6 ms·

The only way to undo the culture of overwork for academic professors, is to increase bottleneck somewhere upstream (e.g. cut the number of PhD students in half)

The only way to undo the culture of overwork for academic professors, is to increase bottleneck somewhere upstream (e.g. cut the number of PhD students in half). Any time you have a situation where 300 people are applying for the same job (as is common for ladder rank professorships at research universities), the people who end up getting those jobs will inevitably have been overworked. Imagine if less than 10% of people who went to med school ended up landing a job as a physician - that's basically the situation with professorships.

maximus-decimus 4y ago
That would require them to say no to free labor.
- ModernMech 4y ago
  To be clear, Ph.D. students are very expensive. I don't know where you would get the idea that they are "free labor". Sure they're not as expensive as software engineers, but they also can't (or shouldn't) be "fired" per se. There's a certain latitude you are afforded as a student, and that's something that I think a lot of Ph.D. candidates don't appreciate when they complain they are underpaid compared to their industry counterparts. Source: was a Ph.D. student who complained about being underpaid, now a professor who sees how expensive they actually are.
  - clircle 4y ago
    I think I was paid like 18K a year when I got my STEM PhD in 2018. So, when you say that PhD students are not as expensive as SWEs, you could be making the understatement of the year. I bet the Mcdonalds workers made more than me.
    - ModernMech 4y ago
      That’s what you were paid, it’s not what you cost.
      - clircle 4y ago
        I frankly don't understand this. I suppose the school also helped out with my healthcare premium, but I didn't have other notable benefits.
      - maximus-decimus 4y ago
        When people say free labour, the mean how much you're paid. Even slaves have to be bought, housed and fed so they have a cost, but they're pretty much the definition of free labour.
        ModernMech 4y ago
        I really have to draw the line at Ph.D. students being compared to slaves. Doing a Ph.D. Is an amazing opportunity, and a voluntary one at that. Far beyond being uncompensated, Ph.D. student are in fact compensated with a stipend, tuition, and mentorship. To compare this arrangement to slavery is to both cheapen the experience of a Ph.D. and to minimize the horrors of slavery.
        maximus-decimus 4y ago
        I didn't meant to call Ph.D. student slaves, I'm just trying to point out that by your definition even slaves are not free labour, which I think we all agree is wrong. I just couldn't think of another situation where people aren't getting paid, but in retrospect I guess volunteers would have been a less insulting example and convey my point better.
        ModernMech 4y ago
        Okay, even so, I must push back stronger on the point you made initially, that professors are looking to exploit free labor and therefore would never cut Ph.D. enrollments in half. The first notion I would like to dispel is that we are looking for employees of any kind. To be clear, a Ph.D. is closer to an apprenticeship than it is to employment, so benchmarking it against employment leads to all kinds of wrong conclusions about the arrangement. In fact, we are looking for students, which is to say that when admitted to a Ph.D., students lack the skills necessary to undertake the work, and the expectation is that they will be trained as a matter of course. How this differs from typical on-the-job training is that the training period can last years. The flip side is that business has adopted the philosophy "fire fast", meaning that that if some employee isn't working out, it's best to just let them go rather than let the issue persist. With a student, the philosophy is reversed; a student who isn't working out should be mentored. All this training and mentorship does not come cheap. For one, the facilities they use are expensive. For another, faculty time is expensive as well. Students don't appreciate this because the economics are