How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2013/12/11/how-academia-resembles-a-drug-gang/

by 7402 • 11 years ago

193 108 11 years ago

blogs.lse.ac.uk

gfosco• 11 years ago

Please update the title, article is from 2013.

barry-cotter2• 11 years ago

Nothing of note for the analysis has changed.

roghummal• 11 years ago

Is that an official reason?

rdfi• 11 years ago

One thing that should also be emphasized is that there is a great number of PhD candidates that never actually finish, in some universities that number is more than half. Many of these, before quitting, teach to help pay tuition and do all sorts of tasks for their department/supervisor that are not related or help them finish their PhD.

j2kun• 11 years ago

The article claims a problem is that there aren't enough mid-tier positions, for those who have just acquired a PhD but aren't yet suitable for a professorship.

What sort of solution could one imagine? Outside of post-doctorate positions, there's neither funding nor desire for the kind of research that you need to further an academic career.

barry-cotter2• 11 years ago

Reduce the number of graduate programme places so the over supply is less, either by reducing the number of places reasonably evenly across the system or by closing marginal doctoral programmes altogether. There are a lot of universities that graduate Ph.D.s who have virtually no chance of a decent academic position. The first tier universities graduate more than 5 times as many Drs. each year than are necessary to replace their own staff, some much more than that. You need to be an extremely strong second tier graduate to have a chance of getting a position at the same level, never mind going up. Third tier or below are basically exploited for teaching and research labour and then gradually eased out of the system. People should not enter these programmes expecting to get an academic job. Those who enter those programmes would be better off getting a J.D., which is damning. A J.D. is a horrible idea for most people but at least it only wastes 3 years and less than $200K. Most people who enter a Ph.D. programme drop out, in most disciplines, and some people who do graduate take up to ten years.

FLengyel2• 11 years ago

This is correct. In retrospect my math Ph.D. was a waste of time. There have been proposals over the years on how to address the overabundance of PhDs. One approach seems to have been widely and independently adopted: advise those responsible for easing out the exploited to read Erving Goffman's On Cooling the Mark Out: Some aspects of adaptation to Failure [1, 2].

1. http://www.tau.ac.il/~algazi/mat/Goffman--Cooling.htm

2. http://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2002/10/31/cooling-the-...

sjg007• 11 years ago

There are thousands of foreigners will to take the places. You can't talk about academia and ignore immigration.

calibraxis• 11 years ago

As a start, remove the bureaucratic administrative layers which have grown wild due to managerialism?

"My own knowledge comes from universities, both in the United States and Britain. In both countries, the last thirty years have seen a veritable explosion of the proportion of working hours spent on administrative tasks at the expense of pretty much everything else. In my own university, for instance, we have more administrators than faculty members, and the faculty members, too, are expected to spend at least as much time on administration as on teaching and research combined. The same is true, more or less, at universities worldwide." http://www.thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-decl...

Articles like this indundate the reader with chart upon chart. High-res pictures with a scope too narrow to find serious solutions. What do these charts leave out?

learnstats23• 11 years ago

Outside of post-doctorate positions, there's neither funding nor desire for the kind of research that you need to further an academic career.

But why not? If academic work is for the benefit of mankind, there should be a desire in society for that kind of research[0].

This desire is only muted because of commercial interests having increased influence (directly and indirectly) over academia.

[0]Perhaps there is a mismatch in what we mean by 'kind of research' here. But this is a political point as well - the kind of research that has long-term benefits to society should be exactly the kind of research that furthers academic careers.

theOnliest2• 11 years ago

I appreciate your point, but this kind of attitude often (intended or not) leaves humanities PhDs out in the cold. Sure, for a PhD in computer science you might convince the public that your work is worthwhile (there may be some practical application). My PhD is in the field of music theory...a field which has practically zero real-world applications. It's still important as an academic field, but the long-term benefit to society of a music theory dissertation is simply that we understand a particular aspect of music better.

nmrm22• 11 years ago

Outside of post-doctorate positions, there's neither funding nor desire for the kind of research that you need to further an academic career.

