[HN Gopher] Trapped in the Ivory Basement (2021)
___________________________________________________________________
Trapped in the Ivory Basement (2021)
Author : luu
Score : 55 points
Date : 2024-03-09 19:59 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (thelocal.to)
(TXT) w3m dump (thelocal.to)
| yashasolutions wrote:
| article from 2021. I suppose it is still relevant but could get
| some date in the title.
| thriftwy wrote:
| That's the flip side of academic freedom. Once you trust a group
| of people with self-governance, they would invariably use it to
| enrich the insiders at the expense of outsiders. Just look up how
| a Greek democratic poleis worked.
|
| That's probably a compromise you would willing to make for a many
| centuries out, internationally ranked universities. But petty
| colleges should be ran more like service sector.
|
| Having said that, it's quite possible that a single mother of
| two, working in service sector, is simply untenable without extra
| help coming from the outside.
| betaby wrote:
| At the same time tuitions are not cheap at all - money burned on
| administrative and questionable activities.
| red_admiral wrote:
| This kind of thing is arguably the real injustice in higher
| education - or "structural oppression" if you prefer. At least
| half the other college diversity initiatives are at best
| smokescreens to hide any discussion of how non-tenured faculty
| are treated.
| josh_fyi wrote:
| Why do these teachers take on such a life? You could say that the
| long-timers were fooled, they are now in too deep, and can't
| start a new career, but those deciding whether to do a PhD must
| know what they are facing, no? This sort of article has been
| going around for many years.
| sandspar wrote:
| Academia is one of the very few places where you can do
| research of your choice. If your theory is like a bug in your
| brain then you have few other options.
| jnwatson wrote:
| One doesn't need a professorship to do research, or go to
| conferences, or publish papers.
|
| There are plenty of folks that do private research on their
| own time. This is the right choice for the vast majority of
| folks that have the "bug".
| ghaff wrote:
| As someone who was very into photography as an undergrad
| and observing the reality of the profession for almost all
| photographers, I basically made the almost certainly wise
| decision to get a "real" job and do my photography as a
| hobby.
| linguae wrote:
| This is true, but what makes academia attractive is the
| idea of being _paid_ to do research. One doesn't have to be
| in the NBA to play basketball, but there's a world of
| difference between playing at the local park versus being
| on the Golden State Warriors.
|
| Of course, the reality of research careers is quite
| different from the pursuit of research itself. They're
| quite competitive, especially in fields that lack a
| lucrative industry, and there are many restrictions on
| freedom that many people aren't aware of until they
| actually become researchers. I learned these realities the
| hard way, and I'm in the process of restructuring my life
| to where I can pursue research as a hobby rather than as a
| paid profession.
|
| Of course, the hardest part about pursuing research as a
| hobby is making a living outside of it. If a person who
| wants to be a researcher is aware of this reality, then he
| or she could prepare by developing some marketable skill,
| product, or service and use that to make a living while
| devoting time outside of money-making to research. However,
| for those deep in research or academia who feel trapped in
| postdocs, adjunct positions, or other unfulfilling
| positions but who spent their who careers preparing for an
| elusive permanent research job without developing other
| skills, it can be a very painful transition, even if in the
| long run stubbornness results in an even more painful
| outcome.
| badpun wrote:
| > One doesn't have to be in the NBA to play basketball,
| but there's a world of difference between playing at the
| local park versus being on the Golden State Warriors.
|
| Depends on the research field. For example, Einstein did
| some of his best work without any university affiliation.
| linguae wrote:
| This is true; one doesn't need a university affiliation
| to do research in many fields. In Einstein's case, he
| famously worked as a patent clerk during his day job
| while working on his research during his spare time.
| However, there is a difference between pursuing research
| as a unpaid side activity versus being paid to do
| research; that is the sentiment I wanted to express with
| my local park vs. NBA analogy. While arguably pursuing
| research as a hobby provides a great deal of freedom
| (e.g., no publishing or "impact" demands from management
| because there are no managers), the problem is making a
| living that is sufficient for paying for shelter, food,
| and other necessities typically requires 40 or more hours
| per week of work, which relegates research to nights and
| weekends, which I don't believe is enough time to engage
| in deep work, though it's not impossible and there are
| many people who have done this, Einstein included (https:
| //www.dpma.de/english/our_office/publications/mileston...
