3 ms·

What? Can you expand? I'm a graduate math student looking to go into academia. :/

by robertk 15y ago

muhfuhkuh 15y ago
I can probably guess it has to do with the current political climate and the growing concern among its most vocal and recently austere adherents that union labor is bad, ergo teachers are as well. Gird yourself, you'll hear the argument that School summer vacations equate to laziness pretty often. Just FYI.
_delirium 15y ago
Academia is a bit different than K-12 education, though not without its own set of issues. The main problem there is the move towards a semi-freelance "research manager" model, where technically you have a research position, which also comes with responsibilities like teaching classes and serving on committees, but also the university expects you to bring in external money to pay for at least part of your own salary, plus ideally a lab of students and post-docs. So the prof-job is really more about the management & grantwriting than about the research (the research is what the people you pay do). Math is probably a bit less far along on that transition than other areas of the sciences & engineering, though. The actual existence of the jobs (outside humanities, which is under more pressure) is probably stable for the medium-term future, though.
- impendia 15y ago
  Math professor here. We are definitely expected (or at least encouraged) to write grants, but this is not such a big deal and most of my time is, as promised, devoted to teaching and research. IMHO the most two important drawbacks are (1) you will make less money than in the private sector and (2) unless you are really outstanding, you will probably eventually have to move to whatever random city to happen to find a job in. A large proportion of tech jobs are in places like SF Bay Area, Austin, Seattle, Boston. The same is not true of academia.
  - _delirium 15y ago
    Interesting; I'm a CS prof., where you can sometimes get away with that, but increasingly the expectation is really that you'll be funding several students out of your grant money, and at some schools, funding a portion of your salary. Baseline to get tenure at a research-oriented university seems to be about $500k-$1m of grants during the 6-year assistant position (i.e. enough to fund an average of 2 PhD students per year over that period out of non-TA/dept money). It could be less in math because there isn't the same "lab" concept, where to be considered a "successful" professor you're supposed to oversee a lab of 3+ (better if it's 5+) PhD students, a post-doc or two, research scientists, etc.?
    - impendia 15y ago
      Yeah, thankfully this lab concept is absent, although it is always good to be advising grad students and postdocs. Most universities have tons of students who need to brush up on mediocre math backgrounds, which makes for a lot of paying work for math grad students.

What? Can you expand? I'm a graduate math student looking to go into academia. :/

by robertk 15y ago

What? Can you expand? I'm a graduate math student looking to go into academia. :/

I can probably guess it has to do with the current political climate and the growing concern among its most vocal and recently austere adherents that union labor is bad, ergo teachers are as well. Gird yourself, you'll hear the argument that School summer vacations equate to laziness pretty often. Just FYI.

_delirium 15y ago

Academia is a bit different than K-12 education, though not without its own set of issues. The main problem there is the move towards a semi-freelance "research manager" model, where technically you have a research position, which also comes with responsibilities like teaching classes and serving on committees, but also the university expects you to bring in external money to pay for at least part of your own salary, plus ideally a lab of students and post-docs. So the prof-job is really more about the management & grantwriting than about the research (the research is what the people you pay do). Math is probably a bit less far along on that transition than other areas of the sciences & engineering, though. The actual existence of the jobs (outside humanities, which is under more pressure) is probably stable for the medium-term future, though.

impendia 15y ago
Math professor here. We are definitely expected (or at least encouraged) to write grants, but this is not such a big deal and most of my time is, as promised, devoted to teaching and research. IMHO the most two important drawbacks are (1) you will make less money than in the private sector and (2) unless you are really outstanding, you will probably eventually have to move to whatever random city to happen to find a job in. A large proportion of tech jobs are in places like SF Bay Area, Austin, Seattle, Boston. The same is not true of academia.
- _delirium 15y ago
  Interesting; I'm a CS prof., where you can sometimes get away with that, but increasingly the expectation is really that you'll be funding several students out of your grant money, and at some schools, funding a portion of your salary. Baseline to get tenure at a research-oriented university seems to be about $500k-$1m of grants during the 6-year assistant position (i.e. enough to fund an average of 2 PhD students per year over that period out of non-TA/dept money). It could be less in math because there isn't the same "lab" concept, where to be considered a "successful" professor you're supposed to oversee a lab of 3+ (better if it's 5+) PhD students, a post-doc or two, research scientists, etc.?
  - impendia 15y ago
    Yeah, thankfully this lab concept is absent, although it is always good to be advising grad students and postdocs. Most universities have tons of students who need to brush up on mediocre math backgrounds, which makes for a lot of paying work for math grad students.