At least in Computer Science, the alternative is to simply go into industry at a company that will let you continue publishing, and get a paper out every year or two. Lots of people have successfully made the transition back into academia after a post-PhD stint in industry.

cscheid• 11 years ago

That turns out to be exactly what I did, but that type of opportunity is now much rarer than it was even 10 years ago. MSR is the stalwart "you-can-publish-here" industrial research lab, and look at what happened to MSR SV -- to say nothing of other smaller places, also shrinking.

nice1• 11 years ago

If someone comes up with a better system, it will be adopted. It is very hard to determine who has the capacity to be a Professor. The current system works fine most of the time. It is true that crackpots get through on occasion, but the vast majority of professorial appointments are reasonable.

loup-vaillant4• 11 years ago

If someone comes up with a better system, it will be adopted.

No. New, better systems are automatically adopted only if they help the establishment. Anything that question the privileges of those currently in power will meet heavy resistance (or inertia).

Turing_Machine• 11 years ago

"If someone comes up with a better system, it will be adopted."

Academia moves very, very slowly. Stuff remains unchanged for centuries, just because that's the way it's always been done.

For instance, the lecture model was adopted when books were hand-written and very expensive -- basically the lecturer (in some institutions, actually called "reader") would read the text very slowly and distinctly, while the students would copy it down verbatim. At the end of the term the students would have their own copy of the text.

We've had printing presses for quite some time now, but the lecture lives on.

Law and religion are similar. Note that those institutions also still retain many medieval trappings, both intellectual and physical (robes, funny hats, etc.)

mellavora• 11 years ago

i LIKE my funny hat, thank you very much.

raincom• 11 years ago

Thanks for enlightenment. I used to wonder about the title "Reader" in commonwealth countries. Now your elucidation makes sense.

mangecoeur3• 11 years ago

Interesting - some important points overlooked:

- They assume that for everyone doing a PhD there is an equivalently attractive job waiting for them. However, many young people going doing PhDs (especially in the countries highlighted, Portugal, Greece, Slovakia) aren't choosing between a steady job and the uncertainty of PhD - there are often either no jobs available or very unattractive ones (e.g. working well below your skill level, poor working conditions, etc). A PhD offers an interesting hybrid of employment and training while offering more intellectual freedom and stimulation than your average desk job (note to Americans - most PhDs in Europe come with some form salary/scholarship/stipend).

- They seem to assume that everyone going into academia from the PhD level up is aiming to remain there. Many people do PhDs and then go to industries - certain industries (e.g. biosciences) pretty much require a PhD if you want to get anywhere interesting.

Both these significantly weaken the drug gang analogy, since it rests on the premise that there is a big pool of people joining at the bottom of the pyramid with the principal aim of clawing their way to the top. The motivations for doing a PhD however are far more diverse, from being simply a more interesting (or simply available) option that regular work (flexible hours, intellectual freedom, and a prestigious title at the end of it) to being a requirement to work in a particular industry. Certainly in my experience, only a minority of people starting PhDs do so with the explicit goal of attaining tenured professorship.

roadnottaken• 11 years ago

PhD programs in the sciences (e.g. bio, chem, phys) in the US also come with a salary/stipend that one can live off of.

kyllo• 11 years ago

And any professor will tell you that if you have to pay for your PhD yourself, you shouldn't be doing a PhD in the first place.

giaour2• 11 years ago

This is also true of PhD programs in the humanities.

netcan2• 11 years ago

I agree. Leaving this out completely avoid the question of why people at the bottom play along. Academia ticks a lot of boxes for some people. Some boxes are even monetary.

learnstats23• 11 years ago

I find it strange, this claim that PhDs have more diverse and subtle motivations than members of drug gangs.

In the first bullet point you can replace "doing PhD" with "working for a drug gang" and nothing is different;

The second bullet point may not apply exactly to drug gangs and industry, but surely many people view drug gangs as a means to an end, a place where they can gain unparalleled experience.

mangecoeur3• 11 years ago

a place where they can gain unparalleled experience

that makes it sound like the kind of experience they could put on their CV... imagine the interview...