| and https://www.ige.ch/en/about-us/the-history-of-the-
| ipi/einste...). It just requires a job that is not too
| intellectually demanding. On the flipside, working as a
| paid researcher means you don't have to worry about
| trying to carve out free time to do your research.
| However, "he who pays the piper calls the tune" has
| become the mantra of research institutions these days;
| the days of pure curiosity-driven research, whether in
| academia or in industry (pre-divestiture Bell Labs and
| Bob Taylor-era Xerox PARC), are long past. These are the
| tradeoffs of being a researcher these days, and I've come
| to know this the hard way.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| You can't do that either. You are dependent on grant funding
| which means you can't just research what you want, you need
| to tailor it to what the grant writer wants. If you want to
| truly research what you want you need your own huge pile of
| money.
| araes wrote:
| Couple issues:
|
| The article itself is basically a direct description of how
| people are lured into academia with exactly that expectation,
| and then end up in the gig economy. Not "choosing" much of
| anything. The market says you're the academic equivalent of a
| taxi driver.
|
| There are other locations to consider theory if theory's your
| thing.
|
| Museums: support of archaeology, art analysis, sociology,
| geography, history. Ex: The British Museum,
| https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/projects
|
| Aquariums/Zoos: Earth science, plants, genetics, ecology,
| animal science, zoology, microbiology, nutrition, pathology,
| physiology, medicine, conservation. Ex: Columbus Zoo and
| Aquarium, https://www.columbuszoo.org/science
|
| NGOs and Foundations: Earth science, plants, genetics,
| ecology, astronomy, education, data science,
| sampling/measurements, foreign affairs, international
| politics, finance, economics, public outreach. Ex: The
| Carnegie Foundation and Sub-Foundations: https://en.wikipedia
| .org/wiki/Carnegie_Corporation_of_New_Yo...
|
| Gov: support of aeronautics, engineering, data science,
| computer science, forestry, agriculture, architecture, almost
| every hard science, economics, finance, law, even
| recreational specilists. [1] Feds have ~3M employees. States
| have ~5M employees. Local govs have ~14M employees. [2]
|
| A lot of the jobs are workaday jobs, yet there's still a
| bunch out of ~22M that are somewhat "research". Formerly a
| contractor at NASA, and even for a contractor (not civil
| servant), seven publications. Mostly, minor citations, maybe
| 10-15, yet still, seven publications on research topics.
|
| [1] https://www.usajobs.gov/help/working-in-
| government/unique-hi...
|
| [1] http://www.truthfulpolitics.com/images/u-s-government-
| employ...
| linguae wrote:
| Even in academia the freedom of inquiry is circumscribed by
| performance expectations by peers and administrators,
| especially pre-tenure. While tenure-track professors do not
| have managers telling them what to research and how to go
| about doing it like many industry researchers do, they are
| often expected to publish regularly (preferably in top
| venues, and at top universities this is required), do
| "impactful" work (where "impact" is often measured by
| citation counts, awards, examples of adoption by industry,
| etc.), and raise money for the university by acquiring
| grants. Grant agencies such as the National Science
| Foundation have their own requirements that have a way of
| circumscribing a professor's research direction, and they are
| very competitive to earn.
|
| So, it is more accurate to say that academia gives professors
| the freedom to run their own research organization, but if
| that professor wants a good shot at getting tenure and
| staying in the good graces of the university, the professor
| needs to be mindful of the expectations that the university
| has placed and the requirements of funding agencies. Even if
| a professor is mindful of these things, research is
| inherently risky, and a professor runs the risk of not
| getting tenure due to research results and grant-earning
| efforts not meeting expectations.
