion and I still love that field. However, I just couldn’t in good conscience participate in it as I knew my ego would drive me far too much. Coding isn’t particularly pleasant, isn’t something I would do in my free time, but it is interesting, keeps me humble, and pays the bills.

csa 6y ago
Well done on your part. I started noticing the hot air when I was in my doctoral program at the #1 school in my field. It still took me 10+ years to change careers. I erroneously thought that I could at least steer part of my field into a non-BS direction. Maybe someone could, but that someone was not me. The good thing is that I had a lot of fun during that time, I learned a lot, and the money was quite good for a professor. That said, I often wonder think about what I could have done better.
- cyberdrunk 6y ago
  I suspect that all sufficiently complex fields are extremely susceptible to fads, egos and cliques. It's the worst in humanities, since they deal with hopelessly complex subjects (i.e. humans), but even science can commonly become like this. Heck, even coding is like this, as we've probably all experienced in our jobs. With this in mind, my plan to retain my integrity is to leave fields with an intellectual component and live simply on much less.
  - csa 6y ago
    > I suspect that all sufficiently complex fields are extremely susceptible to fads, egos and cliques. I completely agree. > With this in mind, my plan to retain my integrity is to leave fields with an intellectual component That’s an interesting solution. Given my personality, I’m not sure it’s one I could do. What I have done is transition to an area in which my skills can be used to make money for me and others. It’s interesting that when money is involved, there are people who are willing to support less-than-trendy ideas.

tha0xb 6y ago

Can't wait for the womens studies and social justice departments to disintegrate in the wake of this. They were riding in the wake of other liberal arts degrees that are actually bring some value to society. Now that these colleges actually have to make cuts, it should be to the degrees and departments that provide no value to society. I can't wait for the future where roles like "VP of diversity" at companies no longer exist. Hopefully the lack of SJWs inventing battles and enemies to fight once they get out of college ushers that in.

ternaus 6y ago

I feel the pain of people that want to stay in science and do not want to move to software engineering. At the same time, at the end of the graduate school many people loose their passion for science. I would recommend these people to learn how to write code and move to industry. The demand for programmers is pretty high. P.S. I got PhD in theoretical Physics at UC Davis, but moved to Bay Area for a Machine Learning job. I love Physics, and can get back to it after retirement, but right now now I am paid well, and more flexible. I like that I can choose company and geography. Postdocs and faculty members do not have this luxury.

petermcneeley 6y ago
Where would you put the recent work of Steven Wolfram? Crank? PS. Undergrad Physics so that means I only have a vague understanding of anything post 1940s.
hart_russell 6y ago
Did the math-y parts of Physics translate well to AI?
- ternaus 6y ago
  Good question. Let me quote myself from https://www.toolbox.com/tech/big-data/articles/lyft-on-why-ridesharing-is-the-future-of-mobility/ https://www.toolbox.com/tech/big-data/articles/lyft-on-why-r... > I believe Physics and Machine Learning are really well aligned. > First, the level of Math that you learn in Physics is a few decades away from what you use in modern Machine Learning. This makes the theory behind machine learning easy to understand. > Second, and the most important is the mindset. In Physics, people are maneuvering between rigorous theory and actual data, trying to connect them sensibly. Machine Learning is very similar. > I may be biased about the alignment of Physics and machine learning. Still, I know at least 20 Kaggle Grandmasters that have Physics majors.

autocorr 6y ago

The Science news article reports that new STEM faculty jobs are at about a third of what they were last year. Like they say, universities, especially big public ones have had their finances nuked by the pandemic and imposed hiring freezes. The other aspect isn't mentioned but I feel has to be the case, which is that if any faculty consider their retirement portfolio hurting they won't elect to retire. That was certainly true last Spring when they would need to initiate the process to retire and create an opening for this cycle. I'm glad I'm only finishing my first postdoc. It really sucks for people who are at the end of their second postdoc (year six post-PhD), which is effectively the limit for faculty hiring or additional postdocs. For them this is really the worst timing for the one critical year in their perhaps 15 year run-up from entering undergrad.

