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It will be near impossible to get tenure if one develops T-shaped qualities. You simply cannot amass the number of grants and papers necessary when dancing on s
by periheli0n 5y ago
It will be near impossible to get tenure if one develops T-shaped qualities. You simply cannot amass the number of grants and papers necessary when dancing on several academic parties, or even doing devops. I've seen too many PhD students doing that and then hitting an academic dead end in their first postdoc or directly after graduating.
It's great for the PI if they have T-shaped students on their team, but they must make it clear to those highly talented people that academia is most likely not for them. Which puts in question whether it makes sense for them to do a PhD at all.
The problem is, the PI has hardly an incentive to tell these valuable, lowly-paid and highly motivated people that they made a bad career choice by starting a PhD.
- tgv 5y ago> It will be near impossible to get tenure if one develops T-shaped qualities. That's completely true in my experience, and not only because of the "lack of depth". Interdisciplinary work is simply not rewarded, because your papers are only partially recognized in the department you apply to. I worked in a cog.sci/comp.sci mixture with the focus on language (which adds linguistics), but the psychology departments didn't accept CS conference publications. That my principal paper got a pretty decent citation score for that field, and that some of the follow-up papers including experiments didn't do bad either, didn't mean anything to the CS department: they simply don't care about the topic, and nor "Cognition," nor "Cerebral Cortex" featured on their impact lists. That said, I think the article's examples (setting up a build system, designing nice mock-ups or logos, creating animations or graphics for presentations) are not T-shaped academic skills, at all. Creating presentations is something everyone has to learn, the rest is offloading support work on PhDs. I've got an idea: perhaps they can do the teaching as well. That's a good T-skill. And do lab support. And get coffee, because you know, so much breadth. No, that's pure exploitation of, exactly as you call it: > valuable, lowly-paid and highly motivated people that they made a bad career choice by starting a PhD. PhD programs should only be allowed when there's a guarantee of a worthy curriculum, and sufficient supervision, and support. There'll be less PhDs, but that might even be beneficial.
- Topolomancer 5y agoAuthor here---I agree with you in that interdisciplinary research is not rewarded. I want to stress that I am not proposing to exploit PhDs by making them do support work. If anything, I am saying: when hiring them, consider rewarding the support that they might have already done instead of just looking at 'no. of papers in high-impact venues.' > PhD programs should only be allowed when there's a guarantee of a worthy curriculum, and sufficient supervision, and support. There'll be less PhDs, but that might even be beneficial. Absolutely! Maybe that's the way forward.
- Topolomancer 5y ago> It's great for the PI if they have T-shaped students on their team, but they must make it clear to those highly talented people that academia is most likely not for them. Which puts in question whether it makes sense for them to do a PhD at all. (I replied to another comment of yours, but wanted to get this in as well) Yes, absolutely, and this is somewhat painful to me, because I think that a PhD can also be a period of tremendous joy for such people because they might use it to experiment broadly with their skill set. Academia loses out here :-(
- periheli0n 5y ago> a PhD can also be a period of tremendous joy for such people because they might use it to experiment broadly with their skill set. Definitely! But in the end they come out frustrated, because they get overtaken by their more focused peers on the career ladder. There are other opportunities aside from a PhD where talented people can hone their skills while earning comparably low salaries. Startups, for example.
- Topolomancer 5y agoYes, I wonder what would be the best course of action. Pointing out the dangers to them early on, maybe?
- periheli0n 5y agoI would go even a step further, and expose them to industry through collaborations as much as possible. That way they can not only make up their own mind whether academia or industry is for them, but also create a network that might help them find a job.
- Topolomancer 5y agoCertainly what I will try---I am building up some networks to provide them with more opportunities (e.g. internships).
- elijahwright 5y agoT shaped person here. Abandoned PhD due to politics and abusive environment- much happier doing devops work and living a life of learning.