Leaving Academia

[ysabetwordsmith]

Here is an essay about a professor leaving academia. 

I went to U of I.  There were parts of it that I enjoyed, and the culture wasn't that bad.  But I can see parallels.  For me it was more a matter of looking at the way education was going, and deciding not to get involved in public education as a teacher.  It was obviously going down the tubes, and that was decades ago; it's infinitely worse now.  So too, many colleges.  :/  I couldn't stop it.  I could sure get the hell out of the way.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

It's certainly been my experience that it differs from school to school. When I went to t'other U of I (Idaho!) I connected great with professors and students alike even as a late transfer student.

When I came to UW for my Masters, I think one professor noticed I was having a massive breakdown over the course of two years? And none of the students I shared the majority of my 10-20 person classes and an office with. Everyone was too busy with their work to look at each other.

It was... not something I'd want to repeat, even if I still love learning and would love to study a few more fields. (If I'm in too much pain to work, I might as well be learning, ehh?)

-ZB

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>It's certainly been my experience that it differs from school to school.<<

That matches my observations. However, I don't think the trend is positive.

>> I still love learning and would love to study a few more fields. (If I'm in too much pain to work, I might as well be learning, ehh?) <<

That is an excellent plan.

[nanila]

Interesting perspective, although this pissed me off:

Human connection was virtually impossible Early in my first summer I asked a colleague in English if she’d be free for lunch one day. “I’m sorry, I’m on a strict writing schedule. I only have the nanny from 8 to 5 four days a week over the summer, so those days are out. I could schedule you in one of my off days I suppose.”

I would've left off the "I suppose", but this is exactly the sort of thing I (and many other of my colleagues) might say if asked to lunch. I have a schedule I have to keep to because of child care and also my living circumstances, and I would rather be totally up-front about that with anyone trying to do something sociable with me. I don't believe that makes me unfriendly or "unwilling to make time for human connections", as the author suggests. Scheduling social outings with my lab is a nightmare because everyone has young children and lives miles outside London, but we do it (yay Doodle). It's just not spontaneous, which sounds like what this person wanted from everyone. And that strikes me as rather unreasonable.

[curiosity]

The face of academia is decaying like everything else in this country. It's one more thing you think someone smart would see as a warning sign about how America's culture is trending downwards . . . but since there's money to be made off of student debt and it's more profitable to beat the spice out of faculty and staff . . . the people who could fix it are too busy counting their fat stacks of cash and getting their 18 holes of golf in.

[thewayne]

The finale to earning your PhD in astrophysics/astronomy has a pretty high casualty rate, according to my wife. She developed an ulcer from it (KFC was about the only thing she could handle at the time), but got her doctorate and manages a 3.5 meter telescope and gets to bounce lasers off the moon. Others didn't succeed and got the consolation prize: a Masters. In this field you earn your BS then go for your PhD and see what happens, or at least that was the methodology 20some years ago when she did hers.

[thewayne]

I've been attending college for about 40 years, off and on, and it's sad the changes that I've seen. Currently I'm studying library science, and about to finish a certificate. I was a little late signing up for the current semester, and I noticed the same name teaching all the classes. I emailed her over the weekend and she said that enrollment is down, so the program has been downsized. I wonder if the other instructors were let go, or if they're teaching other subjects: I think she was the only one with a PhD in the subject.

My photography instructor is retiring at the end of this semester, but she's going to continue teaching online courses. I remember an instructor once upon a time telling me that community colleges are a barometer of the economy: when the economy is good, enrollment is down. When it's bad, enrollment is up. I'm just not sure that is still holding true with the continually increasing rates: our community college recently added $4 per credit hour to increase IT funding.

[technoshaman]

*sigh* when the focus become profit rather than education...

all the love goes out of it. I'm not surprised that either UI or UW (who now has as a major donor a certain extremely profit-oriented Mr. Allen) went that way. I hope Eugene and Evergreen (locally known, less derisively than it used to be, as Treehugger U) (their mascot is the geoduck. Which is about as far from being a _duck_ as you can get...)