abandonliberty 6y ago
I'm mildly amused. When I was an undergrad TA, there was no shortage of disdain for undergrad 'vermin'. Seems like those above the base of the pyramid often forget what they're standing on.
- barumi 6y ago
  > I'm mildly amused. When I was an undergrad TA, there was no shortage of disdain for undergrad 'vermin'. It's no secret that graduates tend to suffer from a false sense of entitlement. However, that sentiment quickly goes away after their first half dozen job interviews.

aborsy 6y ago

I spoke with a famous dean who told me, to the effect that, we have been instructed to focus heavily on candidates with the right gender and certain attributes (that you may imagine). Basically if you are not born in this pool, forget it. By the way, politics has got really extreme. Networks are super important. I see a lot of local hires. In some places, they only hire their own students or swap with students at partner labs. With these developments, I doubt funding academia is efficient allocation of public resources. I support cutting funds. This system will not produce science. It’s shocking how much money is spent, and how many people are in the chain, each outsourcing the problem to someone below, until a graduate student typically an immigrant will simulate something.

tqi 6y ago
I'm pretty sure the Terry Taos of the world are still getting their pick of faculty positions, regardless of their "pool". The people who are being displaced, while certainly talented, are not indisputably more talented than the people who "are born in this pool". So it's probably not the case that we're missing out on any major breakthroughs. > It’s shocking how much money is spent, and how many people are in the chain, each outsourcing the problem to someone below, until a graduate student typically an immigrant will simulate something. Have you ever worked at a company?
- aborsy 6y ago
  Oh, no. I assure you your understanding of the academic environment is flawed. The politics is only intensified at the top. You need to have some skills, but much of it is politics and it is as intense as in industry if not more. You will be surprise if I tell you stories about major awards and recognitions. These are becoming norms than exceptions. I have worked partly in industry.
  - arethuza 6y ago
    "is as intense as in industry if not more" That wasn't my experience - I've never seen anything like the politics I saw in an academic department in industry. It was one of the reasons I left as I got the distinct impression that you have to politic like mad to get ahead and that really didn't interest me. UK rather than US though. You know what they say: "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low."

m0zg 6y ago

Would be interesting to see a more detailed breakdown, as in STEM vs "underwater basketweaving" faculty. Could be that schools are trying to shed some dead weight and using COVID as an excuse to do so.

addicted 6y ago

Isn’t the fundamental problem here that old people are living a lot longer than we thought they would? So you have granted tenure (and pensions and retirement) to people who are gonna seek it for longer than you thought they would so you don’t have place and money for younger people. The same thing applies in the job market, where there is literally no place for someone hired in the last decade or two to grow in management because no one above them in the hierarchy is retiring. Then you have government jobs that are paying out pensions for way longer than anyone expected them to. Over and above this the the government will not dare to cut any policies that would adversely affect old people because they are the only age cohort that votes reliably. What they will try and do is mess around with social security, which, ironically, is one of the few programs that both predicted the baby boomer issues and accordingly created a trust fund to handle that and is actually paid for. All these costs are being picked up by younger generations and all they get in return are the olds complaining about why they can’t just do a part time job to pay for their college degrees like they did in the 60s (nvm that the changing pricing and salaries mean students today could work multiple full time jobs and not be able to pay their college tuition without loans while the boomers complaining could pay their college fees with their weekend burger flipping positions with no debt).

RickJWagner 6y ago

It was inevitable. Higher education has become an escalator for the wealthy. The value of the advanced degree has lost the shine it once had. Education as a whole is due for a massive realignment. Courses can largely be taught online and at a fraction of the cost. Fitting butts into expensive seats and selling pricey books that are constantly re-written is not sustainable.

stevespang 6y ago

How cool. Author posts directly on Sci-Hub to avoid paywall BS

TheMightyLlama 6y ago

A few comments (if memory serves from my earlier reading of this thread) the faculty job market is a pyramid. With the number of people exiting the pyramid being very high due to the few positions at the top. Is there another structure that would encourage a less severe forced exodus of people while maintaining their jobs? As an aside this pyramid seems to me to function a lot like the government with the leader/president at the top. Only the president has limited tenure. Should professors with tenure have a term limit too?