|
| This is distinct from the idea that a professor can do
| whatever research he or she wants. Theoretically this is true
| in the sense that there will be no manager watching over the
| professor's shoulder, but if the professor isn't meeting the
| university's performance expectations for publications and
| grants, the professor won't make tenure, and even post-tenure
| the university could find ways to make life difficult for the
| "unproductive" professor.
|
| I've thought long and hard about this, and I personally
| believe that a professor actually has more freedom in
| predominantly teaching environments. At teaching-oriented
| universities, the publication and grant-earning requirements
| are typically lower than that of research universities. At
| all-undergraduate colleges, sometimes there are no
| expectations for research. Of course, reduced research
| requirements mean increased teaching requirements, which
| could be challenging for researchers who don't have an
| interest or talent for teaching. But for those who love
| teaching and who want reduced or even non-existent "publish
| or perish" pressure, then a teaching-oriented institution is
| a great alternative. Even if one's research is restricted to
| winter and summer breaks due to the workload of teaching,
| this certainly beats trying to do research as a hobby on
| nights and weekends while juggling a 9-5 job and only getting
| 2-4 weeks PTO per year.
| Cheer2171 wrote:
| I entered grad school at 22, thinking I would become a CS prof.
| I loved CS research I did as an undergrad in a prof's lab. That
| prof was my role model for my still not fully formed brain. I
| wasn't told all these things by him or the program, but I did
| my research and found stats about how so few PhDs become profs.
| Side note: all the profs are those who made it, so their advice
| about how to make it is like taking financial advice from
| lottery winners.
|
| I read lots of these kinds of "grad school isn't worth it"
| confessionals. But many were about humanities PhDs, not STEM.
| And I thought I was special, above average, even maybe a
| genius. And I was special, but apparently not special enough. I
| dropped out to work in tech and have a better salary and life
| than my few ex classmates in my program who did make it in
| academia.
|
| But one of my housemates was a humanities PhD who also started
| at 22, and was smarter and a harder worker than any of us STEM
| PhD students. We all thought that if any of us deserved to make
| it in academia, it was him. But the humanities are shrinking in
| the academy. What the article describes is his current life. An
| PhD from an R1 university who can only find a patchwork of
| adjunct positions at different 2 year community colleges. He
| can't go work in tech, who is going to pay a historian six
| figures or even a living wage? He got some work doing freelance
| writing and editing, mostly helping college applicants with
| their essays, but ChatGPT is destroying the freelance writing
| market.
|
| We all made these decisions at age 22, after spending 4 very
| formative years in college. I made the same stupid decision he
| did and mine worked out, but the intellectual bug that bit me
| just so happened to be infinitely more valuable to industry
| than the one that bit him.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > Side note: all the profs are those who made it, so their
| advice about how to make it is like taking financial advice
| from lottery winners.
|
| Or taking business advice from successful entrepreneurs.
| Everyone is looking for the magical advice--The Formula. But
| there is none. You can execute perfectly and still lose. You
| can also bumble through without trying and succeed. You can
| grow up in the wrong country. You can have the right parents.
| So much is out of our control. We almost always underestimate
| the outsized role luck and chance play in our endeavors.
| post- wrote:
| > He can't go work in tech, who is going to pay a historian
| six figures or even a living wage?
|
| I appreciate the thinking that went into the parent post, but
| I want to challenge this statement, which is emblematic of
| the kind of reasoning that paints training in the humanities
| as frivolous and out of touch with the demands of the market,
| as if the market is the sole arbiter of reality.
|
| I recently earned a PhD in a humanities field, and I'm
| currently gainfully employed as a research software engineer
| at a major university. I'm making less than I did when I was
| in tech just out of college, but more than many of my
| humanities colleagues in various positions between the PhD
| and the tenure track.
|
| My point is not to brag about being able to get into tech
| with a humanities background, but to say that I don't think
| I'm anything special. When I was first applying for tech jobs
| out of college, I drew on my training in literature and human
| languages to guide my learning and application of CS
| fundamentals. I admit that I caught a lucky break with
| companies willing to take a chance on someone with a non-
| traditional background, and I'm grateful to have these skills
| to draw on if a traditional academic career doesn't work out
| for me. But I think my story is repeatable.
