Is Academia a Ponzi Scheme?
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- Опубликовано: 2 июл 2024
- The life of a professor sounds like the best dream, and for a lucky few, it is. Once you get that tenured position of happiness, there really isn't much to complain about. But that's not the life of a significant percentage of those teaching college classes.
Most students don't understand the academic hierarchy. What's the difference between an assistant professors and a full professor? Well, watch the video to get an overview of how the academic pyramid scheme is set up. Then you can decide what you think about things. If you feel really bad about the adjuncts, then please subscribe to my channel!
#academia#college#gradschool
Wow! This video just exploded over the last 48 hours. I could not have predicted that RUclips's algos would have such grace, but I will not complain. Thank you for all the subs and lovely comments! And yes, I do know that academia is not "literally" a Ponzi Scheme. I threw this video together on a whim as I was putting together a "how to email your professor" to help undergrads understand the academic hierarchy and how to address their professors in an email. One thing to keep in mind for those less familiar with academia is that every field is different and has its own peculiarities. Make sure you do your best to research them before diving in. For those thinking of the humanities, here's a perspective published recently that resonated with my own experience: wesleyyang.substack.com/p/the-good-marxist Personally, I am very grateful for all my training and education, but it seems much of the future for the humanities will be outside of the Ivory Tower.
I know I haven't posted much as of late...been a bit busy trying to help feed the family and keep our little farm going, but I do have projects in the pipeline that will eventually see the light of day. All the subs mean a lot to me. Truly. Wishing you a blessed day wherever you may be!
Nah, this video hasn't blown up yet... You only have 99k views. :) This is great content! And I don't even know what all these academia terms are lol anyway +1 Like +1 Sub
Nice video, I skipped college and joined the Army 25 years ago and just retired this month, I was making $137k a year with no degree, my retirement check is $42K a year. I've started working on a BS using my GI Bill and I'm getting paid about $3k a month to attend school full time, no student loans. For all the young people out there, at least do 4 years of service to earn your GI Bill and get paid to attend school.
I got here from a video on "Academia is BROKEN! - Harvard Fake Data Scandal Explained"
118K views now. I've seen a bit of this petty drama from the colleges & universities I have gone to, and it's pretty pathetic to see fully grown adults living a mostly sheltered life from the rest of society yet make a big deal out of nearly every petty thing that goes on in the university, especially with the back stabbing and BS regarding funding and inter-department politics.
Speaking of doing your best to research, you DO know that academia isn't limited to the United States?
That awkward moment you are sitting in your calculus night class with your adjunct and she casually discloses her income...and you realize you make more than her working 12 hours a week as a bartender.....and she is about 6 years ahead of where you are trying to get.
Meanwhile the university she works for is probably worth several billion, could afford to run on free tuition for 5 years just from its endowments alone, and rakes in millions in that NCAA money lottery slave money that pours right back into attracting more valuable people who know how to throw balls.
Maybe it's just me being bitter about my own failure, but I gave up and settled with my undergrad after a brief attempt at a master's degree. The few peers I kept in touch with (that stayed the course) are still starving students....I'm in my late 30s.
I don't have the most intellectually stimulating life but I mean....I am debt free, own my home, and can support my kid. Those that kept going might make it one day....but for now, they are half a million or more in debt with no clear end in sight.
Get out now. I’m so glad I got out after my MA
I'm currently in my MSc. and always had academia as an option, but I am 100% going to industry. I might even do a PhD, but only if it actually provides value to me and only when I commit to not get persuaded to go into academia later
she's an adjunct.
I had always had this fantasy about academia being a place for intellectual passion and scientific research... Reality really does hit hard sometimes.
It used to be, but working conditions have steadily decreased along with evangelical commercialisation of education.
Consider: maybe it's always been bad and shitty and unfair, and that's why you had that fantasy in the first place. It's *always* been a career path you'd only follow if you had a burning, inextinguishable passion for the subject matter. And solely because *nobody else would put up with it*! Either you want to Know to such a degree that you'll happily eat out of trashcans because you can't afford food and you'll smile as people two-facedly politick their way down the tenure track, or you don't want to Know enough to be in academia. That's how academia has always maintained the illusion of noble scholarship.
Yep been there
The biggest disappointment of going to university was finding out that I had more intelligent conversations with my coworkers in the army.
It's a bunch of narcissitic nerds who believe they're actually doing that but they aren't; and in essence, their work has little to no impact in people's lives.
Assistant professor here, 100% accurate, if we're being brutally honest. Advance education is a valuable thing, but higher ed as an institution is really, really sick right now. It's focused on exploiting people's passion and grinding them to dust instead of nurturing their continued learning, mastery, and slow development of significant contributions to the field. Burnout is rampant and very few of my friends are really happy. The flexibility is amazing, but not always worth it.
