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How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)
- phillc73 6y agoInteresting article, however I think the main problem is the premise that all, or even the majority, of graduating PhD students wish to continue to work in academia. It will be different across industries, but I work in a pharma R&D company of around 120 people. At a guess, around 40% of the entire staff (admin, management, scientists, technicians) are PhD graduates. They're working in industry and reasonably well paid. The point is that a desire to secure senior academic positions, such as tenured professor, are not the only reasons people decide to pursue a PhD.
- npsomaratna 6y agoTrue - but isn't this mainly limited to the sciences? (genuine question)
- ggm 6y agoNo. I think all publishing disciplines seeking grants and tenure tend to the same outcome (not an academic, worked in university research and general staff many years ago in 3 UK and one Australian uni)
- chuckleMuscle 6y agoBy contrast I work in a field (experimental plasma physics) where there are relatively few industrial opportunities. For grad students in my field who wish to carry on working in science once they graduate, there are few options outside of academia.
- abhinav22 6y agoBut they would know that going in. My parents are both PHDs in physics and professors etc, but I knew 15 years ago how hard it would be get a decent job in the field and didn’t pursue sciences. So I don’t really have much sympathy for grad students who complain about having lack of opportunities.
- nosianu 6y agoYes, because a 25 year old has the same maturity and life experience as a 40 year old (or similar age numbers). How dare the young make decisions that from the point of view of someone with much more experience looks silly? Also, the assumption is faulty that brains are like computers and processing identical information using a non-diseased fully functioning brain should obviously give the same result regardless of age.
- arethuza 6y agoI don't think the average undergraduate has any idea of what is involved in postgraduate work or what working in academia actually involves.
- abhinav22 6y agoThey need to though. I wish it wasn’t the case, but largely it is in my opinion.
- arethuza 6y agoDo any career options give recent graduates a realistic idea of what is involved in working in that field? I'm not sure that academia is any worse than a lot of other fields and it does, potentially, have a lot of advantages. [e.g. I co-founded a startup with someone I met in academia]
- abhinav22 6y agoIn a crude sense, more career options swing the relationship in favor of the employees vs employers, so it can be used as a guideline for whether a career will be rewarding and fairly compensated. I would argue people in academics are on average harder workers than other fields, so overall they have it a bit tougher given all the work they put in. There are successes in every field, I am just making some vast generalizations for our discussion :-)
- specialist 6y ago
- arethuza 6y ago"of graduating PhD students wish to continue to work in academia" I'd be interested in the number who think they want to work in academia at the start of their PhD and compare this with the number at the end - I certainly went completely off the idea, not so much because I thought getting a job would be difficult but that I really didn't like what academic research encourages. Mind you a pyramidal "up or out" structure can be found in areas like law - relatively few lawyers will make partner or even want to take on what that involves.
- T-A 6y agohttps://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0184130 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
- dijksterhuis 6y agoI probably fall into this camp, as does a close friend of mine. We actually talked about it recently and she mentioned there's a significant percentage of PhDs that don't continue into academia (something like a quarter or a half,can't remember the actual figure). It's a serious enough issue that it's been nicknamed the "PhD brain drain". Essentially, people burn out during the PhD and don't want to go back. Which is fair enough.
- st1x7 6y agoI'm very confused about the overall attitude and trends at the moment when it comes to higher education especially postgraduate education and academia. On one hand there seems to be a certain amount of disillusionment with universities, degrees, getting a PhD and working in academia. At the same time the education requirements for jobs seem to be inflated and way more jobs require an MSc or a PhD these days. By the way, the article is from 2013.
- SiempreViernes 6y agoYeah, adding they year to the title would be a good idea.
