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“I Quit Academia,” an Important, Growing Subgenre of American Essays

124 points by tokenadult 13y ago

deleted 13y ago
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jseliger 13y ago
Not only are quitters a large, important subgenre, but so are people warning others not to go—like I do: http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-know-before-you-start-grad-school-in-english-literature-the-economic-financial-and-opportunity-costs/ http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-kno... , and like half a dozen others do in various links from that essay. If so many people are quitting and/or warning others off the path, there may be a good reason why. This especially stands out from the article: Academe is a profession full of erudite free-thinkers who feel disillusioned by a toxic labor system in which criticism is not tolerated—so those who leave often relish the newfound ability to say anything they want (talking about “a friend” here). In its insularity and single-mindedness, academe is also very similar to a fundamentalist religion (or, dare I say, cult), and thus those who abdicate often feel compelled to confess. "A fundamentalist religion:" if so, each heretic who saves someone else is doing important work. If enough people do so, the message might get out; it certainly has for law schools: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/business/for-lsat-sharp-drop-in-popularity-for-second-year.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/business/for-lsat-sharp-dr.... Anyway, it does seem like academia has grown increasingly exploitative along many measures, especially for workers and grad students. The more people who know before they start, the better.
- mathattack 13y ago
  This is actually a good thing, no? If academia is hoarding too many erudite free-thinkers, cut them loose elsewhere to solve the world's problem. If the best 20% of teachers can be leveraged via online resources over 80% of the students, it's ok to have some smart researchers go to the private sector. Automation combined with cost pressure forces re-allocation of resources, and that's fine.
  - mjn 13y ago
    Depends on whether they actually do research in the private sector, though. Historically most fundamental science advances have come either from academia, or from big academia-like research organizations in industry (Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, Microsoft Research), or from government research labs (Sandia, Livermore, CERN, etc.). Most industry R&D tends towards different kinds of problems, applied research with 1-5 years commercialization horizons, sometimes pushing 10. That's a valuable segment of research, but not all of it, and it depends on a pipeline of less-applied research to keep it fed. But due to the difficulty of monetizing indirect future advances that basic science enables, it's difficult to do it profitably in industry. A scientific discovery that at some point in the future turns out to be useful in developing technology is valuable for humanity, but you cannot easily capture that value, as it simply diffuses to the general benefit. Knowledge advances, but anyone can use it, and you don't get to own it; you can get some kind of satisfaction in old age in looking at how this physics discovery you came up with in your 30s is being used to improve chip fabrication processes 40 years later, but you don't get royalties on the chips. Patents try to change that within a 20-year timespan, but they are not supposed to apply to scientific or mathematical discoveries, 20 years is too short for some advances, and they have a whole host of problems anyway.
    - mathattack 13y ago
      I guess I'd divide the research world like this: 1) Pie in the sky research that is beyond the 20 year time horizon of long-view companies and 10 year time horizon of VCs. 2) Research that is amenable to teaching people how to research. 3) Research to advance one's career. 4) Research that is relatively close to Development. There are overlaps, and it can be hard to differentiate between the types until after the fact, but let's go with this model. #1 has to be funded federally (i.e. NSF), via philanthropy (i.e. Gates Foundation) or as a monopoly concession (i.e. Bell Labs). This can belong in the University or elsewhere, and may or may not be tied to teaching. #2 belongs in Universities, as it helps generate the next generation of scholars. #3 should not be financed by taxpayers. It's also hard to justify this in aggregate coming from tuition. Do we really need more papers on Ancient History, or should we invest the same money in better teaching? I understand you need to be an expert to teach, but it seems like a lot of publishing is purely to generate citations. #4 If these people can get real world jobs, why not send them to the real world where rather than stay in a profession with very scarce jobs?
- deleted 13y ago
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  - stevoski 13y ago
    In some areas, yes. But your chances of discovering new species of butterflies in the Amazon, climbing Mt Kilimanjaro, finding an apt life partner, producing healthy, well-balanced offspring, having good relations with your parents? In other words, the achievements that matter...have little to do with attending a top university.
  - peterwwillis 13y ago
    To back this up with an example: If I had a CS degree I could have gotten a job with Amazon years ago, and even farther back than that, could have become the head security bozo for a large state college. I'm still limited in terms of getting the job I want because I just don't have the knowledge to do it yet. Though one should keep in mind the loopholes for non-academic jobs and self-motivation. At my Amazon interview one of the head software bozos actually taught himself everything you'd cover in CS, including all the high-level math. I couldn't hack it, but he did. (edit: the guy I replied to was trying to explain why you need to go)
    - bennyg 13y ago
      Exactly. School's great for finding the unknown unknowns - a useful tool even if you're going to teach yourself everything outside of school regardless.
    - sillysaurus2 13y ago
      Sorry about that. I deleted my comment after I realized the article was talking about attending grad school, rather than attending university in general, so my comment was talking past the central point and hence didn't apply. I should've made that clear with an edit rather than deleting it, though. It seemed to have no replies when I deleted it (which was three minutes after writing it).
- rmc 13y ago
  You will always get people complaining about an industry/professsion. There are lots of people complaining about the tech industry.
- bane 13y ago
  Among my personal peer group, all with graduate degrees from good schools at top-of-class GPAs, approximately 0 (zero) have decided to stay in academia. We all know of a few folks who did stay in to pursue a PhD, and the horror stories we heard were more than enough to keep us away. That, and now with all of us in hiring positions and seeing how little it buys in the job market (outside of very few milieus) has confirmed that we'd all rather go back for another Masters or even another Undergraduate degree than go for a PhD in our fields -- some of us already have.
  - PaulHoule 13y ago
    Out of my graduating class of 80 physics PhD's I think one went in academia, a woman.
    - louwrentius 13y ago
