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

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/10/24/quitting_academic_jobs_professor_zachary_ernst_and_other_leaving_tenure.html

by tokenadult • 13 years ago

124 113 13 years ago

slate.com

jseliger• 13 years 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-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-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.

mathattack6• 13 years 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.

mjn3• 13 years 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.

badman_ting3• 13 years ago

I enjoy this short point Zizek makes about the role of intellectuals today. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdGZeQV4eZc

rmc• 13 years ago

You will always get people complaining about an industry/professsion. There are lots of people complaining about the tech industry.

bane• 13 years 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.

PaulHoule7• 13 years ago

Out of my graduating class of 80 physics PhD's I think one went in academia, a woman.

drblast• 13 years 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• 13 years 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• 13 years 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• 13 years ago

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

PaulHoule7• 13 years 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

DaveWalk2• 13 years 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.

daveyoon2• 13 years 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• 13 years 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• 13 years 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.

daveyoon2• 13 years ago

True, but don't you think it's a dumbbell distribution? A lot of the smartest PhDs who don't land the top academic jobs decide that going to a less academically challenging school is not worth their while? So a lot of them are not leaving in disgust, they're being pulled by better things ...

mjn3• 13 years 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• 13 years ago

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

mahesh_rm• 13 years ago

I guess our startup fit into this subgenre..

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• 13 years 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• 13 years 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• 13 years ago

OTOH, humanities contains more people who reflexively reach for a pen.

ajdecon• 13 years 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-t... for an example.

betterunix• 13 years 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.

dnautics3• 13 years 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.

slurry2• 13 years 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.

dnautics3• 13 years ago

I do think that chem, bio, and physics PhDs who quit are less needy in the "need to broadcast it with an essay" department. I am tempted to write one, but only because I'm bootstrapping my nonprofit research operation and want eyes on it.

chubot• 13 years ago

A notable one that's made the rounds on HN before: http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-im-leaving-harvar...

I see the "I quit" genre more from CS/engineering professors, but that's probably because I'm on HN a lot. It would be somewhat interesting to compare the humanities subgenre and the STEM subgenre.

Also yesterday I had a long conversation with my neighbor at work (former math professor) about everything that's wrong with academia. He mentioned the phrase "loan farming".

w1ntermute• 13 years ago

I see the "I quit" genre more from CS/engineering professors, but that's probably because I'm on HN a lot.

And because it's quite easy to find an industry job if you're a good CS/engineering professor.

DaveWalk2• 13 years ago

As a scientist, two things come to mind:

1) Tenure is a different beast at some medical institutions where your funding comes almost entirely from your own grant support. There are tenured professors and it's fair to argue that tenure is important as a promotion, but if a tenured professors loses his/her grant funding, they can lose their office just like their un-tenured associates (I've heard of it but have not seen it personally).

2) The bigger problem is that tenured professors leave and head for prestigious jobs in the private industry. I always wondered why this was the case; I was enlightened talking to a spouse of a prestigious professor who said that in general the academic system treats even the tenured professor terribly. The big, big opportunities (and accompanying explosion in salary) are only in the private sector.

af3• 13 years ago

nice article, thanks for the submission!

raverbashing3• 13 years 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_gottlieb4• 13 years 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.

raverbashing3• 13 years ago

Academia (and knowledge) is not only basic science.

But yeah, there have been discoveries: 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.

stephp• 13 years ago

This is true for some industries and not others, I think...

What "monopoly on knowledge" brings to my mind is academic journals. Have you ever tried to search them online? On the cheap end, it's like $40 a pop, before you even know how useful it is. Some cost a fortune, such that many people in certain industries can't justify keeping up with all the developments in their still-very-academia-centric field (where one's singular goal in life is to be published in as many expensive journals as possible).

I love papers and studies, and my husband worked in industry as a mathematician, so this is something that I've come upon a lot. It really baffles me.

