7 ms·

A lot of labs are very much like this... with the actual science work getting done by the post-grads. What the author doesn't realise that while the lab heads

A lot of labs are very much like this... with the actual science work getting done by the post-grads. What the author doesn't realise that while the lab heads might not be doing a lot of science on a day to day basis - most are overloaded with a bunch of other stuff that is forced upon them... endless committee meetings, grant writing, teaching and teaching administration etc...

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
tormeh 11y ago
Can't all of that, except teaching, be done by a secretary?
- yodsanklai 11y ago
  > Can't all of that, except teaching, be done by a secretary? Not really, most of these tasks require some expertise. For exemple, committee meetings could be about recruiting colleagues and assessing their work or selecting papers for a journal or a conference. Grant writing requires expertise too...
- marcosdumay 11y ago
  That'd require a secretary with a PhD. Looks more like most of it should not be done. But then, I have no idea how to change it. Teaching is probably the easiest one to solve. Some kinds of classes should be attributed to teachers, not researchers (those are very different kinds of expertize).
  - timelined 11y ago
    It is increasingly common for large labs in the life sciences (25+ members) to hire multiple support staff (with PhDs) to help offset this load. This is in addition to positions like Senior Research Scientists (senior postdocs) who often serve as 50% "project managers" and 50% independent postdocs.
- Fomite 11y ago
  No, committee meetings, which can involve things like setting the PhD curriculum, or deciding on faculty recruiting or retention, cannot be done by a secretary. No, grant writing, which is plotting the (often multi-million dollar) course for a lab, proposing science that has not yet been done and documenting those methods well enough and concisely enough for a review panel cannot be done by a secretary.
tjradcliffe 11y ago
Even if the author realizes that, it doesn't change the fact that what they are doing is mostly admin and management, not science. I left academia--more-or-less--after doing several post-docs and taking a hard look at an employment landscape where colleagues who were at least as good as me were taking offers from second- or third-teir institutions because that was all that was available. I knew some of them were profoundly lonely and struggling in those positions, outside of the charmed circle of the top teir they had comfortably inhabited for so long. Beyond that, there was the realization that unlike the profs who trained my generation, people my age pursuing tenure were rarely getting into the lab. They couldn't afford to. They had to stay relentlessly on the track of paper and grant generation, as well as committee work, if they wanted to succeed. I would be a really bad fit in that job. I got into science because I love the hands-on act of "disturbing the universe", in Freeman Dyson's memorable phrase, and even in the improbable event that I landed a tenure-track job (improbable in part because as a post-doc I tended to work on problems that interested me, rather than ones that would lead to lots of publications) I would end up spending most of my time doing stuff I wasn't very good at and didn't much enjoy. It's one thing to say that "every job has a certain amount of work involved" (there are always less appealing things you have to do in the name of the stuff you enjoy) but when a job is mostly stuff you aren't suited for, it's not a good idea to pursue it. This is the fundamental problem of modern academia: researchers are getting shunted into managers and administrators as soon as they get on tenure track. While the age they make the transition to tenure track is going up, the length of active research careers is going down. Hands-on research scientists who are active over the full length of their career are almost always in some kind of permanent research associate position, free from the vagaries of tenure and promotion. They are the people most of us who go into the sciences want to be, but the positions available for them are few and far between. We need serious, genuine academic reform so that there are more positions available for career scientists who do science, rather than careerists who transition to managers and administrators the moment they become assistant professors.
- noedig 11y ago
  This captures exactly the reason I am thinking about leaving academia. I got into research because I like doing research, but you can't have a career in research anymore. After completing a PhD, the only way to have a career is to spend all your time writing grant proposals, attending workshops, organizing meetings, cultivating useless collaborations, and promoting yourself. There is no time left for research, and teaching becomes a burden to avoid at all cost. You have to get PhD students and postdocs to do all the work, and take as much credit for their ideas and efforts as you can. Academia has become a dead-end job for people who want to do research.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

tormeh 11y ago

Can't all of that, except teaching, be done by a secretary?

yodsanklai 11y ago
> Can't all of that, except teaching, be done by a secretary? Not really, most of these tasks require some expertise. For exemple, committee meetings could be about recruiting colleagues and assessing their work or selecting papers for a journal or a conference. Grant writing requires expertise too...
marcosdumay 11y ago
That'd require a secretary with a PhD. Looks more like most of it should not be done. But then, I have no idea how to change it. Teaching is probably the easiest one to solve. Some kinds of classes should be attributed to teachers, not researchers (those are very different kinds of expertize).
- timelined 11y ago
  It is increasingly common for large labs in the life sciences (25+ members) to hire multiple support staff (with PhDs) to help offset this load. This is in addition to positions like Senior Research Scientists (senior postdocs) who often serve as 50% "project managers" and 50% independent postdocs.
Fomite 11y ago
No, committee meetings, which can involve things like setting the PhD curriculum, or deciding on faculty recruiting or retention, cannot be done by a secretary. No, grant writing, which is plotting the (often multi-million dollar) course for a lab, proposing science that has not yet been done and documenting those methods well enough and concisely enough for a review panel cannot be done by a secretary.

tjradcliffe 11y ago

Even if the author realizes that, it doesn't change the fact that what they are doing is mostly admin and management, not science. I left academia--more-or-less--after doing several post-docs and taking a hard look at an employment landscape where colleagues who were at least as good as me were taking offers from second- or third-teir institutions because that was all that was available. I knew some of them were profoundly lonely and struggling in those positions, outside of the charmed circle of the top teir they had comfortably inhabited for so long. Beyond that, there was the realization that unlike the profs who trained my generation, people my age pursuing tenure were rarely getting into the lab. They couldn't afford to. They had to stay relentlessly on the track of paper and grant generation, as well as committee work, if they wanted to succeed. I would be a really bad fit in that job. I got into science because I love the hands-on act of "disturbing the universe", in Freeman Dyson's memorable phrase, and even in the improbable event that I landed a tenure-track job (improbable in part because as a post-doc I tended to work on problems that interested me, rather than ones that would lead to lots of publications) I would end up spending most of my time doing stuff I wasn't very good at and didn't much enjoy. It's one thing to say that "every job has a certain amount of work involved" (there are always less appealing things you have to do in the name of the stuff you enjoy) but when a job is mostly stuff you aren't suited for, it's not a good idea to pursue it. This is the fundamental problem of modern academia: researchers are getting shunted into managers and administrators as soon as they get on tenure track. While the age they make the transition to tenure track is going up, the length of active research careers is going down. Hands-on research scientists who are active over the full length of their career are almost always in some kind of permanent research associate position, free from the vagaries of tenure and promotion. They are the people most of us who go into the sciences want to be, but the positions available for them are few and far between. We need serious, genuine academic reform so that there are more positions available for career scientists who do science, rather than careerists who transition to managers and administrators the moment they become assistant professors.

noedig 11y ago
This captures exactly the reason I am thinking about leaving academia. I got into research because I like doing research, but you can't have a career in research anymore. After completing a PhD, the only way to have a career is to spend all your time writing grant proposals, attending workshops, organizing meetings, cultivating useless collaborations, and promoting yourself. There is no time left for research, and teaching becomes a burden to avoid at all cost. You have to get PhD students and postdocs to do all the work, and take as much credit for their ideas and efforts as you can. Academia has become a dead-end job for people who want to do research.