      Why is it relevant that it was a woman? It sounds like you suggest that the only applicant academia got was a 'woman', as if women are mediocre at best.
      - jjoonathan 13y ago
        Just the opposite. We already know that she chose physics even though the prior of being a woman made that choice less likely. We can infer that she was probably more dedicated to the subject itself than her average peer. The fact that she eventually made it in academia supports this hypothesis. Another possibility is that she had a partner willing to support her if things went south. Obviously this situation isn't unique to women, but I do think it's slightly more probable for a woman to have such a partner. If this is the case, PaulHoule's point becomes that the decision to enter grad school only made sense for her because of the artificially reduced consequences of p(failure). Even if affirmative action did play a role (a recent paper found very damning, well-controlled evidence of systematic bias against women in the evaluation process, so I wouldn't assume this with any degree of certainty), PaulHoule could have simply been observing that she saw a better p(success) and was therefore the only one willing to take the leap. Or maybe PaulHoule is a misogynist. But I'd be willing to bet against you if you still thought that.
- drblast 13y ago
  "In recent months, class-action lawsuits have been filed against more than a dozen law schools, charging that students were snookered into enrolling by postgraduate employment figures that were vastly, and fraudulently, inflated." That's hysterical. Imagine graduating hundreds of students who won't be employed, face a massive amount of debt, and who not only have the skills necessary, but all the time in the world, to sue you for it.
- altoz 13y ago
  "criticism is not tolerated" These are the people doing research and peer-reviewing? No wonder the quality of research is so bad. Criticism should be encouraged, not suppressed.
  - ISL 13y ago
    Criticism is prevalent in academia, especially with new ideas at the cutting edge. The idea that "criticism is not tolerated" tends to emerge from ideas that fall far from the trunk knowledge of the field. If your new theory of physics comes into direct experimental conflict with the Standard Model, expect to get the cold shoulder. (Actually, at APS meetings and sectional meetings, almost everyone gets a chance to speak. However, not everyone attends the "new perspectives in physics" sub-meeting when there's a talk on another topic in the adjoining room.) This sort of groupthink rejection sees more light when an issue is closer to public policy. In the nascent field of climate science, for example, I wouldn't be surprised to see papers claiming global cooling or stasis rejected almost immediately. Almost everyone in the field these days would appear to believe that global warming is occurring. Coming back to my original thesis; the peer-review process is full of criticism. Search around for web pages aimed exclusively at coaxing young graduate students out of peer-review induced depression. Peer review can be brutal, and the anonymity can double its impact.
agilebyte 13y ago
Wouldn't quitting actually fix the problem? The supply side of the equation is too big at the moment.
- PaulHoule 13y ago
  For one thing this is an unlimited supply of very good BS students from poor countries who want to get the hell out, and the time it takes to do a PhD or even a postdoc is enough time to get a real job or get married or otherwise become nationalized
- DaveWalk 13y ago
  A great point -- in "How Economics Shapes Science," science economist Paula Stephan talks about this problem repeatedly. One of the unforeseen problems in the peer review space is that older professors retire later and later in life compared to previous decades. Professors who know the grantwriting system are have a large advantage over first time submitters and get a disproportionate amount of funding.
daveyoon 13y ago
Isn't this the exception that proves the rule? And I don't think very many academics at top universities leave the field, unless it's to do something they might think is more interesting, not to leave in disgust (perhaps a fine distinction, but a distinction nevertheless).
- unmei 13y ago
  Yeah, but remember there are far more grad students obtaining PhD's than faculty positions - in other words, sure, not many who make it to faculty leave, but far more people leave than stay overall.
  - rrrrtttt 13y ago
    The fact that 10x as many people train to be scientists as those who become scientists only shows how attractive academia careers are. I like to compare this to sports. Only three people in the world get an Olympic medal once every four years in each discipline, while everyone else spends most of their childhood and youth in arduous training with nothing to show for it.
    - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
      That only makes sense if you hold the "supply" of scientist jobs constant. What we've actually observed is that: 1) Scientist jobs are high-status, you're right, and permanent positions usually come with a comfortable (though rarely really flush) salary and other upper-middle class perks. However: 2) The number of available permanent jobs as a scientist has been trending down for reasons that have nothing to do with the number of people willing to do those jobs. Basically, research funding has been dropping like a rock. 3) The "professor -> undergrads -> grad-students -> post-docs -> new professor" career model is structurally senseless. There's nothing wrong with having a severe filter on the number of undergrads who become grad-students (in the sense that there have traditionally been many fields where most of the undergrads can get a job that applies their undergrad-level education), but you simply can't set up the entire science career on the basis of an exponential increase in workers without an exponential increase in jobs. The system only even works for computer-scientist types because most of our PhD grads leave academia by default to get applied research or high-level development jobs in industry. Now, I'm not going to be a pure-academia wanker and say, "Nobody should get a job in industry EVAR!", but neither is it all right to say, "Everyone should just get a job in industry after grad-school!". Companies simply don't want that many PhDs in most fields. Also, the oversupply of PhD labor and overspecialization thereof in most fields has enabled many universities to shift to a teaching model in which 2/3 of teaching staff are adjuncts without livable salaries, fringe benefits, or any contract for permanent employment. As much as I really, really like what academia and research are supposed to stand for (and I say this as I current graduate student), I can't give any kind of endorsement to the career model involved. Not while I'm earning approximately $1400/month after taxes as an "entry-level academic" (ie: grad-student) and a friend of mine (whom I decline to name here) with a fairly close skill-level to me earns something like five times that (again, after taxes) working for a major Silicon Valley company. Hell, I earned three times that much money interning at a Silicon Valley company over the summer! I wasn't even entry-level in industry, and yet I made more than I do in academia and had a clearer, more secure career path in front of me. The thing I'm thankful for is that we're a bit less "ideological" about the industry-versus-academia split here in Israel. Professorial jobs have never been very well-paid here, so alternating between industry and academia throughout one's career is just considered normal. Oh, and of course the fact that my health insurance and pension funds aren't tied to just one job :-p.
