8 ms·

Drug lord was chosen so they could plaster Breaking Bad pictures and get links, but it resembles any other tournament-like profession. Its like being a musician

Drug lord was chosen so they could plaster Breaking Bad pictures and get links, but it resembles any other tournament-like profession. Its like being a musician or actor, unlimited money at the very top for the few who make it and extremely large number of people at the bottom trying to make it just scraping by.

impendia 13y ago
Unlimited money? In academia? Umm... no. Even for the very best people, at the very best places, salaries tend to top off below $150K. In places with high costs of living, this isn't a cushy life.
- tokenadult 13y ago
  Famous academics make a lot of money besides their salaries. And there was a Hacker News thread recently that said that Terence Tao's salary (which I guess is public information, because his salary comes from a public university) was above $400,000 a year. (I imagine he has the flexibility to travel to conferences that he desires, as well, among other nonsalary benefits.) Medical doctors who are professors of medicine also have total compensation packages well north of $150K. AFTER EDIT: Of course, I was specifically disagreeing with the specific dollar figure ("$150K") in the comment immediately above mine. The grandparent comment, referring to "unlimited money," is of course using the literary device of hyperbole, which academics in the disciplines I studied in my higher education know better than to take literally. An academic who writes a widely adopted textbook can make serious money in quite a few different disciplines, and academic employment in general offers more opportunity than most forms of employment to take on side jobs.
  - ItendToDisagree 13y ago
    When did 400K or even "well north of 150K" become "unlimited money"? Unless you're Craig Venter (who isn't an 'academic') or some other incredible outlier there is nothing like Rockstar/Jayz wealth out there. You have to sell/patent a highly sought after product/process to get anywhere near that level. Edit: If you're measuring or living off of a salary in general, without vast outside income from investments or the like, you arn't even close to "unlimited money".
    - noillusions 13y ago
      I've been an assistant professor for 2 years now (finished PhD on Jan 2012), my salary is US$110K a year. This year I decided to secretly do some consulting/contracting work on the side (for various reasons). It was a really difficult year as I worked like a dog but I was able to make an additional US$175K in income. It's strange, I've felt more 'fulfilled' this year than simply spending that time on writing research publications. I feel like I've actually helped people and worked on stuff that matters... Academia is broken IMHO: Too much focus on volume instead of quality, MOOCs and online courses are breaking teaching, most students don't care about the content, 50% of university staff are administrators. I plan to make the most of it though (while it lasts).
      - kaitai 13y ago
        I would be interested in hearing about your consulting on the side. How did you manage that and the requirements of your job? Is it in an area close to your research? What are the IP and commercialization ramifications, if any, with respect to your university? (Some universities seem to have rules about outside consulting.)
  - impendia 13y ago
    Terry Tao is exceptional, perhaps the best known mathematician. I speculate (although I can't really know, most salaries are private) that there are less than 100 academic mathematicians making > 200K. This, in a field that's famous for attracting brilliant, hard-working people.
- jrs99 13y ago
  after you're a professor, you can reach the top, the president of a university. look at john hennessy.
peter_l_downs 13y ago
> Drug lord was chosen so they could plaster Breaking Bad pictures and get links Where do you see a Breaking Bad picture on this page? The comparison they make to drug gangs is fair and the gangs themselves are _not_ the root of the article. It's an article with statistics and cited sources, it seems reasonable for them to make an interesting introduction.
- pallandt 13y ago
  I think the URL was changed, it used to be this one if I remember correctly: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/inside_higher_ed/2013/11/competing_for_tenure_is_like_competing_to_be_a_drug_lord.html http://www.slate.com/articles/life/inside_higher_ed/2013/11/... I saw this post on the /newest page earlier today.
lsc 13y ago
the interesting bit about academia, though, is that the "wealth" you accumulate at the top isn't money; it's prestige. To the best of my knowledge, if you are president of a good uni, you are looking at like half a mil a year. Undoubtedly good money, but hardly "rockstar level" In fact, I'd argue that business management is closer to a "tournament-like profession" - guys on the bottom of the management scale make nothing compared to even a mediocre Engineer, and get no respect. Folks a the top of that scale laugh at your puny half a million a year. (Note, I wouldn't call business management a tournament-like profession... just that the difference between the bottom and the top is larger, I think, than it is in academia.) The other problem here is that okay, you get your PhD in hope of getting a teaching gig. sure, okay, let's accept that. If you join a gang as a foot-solder, you do it to get to the top. Let's accept that, too, for this discussion. The problem is that if you are a failed gangster, your /best case/ is to end up nearly unemployable and living with your mom. If you are a "failed" PhD? which is to say, you get your PhD and you fail to get a teaching gig? There are all sorts of other jobs who would love to have you. Yeah, you might not get paid all that much more than others who stopped with a bachelor degree, but more than half the time, that's more money (even if it's not more stability) than a professor can expect to make. Really, I think teaching higher education is a 'prestige job' more than a 'tournament job'
- 001sky 13y ago
  the "wealth" you accumulate at the top isn't money; it's prestige Exactly. The culture is 'presitige maximization', and it's ruthlessly pursued. TLDR: Man is a political animal
  - rockyleal 13y ago
    Pierre Bourdieu called it "cultural capital"
- ItendToDisagree 13y ago
  Very much so. 'Prestige job' pretty much sums it up. Only a fool gets a PhD so they can 'make the big bucks'. If they were into it just for the money they'd go into finance rather than fiddling around with teaching or research.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
nnq 13y ago
...the mysterious thing to me is why people choose these "tournament-like professions" in the first place. I think the whole "tournament profession" thing is an illusion build for the purpose of unfair exploitation by the few at the top. The natural reactions imho to encountering a "tournament situation" should be to either: (a) just run as far away as you can from such a discipline/industry/trade or (b) rebel and burn the system to the ground from the inside, be the joker that just wants to "see the world burn" because you'll just make it a better place for others by burning it clean. It's as stupid as playing the lottery. In academia people should just rebel and ask for one of two things: 1. higher salaries (like significantly higher than the average income that someone with a similar qualification would get in industry!), OR 2. tenured positions with lots of "free" time to do research and the security that even if they pursue unpopular lines of research and get negative research they'd still get to keep their tenure. People should not accept working for the "hope of much better status/income" in the future, they should aggressively and unreasonably demand IMMEDIATE compensation for their struggles, not work for expectation of a "better future". There are enough money and resources in the system for almost everybody to "have their cake and eat it too" and you shouldn't settle for anything less! Now if people would start thinking this way, worldwide academic institutions would collapse, but I think this would be a good outcome as, imho, despite their contributions to mankind's progress, educational systems and academic institutions are mostly unreformable and can only be rebuild from scratch for the better.
gaius 13y ago
The weird thing is that we (society) are fine with this model in sports, movies, music, academia, publishing etc but not in business.
- nnq 13y ago
  ...because the model is just wrong and broken and it's only useful for exploiting people in the benefit of those in the "inner circle". Business is more like evolution and has less tolerance for plainly broken models: even if you want to get to "the top", you still need to make profit for most of the way up there, just like in evolution every variation must provide some kind of clear immediate fitness benefit (not just "hope of great great benefit , but after n generations in the future"). Now, in business you can get close to "the top" by riding on investors' money, but someone still has to make profit on every step of the way, only that "every step of the way" may be more like "the aggregated profit of all companies fueled by one investment fund in a period of time" or something like that.