Although, ironically, you *can* have both... I have the pleasure of knowing several former students and one current professor at the University of Chicago. Chicago is *intense*. The best classes involve the lecture spilling out of the classroom into the student centre, the local pub when that closed, and students' rooms when THAT closed... my wife knows of at least one marriage - still exant - that came out of one of the most intense of those...

But then there's MIT... whose unofficial motto-cronym is "IHTFP." I Hate This Place.

Georgia Tech, I know what they'd do come a hurricane. KEG PARTY. That's just how us Fuzzy Beez roll.

Chicago? When after the week or two of sub-zero weather it "warms up" to 20F? Snowball fights on the commons!

MIT?

They get out the monopoly boards and play for blood.

NUH-UH. Not on a bet.

[zesty_pinto]

I agree with this in several ways. During my time working at the Museum of Natural History, I dealt with a lot of people who were miserable and basically stuck around either because they had nothing better to do or were justifying the highly competitive but underpaid environment with job titles that had no value in the grand scheme of the institute. Likewise, Michelle's fight for validity as a postdoc has been continuous and frustrating being the only staffer in a fairly empty office around other academics that were glaringly competitive against each other thanks to a continuously shrinking budget. The administration did not seem to understand this either, as they seemed obsessed with building things that look good but lack usefulness: in fact, one of their latest labs isn't even built up to the specs that the instructors need it for in order to do their research.

I'm not surprised that she left. Michelle is actually more comfortable working here with me, even though she makes less and is seriously underpaid given the value of her education because the culture here is a lot less crazy. It never surprises me that The Upturned Microscope is so ridiculously negative and then I even just read a Nature article actually praising PhDs getting second jobs to substantiate their slave wage income. The institutions are in serious need of revision, imo.

[batdina]

I left academia in 1998, with two chapters of a dissertation written.

I didn't want to live that way any longer. I loved my students: they were most assuredly NOT my products.

I wish I had an academic job in the early 1960s. But definitely not today.

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith]

When one person has a schedule that's difficult to fit new people into, it's not a big deal. When everyone is doing that, the new person is shut out and unhappy. That's probably a random example and someone else's would've been a second job or exercising at the gym or whatever. The more high-pressure the local culture, the more densely people tend to schedule things.

Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Many jobs are notorious for ruining people's health. I think that employers should be liable for that the same way they are if a factory machine grinds up someone's arm. But most people don't care.

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Unrestrained greed can ruin pretty much everything. That's how we wound up with a medical system run by insurance suits who know nothing about health care and don't care how many people they kill as long as it improves profits. That's not health care, it's parasitism.

Same with college: Employers have bought into the idea that only degreed people are employable. You pay whatever is demanded or you aren't permitted to apply for jobs that make enough to live on, regardless of your actual skills. But then the loansharks take so much of your money, you're often poorer than if you made minimum wage but kept all of it. That's if you even get a job. Students who can't get a degreed job are just fucked, because there's no getting out of student loans. So of course, the default rate is high and the rate of crippling illness and suicide is too. >_<

I tell people, before they go to college to earn more money, ask who's going to get that money.

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith]

I think community colleges are a good barometer because they serve people who can't afford to attend a better school. Therefore, when you see them raising prices just to stay afloat, it's a sign that the whole college bubble is fixing to pop, because they cannot get away with that the way fancier schools can. Poor people don't have the money and even loansharks will only pretend to give them a certain amount. The community colleges will price themselves out of the market, people will stop attending in droves, and employers will have to hire workers without a degree or leave the work undone. And then people at the fancy colleges will wonder why poor people are getting away with that while they're still selling their souls, and jump the fence too.

Eventually it collapses down to college only for professions that need it.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> The face of academia is decaying like everything else in this country. <<

Sadly so.