mjn 13y ago
It's somewhat interesting that this is specifically an American essay genre. People join or leave academia in Europe as well, but people seem less angry about it either way. You can work at a university or you can work at a company or a think-tank or in the government or start your own company. Different choices, different pros and cons. I like the university, though there are things I don't like about it certainly. Some people will go in both directions during a career (this highly varies by country within Europe, though). One graphics guy I'm acquainted with spent almost a decade in academia, then spent 4-5 years working as senior technical staff at a company, and now is back in academia. In CS, the typical tradeoff is that you get more resources but somewhat less direct freedom at companies. In academia you have fewer resources and have to bring in your own grants, but the resource constraint is the main constraint, a sort of indirect restriction on your research freedom (how strong of one depends on your resource needs). Lots of other differences depending on your preferences. Easier to publish papers in academia (no approval needed and it's valued); easier to do software development in industry (resources/coordination exists, and it's valued). Academic schedules tend to be more flexible; work-from-home and non-9/5 schedules are common and don't typically require approval. Teaching is typically required, which can be a pro or a con. Etc.
qwerta 13y ago
Why quit? Everyone loves working 80 hours a week without permanent job, salary or even health insurance.
mahesh_rm 13y ago
I guess our startup fit into this subgenre.. http://blog.coffeestrap.com/2013/05/06/something-meaningful/ http://blog.coffeestrap.com/2013/05/06/something-meaningful/ Didn't know was something that common. Would love to hear from somebody else with similar experience. ps> almost 1 year into CS, 10/10 wouldn't go back! :-)
- dcre 13y ago
  Interesting post. Just a tip — the font is distracting. Especially in Chrome on Windows, which for some reason can't do font smoothing. In other browsers it's better, but still unnecessarily quirky.
rollo_tommasi 13y ago
Maybe I'm wrong about this, but haven't most of these 'quit/don't go' essays come from academics in the humanities? Are there similar essays coming from science or engineering grad students / tenured professors?
- jimhefferon 13y ago
  OTOH, humanities contains more people who reflexively reach for a pen.
- ajdecon 13y ago
  I don't see many "I quit!" or "don't go!" essays from science, but you do see scientists expressing concerns about continuing to accept so many PhD students who won't have a clear career path. This seems especially true in biotech, though part of their concerns seem to be about how the new students will compete with them for grant dollars... see http://scientopia.org/blogs/drugmonkey/2013/01/28/shut-off-the-phd-tap/ http://scientopia.org/blogs/drugmonkey/2013/01/28/shut-off-t... for an example.
- betterunix 13y ago
  Two things: 1. There is more money in being an engineering professor 2. Lots of PhD students in engineering never bother being professors of any kind (even non-tenure track) and just find an industry position with a big salary.
- dnautics 13y ago
  Scientist here: I am tempted to write one, I haven't yet, I'm just doing it. Incidentally, my former postdoctoral boss is one of these academes who quit... One year after getting tenure. Interestingly, her decision to quit and abandon her project, in turn, enabled me to quit my "semi-academic" track (I've worked predominantly at "academic" nonprofit research institutes that are not generally colleges) - by trying to resurrect the project that she abandoned. Details in my bio, if you're curious.
- slurry 13y ago
  Yeah, you can find basically identical complaints (not always prestige-format essays though) from bio, chem and physics PhD's. Those job markets are nearly as bad as humanities and social sciences. And since pharma is in a state of disarray, the job prospects in industry aren't so hot either.
af3 13y ago
nice article, thanks for the submission!
raverbashing 13y ago
Well, here's the thing Academia does not have a monopoly on knowledge anymore. They are also usually not on the latest developments (some schools are better than that). Not to mention the money-grabbing aspect of it. Unfortunately, a "certificate by an upholding institution" has a certain value.
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  >They are also usually not on the latest developments (some schools are better than that). Please tell me the last new theory in basic science to come out of some place other than academia.
  - raverbashing 13y ago
    Academia (and knowledge) is not only basic science. But yeah, there have been discoveries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_cosmic_microwave_background_radiation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_cosmic_microwave_b... See how many schools can offer a Machine Learning course. See how many professors know what's Map-Reduce.
    - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
      Ummm... Map-Reduce is a system infrastructure based on functional programming. It has applications in Machine Learning, but it isn't fundamentally based in machine learning.
      - raverbashing 13y ago
        I didn't say Map-Reduce was based on machine leaning (nor vice-versa).
        eli_gottlieb 13y ago
        Ok, I think I see what you meant a bit more clearly now. It's just that every respectable CS department I've seen has some course in machine learning, and most of them also have some kind of course in "Programming Language Paradigms" or something where functional programming, including the map and reduce functions, will be taught. Though admittedly, the number where functional programming and its related disciplines are taught or researched, or even acknowledged, at any real level is pathetically small. Yet, FP and programming language theory in general are still far more advanced in academia than in industry.
AaronFriel 13y ago
There are two kinds of people who quit academia: those who want to produce research and those who don't. To the latter, I say, oh well, it perhaps was not the place for you. Good luck and best fortune. To the former, I lament their opportunities outside of academia. Basic research, the research that built the foundation that makes this comment appear before your eyes and zips packets of data around to make this economy function, has been on the decline for near a decade now. And the decline in corporate, non-university basic research has been even more profound. People who read Hacker News are probably in a better state than most when it comes to this, there are many choices of research lab to work at in computer science. For basic mathematical research, your choices outside of a university setting are a little more slim; and nearly nonexistent, if you, like most of the readers here, have ethical problems with producing classified research or working with 3 and 4 letter agencies of recent disrepute. But to my peers in other academic programs - I wonder how much the world will lose because ethicists, geologists, and even people who are pursuing the art of pedagogy in advanced educational degrees are leaving academia. Postscript: I don't mean any of the above to be exhaustive lists of academic fields affected or not affected. It's not just computer science that has ample opportunity for postgraduate research outside of a university, and it's not only the philosophers, geologists, and educators who are finding difficulty. To wit, I don't even know if that's the case for geologists, but I have heard of the woes of finding even graduate study programs in philosophy and education. Post-postscript: I forgot to cite sources, and one summary, though five years dated, is here: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsb0803/start.htm?CFID=12379966&CFTOKEN=70354711&jsessionid=f0307725d648dd553ba513586d223fe107f4#declining http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsb0803/start.htm?CFID=1237996... - there the NSF documents declining basic research from industry and declining funding from government.