|
| But back to the original point: rather than denigrating the
| value of a history PhD, it's important to question the market
| forces that have created this kind of precariousness for
| people who possess not only important knowledge about the
| past but, more importantly, the training and skills to use
| that knowledge to interpret the present.
|
| The assumption that jobs are available to people because of
| what they _know_ is based on faulty logic that comes from the
| MBA-ification of everything -- the obsession with
| "deliverables."
|
| Really, what PhD training in any discipline brings is both a
| deep pool of knowledge _and_ the training to synthesize and
| use those "facts" in novel ways.
|
| > ChatGPT is destroying the freelance writing market
|
| Relatedly, this statement only makes sense if one assumes
| that we have given up on teaching everyday people -- non-
| specialists -- the importance of the medium for a message's
| delivery, dissemination, and broader understanding. "ChatGPT
| is destroying the freelance writing market" because we have
| collectively failed to reinforce the value of human
| perspectives on an issue.
|
| Allowing "The Market" to dictate reality has led to schisms
| in shared truth like climate change denialism. We need
| interpreters of history, literature, drama, etc. in order to
| get back to any hope of getting back to broad agreement about
| what the world is.
|
| Will we ever get everyone to agree? Of course not, but market
| forces can't repair these divisions.
|
| As the old Upton Sinclair quote goes, "It is difficult to get
| a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his
| not understanding it."
| FredPret wrote:
| The market doesn't dictate reality - it is part of reality.
|
| If a skill isn't needed, there won't be a demand for it,
| and it won't pay well, no matter how many years of learning
| and personal growth are required to acquire the skill.
|
| The big bad market refusing to pay historians a good wage
| is just society's built-in mechanism for trying to guide
| people into doing things that are most needed.
|
| A lot of the humanities were historically aimed at rich
| kids who don't need to engage with the labour market; we
| really shouldn't be encouraging middle-class kids to take
| on a mountain of student debt when they should be focusing
| on maximizing their earnings.
| currymj wrote:
| the problem is that having a healthy community of
| scholars doing good historical research using
| sophisticated methods, produces a lot of positive
| externalities. most people never engage with it but
| having such people around does limit historical bullshit.
| this has been good for society. but it's now falling
| apart.
| FredPret wrote:
| I agree it's a positive, but each one of us has to sell
| our value-add to the rest of society. This is actually a
| wonderful constraint to have because it keeps each of us
| in touch with the rest of humanity
| hobs wrote:
| Except for all the people that are born rich, they don't
| have to do anything.
| badpun wrote:
| Is it really falling apart? The US universities hire
| many, probably thousans or even tens of thosands, of
| excellent history professors. What's the problem with it?
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Your explanation is an exemplar of constrained thinking.
| Thinking inside the box, or having limited horizons [0].
|
| You start off correctly; markets are "part of reality".
| That rightly implies some other "rest of reality", does
| it not?
|
| You then define all value only within the limited logic
| of markets. And wish to a universalise it as "society's
| built-in mechanism".
|
| Mathematics is a "humanity". Reading some, you'll gain
| understanding of Godel, Whitehead and Russell who would
| alert you to the logic that a system can't deal with
| what's outside itself.
|
| Markets are a system. A very simplified one.
|
| Humanities are precisely that project that transcends
| simple models like markets. Humanities attempt to cover a
| _bigger, meta-reality_. It has nothing to do with "rich
| kids". Some of the greatest philosophers, writers and
| scientists (what we call 'STEM' now was once "natural
| philosophy") were dirt poor.
|
| To be more frank, to think _only_ about markets and
| "maximising earnings" is stubborn, insular and self-
| limiting. It's a great way to stay cloistered and never
| contribute anything of value to the world.
|
| Sure we have professional economists. But not everyone
| should reduce them-self to the level of economics.
|
| [0] EDIT: these are not words meant to insult or belittle
| - they are to mean exactly what they mean on face value.