Interviewer: "Tell me about an experience you think would be relevant here at OfficeDeskCo"

Guy: "Well I was in the east side crack dealers gang for 4 years, and this one time...."

marze2• 11 years ago

You claim only a minority of people getting PhDs want to become a professor?

Citation?

mangecoeur3• 11 years ago

The key phrase being "in my experience" ;) That's not a the result of an in depth study, merely personal experience. I just don't think I've met many (or any, come to think of it) people who could state unequivocally at the start of their PhD that their goal was to attain professorship - most people assess and adjust their goals as they go along, and maybe a purely academic career works out for them.

Plus, people doing PhDs are (hopefully) not stupid - they have a pretty good idea of the proportion of professors to PhD students when they sign up - I should hope they can do the math slightly better then your average gang member.

joosters• 11 years ago

So now every organisational structure that has more people at the bottom than at the top resembles a drug gang?

I blame Levitt.

emiliobumachar• 11 years ago

Just to let others in on the reference, Levitt is the co-author of Freakonomics, a book that popularized, among other concepts, research showing that the average drug dealer gets terrible payment for the risk they take, and only stays in the business due to unrealistic hope of one day becoming one of the few drug lords that make insane amounts of cash.

danieltillett5• 11 years ago

As some one who managed to succeed in the academic rat race (tenured professor) and who quit to do more productive things, my feeling is academia is more like cult. When inside it you believe you are doing important things, and on occasion you actual do (i.e. teaching and research), but the important activities are basically a hobby you fit around your full-time job of administration and politics. Once outside you realise you were wasting your life on trivia of the most meaningless kind. While I miss some parts I have to say I am glad to be out.

timrpeterson• 11 years ago

Having tenure affords opportunity. Can't get the golden parachute unless you play the game long enough (i.e., waste prime years).

danieltillett5• 11 years ago

I certainly missed the golden parachute. Even if I hung around until I was deadwood I would not have made anything financially. No academic in Australia gets rich just out of being an academic.

I don’t regret my time as an academic other than my last two years. I should have left earlier, but the security the job afforded my family kept me there longer than I really should have stayed. This is a mistake many people make when in a secure job when they have kids so I am not too angry at myself. It is an experience few people get to have so I am grateful to have had it.

tdumitrescu2• 11 years ago

My experience was very similar. While I was in the land of postdoc fellowships and part-time teaching, it was a great job where I gladly accepted low pay in return for freedom to work on my own projects and structure my time independently. By the time I was a few years into a tenured post (at a European university), the amount of administrative drudgery, committees, useless meetings and other BS entirely unrelated to my skillset as an academic had grown tremendously - enough to make it quite easy to quit when I saw opportunities in the software industry. When I look back at it now, I still bristle a little at how much worse it got over the years, almost feels like a bait-and-switch. I have several other friends who've since left their tenured positions while still young, all of us with this feeling that we were stuck in a type of work we really hadn't signed up for.

johnchristopher• 11 years ago

Out of curiosity, how old were you when you left ?

bitwize• 11 years ago

What do you get when you combine the economic mechanism of a drug gang with the mind control technology of a cult, used to keep people in the system?

A multi-level marketing scheme.

cafebeen2• 11 years ago

I think a multi-level marketing scheme includes a benefit for recruiting new people, in the form of some sort of "downline" compensation. As far as academia goes, this doesn't really exist, otherwise there'd be teaching/research assistant assistants, and so on

Ivanov• 11 years ago

Once outside you realise you were wasting your life on trivia of the most meaningless kind.

I think it depends. From the outside, industry looks to be churning out nothing, but trivial stuff for sale.

fsloth5• 11 years ago

"From the outside, industry looks to be churning out nothing, but trivial stuff for sale."

I suppose what one chooses to focus on. The stuff I do in industry helps people design houses and infrastructure.

lukasm• 11 years ago

The reason for this is that the prospect of future wealth, rather than current income and working conditions, is the main driver for people to stay in the business: low-level drug sellers forgo current income for (uncertain) future wealth.