- PaulHoule 13y ago
  It might gain. If you spend much time with the literature it's pretty obvious that U.S. agencies regularly blackball particular research areas. For instance, the tap got turned off suddenly on work on quasicrystals, MPI-style parallel computing, and on work related to the semantic web. In the meantime, huge amounts of research money goes down the drain in areas such as internet QoS.
mrcactu5 13y ago
I left graduate school bitter and resentful. Now I'm hearing it's a cliche. Once you leave academia, you pay for all of your thinking time & how have to confront that humans decisions collectively by what looks and feels good in the short term. These days I am hoping to pay for my own "academic freedom" through service -- by working. Then people go to the opposite utilitarian extreme. Not everything I do has to buy me a car or impress girls. Actually, that could be very persuasive... Learn algebraic number theory, get a car, impress girls!™
mililani 13y ago
My wife is in academia. Although, not in the ivory towers. She's at a community college in California, and she's both on the tenured faculty track and administration as a program director. So, her experiences may not speak entirely to this article. There are lots of problems inherent with academia that most people thinking about this field are not really thinking about. The biggest problem, I think, is that for most 99% of all professors, once they are tenured, they are LOCKED down geographically. And, that sucks. My wife and I have one foot out the door all the time. We go where the jobs are. But, now that she's on the tenure track, we wonder if this is where we'll lay down and die. It's pretty sad, when I think about it. You hear about it time and time again from so much of these guys. One of my old math professors had a page devoted to this. He complained a lot about living in Hawaii and how his wife divorced him because of it. He had a page up here: http://www.math.hawaii.edu/~lee/ http://www.math.hawaii.edu/~lee/ But, apparently, after some time he decided to take down the more controversial stuff. The index.html page to his ramblings are down. Anyways, that's a huge problem for academics. And, I thought about it, and I think the biggest problem is the whole tenure thing. I think it should be abolished. Professors should be able to move to new institutions without worrying about that entire process, and they should be paid a better wage because of it. It should be like any other free market enterprise we have nowadays. And, Universities should also be able to get rid of dead weight. I've had some professors in the past who just gave up on research and life. For example, said professor mentioned above. He gave up on math research because the University kept screwing them over on pay. He retired with only 17 publications under his name. My other friend who is now a tenured math professor at a 4 year college has 17 publications at just 37 years of age. My other friend who has been teaching for about 10 years now has only 2 publications: his math Ph.D. dissertation, and a one page paper that probably isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Anyways, I think it's high time tenure is made obsolete. It gives professors more latitude to move, probably better pay, and more incentive to do research or teach better. It also gives schools and students the opportunity to get better teachers and lose the dead weight.
- badman_ting 13y ago
  I got interested in this and found the index to his ramblings on the internet archive. http://web.archive.org/web/20130120215549/http://www2.hawaii.edu/~lady/ramblings/index.html http://web.archive.org/web/20130120215549/http://www2.hawaii... I wouldn't say I am learning exactly, but it's interesting to read from his point of view. Thought I'd post the link.
da-bacon 13y ago
I wrote one of these! It was fun and cathartic, as you can imagine. But, because it's complicated, and because I wanted to play around with d3.js, instead of a long diatribe, I built a model of my brain to explain why I left: http://dabacon.org/pontiff/?p=10176 http://dabacon.org/pontiff/?p=10176
noillusions 13y ago
This year I hacked my academic job. The previous two years, like a lot of junior academics, I become extremely disillusioned with academia: long hours, low pay, and no job security. I was about to quit my fixed-term assistant professor position (Maths) until I became curious: what would happen if I didn't care about being fired? So Dec 2012, I made the decision to only focus on high-quality research that I care about (quality over volume), to do a decent (but not amazing) job teaching, and to secretly do consulting/contract work on the side. It's been really interesting. Suddenly, when I didn't care anymore, they gave me tenure and bumped my salary. Over the year, I've also spent roughly 2 days a week sneaking around and doing contract work which has been amazing financially... Would anyone be interested in my story?
- xanmas 13y ago
  Absolutely!
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knowtheory 13y ago
I had seen the link to Zac's jumping off post, but had neglected it (because frankly most of these discussions are pretty similar). The exception for this particular case is that i have met Zac and had some interesting conversations, because i also work on the University of Missouri campus. So when the author of the slate post writes "And finally, in a rare coup for humanists, Ernst is departing for a lucrative job in the private sector." I can say categorically this should not surprise people. Zac is the brand of humanist who is in the humanities not because they are not technically proficient, but because they are of a technical proficiency that allows them to pursue whatever they want.
sridharvembu 13y ago
I am one of those people who quit academia, and looking back, I am so glad I did. After spending over 4 years on my PhD in Electrical Engineering, I came to the conclusion that it was simply mathematical masturbation, proving pointless theorems on useless models. I realized I was prettying up some fairly trivial insights with impressive mathematical language. I realized it was a marketing and sales job. At that moment, I decided it was more honest to be in the private sector actually doing marketing and selling, at least I would not be lying to myself or to the world. As it turns out, I have done more interesting research in the business world (essentially to amuse myself) than I was doing in academia.

