5 ms·

Academia. Nowhere else do people fight so much and so dirty for so little.

by 77pt77 1y ago

karmakurtisaani 1y ago
Student politics, perhaps.
snapcaster 1y ago
Why do people say "so little". How is an appointment to a high prestige job for life small stakes?
- aaronbaugher 1y ago
  It's a slam on how petty many of the internal grudge matches are. But of course they don't seem at all petty to those engaged in them.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
  At the state university in my smaller city, an actual professorship (not some adjunct) earns up towards $200k/year salary. Maybe pretty modest by FAANG standards, but for many people outside of tech that sounds like a lottery jackpot. So it's not just prestige, though that's on offer too.
  - pohl 1y ago
    Especially once you factor in the lower cost of living (relative to FAANG jobs) in that smaller city.
  - hyperbovine 1y ago
    Don't forget 3-4 months off in the summer too.
    - Fomite 1y ago
      Professors don't get the summer off. If you have a heavy teaching load, summers are your one window to get research work done. If you don't, like me, the difference between the summer and the rest of the year is its easier to find parking.
      - hyperbovine 1y ago
        Fine, 3-4 months to think about interesting things all day long with basically zero expectation that you’ll be anywhere or show up to anything. Call it what you will.
        Fomite 1y ago
        That you think this is true betrays a complete lack of understanding about what a modern academic job requires.
        aydyn 1y ago
        I mean, its not completely untrue. You do not have set hours. You can offload as much work as you want to grad students and postdocs, depending on how despotic you want to be.
        Fomite 1y ago
        I do not have set hours, but I do have obligations. When a program officer wants to talk to you, and it's 6 AM because you're on the west coast, you say yes. "You can offload as much work as you want to grad students and postdocs" is just untrue - there's always more work than there are people to do it, and I'm pretty sure a number of committees I'm on would be more than a little annoyed if I sent a postdoc. Is it a job that has some nice properties to it? Yes. But the idea that we have summers "off", or that it's all time to contemplate blue sky research ideas, rather than go to curriculum meetings and work on monthly grant reports is a fantasy.
        aydyn 1y ago
- davidgay 1y ago
  The quote is referring to fights between people who already have tenure.
- coderatlarge 1y ago
  in many countries the salaries are unbelievably low by US standards, but they generally do come with healthcare, benefits and a pension.
- mountainb 1y ago
  There's a more transparent and straightforward pathway to a lifetime appointment as a federal judge (which actually pays OK and has many social perks) than there is to a tenured professorship in most fields. Judges have Solomon-like-life-and-death power, and the lawyers who argue before them (often successful, high-status people in their own right) are professionally obligated to suck up. By comparison almost all professorships are like becoming the most important hobo on a given street corner.
  - throw-qqqqq 1y ago
    This is a really sharp take IMO. In all fairness though, it's very difficult to become a judge. At least in my country, you have to have been both a defense lawyer and a prosecutor in order to become a judge. It takes many years of experience that is not easily gained.
  - wisty 1y ago
    Yeah, it's mostly either students or academia who admire their hobo kings. It's kind of like a sport like tennis. If you're in the system, you think that the world number 150 tennis player is amazing, but they barely make enough to afford travel to the matches.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
coderatlarge 1y ago
maybe those who fight for it have better information. for example they realize that once they achieve tenure, the amount of work truly required to retain the for-life annuity is risibly low so they can go on to do just about whatever else they want or “consult” for extra dollars as needed.
- Fomite 1y ago
  My workload has only steadily increased once I got tenure. The nature of the work changed, but the "Kick back, relax and enjoy your zero effort forever job" is a fantasy of people who don't actually know what they're talking about.
  - coderatlarge 1y ago
    i’ve personally known a number of tenured professors who’ve systematically shirked all responsibility after their tenure event. they’ve been willing to live as semi-pariahs within their peer group though. even when required to teach they simply repeat classes they’ve taught many times before making no effort to optimize for reviews. i don’t doubt your experience but i wonder how much it has to do with not wanting to endure your colleagues’ and departments’s disapproval vs actual threat to employment. and fwiw, i’m not saying it has to be this way just that it can be this way due to the structure of the system. similarly there are many corporate situations in which one can scrape by for extended periods of time, but there is rarely a “for life” clause. even so, it hasn’t prevented the university system from helping to catalyze all the amazing discoveries we all benefit from in society every day.
    - Fomite 1y ago
      I mean, there are definitely people who coast, because there are people everywhere who coast. But the vast majority of tenured professors I know don't do so, for one of the following reasons: - I can't get fired, but I also don't need to get paid. My position has a non-trivial soft money component to it, and it's actually low for my field, which ranges from 50% to 100% soft money depending on the institution. A double-digit pay cut is motivation for most people. - There are still promotions to be had, and those promotions are really the only way to get a raise beyond cost of living increases. At my institution there are two steps beyond Associate Professor with Tenure, and both of them are not obtained by phoning it in. - Ego. It's hard to understate this one. Most academics are smart, determined people. There are other easier, more lucrative jobs. But there's a sense of purpose and ego that channeled them to the career they're in. Said ego is usually not fed by being in the doldrums. That's not how you get awards and invited to talks, and recruited elsewhere, etc. Sure, the stick of "You could get fired" isn't there, but there are also ways to make a tenured professor whose coasting's life less pleasant. But even if not, I don't think it's nearly as common as the popular imagination (or this thread) think it is. Most people I know only really take their foot of the gas in the last few years of their careers, often well past retirement age.