| There is no 'shame' in thinking with limited horizons, or
| seeing in an involuted way if you've been exposed to
| nothing else but are open minded to imagine there is more
| to the world.
| badpun wrote:
| > You then define all value only within the limited logic
| of markets.
|
| Not all value, just monetary one. There's plenty of
| valueable activities that do not pay much or even a dime.
| However, the discussion revolved about making a living,
| not what's valueable in the abstract. And, regarding
| making a living, it's true that plenty more people want
| to be paid as historians that other people have a need
| for.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| I respectfully acknowledge that you aren't the parent to
| whom I was responding and that you're jumping in with
| your own contribution.
|
| But I do not think the "discussion revolved about making
| a living" Indeed, it's something of an irritating HN
| trope/style to try steering the narrative by telling
| other people what the "discussion is _actually_ all about
| "
|
| As I see it the main theme here was the low social status
| of academic work in general.
|
| I realise, and sympathise, that a lot of HN posters are
| deeply anxious about "making a living".
|
| My disagreement with the parent is the claim that "the
| market" is: "" just society's built-in
| mechanism for trying to guide people into doing
| things that are most needed. ""
|
| Markets are awful at determining what is "needed".
| They're great at figuring out how to satisfy people's
| superficial desires and great at making money. Look
| around you. Millions of people doing pointless make-work
| jobs in advertising and "the financial industry".
| Meanwhile, we keep failing to solve the most elementary
| challenges of a sustainable, healthy environment, which
| is surely a fundamental _need_.
|
| For me, this where Neo-liberalism falls flat. Markets
| cannot tell society anything about what is needed.
| Society must tell markets what is needed... however we
| achieve that. And so to see things only from within the
| frame of "market think" is to remain blind to most of
| reality.
| life-and-quiet wrote:
| Appreciate this post, and will add my voice to it. Current
| senior manager in technology whose only academic
| credentials are undergrad and grad degrees in history and
| (non-quantitative minor) economics.
|
| I do think my career stalled a bit as a result of studying
| these things, but that's a consequence of the same market
| thinking you're challenging. The people who hired me are
| happy they gave me the chance, and presumably like OP said,
| we aren't that special and there are tons of other talented
| people who can do this work being ignored because of an
| excess concern for credentialism.
| cka wrote:
| I'm a math PhD, was a tenured professor and then
| transitioned to industry. We've got two humanities PhDs
| that work as QA testers on our team. They're both
| fantastic, especially in thinking about either big picture
| questions or nuanced takes that others missed out on.
| WalterSear wrote:
| Considering the length of the road they took to become QA
| testers, they had better be. This is more evidence that
| humanities studies are a substantial stumbling block, in
| terms of career growth.
| ghaff wrote:
| There were a number of careers that undergraduate me was
| somewhat enamored of. But undergraduate me, surprisingly, was
| also aware that the odds of my attaining them at the levels I
| would find satisfying and at least reasonably lucrative were
| vanishingly small. So I should just stick with a job from my
| good engineering school.
| ghaff wrote:
| >ChatGPT is destroying the freelance writing market.
|
| As someone very close to this area, I seriously question
| this. Yes, there are very low-rent content mills with
| material being cranked out by people who are being paid
| pennies per word. But serious freelance writing being
| commissioned by many corporations (where the pay is more in
| line with $1/word) are not going to be replaced by ChatGPT
| anytime soon. The writers may use ChatGPT as an assistant and
| perhaps rates will decline further over time but this
| basically falls in the same category as we won't need
| programmers any longer.
|
| Maybe? But now you're in the category of AI will take all the
| jobs.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| I'm also close to this area, and executives see the writing
| on the wall.
|
| ChatGPT doesn't even need to be nearly as good as the
| writers it replaces for those writers to lose their jobs.
| It just has to be good enough that the people who write the
| cheques can't tell the difference, and such people don't
| all have a good eye for quality writing.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| This kind of talk was bubbling around STEM phds, too at top
| institutions in the 2005-2015 era, so even if you're in your
| early 40s, you should have at least been able to make an
| informed decision.
