4 ms·
I wonder if it's a better system to just hire smart professors and give them tenure immediately. The lazy ones in it just for the status won't do any work, but
by fallingknife 5y ago
I wonder if it's a better system to just hire smart professors and give them tenure immediately. The lazy ones in it just for the status won't do any work, but the good ones will. Sure, there will be dead weight that gets salaries for life, but I feel like that's a lesser problem than incentivizing bad research.
- varjag 5y agoWho is going to decide whether professor is smart?
- User23 5y agoThe other smart professors. Which is exactly how it worked in the now distant past.
- varjag 5y agoSo what you are saying is, peer review.
- rscho 5y agoWhich is exactly how it still works in many places. You have to be co-opted and have the vote of your peers. This doesn't do anything to ensure those elected are able. It ensures they are politically desirable.
- dagw 5y agoWon't those professors then just hire people that agree with their pet theories?
- achillesheels 5y agoThose professors in the distant past flourished in a more spiritual age. They did not treat themselves as professionals nor had a sense of “career”.
- TimPC 5y agoSmart isn't the biggest criteria for success as a professor. The PhD degree is a good filter because it trains and tests research aptitude, work ethic, ability to collaborate, ability to focus on a single problem for a long period of time, and others. One problem is PhD degrees are too costly to those who don't get academic or industrial success from them. But as long as talented people are willing to try to become a professor I don't see the system changing.
- achillesheels 5y agoWho is to judge the merit of their talent? Shouldn’t their results speak for themselves? And prey tell, what are the results of academia in the age of the digital revolution where there is no obligation to complete a university education with the knowledge of its mathematical scientific foundation? I think many more are drawn to professorship for a sense of status, ie prestige. It shows in their overwhelming mediocrity, eg the failure of economics to progress to a biologically scientific paradigm.
- dagw 5y agoThe problem isn't just the scientists, it goes all the way up. Let's say we implement your system. Who decides how many 'smart professors' the Type Theory group gets to hire? What if the Type Theory and Machine Learning departments both want to hire a new 'smart professor' but the Computer Science department only has money to hire one more person? One reasonable approach might be to look at which group has produced the 'best' research over the past few years. But how do you judge that in a way that seems fair? Once you have a criteria to judge that, then people will start to game that criteria. Or taking a step up, The university needs to save money. How do you judge if the Chemistry department or the Computer Science department should have its funding cut. No matter how you slice it at some point you're going to need a way for someone to judge which of two departments is producing the 'best' research and thus deserves more money, and that will incentivize people to game that metric.
- alexashka 5y agoThere is no shortage of resources to provide for every person who wants to devote their life to discovering something valuable for all of humankind. We aren't short on food, shelter, clothes, tech, etc - those are all solved problems. The problem that isn't solved is stupid people sitting in charge of decisions they don't have the brain make-up to comprehend or manage, making pretend they know what they're doing, holding people far superior to them hostage.