>> It's one more thing you think someone smart would see as a warning sign about how America's culture is trending downwards . . . <<

I never cease to be amazed by the blindness of other people when it comes to ignoring things like that.

>> but since there's money to be made off of student debt and it's more profitable to beat the spice out of faculty and staff . . . the people who could fix it are too busy counting their fat stacks of cash and getting their 18 holes of golf in.<<

Of course, the rich never see warning signs. Even individual ones rarely do, and when they do, nobody listens to them. They're like stockbrokers, they think things will keep going up forever and then are shocked by the inevitable crash. It's like, what, they've never seen a sine wave or a predator-prey graph? 0_o

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>During my time working at the Museum of Natural History, I dealt with a lot of people who were miserable <<

Sad, but hardly a surprise.

>>Michelle is actually more comfortable working here with me<<

Yay!

>>I even just read a Nature article actually praising PhDs getting second jobs to substantiate their slave wage income.<<

If a PhD cannot earn a comfortable living, that kills the idea of going to college as a way to improve income.

Re: Thoughts

[curiosity]

As smart as they think they are, you think they'd be somewhat aware of their own hubris. But you know, the more I interact with people the more I notice that the better off someone is doing, the less they actually consider things like that. I guess for every tax bracket someone goes up, their perception drops by one point.

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

It's an echo chamber effect, the same problem that cuts into their compassion. Money insulates. Too much money starts doing real damage.

The more money people have, the more ability they have to self-select places and people they like. Most people around them tell them they're awesome, even if they're not, aside from the tendency of rich people to snipe at each other. They have less and less contact with people who will risk offending them by being honest when they're doing something stupid. They can control the environment to a point that they stop needing to pay attention to it routinely.

Which means they're blindsided by things they can't control. :/

Re: Thoughts

[zesty_pinto]

The current academic environment is just that, a terrible one. It's more insulting when you think of how what few winners there are include some of the worst people in existence. The Upturned Microscope already emphasizes that some professors are pretty bad already from suffering from laziness thanks to the endless resource pool of PhDs and postdocs looking for a way to keep working.

I still feel bad for Michelle. She's earning less than me. *ME*! I may have more experience in this field, but she has a god damn PhD working on materials and yet due to some downturn she can't even get a promotion to a similar position.

Thanks for reminding me, I gotta keep looking for her sake.

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>The current academic environment is just that, a terrible one.<<

Painfully true.

>> It's more insulting when you think of how what few winners there are include some of the worst people in existence.<<

No surprise. Intense competition means the survivors tend to be A) people with strong advantages at the start (a penis, fair skin, etc.) and B) the ones willing to do whatever it takes to win, no matter how heinous. You get what you reward. What they reward is often abuse. Well, of course people take that home, it's the same reason cops and soldiers have sky-high rates of domestic violence.

>>Thanks for reminding me, I gotta keep looking for her sake.<<

Good luck with that.

Re: Thoughts

[curiosity]

Boo. Wealth breeds contempt. All the way around. Including contempt for common sense. I wonder if that isn't just a built-in feature. A self-correction option for when humanity goes off the rails.

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

Yes, it is.

So is the fact that prosocial behavior breaks off when society turns toxic or when there's a plague. Mob formation is a safety valve. Doesn't look like it unless you know exactly what to watch for, but it's among the more reliable ways to tear down a tyrant -- it switches off self-preservation. That goes all the way back to hominids mobbing large predators as a last resort.

Re: Thoughts

[curiosity]

Well then things are going to get crazy interesting here shortly. Time to make some lemonade and set up a lawn chair to watch the show.

Re: Thoughts

[johnpalmer]

Hubris is part of what makes them the money-movers. Banking and finance are really pretty boring when done well and with social responsibility. But if you want to be one of the people who looks around for money to squeeze out of a system, it's probably necessary to think of yourself as the one who REALLY counts.

When the goal is to both scoop money out of an area, while convincing the other people that you're doing them a favor, it takes a particular kind of person.

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

... otherwise known as a con artist.