May the academic gods smile in your favor and grant you the glorious boon that is tenure.
I am very grateful for all my educational training, but I agree that higher ed is in a sorry state. It's really a shame that so many talented scholars are lost along the way. I hope you make it!
Agree, unfortunately. It's like they want you to hate science. But I don't hate science. I hate academia.
So true - many of my colleges are in depressions and even in myself the flame of passion is almost going out!
@@kuromyou7969 Wow, exactly the same. I still am fascinated by my field, but i have grown to hate academia as a phd student about to finish. The worst part is that they are even trying to sugarcoat their scheme (well, it's true that this is also a characteristic of schemes themselves :D) by saying that "you are here to learn not to earn", while of course they are profiting off you.
Academia is full of small-minded, extremely insecure, spiteful people who get their jollies from other's failures.
I got a PhD in metallurgy. Published a few papers. Did a postdoc. Didn't fit in the academia. Always had problems with my professors. Finally I got out. I had learned python during my PhD. Added databases and some data science on top and became a software developer. Haven't been happier.
Agree, everyone needs to get a skill where you can get a job.
So you went from a valuable member of human society to a waste of space that produces no real value but gets paid well. Enjoy until your ignorance fades. Suffice to say I hate academia but research is by far the most useful thing a person can do. I'm talking from experience you will regret this.
What a regression.
@@omegads3862 I disagree. My income grew 50% in one year. And there are lots of transferable skills from my academic background to my current job. In less than 2 years after the switch I became the technical lead of my group and now the architect. It would have been nice if I had made the switch earlier but without that experience there is no guarantee I would have been as successful as I am now.
@@omegads3862haha
As a tenured and full prof at a major research university, I give this video an A, but also want to add that even full profs must stay on the hamster wheel if they don’t want to be publicly shamed as “dead weight.” Further, upper levels are very concerned with image, and how the truth of some of the goings on should be kept quiet. Thx for the video
You're not wrong, and I suspect that the tenured positions are not nearly as secure as people would like to think they are. Given the demographic crunch of a smaller undergrad pool we will see over the next several years, universities will find creative ways to get rid of the "dead weight." One way they seem to be able to do that is to dissolve entire departments.
Everyone is doing "world class research" and and is supposed to crank out dozens of replicas of themselves. For like 0.1% of people that might be a reasonable goal. No thanks.
yeah, I want to be a prof at the universities he is talking about
@@worthlessprofessor6477 in france you can't be a lab head after 65 y.o., and they do re-assessment every 5 years
On the one had you have fuck-you power with tenure, on the other hand your inferiority compared to your colleagues has a massive limelight on it. Everyone can look you up on Google Scholar and see that like five people have cited you.
In my time in academia I learned that you're not getting far if you have ethics and care about your students. One of my former colleagues hates teaching, neglects students, doesn't know the basics of her job etc., so of course she has been promoted and was even considered for dean!
This is sadly true. The last thing you are allowed to do in education is educate.
She has the "correct" political views though
@@kenneth9874those capitalist ethics of no solidarity.
@@melelconquistador no, the marxist ethics of non performance, theft, and lies
@@kenneth9874the correct one being brutally capitalistic and greedy 💀
One late night in 2001, after being at the lab for more than 10h my experiment just collapsed in front of me. My friend in the opposite bench tried to make me feel better when the cleaning lady came to collect the trash. When she left I asked my friend, another post doctoral fellow, how much he thought she made. We quickly realized she earned more than us… I am not saying she shouldn’t have a decent salary, I am saying we were payed poorly. I went home and decided not to renew my contract when it was over. Never regretted that decision.
It’s all a scam. Peer review is a scam. Tenure is a scam. Student loans are a scam.
Well, why shouldn't she? She was cleaning garbage you created, and you were making garbage, meaning she was being more useful, so why shouldn't she be paid more, lol
@@Manx123that's a mean thing to say. I am not opposed to a cleaning lady making good money but you can't compare the job of a scientist to that of a janitor. And a scientist does not create garbage in the lab. The point here is, scientist aren't well compensated for their effort, knowledge , and the ridiculous number of hours spent in the lab.
@@samimarzou That guy is mostly an annoying troll, didn't expect to find him here
@@samimarzou 95% of people are totally confused by compensation because they have the childish notion that it should be fair. Compensation is not fair, as a worker it's about playing a game. I get paid a lot more than anyone I know in my role. I'm good at my job but there are people who make less than me who are better, with more relevant education. Their employers could afford to pay them more but don't, because they don't play the game. My pay does a slightly better job of approaching how much revenue I generate because I switched jobs every time my pay stalled. I'm at the 4th company doing the same thing in 12 years.