Academia. Nowhere else do people fight so much and so dirty for so little.

by 77pt77 1y ago

Academia. Nowhere else do people fight so much and so dirty for so little.

karmakurtisaani 1y ago

Student politics, perhaps.

snapcaster 1y ago

Why do people say "so little". How is an appointment to a high prestige job for life small stakes?

aaronbaugher 1y ago
It's a slam on how petty many of the internal grudge matches are. But of course they don't seem at all petty to those engaged in them.
NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
At the state university in my smaller city, an actual professorship (not some adjunct) earns up towards $200k/year salary. Maybe pretty modest by FAANG standards, but for many people outside of tech that sounds like a lottery jackpot. So it's not just prestige, though that's on offer too.
- pohl 1y ago
  Especially once you factor in the lower cost of living (relative to FAANG jobs) in that smaller city.
- hyperbovine 1y ago
  Don't forget 3-4 months off in the summer too.
  - Fomite 1y ago
    Professors don't get the summer off. If you have a heavy teaching load, summers are your one window to get research work done. If you don't, like me, the difference between the summer and the rest of the year is its easier to find parking.
    - hyperbovine 1y ago
      Fine, 3-4 months to think about interesting things all day long with basically zero expectation that you’ll be anywhere or show up to anything. Call it what you will.
      - Fomite 1y ago
        That you think this is true betrays a complete lack of understanding about what a modern academic job requires.
        aydyn 1y ago
        I mean, its not completely untrue. You do not have set hours. You can offload as much work as you want to grad students and postdocs, depending on how despotic you want to be.
        Fomite 1y ago
        I do not have set hours, but I do have obligations. When a program officer wants to talk to you, and it's 6 AM because you're on the west coast, you say yes. "You can offload as much work as you want to grad students and postdocs" is just untrue - there's always more work than there are people to do it, and I'm pretty sure a number of committees I'm on would be more than a little annoyed if I sent a postdoc. Is it a job that has some nice properties to it? Yes. But the idea that we have summers "off", or that it's all time to contemplate blue sky research ideas, rather than go to curriculum meetings and work on monthly grant reports is a fantasy.
        aydyn 1y ago
davidgay 1y ago
The quote is referring to fights between people who already have tenure.
coderatlarge 1y ago
in many countries the salaries are unbelievably low by US standards, but they generally do come with healthcare, benefits and a pension.
mountainb 1y ago
There's a more transparent and straightforward pathway to a lifetime appointment as a federal judge (which actually pays OK and has many social perks) than there is to a tenured professorship in most fields. Judges have Solomon-like-life-and-death power, and the lawyers who argue before them (often successful, high-status people in their own right) are professionally obligated to suck up. By comparison almost all professorships are like becoming the most important hobo on a given street corner.
- throw-qqqqq 1y ago
  This is a really sharp take IMO. In all fairness though, it's very difficult to become a judge. At least in my country, you have to have been both a defense lawyer and a prosecutor in order to become a judge. It takes many years of experience that is not easily gained.
- wisty 1y ago
  Yeah, it's mostly either students or academia who admire their hobo kings. It's kind of like a sport like tennis. If you're in the system, you think that the world number 150 tennis player is amazing, but they barely make enough to afford travel to the matches.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

coderatlarge 1y ago

maybe those who fight for it have better information. for example they realize that once they achieve tenure, the amount of work truly required to retain the for-life annuity is risibly low so they can go on to do just about whatever else they want or “consult” for extra dollars as needed.

Fomite 1y ago
My workload has only steadily increased once I got tenure. The nature of the work changed, but the "Kick back, relax and enjoy your zero effort forever job" is a fantasy of people who don't actually know what they're talking about.
- coderatlarge 1y ago
  i’ve personally known a number of tenured professors who’ve systematically shirked all responsibility after their tenure event. they’ve been willing to live as semi-pariahs within their peer group though. even when required to teach they simply repeat classes they’ve taught many times before making no effort to optimize for reviews. i don’t doubt your experience but i wonder how much it has to do with not wanting to endure your colleagues’ and departments’s disapproval vs actual threat to employment. and fwiw, i’m not saying it has to be this way just that it can be this way due to the structure of the system. similarly there are many corporate situations in which one can scrape by for extended periods of time, but there is rarely a “for life” clause. even so, it hasn’t prevented the university system from helping to catalyze all the amazing discoveries we all benefit from in society every day.
  - Fomite 1y ago
    I mean, there are definitely people who coast, because there are people everywhere who coast. But the vast majority of tenured professors I know don't do so, for one of the following reasons: - I can't get fired, but I also don't need to get paid. My position has a non-trivial soft money component to it, and it's actually low for my field, which ranges from 50% to 100% soft money depending on the institution. A double-digit pay cut is motivation for most people. - There are still promotions to be had, and those promotions are really the only way to get a raise beyond cost of living increases. At my institution there are two steps beyond Associate Professor with Tenure, and both of them are not obtained by phoning it in. - Ego. It's hard to understate this one. Most academics are smart, determined people. There are other easier, more lucrative jobs. But there's a sense of purpose and ego that channeled them to the career they're in. Said ego is usually not fed by being in the doldrums. That's not how you get awards and invited to talks, and recruited elsewhere, etc. Sure, the stick of "You could get fired" isn't there, but there are also ways to make a tenured professor whose coasting's life less pleasant. But even if not, I don't think it's nearly as common as the popular imagination (or this thread) think it is. Most people I know only really take their foot of the gas in the last few years of their careers, often well past retirement age.