That's description of statups.

pcr0• 11 years ago

There's a difference though. With a startup, you're practically working for yourself.

In academia, you end up having to do a lot of ad hoc work for other people.

benihana• 11 years ago

Betting on the future is a pretty common tactic in all aspects of life.

stared3• 11 years ago

With startups, you can pivot (with academia you can too, but it's rather 3-5 years).

With startups, you can fail (and try again); in academia, if you fail, you fail.

In short: with startups, if something is not working (or you totally lost belief in it), you can quit a project without quitting startups for good. In academia, if you want to stay, you often need to stay in a miserable conditions 1-3 more years (e.g. to finish PhD, postdoc, etc), just not to get kicked out for good.

Moreover, with startups, you can start your group being 20, without anyone's blessing.

rsfern• 11 years ago

I have several friends who have successfully navigated switching research groups and even departments in the middle of their PhD work. I also know a few who didn't manage such a graceful transition, but it's definitely possible to pivot during the PhD without giving up on the degree and research career.

nhstanley• 11 years ago

Not my opinion, but what I think lukasm was getting at is that a majority of players in the startup game aren't VCs or founders, but suckers taking low wages and/or options and/or insane hours on the promise of a big future payout that never comes.

netcan2• 11 years ago

I think this article is reaching a bit. There are some interesting things about this drug dealer model though. Why do the bottom rungs agree to play this game? I think the dynamic manifests in a lot of highly aspirational industries. The money, prestige and such going to the slim top layer can act in lieu of benefits going directly to participants.

Many one-on-one sports are examples. Floyd Mayweather might make close to $500m in career prize winning. The "contenders" who fight him (apart from big names like Manny Pacquiao or Oscar De La Hoya) under him will earn ˜1% of that. Beneath them, "journeymen" (maybe the top 25 in a weight class) fighters often make something like that $3 an hours wage.

I suspect acting is often similar. Music, stand up comedy and arts in general. The possibility of attaining the prestige and earning of Tom Cruise keeps aspiring actors in gyms and auditions, trying to climb the steep ladder.

Apart from all that, there is definitely something in the zeitgeist about universities and academia. I think they are in for a tsunami of change sometime in the next generation. This is just one example. The weird entanglement of research and education. The trading on Prestige. The dynamism of competition under them (non academic education, bootcamps, online learning, etc.).

TheOtherHobbes• 11 years ago

All the arts have brutal power law income distributions, with a handful of winners making $$$$$ while most people don't break even.

People who do well in the arts have a rare combination of charisma, marketing/networking skills, existing social contacts, persistence, location, luck, and talent - which often belongs at the end of the list, unfortunately.

Ironically, academia is one of the few places where you can work in the arts and do better than average. You can get real funding for arts research, especially if there's a technical angle.

Of course you don't usually have an audience - unless you count other academics - but not everyone loses sleep over that. And there's often a special policy niche for academic art. It's a kind of "Look at us as a country - we totally do serious difficult art" cultural brag.

It seems to be important to fill that niche. What it gets filled with isn't so important.

analog31• 11 years ago

As a part time working musician, living in a university town, I know a lot of people on the lower rungs of both ladders. A common thread that I've noticed is that these people are compelled to pursue their fields, out of a devotion to their subject matter that would seem to frustrate a Homo Economicus analysis of their behavior.

The drug dealer analogy would be more fitting if dealers were paid in drugs. ;-)

stared3• 11 years ago

Previous submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6825534 (100+ votes, ~2 years ago) with a different address: https://alexandreafonso.wordpress.com/2013/11/21/how-academi...

FLengyel2• 11 years ago

I left after being continually relegated to low-academic value technical support work for established academics. Last year I turned down four opportunities to participate in NSF grants, and this year three so far. It is impossible to advance in an academic career on the basis of the technical skills you used to help your colleagues. Academia is winner-take-all. I decided it was pointless to compound my losses by supporting the winners.

joesmo• 11 years ago

"There is an expanding mass of rank-and-file “outsiders” ready to forgo income for future wealth, and a small core of “insiders” securing incomes largely at the expense of the mass. We can call it a winner-take-all market."

