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> Academics sacrifice material opportunity costs in exchange for intellectual freedom. Most academics I’ve come across only think they’re doing this. My percep
by jarym 6y ago
> Academics sacrifice material opportunity costs in exchange for intellectual freedom.
Most academics I’ve come across only think they’re doing this. My perception is they are too insecure about their self-worth to pursue material opportunities.
I admit, the number of academic types I know is not vast so maybe it’s too small a subset to make any judgments
- rowanG077 6y agoThe core problem is that you don't have intellectual freedom. You won't get funded if you are not researching the hot new thing.
- dimitrios1 6y agoExactly, and that's assuming you are one of the very select few that gets to even select and lead the research areas. Most of the opportunities are working along side professors and department heads that already have an idea of what you should be working on. If you are at one of the elite universities with billion dollar endowments that don't have a lot of these funding problems, then you are working on what the corporate donors suggest the University work on. The university will sell it as "staying relevant for the future job market"
- chriskanan 6y agoIf one has a supportive advisor and adequate non-grant support (e.g., a fellowship), it is possible to work on self-drive ambitious projects. However, typically an advisor only wants to invest significant time if the work is interesting to them. Also, often I've been approached by students who want to do their own thing in terms of high risk work, but they don't have adequate skills or enough existing work to graduate with. Mt goal is to ensure students advance knowledge, graduate, and get the kind of job they want. Ambitious projects that fail will significantly impair positive outcomes. The billion dollar endowments don't usually go toward supporting research directly.
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- xpe 6y agoThis is clearly overstated. Some nuance would be appreciated.
- ipunchghosts 6y agoI went a very uncommon route in my career: I started phd school after 14 years of industry. My motivation was I was tired of creating new and interesting things in industry only to have them be killed by politics. So, my idea never saw the light of day san a few dozen people. My thought was that if i have a phd, I am rewarded in my career for publishing these thoughts. If they are published, maybe some organization smarter than mine would use the ideas. I am a true scientist at heart in that i want to know where my ideas break and a good way to know that is to have a lot of public scrutiny over them.
- alexilliamson 6y agoHow has the experience been getting a PhD after so long out of school? I'm quickly approaching 14 years in industry but still haven't ruled out a PhD.
- dhairya 6y agoI just started my PhD in AI (specifically NLP). Also took a non-traditional route (creative writing major -> 10 years in industry -> phd). It's interesting so far. Research feels very open ended compared to industry. While I was in industry (AI fintech startup), even though goals were rapidly changing, I had a good idea of what problems to work on and how to gauge progress. In contrast, research is far more undefined. There are days I feel lost and other where I'm chasing rabbits down deep holes. It's been hard for me to figure out if the problems I'm trying to solve are worth exploring (are they good research question? and more importantly are they publishable). But that being said, it's only about 6 months in and I feel like I'm still learning what it means to do research. I've definitely enjoyed having the space to explore problems at my own pace and think deeply about them.
- jbn 6y agofrom "creative writing" to AI (industry or academia) sounds like such a wide gap, I did not think such a jump would be possible... congrats!
- 6y ago