AaronFriel• 13 years 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=1237996... - there the NSF documents declining basic research from industry and declining funding from government.

PaulHoule7• 13 years 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.

redblacktree2• 13 years ago

Would that this were more well known. I would have called myself a conspiracy theorist if I'd made that conclusion on my own. Sure, I'm aware of the halted embryonic stem cell research we had under Bush, but I had no idea it was happening with anything so seemingly-benign (or, at the least, neutral) as parallel computing.

Guvante• 13 years ago

There are two kinds of people who quit academia: those who want to produce research and those who don't.

The article calls out a third case, those who don't produce research because they aren't being paid enough. If you are being paid a teacher's salary, they can't really complain when you put forth a teacher's work (well they can, but not justifiably).

mrcactu5• 13 years 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!™

mililani6• 13 years 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/

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_ting3• 13 years 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...

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.

mililani6• 13 years ago

Ah, good ole web archive! Forgot about that. So, I went digging through, and I made a mistake. It's not on his ramblings site. More of it is located here:

http://web.archive.org/web/20120201172033/http://www.math.ha...

But, he rambles a lot on there and weighs the pros and cons of being a professor in Hawaii. Basically, though, his final sentence says it all: "I've got to get out of this place."

Some more about his salary he keeps talking about, " Unfortunately, though, the one thing at the University of Hawaii that was not under my control, nor under the Math Department's either, whether by ``shibai'' or otherwise, was my salary. I had known when I accepted the position here that I was being offered a salary that was too low, but what I had not realized was that, unlike Kansas, faculty salaries at the University of Hawaii are controlled by a rigid civil-service structure, so that the salary one is hired at determines one's salary for the rest of one's life. But added to that, the nation soon entered an extremely drastic phase of Reaganomics inflation, and the State of Hawaii responded by giving only minimal salary raises (0% one year and 2% the following), and the entire faculty here at UH was becoming financially desperate.

One of the reasons I dropped out of active mathematical research was a realization (even before Reagan came into office in 1981) that it would soon no longer be financially feasible for me to continue working here. And as I stopped letting my life be taken over by doing research, and after being promoted to full professor had finally jumped through all the hoops that young academics (although I was no longer exactly young) are require to jump through, more and more I was asking myself exactly what it was that I want out of life, and to what extent my career as a mathematician was providing it. "

He also mentioned before about thinking about becoming an actuary; and, how another math professor started taking electrical engineering courses at the university and later left for California to become an engineer in the aerospace industry (which turned out to be poor timing since the aerospace industry went under major turmoil in California during the late 80's).

Then he talks about how he has a strong distaste for living in Hawaii here:

http://web.archive.org/web/20120218124307/http://www2.hawaii...

It gives a very intimate perspective from a man who has lived the life of being an academic, and what that entails. I don't recommend reading his entire web site, since he writes quite a lot. But, for anyone interested in academia, I think a perusal is in order. He does talk a lot about what life being an "institutionalized" academic is like. It's pretty sad, and it made me realized I would never want to get into that field.

muaddirac• 13 years ago

and more incentive to do research

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that the entire point of tenure was so that professors who have proven their worth have the freedom to do the (perhaps controversial) research that they want to without fear of retribution from their employer.

Edit: And now that I think about it, the point is also to prevent "dead weight" from being fired. Because it'd be easy to classify a professor as dead weight who is simply working on something unpopular, or contrary to consensus.

HarryHirsch• 13 years ago

That was back then, when science was the humanities (remember: when Theodor Mommsen solicited research funding, saying "If there is big industry there must be big science" it was for the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae), and professors were public intellectuals.