Interesting. If I didn't know any better, I thought he was describing the situation with many tech startups. The investors have all the money, the founders are the only ones with any hope of making good money, and the rest just serve as cannon fodder in the investors' and founders' games. This actually seems to be a common pattern in quite a few other industries as well, and from the perspective of an established business owner, is the ideal structure of any business.

ghaff2• 11 years ago

The difference is the power law chart of the incomes. Yes, the potential for the really big wins in startups is mostly with the investors and the founders. But most of the "cannon fodder" as you call them are still making what most would consider respectable salaries. There are exceptions certainly but, by contrast, most would-be actors who haven't hit a relatively high level of success are waiting tables or the equivalent.

orkoden• 11 years ago

Capitalism is always exploitation.

larrys• 11 years ago

"The reason for this is that the prospect of future wealth, rather than current income and working conditions, is the main driver for people to stay in the business: low-level drug sellers forgo current income for (uncertain) future wealth. "

May be true but also could be that the person who decides to sell drugs for less than they could make at McDonalds couldn't even land a job at McDonalds or any other traditional employment. Similar to how many people go into business for themselves because they are not cut out to work for anybody else. It's not all about money and future prospects.

jqm• 11 years ago

How Academia does not resemble a drug gang:

1)Drug gangs don't have an excess of lazy administrative support staff.

2)Drug gangs actually have to deliver some drugs at some point.

3)The politics of drug gangs are less vicious and there is better teamwork.

cafebeen2• 11 years ago

To be fair, a similar pattern might be present in other industries as well, e.g. finance, food services, manufacturing, etc. I think the point the author is trying to make though is that academia is uniquely like a drug gang, but I'd don't see anything to justify that. My guess is that you'd find something like this in every large and hierarchically-organized system. That's not to say this is a good way to do things though...

marze2• 11 years ago

Multi-level marketing schemes are similar, in that they exploit people leveraging those people's desire to improve their situation (or dream to get paid while doing nothing).

The film industry is similar, you work for low wages, hoping you will make it to the big time.

So is athletics, work for free at college, hope you make it to the NFL or wherever.

This pattern may be more common than most realize.

throwaway0093822• 11 years ago

I am both an aspiring graduate student (though, maybe not after reading this) and grew up with many friends who were/are still in organized crews, plus did some delivery for a few years myself when I was a foolish 17 yr old.

Most delivery driver jobs here pay $150-200/day depending on how busy the line is, and the people that work them usually aren't looking to move up instead they want cash wages for easy work, since most have records and can't get decent paying jobs anywhere else. The article is correct almost all these guy's still live with their parents. There were only 2 guys I knew that actually thought they could move up and make big money while the rest of us accepted we were only ever going to make $200/day and were essentially contractors, we were never privy to any gang internal business.

Gangs no longer hold drugs when corner selling (where you make the most money, selling by the point at full street value), they pay an addict in drugs to do this while they run security watching over the operation to prevent robberies. Street enforcer is where you start if you want to move up since you are essentially managing operations instead of just a delivery boy. You also hang around the top people as they call on you to come along to jack rival operations. These thugs get a lucrative percentage when they steal drugs off other crews and pass them down to the delivery lines to sell so are making real money, since it seemed every enforcer in my little dope crew was bombing around in a Porsche Cayenne customized to be bullet resistant with hidden compartments installed to hide their handguns, lived in huge houses by themselves and were always decked out in latest heatbag designer clothes. I don't remember any of these guys being broke, and technically they are the lowest rung on the gang hierarchy since the drivers are just contractors.

