I’ve been back in academia for a few years now. I’m lucky to be permanent and my colleagues are generally lovely and supportive. There’s a big push on Equality

I’ve been back in academia for a few years now. I’m lucky to be permanent and my colleagues are generally lovely and supportive. There’s a big push on Equality Diversity and Inclusion here so people are aware of treating students better. I don’t doubt there is some serious toxicity here and I’ve seen severe cases of it elsewhere. My problem with the whole thing is the constant rejection when it comes to securing research funding. You have all these high achieving people being subject to endless failure often with useless feedback or none at all. You feel people doing incremental research (or sometimes what looks like the same research they’re always do) get big grants. When you propose, in your self inflated opinion of yourself, something novel but risky you get nothing. Research money should not fund safe and guaranteed to work, it is always a gamble on something out there. If something is that obvious and safe its not academic research. So there comes the time where you start to lose you ambition and find the safe boring research that will funded and allow you to progress in your career. Sometimes I think academia is ripe for UBI. Pay PhDs and PostDocs a UBI and give academics a guaranteed but small amount of research money per year. Let them self organise so this money can fund lab equipment and let them research whatever they want. Success can be measured based on the output achieved and that can drive promotion and then the ability to attract others to work with you.