impendia 13y ago

Unlimited money? In academia? Umm... no. Even for the very best people, at the very best places, salaries tend to top off below $150K. In places with high costs of living, this isn't a cushy life.

tokenadult 13y ago
Famous academics make a lot of money besides their salaries. And there was a Hacker News thread recently that said that Terence Tao's salary (which I guess is public information, because his salary comes from a public university) was above $400,000 a year. (I imagine he has the flexibility to travel to conferences that he desires, as well, among other nonsalary benefits.) Medical doctors who are professors of medicine also have total compensation packages well north of $150K. AFTER EDIT: Of course, I was specifically disagreeing with the specific dollar figure ("$150K") in the comment immediately above mine. The grandparent comment, referring to "unlimited money," is of course using the literary device of hyperbole, which academics in the disciplines I studied in my higher education know better than to take literally. An academic who writes a widely adopted textbook can make serious money in quite a few different disciplines, and academic employment in general offers more opportunity than most forms of employment to take on side jobs.
- ItendToDisagree 13y ago
  When did 400K or even "well north of 150K" become "unlimited money"? Unless you're Craig Venter (who isn't an 'academic') or some other incredible outlier there is nothing like Rockstar/Jayz wealth out there. You have to sell/patent a highly sought after product/process to get anywhere near that level. Edit: If you're measuring or living off of a salary in general, without vast outside income from investments or the like, you arn't even close to "unlimited money".
  - noillusions 13y ago
    I've been an assistant professor for 2 years now (finished PhD on Jan 2012), my salary is US$110K a year. This year I decided to secretly do some consulting/contracting work on the side (for various reasons). It was a really difficult year as I worked like a dog but I was able to make an additional US$175K in income. It's strange, I've felt more 'fulfilled' this year than simply spending that time on writing research publications. I feel like I've actually helped people and worked on stuff that matters... Academia is broken IMHO: Too much focus on volume instead of quality, MOOCs and online courses are breaking teaching, most students don't care about the content, 50% of university staff are administrators. I plan to make the most of it though (while it lasts).
    - kaitai 13y ago
      I would be interested in hearing about your consulting on the side. How did you manage that and the requirements of your job? Is it in an area close to your research? What are the IP and commercialization ramifications, if any, with respect to your university? (Some universities seem to have rules about outside consulting.)
- impendia 13y ago
  Terry Tao is exceptional, perhaps the best known mathematician. I speculate (although I can't really know, most salaries are private) that there are less than 100 academic mathematicians making > 200K. This, in a field that's famous for attracting brilliant, hard-working people.
jrs99 13y ago
after you're a professor, you can reach the top, the president of a university. look at john hennessy.