- kortilla 6y agoIt helps to separate the PhD from the general academia angst because it’s in an entirely different category. The complaints about the lower degrees are usually about value for cost, remote learning, etc. This is easily compatible with the fact that employers want employees to have degrees. It’s even one of the primary reasons the prices have been able to go up so much for a degree (economic value). The PhD programs, research, and tenure track academia in general is an entirely different beast with some pretty fundamental flaws. Very few companies require PhDs so the job opportunities for a PhD student who wants a position that requires one are scarce. I got my PhD from a top 10 CS research university and it was shocking how much competition the graduates had to get a tenure track position at some third rate university when they graduated. Publications in top journals and even a solid post doc just got you the opportunity to fight 8 other equally qualified candidates for a single slot. The professors do not emphasize enough that tenure track research faculty is nothing more than a fantasy for 90% of the graduates, and that’s ignoring the 50% of PhD students who dropped out before finishing.
- atq2119 6y ago> it was shocking how much competition the graduates had to get a tenure track position at some third rate university when they graduated Counterpoint: assuming a stable size of universities, the average number per professor of supervised doctoral students who receive tenure is 1. How many doctoral students does a professor have on average over the course of their career? By that point, the situation really shouldn't be surprising. It only seems that way because the 20th century saw a period of extremely fast growth of universities, and societal expectations have a lot of inertia.
- intricatedetail 6y agoThe problem I see is that scientists make so little money it is very tempting for them to accept indecent offers like "We pay you X if your study about Y finds Z". I observed this mostly when it comes to studies about cannabis as there was a big push to discredit the plant as a valid medicine and an alternative to "regular" medication.
- kortilla 6y ago> I observed this mostly So you’re not only saying you’ve seen scientists take bribes, but that you’ve seen it on enough occasions to find patterns?! How many briberies have you observed? Didn’t you feel compelled to report them to the ethics committee?
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- karlp 6y agoI think the OP is referring to negative studies involving cannabis that receives funding from opposing groups. Alternatively, you have all the suspect studies describing miraculous plant properties paid by food company that put them in yogurt or health supplements.
- logicallee 6y agoYour phrasing is really unfair to OP based on OP's phrasing! A bribe would be, "you just published x - we'll pay you y to publish a retraction" or if OP had said: "We pay you X if you publish Z", omitting any pretense of an actual study. Or if OP included scare quotes: We pay you X if your study about Y "finds" Z. To use an example not based on science, if Intel said, "we'll donate $1 billion to your university if you find a room temperature superconductor" nobody would interpret that as a bribe for you to publish fake results. Some financial incentive might be there to be corrupt, but a bribe it is not. The whole world isn't a corrupt wall street bank, and academia certainly isn't. Companies can give explicit or implicit incentives but that doesn't make those bribes. Plus, academics list the sources of their funding. To think it through even more. If Intel did communicate the above incentive to universities, then surely all research universities would devote very significant funds to researching room temperature superconductors. But would they publish other results, or even theoretical impossibility results (We show that under the standard model, it is impossible to ...) If it were a bribe, they would not, but clearly in practice they would. Likewise, if a cigarette company gives a similar incentive to show that cigarettes are good appetite suppresants and make you thinner, and somebody did the research and found that cigarettes reduce your inhibition and make you fatter on average, would they publish their results even though they'd get grants for the opposite results? I think they surely would still publish them. They wouldn't just put them in their drawer like a null result. So I think it is really unfair to call it a bribe, and your comment goes too far.
- ocfnash 6y agoRumour has it doing a PhD might actually be a rewarding experience in its own right, and not derive its value solely from the possibility of remaining in academia.