Today research costs money, and often a substantial part of a professor's salary comes from external funding. I feel that tenure has become something of an anachronism, and when you see tenured professors who haven't had a grant in ten years sit in a circle, each one giving an easy job to the person on their right, and dropping the rest of the work on the untenured faculty it becomes very difficult to defend the practice.

mililani6• 13 years ago

Yes, that was definitely the original intent of tenure. However, times have changed. I believe most professors just want good pay and benefits. I'm sure most would be willing to exchange tenure protections for this along with better job mobility and latitude. However, that's just conjecture.

drzaiusapelord• 13 years ago

One of my old math professors had a page devoted to this. He complained a lot about living in Hawaii

Wow. No offense, but I can't imagine this guy with a real job. The self-entitlement is insane. I really think there's a forest for the tree problem with a lot of academics. The few I know get massive entitlements, days off, benefits, etc. I work in IT, worry about layoffs, get minimal holidays, have on-call, and generally get treated like an idiot savant because no one likes techies and techies go against the corporate 'sales guy' culture that dominates so many companies.

I wish my biggest problem was being forced to stay in Hawaii. On top of it, I went to some pretty good schools and honestly half my professors were loathesome misanthropes. I can't imagine where they would fit elsewhere. They'd be destroyed in corporate culture in a new york minute.

Perhaps I am suffering from a 'grass is greener' mentality, but sometimes it helps, i think, to remember where you came from and what you have. Some problems are real and others just aren't.

I really wonder if the real issue is the ease that someone can enter many phd programs. With massive private/public loans and universities hungry for money, we might have long ago hit a tipping point of being too generous and letting a lot of people in who otherwise would have been unacceptable for phd programs, especially in the humanities. Of the academics I know, maybe one is a stellar thinker, the rest are just upper-middle class milquetoasts who wanted an easy life.

mililani6• 13 years ago

I know what you're saying, but I also feel that one needs to consider the perspectives. Like they say, grass is greener. He was just not into Hawaii, and I don't think there is anything wrong with that. Personally, I hated living in the SF Bay Area. It was just not for me either. I know, I know. People think I'm nuts. But, after 10 years of living there, I finally understood my math professor. I was like, "Wow, I can't imagine professor Lady going through something like what I'm going through for over 30 years!" I really felt for him. By the time I finally left the Bay Area, I was utterly burnt out by big city, fast paced life. It made me the person who I am today: one foot out the door at all times. My wife and I moved around several times in the years since, and now that we're back in California living in a smaller coastal city, I realized what I hated about being in the Bay Area: it's just too big, too much of a rat race. Although I love living where we're at now, I can eventually see myself growing tired of it.

And, that's the perspective, I think, you're missing out on. You are seeing things from your own perspective. I know that perspective well, too. I lived it for 10 years. I was a techie; I was always wary of being laid off; I had crap for vacations; I was ALWAYS learning new stuff; and as techies, we're always crapped on. I had business envy and thought of going to business school. So, I see your perspective. But, I also see his.

Being in Hawaii, or any other small town/city, can get very old and tiresome. Several of the Hawaii math professors eventually gave up tenure and moved away to do other things. It makes one wonder about why these guys would be willing to give up a highly sought after thing in academia, tenure, to move away and start a new life. I think my old professor provides a good explanation, at least for some people, about why that happens. At least, it did for me.

saraid216• 13 years ago

Being in Hawaii isn't automatically a happy fun lifestyle. It's a popular tourist destination, but it's still just a place like any other.

And it's a pretty shitty place when your spouse leaves you because you can't go with them.

Nicholas_C• 13 years ago

I wish my biggest problem was being forced to stay in Hawaii.

I don't think Hawaii is as great to live in as it is to visit. Cost of living sucks, traffic sucks, traveling anywhere to visit relatives or another state/country requires flying. All of Hawaii only has a population of 1.4M. The metro population of Honolulu is 953,207. The state itself is just a little bit larger than New Jersey if you add the area of all the islands. Sure, the weather is great, but living in Hawaii for the rest of my life is not something I want to do.

Now imagine being trapped there until you die because you're on a tenure track.

rz2k• 13 years ago

I don't think expressions of awe and reverence for one's good fortune or the system that created that good fortune is productive at all. And, I think it becomes counter productive when that awe goes so far as to suppress one's discontent.