124 points by tokenadult 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

Not only are quitters a large, important subgenre, but so are people warning others not to go—like I do: http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-know-before-you-start-grad-school-in-english-literature-the-economic-financial-and-opportunity-costs/ http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-kno... , and like half a dozen others do in various links from that essay. If so many people are quitting and/or warning others off the path, there may be a good reason why. This especially stands out from the article: Academe is a profession full of erudite free-thinkers who feel disillusioned by a toxic labor system in which criticism is not tolerated—so those who leave often relish the newfound ability to say anything they want (talking about “a friend” here). In its insularity and single-mindedness, academe is also very similar to a fundamentalist religion (or, dare I say, cult), and thus those who abdicate often feel compelled to confess. "A fundamentalist religion:" if so, each heretic who saves someone else is doing important work. If enough people do so, the message might get out; it certainly has for law schools: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/business/for-lsat-sharp-drop-in-popularity-for-second-year.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/business/for-lsat-sharp-dr.... Anyway, it does seem like academia has grown increasingly exploitative along many measures, especially for workers and grad students. The more people who know before they start, the better.

mathattack 13y ago
This is actually a good thing, no? If academia is hoarding too many erudite free-thinkers, cut them loose elsewhere to solve the world's problem. If the best 20% of teachers can be leveraged via online resources over 80% of the students, it's ok to have some smart researchers go to the private sector. Automation combined with cost pressure forces re-allocation of resources, and that's fine.
- mjn 13y ago
  Depends on whether they actually do research in the private sector, though. Historically most fundamental science advances have come either from academia, or from big academia-like research organizations in industry (Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, Microsoft Research), or from government research labs (Sandia, Livermore, CERN, etc.). Most industry R&D tends towards different kinds of problems, applied research with 1-5 years commercialization horizons, sometimes pushing 10. That's a valuable segment of research, but not all of it, and it depends on a pipeline of less-applied research to keep it fed. But due to the difficulty of monetizing indirect future advances that basic science enables, it's difficult to do it profitably in industry. A scientific discovery that at some point in the future turns out to be useful in developing technology is valuable for humanity, but you cannot easily capture that value, as it simply diffuses to the general benefit. Knowledge advances, but anyone can use it, and you don't get to own it; you can get some kind of satisfaction in old age in looking at how this physics discovery you came up with in your 30s is being used to improve chip fabrication processes 40 years later, but you don't get royalties on the chips. Patents try to change that within a 20-year timespan, but they are not supposed to apply to scientific or mathematical discoveries, 20 years is too short for some advances, and they have a whole host of problems anyway.
  - mathattack 13y ago
    I guess I'd divide the research world like this: 1) Pie in the sky research that is beyond the 20 year time horizon of long-view companies and 10 year time horizon of VCs. 2) Research that is amenable to teaching people how to research. 3) Research to advance one's career. 4) Research that is relatively close to Development. There are overlaps, and it can be hard to differentiate between the types until after the fact, but let's go with this model. #1 has to be funded federally (i.e. NSF), via philanthropy (i.e. Gates Foundation) or as a monopoly concession (i.e. Bell Labs). This can belong in the University or elsewhere, and may or may not be tied to teaching. #2 belongs in Universities, as it helps generate the next generation of scholars. #3 should not be financed by taxpayers. It's also hard to justify this in aggregate coming from tuition. Do we really need more papers on Ancient History, or should we invest the same money in better teaching? I understand you need to be an expert to teach, but it seems like a lot of publishing is purely to generate citations. #4 If these people can get real world jobs, why not send them to the real world where rather than stay in a profession with very scarce jobs?
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- stevoski 13y ago
  In some areas, yes. But your chances of discovering new species of butterflies in the Amazon, climbing Mt Kilimanjaro, finding an apt life partner, producing healthy, well-balanced offspring, having good relations with your parents? In other words, the achievements that matter...have little to do with attending a top university.
- peterwwillis 13y ago
  To back this up with an example: If I had a CS degree I could have gotten a job with Amazon years ago, and even farther back than that, could have become the head security bozo for a large state college. I'm still limited in terms of getting the job I want because I just don't have the knowledge to do it yet. Though one should keep in mind the loopholes for non-academic jobs and self-motivation. At my Amazon interview one of the head software bozos actually taught himself everything you'd cover in CS, including all the high-level math. I couldn't hack it, but he did. (edit: the guy I replied to was trying to explain why you need to go)
  - bennyg 13y ago
    Exactly. School's great for finding the unknown unknowns - a useful tool even if you're going to teach yourself everything outside of school regardless.
  - sillysaurus2 13y ago
    Sorry about that. I deleted my comment after I realized the article was talking about attending grad school, rather than attending university in general, so my comment was talking past the central point and hence didn't apply. I should've made that clear with an edit rather than deleting it, though. It seemed to have no replies when I deleted it (which was three minutes after writing it).
rmc 13y ago
You will always get people complaining about an industry/professsion. There are lots of people complaining about the tech industry.
bane 13y ago
Among my personal peer group, all with graduate degrees from good schools at top-of-class GPAs, approximately 0 (zero) have decided to stay in academia. We all know of a few folks who did stay in to pursue a PhD, and the horror stories we heard were more than enough to keep us away. That, and now with all of us in hiring positions and seeing how little it buys in the job market (outside of very few milieus) has confirmed that we'd all rather go back for another Masters or even another Undergraduate degree than go for a PhD in our fields -- some of us already have.
- PaulHoule 13y ago
  Out of my graduating class of 80 physics PhD's I think one went in academia, a woman.
  - louwrentius 13y ago
    Why is it relevant that it was a woman? It sounds like you suggest that the only applicant academia got was a 'woman', as if women are mediocre at best.
    - jjoonathan 13y ago
      Just the opposite. We already know that she chose physics even though the prior of being a woman made that choice less likely. We can infer that she was probably more dedicated to the subject itself than her average peer. The fact that she eventually made it in academia supports this hypothesis. Another possibility is that she had a partner willing to support her if things went south. Obviously this situation isn't unique to women, but I do think it's slightly more probable for a woman to have such a partner. If this is the case, PaulHoule's point becomes that the decision to enter grad school only made sense for her because of the artificially reduced consequences of p(failure). Even if affirmative action did play a role (a recent paper found very damning, well-controlled evidence of systematic bias against women in the evaluation process, so I wouldn't assume this with any degree of certainty), PaulHoule could have simply been observing that she saw a better p(success) and was therefore the only one willing to take the leap. Or maybe PaulHoule is a misogynist. But I'd be willing to bet against you if you still thought that.
drblast 13y ago
"In recent months, class-action lawsuits have been filed against more than a dozen law schools, charging that students were snookered into enrolling by postgraduate employment figures that were vastly, and fraudulently, inflated." That's hysterical. Imagine graduating hundreds of students who won't be employed, face a massive amount of debt, and who not only have the skills necessary, but all the time in the world, to sue you for it.
altoz 13y ago
"criticism is not tolerated" These are the people doing research and peer-reviewing? No wonder the quality of research is so bad. Criticism should be encouraged, not suppressed.
- ISL 13y ago
  Criticism is prevalent in academia, especially with new ideas at the cutting edge. The idea that "criticism is not tolerated" tends to emerge from ideas that fall far from the trunk knowledge of the field. If your new theory of physics comes into direct experimental conflict with the Standard Model, expect to get the cold shoulder. (Actually, at APS meetings and sectional meetings, almost everyone gets a chance to speak. However, not everyone attends the "new perspectives in physics" sub-meeting when there's a talk on another topic in the adjoining room.) This sort of groupthink rejection sees more light when an issue is closer to public policy. In the nascent field of climate science, for example, I wouldn't be surprised to see papers claiming global cooling or stasis rejected almost immediately. Almost everyone in the field these days would appear to believe that global warming is occurring. Coming back to my original thesis; the peer-review process is full of criticism. Search around for web pages aimed exclusively at coaxing young graduate students out of peer-review induced depression. Peer review can be brutal, and the anonymity can double its impact.