| setgree wrote:
| Status and autonomy. Even an adjunct professor still gets
| addressed with a honorific. You rarely have anyone yell at you
| or look over your shoulder as you work. And, as a friend who
| has a TT job at a Canadian University recently observed, it is
| generally the adjuncts who most adopt the professorial look:
| sweaters, jackets with elbow patches, horn-rimmed glasses.
|
| So long as these things are enticing to enough people, supply
| will outstrip demand and wages will fall.
| mycologos wrote:
| I think this is an underrated point in these discussions.
| There are three components to every job: how much value other
| people get out of you doing it, how much value you get out of
| doing it, and how many other people want to do it. Whether
| it's game development or adjunct prof'ing, employers know
| when the job their offering has benefits beyond pure salary,
| and they adjust that salary accordingly. The humanities grad
| students I knew weren't stupid. They could see the statistics
| in front of them. But staying the university world for a bit
| longer, and seeing other people do the same, tempted them
| down that path, and continues to tempt a surprising number of
| them.
| jseliger wrote:
| "This sort of article has been going around for many years."
| Exactly, this article could've been written any time in the
| last couple decades.
|
| In 2016 I put up "Universities treat adjuncts like they do
| because they can" in response to one of them.
| https://jakeseliger.com/2016/02/25/universities-treat-
| adjunc.... Supply and demand.
| red_admiral wrote:
| Many reasons, but here's one from the same site:
| https://thelocal.to/one-year-fifty-cover-letters-three-inter...
| (the URL kind of gives the point away already)
| iraqmtpizza wrote:
| getting rejected from a master's program is like dodging a
| bullet
| gnicholas wrote:
| I worked as a lawyer from 2007-2014. Most of the partners I
| worked for had PhDs and had taught at least briefly in the
| 80s-90s. They went back to school to get JDs (their PhDs were
| in unrelated fields) and now make very good money as biglaw
| partners. One is married to a professor at an R1, but that's
| the extent of their connection to higher ed.
|
| The lack of jobs for PhDs has been a trend for several decades.
| These guys are smart and are successful. They came from all
| different fields. And if they hadn't detoured into academia
| they would have had an extra 10-15 years of legal earnings (or
| the ability to retire that much sooner).
| pfdietz wrote:
| I had discussions with my children about this issue before they
| even went to college. The one that went on to an advanced degree
| decided she'd rather be an MD than a PhD. It's much more
| rewarding, and even if you want to do medical research (she
| didn't) a dual degree is better than just a PhD.
| boring-alterego wrote:
| Community colleges do a great job. I went to one before the 4
| year university for electrical engineering and gave me a much
| better foundation than those that went straight to the 4 year
| uni.
| pc_edwin wrote:
| The elephant in the room is the modern collectivist initiative of
| college/higher education for the common man. I don't how people
| don't see it, especially the HN crowd..
|
| This article is shows only one of the smaller downstream
| consequences, it gets much worse. We are talking an entire
| generation indebted by trillions, entire areas of the economy
| with staff shortages, "highly credentialed" people working
| unrelated jobs etc etc
|
| Colleges we always meant to a niche entity. Huge inequalities
| were not just optional downsides, rather they were structurally
| essential. Most people shouldn't go to college, most phds and
| professorhips shouldn't exist and most colleges shouldnt..
|
| This is not a luddite take, i think these things actually should
| 100x but not like the way it is right now. The issue is
| socialism.
|
| Government/non-profit funded high education should only be
| afforded to a very small subset of the population. The gifted.
|
| Everything else should be private and amongst them most should be
| treated like trades/apprenticeship.
|
| These ideas seem radical/ridiculous but most of what we think of
| high education these days are a consequences of extremely silly
| post WWII socialist policies.
|
| I don't even have a massive problem with government funding
| either, this can be effective but not socalism, nothing like what
| we have now. More like military research during the WWWII and the
| early period of the cold war.
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