That was back in 2005 though, and now the vast majority of gangs are not handling any product here. Their income model is intimidation and extortion. It's far easier to wave a gun around on the street and tax everybody in the drug business than it is to put in work building up a line or managing operations. They don't even steal each other's lines anymore, just demand a percentage of the profits. As a result street violence has actually declined, since jackings and hits decreased and most beefs are now solved by passing money over a table. These independent dealers are also way better at selling drugs than gangs, so bring in much more money and the dominant gang that taxes them also offers protection from robbery (we are robbing you to offer our robbery prevention services).

This gangster method is more profitable, has almost no startup costs besides needing vehicles and guns, is much harder to prosecute since they never are directly involved in narcotics trade, and has an endless recruitment pool inside prisons to replenish ranks faster and with tougher recruits. It's also how all those Mexican border cartels operate. They are merely taxing the smuggling routes into the US skimming the shipments of Gulf and Sinaloa cartels. Those cartels have to build manufacturing, supply chain and retail while paying off politicians and police while the thug at the border just needs a gun, and is impossible to get rid of since they hold down their territory hard.

tl;dr Stepping into a gang as the new lowest position pays much more now, and is almost a guaranteed ladder to better positions since narcotics handling has all been outsourced as drug dealers are good at being drug dealers, and gangsters are good at being thugs.

avn2109• 11 years ago

Very underrated comment, by far the best in the thread. Sounds like drug gangs are borrowing the business model of governments.

throwaway0093822• 11 years ago

I guess they are like a government, in that they can afford to wait out disputes while the drug businesses can't. Every once in a while these other groups will try and get rid of the dominant extortion gang but since they live off skimming, and their business model is a vehicle and a gun, they can afford to go to war while the drug dealers and cartels all will be losing money and cannot sustain a lengthy conflict. The narcotics businesses have extensive bribery networks they need to keep operating to survive and any interference in the income will threaten to unravel it all. Some of them have minimum wholesale they need to buy every month in order to keep up supply, and customers will also start calling competitor lines if deliveries are stopped.

Even worse, when the heat on the streets is so hot during a war from all the shootings and police are everywhere, not much business can happen so the extortion crews turn to contract hits for income. For $10-15k you can pay them to kill off one of your rival drug dealers, potential informants or even people in your own delivery crew so you can move up and take their place. So while they are fighting off a rival takeover they are also open for local business dropping bodies all over the streets and blaming it on the invading gang, which police then turn their attention to, and are getting paid while the rivals/cartels are bleeding money. Eventually they have no choice but to give up the dispute to save their own business from extinction, much like how businesses have to settle in court when defending against government lawsuits and can't afford too much delay.

What is really surreal about the black market is after these violent outbursts everything is simply settled by a payment of back taxes owed and you just go back to work like nothing happened. One of the enforcers who managed us was shot at repeatedly by somebody he knew living in the same immediate neighborhood during one of these wars and next week it was all cleared up above us by whoever was in charge and beefs squashed. He'd still see the guy on a regular basis, no hard feelings, only business.

cossatot• 11 years ago

Great post.

If you get all of this, you'll probably be able to navigate grad school just fine...

jcslzr• 11 years ago

every company resembles a drug gang

stretchwithme• 11 years ago

Isn't medicine like this to a degree? The interns and resident make very little per hour, work long hours and have little control over anything.

Sounds like apprenticeship as well.

Why do people put up with it? Because its very difficult to leave and start a competing enterprise. There's either a contract that locks you in or licensing that locks you out.

Or you need government funding to compete with those who have government funding, so you must suck up to the powers that be, who are all in bed together.

ghaff2• 11 years ago

Not at all. Interns and residents have a reasonably high probability [1] of becoming fairly well-compensated licensed physicians if they choose to follow their program through to the end. This isn't an argument about long and even grueling apprenticeships with modest compensation. It's about how even those who make it through such an apprenticeship in some professions will mostly not find a job at the end--which isn't the case with doctors.

BTW, I'm not sure I believe the drug dealer/actor/pro athlete thought really applies to academia--even if it's true that PhD degrees in many fields probably don't have a great ROI and aren't likely to result in a tenured position.

[1] I don't know the numbers but I have no reason to think a lot of people, especially from better programs, are forced out during internship or residency.

How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang (2013)

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