agilebyte 13y ago

Wouldn't quitting actually fix the problem? The supply side of the equation is too big at the moment.

PaulHoule 13y ago
For one thing this is an unlimited supply of very good BS students from poor countries who want to get the hell out, and the time it takes to do a PhD or even a postdoc is enough time to get a real job or get married or otherwise become nationalized
DaveWalk 13y ago
A great point -- in "How Economics Shapes Science," science economist Paula Stephan talks about this problem repeatedly. One of the unforeseen problems in the peer review space is that older professors retire later and later in life compared to previous decades. Professors who know the grantwriting system are have a large advantage over first time submitters and get a disproportionate amount of funding.

daveyoon 13y ago

Isn't this the exception that proves the rule? And I don't think very many academics at top universities leave the field, unless it's to do something they might think is more interesting, not to leave in disgust (perhaps a fine distinction, but a distinction nevertheless).

unmei 13y ago
Yeah, but remember there are far more grad students obtaining PhD's than faculty positions - in other words, sure, not many who make it to faculty leave, but far more people leave than stay overall.
- rrrrtttt 13y ago
  The fact that 10x as many people train to be scientists as those who become scientists only shows how attractive academia careers are. I like to compare this to sports. Only three people in the world get an Olympic medal once every four years in each discipline, while everyone else spends most of their childhood and youth in arduous training with nothing to show for it.
  - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
    That only makes sense if you hold the "supply" of scientist jobs constant. What we've actually observed is that: 1) Scientist jobs are high-status, you're right, and permanent positions usually come with a comfortable (though rarely really flush) salary and other upper-middle class perks. However: 2) The number of available permanent jobs as a scientist has been trending down for reasons that have nothing to do with the number of people willing to do those jobs. Basically, research funding has been dropping like a rock. 3) The "professor -> undergrads -> grad-students -> post-docs -> new professor" career model is structurally senseless. There's nothing wrong with having a severe filter on the number of undergrads who become grad-students (in the sense that there have traditionally been many fields where most of the undergrads can get a job that applies their undergrad-level education), but you simply can't set up the entire science career on the basis of an exponential increase in workers without an exponential increase in jobs. The system only even works for computer-scientist types because most of our PhD grads leave academia by default to get applied research or high-level development jobs in industry. Now, I'm not going to be a pure-academia wanker and say, "Nobody should get a job in industry EVAR!", but neither is it all right to say, "Everyone should just get a job in industry after grad-school!". Companies simply don't want that many PhDs in most fields. Also, the oversupply of PhD labor and overspecialization thereof in most fields has enabled many universities to shift to a teaching model in which 2/3 of teaching staff are adjuncts without livable salaries, fringe benefits, or any contract for permanent employment. As much as I really, really like what academia and research are supposed to stand for (and I say this as I current graduate student), I can't give any kind of endorsement to the career model involved. Not while I'm earning approximately $1400/month after taxes as an "entry-level academic" (ie: grad-student) and a friend of mine (whom I decline to name here) with a fairly close skill-level to me earns something like five times that (again, after taxes) working for a major Silicon Valley company. Hell, I earned three times that much money interning at a Silicon Valley company over the summer! I wasn't even entry-level in industry, and yet I made more than I do in academia and had a clearer, more secure career path in front of me. The thing I'm thankful for is that we're a bit less "ideological" about the industry-versus-academia split here in Israel. Professorial jobs have never been very well-paid here, so alternating between industry and academia throughout one's career is just considered normal. Oh, and of course the fact that my health insurance and pension funds aren't tied to just one job :-p.