peter_l_downs 13y ago

> Drug lord was chosen so they could plaster Breaking Bad pictures and get links Where do you see a Breaking Bad picture on this page? The comparison they make to drug gangs is fair and the gangs themselves are _not_ the root of the article. It's an article with statistics and cited sources, it seems reasonable for them to make an interesting introduction.

pallandt 13y ago
I think the URL was changed, it used to be this one if I remember correctly: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/inside_higher_ed/2013/11/competing_for_tenure_is_like_competing_to_be_a_drug_lord.html http://www.slate.com/articles/life/inside_higher_ed/2013/11/... I saw this post on the /newest page earlier today.

lsc 13y ago

the interesting bit about academia, though, is that the "wealth" you accumulate at the top isn't money; it's prestige. To the best of my knowledge, if you are president of a good uni, you are looking at like half a mil a year. Undoubtedly good money, but hardly "rockstar level" In fact, I'd argue that business management is closer to a "tournament-like profession" - guys on the bottom of the management scale make nothing compared to even a mediocre Engineer, and get no respect. Folks a the top of that scale laugh at your puny half a million a year. (Note, I wouldn't call business management a tournament-like profession... just that the difference between the bottom and the top is larger, I think, than it is in academia.) The other problem here is that okay, you get your PhD in hope of getting a teaching gig. sure, okay, let's accept that. If you join a gang as a foot-solder, you do it to get to the top. Let's accept that, too, for this discussion. The problem is that if you are a failed gangster, your /best case/ is to end up nearly unemployable and living with your mom. If you are a "failed" PhD? which is to say, you get your PhD and you fail to get a teaching gig? There are all sorts of other jobs who would love to have you. Yeah, you might not get paid all that much more than others who stopped with a bachelor degree, but more than half the time, that's more money (even if it's not more stability) than a professor can expect to make. Really, I think teaching higher education is a 'prestige job' more than a 'tournament job'

001sky 13y ago
the "wealth" you accumulate at the top isn't money; it's prestige Exactly. The culture is 'presitige maximization', and it's ruthlessly pursued. TLDR: Man is a political animal
- rockyleal 13y ago
  Pierre Bourdieu called it "cultural capital"
ItendToDisagree 13y ago
Very much so. 'Prestige job' pretty much sums it up. Only a fool gets a PhD so they can 'make the big bucks'. If they were into it just for the money they'd go into finance rather than fiddling around with teaching or research.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

nnq 13y ago

...the mysterious thing to me is why people choose these "tournament-like professions" in the first place. I think the whole "tournament profession" thing is an illusion build for the purpose of unfair exploitation by the few at the top. The natural reactions imho to encountering a "tournament situation" should be to either: (a) just run as far away as you can from such a discipline/industry/trade or (b) rebel and burn the system to the ground from the inside, be the joker that just wants to "see the world burn" because you'll just make it a better place for others by burning it clean. It's as stupid as playing the lottery. In academia people should just rebel and ask for one of two things: 1. higher salaries (like significantly higher than the average income that someone with a similar qualification would get in industry!), OR 2. tenured positions with lots of "free" time to do research and the security that even if they pursue unpopular lines of research and get negative research they'd still get to keep their tenure. People should not accept working for the "hope of much better status/income" in the future, they should aggressively and unreasonably demand IMMEDIATE compensation for their struggles, not work for expectation of a "better future". There are enough money and resources in the system for almost everybody to "have their cake and eat it too" and you shouldn't settle for anything less! Now if people would start thinking this way, worldwide academic institutions would collapse, but I think this would be a good outcome as, imho, despite their contributions to mankind's progress, educational systems and academic institutions are mostly unreformable and can only be rebuild from scratch for the better.

gaius 13y ago

The weird thing is that we (society) are fine with this model in sports, movies, music, academia, publishing etc but not in business.

nnq 13y ago
...because the model is just wrong and broken and it's only useful for exploiting people in the benefit of those in the "inner circle". Business is more like evolution and has less tolerance for plainly broken models: even if you want to get to "the top", you still need to make profit for most of the way up there, just like in evolution every variation must provide some kind of clear immediate fitness benefit (not just "hope of great great benefit , but after n generations in the future"). Now, in business you can get close to "the top" by riding on investors' money, but someone still has to make profit on every step of the way, only that "every step of the way" may be more like "the aggregated profit of all companies fueled by one investment fund in a period of time" or something like that.