- segfaultbuserr 6y agoRemind me of an old Usenet joke. > The upgrade path to the most powerful and satisfying computer: > * Pocket calculator > * Commodore Pet / Apple II / TRS 80 / Commodore 64 / Timex Sinclair > (Choose any of the above) > * IBM PC > * Apple Macintosh > * Fastest workstation of the time (HP, DEC, IBM, SGI: your choice) > * Minicomputer (HP, DEC, IBM, SGI: your choice) > * Mainframe (IBM, Cray, DEC: your choice) > And then you reach the pinnacle of modern computing facilities: > xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > xxxxxxxxxxG R A D U A T E xxxxxxxxx S T U D E N T S xxxxxxxxxx > xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- MaxBarraclough 6y agoI've encountered a variation on this, he programmed in a very high-level programming language called "graduate student". * https://mathoverflow.net/a/11135 https://mathoverflow.net/a/11135
- SiempreViernes 6y agoWhat, you want to ascribe value to learning itself? But it's so hard to measure! Simpler then to ignore it and use lifetime wages as the only relevant measure.
- ramraj07 6y agoWhat, you want me to be happy that I started my PhD in 2009, finished in 2017 when I was 30, but I suppose I did occassionally learn something interesting in between browsing reddit and watching buffy, so I shouldn't complain that most of my colleagues are worth in the millions while I'm finally trying to make myself in my first real job? Sure sounds like a good deal.
- vr46 6y agoI worked as a part-time lecturer for one course, over two years, and I did it for the love of it, because I had to take time off my high-paying contract to do it, and it cost me thousands to do it. I don't regret it, and quite enjoyed it, but I was appalled at the state of academia and how poorly resourced it was, despite the vast amount of money being charged the students. Permanent staff were few, and I don't really understand how academia is designed for anyone but those at the top. The article's basic point is right.
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- hatmatrix 6y agoThere is a difference though, drug gang members often have limited alternatives for making a decent wage, whereas academics are more than qualified for a lot of decent-paying jobs. I don't disagree that it's a dual economy however. Academia is supposed to be sort of a self-governing effort (note all the committees faculty members are a part of) and core members decide much of their own fate; it's no surprise that they make sure they get their lion's share first and the rest are distributed meagerly to the non-core members.
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- sgt101 6y agoI used to work at a place where we offered Ph.D. scholarships in the UK for UK nationals doing Compsci. We had lots and lots of problems getting anyone to accept. Now these were not high paid positions, but they offered a basic income and a full ride in terms of fees, and opportunities for teaching on top. No one wanted to do it - they could all get more money going contracting. Non UK students were keen, but unfortunately because of the grant conditions were inelligable.
- arethuza 6y agoI did 6 years as a Research Associate (contract researcher) in a UK university in the late 1980s and 1990s. For some part of that time the UK was in recession and it was actually kind of neat having a 3 year contract with guaranteed employment. Mind you - I knew other people who had terrible problems with contract renewals, getting mortgages etc. Fortunately, I never had those problems but I'm pretty sure that was sheer luck.
- finolex1 6y agoMore than half of PhD students in STEM programs are international students, often from developing nations, for whom the calculus is slightly different. A graduate student's stipend is probably comparable to the wages they could have made back home.
- aborsy 6y agoNot to mention immigration. The academic departments increasingly play important roles in immigration. They probably benefit from closer integration with government’s immigration organizations.
- hatmatrix 6y agoAustralia especially.
- screye 6y agoto be fair, it is fairly easy to immigrate to Australia. Any higher graduate course and a decent score on their test usually suffices and they give you a PR from the outset. Same for Canada. If anything, the immigration equation is far more relevant to the US than it is to other countries. A top PhD used to be able to fetch you an eb1 Green Card which is a lot faster than the eb2. However, 'eb' GCs have to be filed by your employer, which means leaving Academia or having a decent enough post-graduation industry outlook. With eb-1 requirements only getting more stringent, this perk is also becoming less relevant.
- atemerev 6y agoEmigration from the developing countries (assuming you can make it) is always a positive gradient. It is not just the salary (which might not be what you’d think, considering the cost of living), but also networking, opportunities, available career paths, etc. Of course everybody wants to emigrate from the less fortunate places.
- captain_price7 6y agoAs a prospective student from a developing country looking to apply for fall'21 cycle- not really. Given the stipend provided by an avg US university, and taking cost of living into account, my standard of living is likely to be lower in USA than in my home country. There are lots of great positives about doing a PhD in USA- salary/stipend is definitely not one of them.