hidden from them, and it often leads to perceptions that they are only paid the small fraction of their compensation that flows into their bank accounts. But to be clear, this training is in fact compensation to the student. It's not given to them at zero cost to the university. I can charge up to $300 per hour to give advice and training as part of my consultancy, but my students as part of my regular employment get carte balance access. They don't ever see an invoice from me, but that doesn't mean my time was spent with them out of the goodness of my heart. It certainly doesn't mean I'm exploiting them by not paying them market rate. If they want market rate, they should have marketable skills relevant to the position. The slavery comparison falls apart for obvious reasons. The volunteer comparison also falls apart because volunteers act as such to give, whereas students start a Ph.D. to get something out of it. And they do, it's just not all money. It's not even mostly money, and I think this should be clear to anyone thinking of starting a Ph.D. at this point. So for a Ph.D. student to complain that they were paid a small amount compared to someone who was employed, while eliding the vast array of other compensation they got, and simultaneously ignoring all the privileges afforded to students that aren't to employees, that to me is missing the entire value of the degree.
  - polygamous_bat 4y ago
    Personal experience: my advisor brings in somewhere between 2-3x my nominal pay as a Ph.D. student just to employ me. In his words, the excess goes into the "university", which I believe is just the org structure/bureaucracy that we at HN love to hate. So, all I want to say is > was a Ph.D. student who complained about being underpaid, now a professor who sees how expensive they actually are. They both can be true! You can be paying through the nose just for a middleman fat cat to take a fat cut, leaving the Ph.D. student with very little power to receive an unlivable amount.
    - ModernMech 4y ago
      > In his words, the excess goes into the "university", which I believe is just the org structure/bureaucracy that we at HN love to hate. Yes, we all love to complain about paying overhead, the same way we all love to complain about paying taxes. "If only I didn't have to pay this chunk of money, imagine what more I could do for myself!" And yet, we all know that it's not as simple as that. Yes, it's a shame that your advisor can't keep all his grant money and pay you 2-3x more. At the same time, the overhead money he pays is going to fund (among many other things) teaching assistantships, which will fund some other grad student whose advisor isn't as fortunate to have landed a lucrative grant. Or it will fund a new professor's startup package who is just starting out. Or it will fund startup research internal to the university. That same fund could support you in the future, if your funding runs dry; typical projects are funded for 4-5 years, whereas a Ph.D. can be longer (up to a decade even). There are a million excellent uses for that money. Honestly this wouldn't be much of a discussion if the housing and healthcare markets were more sane; most of the stipend money is spent on rent anyway. My institution is able to subsidize housing for many grad students, but when a 2 bedroom apartment costs $3000/mo on the open market, it's true that it can be tough to be a grad student. Especially with a family. But at the same time, those who seek to pursue a Ph.D. are often young and unencumbered. This can be a great option for many, as you are aware. I don't see the need to make it more like employment, when employment is already an option.
      - polygamous_bat 4y ago
        > Yes, we all love to complain about paying overhead, the same way we all love to complain about paying taxes. "If only I didn't have to pay this chunk of money, imagine what more I could do for myself!" I agree with you! I believe a tax rate of 0% OR 100% is insane, and the right number is somewhere in the middle. Right now, paying 67-50% "taxes" to the university and then also paying ~30% in real taxes just seems unfair/inefficient/unjust.