mjn 13y ago

It's somewhat interesting that this is specifically an American essay genre. People join or leave academia in Europe as well, but people seem less angry about it either way. You can work at a university or you can work at a company or a think-tank or in the government or start your own company. Different choices, different pros and cons. I like the university, though there are things I don't like about it certainly. Some people will go in both directions during a career (this highly varies by country within Europe, though). One graphics guy I'm acquainted with spent almost a decade in academia, then spent 4-5 years working as senior technical staff at a company, and now is back in academia. In CS, the typical tradeoff is that you get more resources but somewhat less direct freedom at companies. In academia you have fewer resources and have to bring in your own grants, but the resource constraint is the main constraint, a sort of indirect restriction on your research freedom (how strong of one depends on your resource needs). Lots of other differences depending on your preferences. Easier to publish papers in academia (no approval needed and it's valued); easier to do software development in industry (resources/coordination exists, and it's valued). Academic schedules tend to be more flexible; work-from-home and non-9/5 schedules are common and don't typically require approval. Teaching is typically required, which can be a pro or a con. Etc.

qwerta 13y ago

Why quit? Everyone loves working 80 hours a week without permanent job, salary or even health insurance.

mahesh_rm 13y ago

I guess our startup fit into this subgenre.. http://blog.coffeestrap.com/2013/05/06/something-meaningful/ http://blog.coffeestrap.com/2013/05/06/something-meaningful/ Didn't know was something that common. Would love to hear from somebody else with similar experience. ps> almost 1 year into CS, 10/10 wouldn't go back! :-)

dcre 13y ago
Interesting post. Just a tip — the font is distracting. Especially in Chrome on Windows, which for some reason can't do font smoothing. In other browsers it's better, but still unnecessarily quirky.

rollo_tommasi 13y ago

Maybe I'm wrong about this, but haven't most of these 'quit/don't go' essays come from academics in the humanities? Are there similar essays coming from science or engineering grad students / tenured professors?

jimhefferon 13y ago
OTOH, humanities contains more people who reflexively reach for a pen.
ajdecon 13y ago
I don't see many "I quit!" or "don't go!" essays from science, but you do see scientists expressing concerns about continuing to accept so many PhD students who won't have a clear career path. This seems especially true in biotech, though part of their concerns seem to be about how the new students will compete with them for grant dollars... see http://scientopia.org/blogs/drugmonkey/2013/01/28/shut-off-the-phd-tap/ http://scientopia.org/blogs/drugmonkey/2013/01/28/shut-off-t... for an example.
betterunix 13y ago
Two things: 1. There is more money in being an engineering professor 2. Lots of PhD students in engineering never bother being professors of any kind (even non-tenure track) and just find an industry position with a big salary.
dnautics 13y ago
Scientist here: I am tempted to write one, I haven't yet, I'm just doing it. Incidentally, my former postdoctoral boss is one of these academes who quit... One year after getting tenure. Interestingly, her decision to quit and abandon her project, in turn, enabled me to quit my "semi-academic" track (I've worked predominantly at "academic" nonprofit research institutes that are not generally colleges) - by trying to resurrect the project that she abandoned. Details in my bio, if you're curious.
slurry 13y ago
Yeah, you can find basically identical complaints (not always prestige-format essays though) from bio, chem and physics PhD's. Those job markets are nearly as bad as humanities and social sciences. And since pharma is in a state of disarray, the job prospects in industry aren't so hot either.

af3 13y ago

nice article, thanks for the submission!

raverbashing 13y ago

Well, here's the thing Academia does not have a monopoly on knowledge anymore. They are also usually not on the latest developments (some schools are better than that). Not to mention the money-grabbing aspect of it. Unfortunately, a "certificate by an upholding institution" has a certain value.

eli_gottlieb 13y ago
>They are also usually not on the latest developments (some schools are better than that). Please tell me the last new theory in basic science to come out of some place other than academia.
- raverbashing 13y ago
  Academia (and knowledge) is not only basic science. But yeah, there have been discoveries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_cosmic_microwave_background_radiation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_cosmic_microwave_b... See how many schools can offer a Machine Learning course. See how many professors know what's Map-Reduce.
  - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
    Ummm... Map-Reduce is a system infrastructure based on functional programming. It has applications in Machine Learning, but it isn't fundamentally based in machine learning.
    - raverbashing 13y ago
      I didn't say Map-Reduce was based on machine leaning (nor vice-versa).
      - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
        Ok, I think I see what you meant a bit more clearly now. It's just that every respectable CS department I've seen has some course in machine learning, and most of them also have some kind of course in "Programming Language Paradigms" or something where functional programming, including the map and reduce functions, will be taught. Though admittedly, the number where functional programming and its related disciplines are taught or researched, or even acknowledged, at any real level is pathetically small. Yet, FP and programming language theory in general are still far more advanced in academia than in industry.

AaronFriel 13y ago

There are two kinds of people who quit academia: those who want to produce research and those who don't. To the latter, I say, oh well, it perhaps was not the place for you. Good luck and best fortune. To the former, I lament their opportunities outside of academia. Basic research, the research that built the foundation that makes this comment appear before your eyes and zips packets of data around to make this economy function, has been on the decline for near a decade now. And the decline in corporate, non-university basic research has been even more profound. People who read Hacker News are probably in a better state than most when it comes to this, there are many choices of research lab to work at in computer science. For basic mathematical research, your choices outside of a university setting are a little more slim; and nearly nonexistent, if you, like most of the readers here, have ethical problems with producing classified research or working with 3 and 4 letter agencies of recent disrepute. But to my peers in other academic programs - I wonder how much the world will lose because ethicists, geologists, and even people who are pursuing the art of pedagogy in advanced educational degrees are leaving academia. Postscript: I don't mean any of the above to be exhaustive lists of academic fields affected or not affected. It's not just computer science that has ample opportunity for postgraduate research outside of a university, and it's not only the philosophers, geologists, and educators who are finding difficulty. To wit, I don't even know if that's the case for geologists, but I have heard of the woes of finding even graduate study programs in philosophy and education. Post-postscript: I forgot to cite sources, and one summary, though five years dated, is here: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsb0803/start.htm?CFID=12379966&CFTOKEN=70354711&jsessionid=f0307725d648dd553ba513586d223fe107f4#declining http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsb0803/start.htm?CFID=1237996... - there the NSF documents declining basic research from industry and declining funding from government.