- nshm 6y ago5 years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9950179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9950179
- bregma 6y agoIt's odd indeed that various self-organized groups of self-interested individuals assembled for their mutual benefit resemble each other in various organization aspects that can best be attributed to human nature. One could just as easily show a strong resemblance between drug gangs and modern corporate industry, or between medieval European feudalism and modern corporate industry.
- joosters 6y agoLevitt's discovery that income distribution within drug gangs is extremely skewed in favor of those at the top, seems very uninspired. The same is true for just about any company or organisation, so why should we be at all surprised that it also holds true for an illegal enterprise? Now, the question of why a drug gang pays low-level members less than (say) McDonald's, is more interesting. Is it because gang members have a higher expectation of future wealth than McDonald's staff, i.e. McDonald's has worse career mobility than drug trading? Your chance of rising from a burger flipper to McDonald's board or C-suite is effectively zero, whereas you might rise high in a drug gang (promotions might be faster if your bosses have a tendency to get shot or imprisoned!) So you could say that McDonald's has to pay its workers more to offset the smaller future wealth expectations.
- samth 6y agoThis is one of many confused articles based on Venkatesh's research. The point of the original work is that drug gangs, despite being criminal organizations, have a ladder hierarchy and low wages at the bottom, just like many other "normal" jobs at conventional institutions, like mcdonalds or academia. Subsequently, many people have written silly articles like this one saying that some conventional organization is like a drug gangs because it has these totally normal features. But we knew that already -- that grad students get paid less than full professors is hardly news. The inclusion of drug gangs just produces a snappy headline and reduces understanding.
- SeanLuke 6y agoIt is a silly article, but there is an important distinction that I think you're missing. In a typical hierarchical organization there is a clear heterogeneity in job skills. The fry cook at McDonalds does not have, and will likely never have, the skills necessary to become an executive. Similarly in a law firm the secretary cannot advance to become a law partner: he is not a lawyer. There is no expectation that the line worker would ever become the CEO, at least not without going back to school. But in academia, and I suppose in a criminal gang, everyone has the same skillset. PhDs are notionally being trained with the specific abilities necessary to become a professor. Those at the very bottom have the capability to move to the very top, and likewise are hoping to do so.
- grawprog 6y agoJust like a drug gang too, there's striking. To be an RP bio, at least at the time I was looking into it, you needed 3 years of field experience, a paper published in a reputable journal and you had to pay a $10,000 yearly fee to the association of applied biology and attend a few of their meetings and stuff. That's if you wanted the ability to sign your name on government projects, otherwise, you had to just find and pay someone willing to write their name on your project.
- SeanLuke 6y agoIn the US, to be a computer science professor you generally only need a PhD in CS, which you're getting as a PhD grad student. It helps to also have some good publications under your belt and a good thesis and a good advisor. But these are all things a PhD student can achieve. No fees, no field experience, none of that stuff. No special requirements for obtaining grant funding. This is the case for a great many academic fields.
- tomcat27 6y ago> So what you have is an increasing number of PhD graduates arriving every year into the market hoping to secure a permanent position as a professor and enjoying freedom and – reasonably – high salaries, a bit like the rank-and-file drug dealer hoping to become a drug lord. This argument is supposed by around 50% increase in PhD graduates in last 10 years It's a weak argument. I see many students joining a PhD program with strong inclination to get industry research jobs. Only a tiny fraction actually wants and aligns their work toward a long term academic position.
- gpuhacker 6y agoThe data of people taking longer to reach professorship should have included the average age of retirement of professors over the same period, which I would expect to also have shifted during this interval (and roughly by the same amount, as I know it did in the Netherlands). It explains why there are relatively fewer open positions for people to transition into, simply because the current cohort of professors isn't retiring. Not as fancy as a comparison to drug dealers, unfortunately.