maximus-decimus 4y ago

That would require them to say no to free labor.

ModernMech 4y ago
To be clear, Ph.D. students are very expensive. I don't know where you would get the idea that they are "free labor". Sure they're not as expensive as software engineers, but they also can't (or shouldn't) be "fired" per se. There's a certain latitude you are afforded as a student, and that's something that I think a lot of Ph.D. candidates don't appreciate when they complain they are underpaid compared to their industry counterparts. Source: was a Ph.D. student who complained about being underpaid, now a professor who sees how expensive they actually are.
- clircle 4y ago
  I think I was paid like 18K a year when I got my STEM PhD in 2018. So, when you say that PhD students are not as expensive as SWEs, you could be making the understatement of the year. I bet the Mcdonalds workers made more than me.
  - ModernMech 4y ago
    That’s what you were paid, it’s not what you cost.
    - clircle 4y ago
      I frankly don't understand this. I suppose the school also helped out with my healthcare premium, but I didn't have other notable benefits.
    - maximus-decimus 4y ago
      When people say free labour, the mean how much you're paid. Even slaves have to be bought, housed and fed so they have a cost, but they're pretty much the definition of free labour.
      - ModernMech 4y ago
        I really have to draw the line at Ph.D. students being compared to slaves. Doing a Ph.D. Is an amazing opportunity, and a voluntary one at that. Far beyond being uncompensated, Ph.D. student are in fact compensated with a stipend, tuition, and mentorship. To compare this arrangement to slavery is to both cheapen the experience of a Ph.D. and to minimize the horrors of slavery.
        maximus-decimus 4y ago
        I didn't meant to call Ph.D. student slaves, I'm just trying to point out that by your definition even slaves are not free labour, which I think we all agree is wrong. I just couldn't think of another situation where people aren't getting paid, but in retrospect I guess volunteers would have been a less insulting example and convey my point better.
        ModernMech 4y ago
        Okay, even so, I must push back stronger on the point you made initially, that professors are looking to exploit free labor and therefore would never cut Ph.D. enrollments in half. The first notion I would like to dispel is that we are looking for employees of any kind. To be clear, a Ph.D. is closer to an apprenticeship than it is to employment, so benchmarking it against employment leads to all kinds of wrong conclusions about the arrangement. In fact, we are looking for students, which is to say that when admitted to a Ph.D., students lack the skills necessary to undertake the work, and the expectation is that they will be trained as a matter of course. How this differs from typical on-the-job training is that the training period can last years. The flip side is that business has adopted the philosophy "fire fast", meaning that that if some employee isn't working out, it's best to just let them go rather than let the issue persist. With a student, the philosophy is reversed; a student who isn't working out should be mentored. All this training and mentorship does not come cheap. For one, the facilities they use are expensive. For another, faculty time is expensive as well. Students don't appreciate this because the economics are hidden from them, and it often leads to perceptions that they are only paid the small fraction of their compensation that flows into their bank accounts. But to be clear, this training is in fact compensation to the student. It's not given to them at zero cost to the university. I can charge up to $300 per hour to give advice and training as part of my consultancy, but my students as part of my regular employment get carte balance access. They don't ever see an invoice from me, but that doesn't mean my time was spent with them out of the goodness of my heart. It certainly doesn't mean I'm exploiting them by not paying them market rate. If they want market rate, they should have marketable skills relevant to the position. The slavery comparison falls apart for obvious reasons. The volunteer comparison also falls apart because volunteers act as such to give, whereas students start a Ph.D. to get something out of it. And they do, it's just not all money. It's not even mostly money, and I think this should be clear to anyone thinking of starting a Ph.D. at this point. So for a Ph.D. student to complain that they were paid a small amount compared to someone who was employed, while eliding the vast array of other compensation they got, and simultaneously ignoring all the privileges afforded to students that aren't to employees, that to me is missing the entire value of the degree.
- polygamous_bat 4y ago
  Personal experience: my advisor brings in somewhere between 2-3x my nominal pay as a Ph.D. student just to employ me. In his words, the excess goes into the "university", which I believe is just the org structure/bureaucracy that we at HN love to hate. So, all I want to say is > was a Ph.D. student who complained about being underpaid, now a professor who sees how expensive they actually are. They both can be true! You can be paying through the nose just for a middleman fat cat to take a fat cut, leaving the Ph.D. student with very little power to receive an unlivable amount.
  - ModernMech 4y ago
    > In his words, the excess goes into the "university", which I believe is just the org structure/bureaucracy that we at HN love to hate. Yes, we all love to complain about paying overhead, the same way we all love to complain about paying taxes. "If only I didn't have to pay this chunk of money, imagine what more I could do for myself!" And yet, we all know that it's not as simple as that. Yes, it's a shame that your advisor can't keep all his grant money and pay you 2-3x more. At the same time, the overhead money he pays is going to fund (among many other things) teaching assistantships, which will fund some other grad student whose advisor isn't as fortunate to have landed a lucrative grant. Or it will fund a new professor's startup package who is just starting out. Or it will fund startup research internal to the university. That same fund could support you in the future, if your funding runs dry; typical projects are funded for 4-5 years, whereas a Ph.D. can be longer (up to a decade even). There are a million excellent uses for that money. Honestly this wouldn't be much of a discussion if the housing and healthcare markets were more sane; most of the stipend money is spent on rent anyway. My institution is able to subsidize housing for many grad students, but when a 2 bedroom apartment costs $3000/mo on the open market, it's true that it can be tough to be a grad student. Especially with a family. But at the same time, those who seek to pursue a Ph.D. are often young and unencumbered. This can be a great option for many, as you are aware. I don't see the need to make it more like employment, when employment is already an option.
    - polygamous_bat 4y ago
      > Yes, we all love to complain about paying overhead, the same way we all love to complain about paying taxes. "If only I didn't have to pay this chunk of money, imagine what more I could do for myself!" I agree with you! I believe a tax rate of 0% OR 100% is insane, and the right number is somewhere in the middle. Right now, paying 67-50% "taxes" to the university and then also paying ~30% in real taxes just seems unfair/inefficient/unjust.