In wealthy countries like the US, the quality of life improves every decade, and it only improves when people seek to change the system where faults remain. Professors are supposed to be thought leaders, not automatically and uncritically deferential to established thought or power structures. Perhaps his specialty is mathematics rather than the structure of academia, yet even still nothing is gained by subservience.

Furthermore, how does it matter when a professor is a loathsome misanthrope or not? Most important is the quality of their original research, and second to that, the quality of instruction they provide, and both of those in relation to their cost. If their misanthropy affects their job choose people who are less misanthropic. If the institutions aren't getting enough A-level talent for research and instruction to choose from, then they should look at how they are attracting talent. Surely, the compensation is an entire basket comprised not only of money and tangible benefits, but such forms of autonomy as the ability to move without giving up progress in your career, the freedom to pursue research regardless of unpopular outcomes, and the ability to speak freely.*

How best would you characterize "the problem with academia"? You seem to be saying (1)that there is too little talent in academia—an a outcome signify the combination of working conditions or salaries discourage talent from trying to enter academia. But then seem to say that (2)they are over compensated with days off and benefits. The only way to get such a juxtaposition of overcompensated and under-talented, though is if the positions are filled through some political manner such as personal PR, nepotism, graft etc, and yet that runs counter to your third complaint, that (3)academics aren't political enough to bow and scrape and show deference to everyone else.

At least one of these complaints must have a flaw.

Finally, how do you know you can't get a job in Hawaii? These days it takes remarkably little effort to browse job offerings and send out a few resumes. Maybe you'd end up with a lot of the same concerns anywhere you live, but maybe you'd also end up liking the climate a lot more.

* Though tenure can make moving difficult, it does help enable intellectual and academic freedom, since it effectively limits the equivalent of having a boss who tells you to suppress an unpopular conclusion.

btilly2• 13 years ago

Interesting data point. My father-in-law was a math prof who gave up research. He felt bad about it. He went to the department chair and said that since he wasn't doing research any more, could he be given more classes to free up other professors who were doing research to spend their time that way.

He was told no because, "It would make the rest of us look bad." And so he spent many years working a half-time job and feeling bad about it.

(He was also one of the best teachers in the department. In large part, possibly, because his attention was on teaching, not research. And face it, most of the material that is presented in first and second year math courses has not been a subject of research since the 1800s.)

dferlemann• 13 years ago

Same thing here working for government... it's ridiculous.

judk3• 13 years ago

Why didn't he apply for a job at a teaching college?

ronaldx• 13 years ago

Why does tenure lock you down? I'm not aware of this being the case in Europe.

I understand that tenure positions are hard to reach, but if you are providing value (whether that's through skill in research or education or pure 'prestige') - other universities should still want to employ you?

The only sense in which you are locked down is that you have a nice guaranteed job and a lifestyle that is no longer competitive with other opportunities - this is not something reasonable to complain about.

mililani6• 13 years ago

The entire process is tough. Once you leave tenure at one university for another, you must go through that entire process again. And if ONE faculty member does not like you for some bizarre reason or another, you will not gain tenure. That's why most professors, or any sane person, wouldn't opt to do it all over again unless they are highly sought after.

For example, I'm pretty sure Terry Tao, math professor extraordinaire, would have NO problems moving around to any university and gaining tenure. However, the average Joe schmoe Ph.D. may not have the desired qualities to do that so easily.

PaulHoule7• 13 years ago

I know a lot of people who specifically go to Hawaii to die.

How bad can it be?

wyclif• 13 years ago

Just curious: why is living in Hawaii something a person would get divorced over (or something to complain about?)

mililani6• 13 years ago

It's like being forced to live in a small town. Some people (actually, I'm betting a lot) can't deal with it.

da-bacon• 13 years 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

noillusions• 13 years 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• 13 years ago

Absolutely!

knowtheory• 13 years 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.

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

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