PaulHoule 13y ago
It might gain. If you spend much time with the literature it's pretty obvious that U.S. agencies regularly blackball particular research areas. For instance, the tap got turned off suddenly on work on quasicrystals, MPI-style parallel computing, and on work related to the semantic web. In the meantime, huge amounts of research money goes down the drain in areas such as internet QoS.

mrcactu5 13y ago

I left graduate school bitter and resentful. Now I'm hearing it's a cliche. Once you leave academia, you pay for all of your thinking time & how have to confront that humans decisions collectively by what looks and feels good in the short term. These days I am hoping to pay for my own "academic freedom" through service -- by working. Then people go to the opposite utilitarian extreme. Not everything I do has to buy me a car or impress girls. Actually, that could be very persuasive... Learn algebraic number theory, get a car, impress girls!™

mililani 13y ago

My wife is in academia. Although, not in the ivory towers. She's at a community college in California, and she's both on the tenured faculty track and administration as a program director. So, her experiences may not speak entirely to this article. There are lots of problems inherent with academia that most people thinking about this field are not really thinking about. The biggest problem, I think, is that for most 99% of all professors, once they are tenured, they are LOCKED down geographically. And, that sucks. My wife and I have one foot out the door all the time. We go where the jobs are. But, now that she's on the tenure track, we wonder if this is where we'll lay down and die. It's pretty sad, when I think about it. You hear about it time and time again from so much of these guys. One of my old math professors had a page devoted to this. He complained a lot about living in Hawaii and how his wife divorced him because of it. He had a page up here: http://www.math.hawaii.edu/~lee/ http://www.math.hawaii.edu/~lee/ But, apparently, after some time he decided to take down the more controversial stuff. The index.html page to his ramblings are down. Anyways, that's a huge problem for academics. And, I thought about it, and I think the biggest problem is the whole tenure thing. I think it should be abolished. Professors should be able to move to new institutions without worrying about that entire process, and they should be paid a better wage because of it. It should be like any other free market enterprise we have nowadays. And, Universities should also be able to get rid of dead weight. I've had some professors in the past who just gave up on research and life. For example, said professor mentioned above. He gave up on math research because the University kept screwing them over on pay. He retired with only 17 publications under his name. My other friend who is now a tenured math professor at a 4 year college has 17 publications at just 37 years of age. My other friend who has been teaching for about 10 years now has only 2 publications: his math Ph.D. dissertation, and a one page paper that probably isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Anyways, I think it's high time tenure is made obsolete. It gives professors more latitude to move, probably better pay, and more incentive to do research or teach better. It also gives schools and students the opportunity to get better teachers and lose the dead weight.

badman_ting 13y ago
I got interested in this and found the index to his ramblings on the internet archive. http://web.archive.org/web/20130120215549/http://www2.hawaii.edu/~lady/ramblings/index.html http://web.archive.org/web/20130120215549/http://www2.hawaii... I wouldn't say I am learning exactly, but it's interesting to read from his point of view. Thought I'd post the link.

da-bacon 13y ago

I wrote one of these! It was fun and cathartic, as you can imagine. But, because it's complicated, and because I wanted to play around with d3.js, instead of a long diatribe, I built a model of my brain to explain why I left: http://dabacon.org/pontiff/?p=10176 http://dabacon.org/pontiff/?p=10176

noillusions 13y ago

This year I hacked my academic job. The previous two years, like a lot of junior academics, I become extremely disillusioned with academia: long hours, low pay, and no job security. I was about to quit my fixed-term assistant professor position (Maths) until I became curious: what would happen if I didn't care about being fired? So Dec 2012, I made the decision to only focus on high-quality research that I care about (quality over volume), to do a decent (but not amazing) job teaching, and to secretly do consulting/contract work on the side. It's been really interesting. Suddenly, when I didn't care anymore, they gave me tenure and bumped my salary. Over the year, I've also spent roughly 2 days a week sneaking around and doing contract work which has been amazing financially... Would anyone be interested in my story?

xanmas 13y ago
Absolutely!

deleted 13y ago

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knowtheory 13y ago

I had seen the link to Zac's jumping off post, but had neglected it (because frankly most of these discussions are pretty similar). The exception for this particular case is that i have met Zac and had some interesting conversations, because i also work on the University of Missouri campus. So when the author of the slate post writes "And finally, in a rare coup for humanists, Ernst is departing for a lucrative job in the private sector." I can say categorically this should not surprise people. Zac is the brand of humanist who is in the humanities not because they are not technically proficient, but because they are of a technical proficiency that allows them to pursue whatever they want.

sridharvembu 13y ago

I am one of those people who quit academia, and looking back, I am so glad I did. After spending over 4 years on my PhD in Electrical Engineering, I came to the conclusion that it was simply mathematical masturbation, proving pointless theorems on useless models. I realized I was prettying up some fairly trivial insights with impressive mathematical language. I realized it was a marketing and sales job. At that moment, I decided it was more honest to be in the private sector actually doing marketing and selling, at least I would not be lying to myself or to the world. As it turns out, I have done more interesting research in the business world (essentially to amuse myself) than I was doing in academia.