And that's compensation for workers. If you're an investor or a lackey (executive), your pay is completely disconnected from effort, or intelligence, or any rational quality. You get paid purely to exploit the workers.
Failing at a game with a 99% failure rate is not shameful, it's the norm. Better fail early and quit as soon as you have a reasonable plan B in sight.
Very good advice. It's just figuring out that plan B that can be really tough.
Let's not encourage irrational risk taking.
How about consider the opportunity cost and never participate in such a game in the first place? Games should not be the criteria by which rising through the ranks should be decided. Money and other rewards can be earned elsewhere, but time cannot be recouped.
Playing a game with a 99% failure rate IS shameful.
Already to join academia path is a failure from start. You act in an echochamber, detached from real life problems. You theoritize instead of finding pragmatic approaches. ANd worse of all: you teach others poor future "doctors". (that does not apply for mathematichs and STEM so much though)
@@aluisious Of course not. "You miss 100% of the shots that you don't take." If you don't play long odds the chance of you succeeding is definitely zero. Otherwise, it's 1% which is greater than zero.
A PhD or grad school can be great depending on your field -- just have a realistic exit strategy. I got a PhD and did a couple of years of postdoc training before joining a large biotech company with a great salary and fantastic benefits. Just don't get stuck in academia -- that's where the misery is. I have a lot of friends who are still stuck, it makes me sad.
Exactly, if you are in a field that is valued you have more options. My husband is getting a PhD in physics, but he does a lot of programming with huge databases, so he can use that in numerous fields.
the problem is that most people study more to get stucked in the kindergarden called academia, they fear to venture to other fields
Same here, but after MSc I joined a biotech with an entry professionaleole, after a couple of years of dedication they paid for an MBA :) now I’m an executive and rolling
@@codniggh1139 Let's be honest about how many people stay in academia because the world outside scares them.
Problem is education quality just deteriorates when you have worst kind of ppl becoming professors a lot of the time
I know somebody who was literally submitting a research paper while his first child was being born. Judging by the way he talked about it, he didn't even realize how horrible that was.
Sad also that one can conclude from this he could only have been a man.
@@ouilsen2I knew a professor who attended group meeting for her lab 3 days after delivery.
She quit her tenure track position; shes living the dream at a teaching university
I was writing a research proposal in the hospital lobby while my wife was undergoing a C-section surgery. Fortunately her mother was with her. I left academia after 5 years of postdoc and a decent publication record. Industry is so much better. I do miss being in the lab but I don’t miss the constant endless stress to work more and more. “Science never stops (or sleeps)” is a toxic statement to ensure the grad students and postdocs continue the grind at the cost of their health and family.
@@ouilsen2No crap, Sherlock!
"I know somebody who was literally submitting a research paper while *his* first child was being born. The way *he* talked about it made me think *he* didn't realise how bad it was."
My god!
I am a tenured professor, and I find this video 100% accurate.
I think the bit about Full Professors living it up and having barbeques isn't specially true. Most of the ones I know are still very much on the hamster wheel and/or nursing long term illnesses. The often made a slew of enemies on the way up and all the constant changes to the rules designed to catch them out are also something of a drag...
@@herbertdaly5190 *They often
Which is weird, because it's bullshit wrong.
I agree. Getting a PhD may have been the worst decision of my life, lmao. I’d be so much happier as a carpenter or plumber.
I completely know the feeling. If I had had any marketable skills, I probably would have dropped out of grad school!
I gained my PhD, taught for awhile, realised the above (or a version of it since I was in the UK), plus observed the decline in standards coming as my institution sought to woo higher paying foreign students with "curve" marking etc, together with the burgeoning wave of "woke" that now saturates academia, and ran away to sea. Been 14 years professional sailor. So much happier. I miss the teaching but still teach sailing as well as sail worldwide. I mourn the death of the ideal of the Academe... but glad I am not dying with it.
I'm a PhD student working part time as a hotel room cleaner. I tried doing teaching and almost died. I have done teaching in a library before and it was nothing like in academia. I love my hotel cleaning job and to be honest these people in blue collar jobs are so much happier and have work life balance.
@@Farieclau You're not wrong. I suppose it depends upon what your PhD concerns, and what it will likely be used for? Are you in STEM? I was philosophy so no condescension from me from a practicality standpoint...
I have never been more humiliated and depressed then during my post doc. I was always respected during internships and undergraduate research. I feel like It was a massive mistake staying in academia. At least I have some chances of moving to biotech and pharma industries In the future, but the transition is hard.
Add to all of this the sheer uncertainty of life. My wife had that golden ticket -- she was headed toward tenured professor. She was on the steering committee of her university and heavily active in both her field and in textbook publishing. She died this past Easter from a rare and aggressive cancer. She had a grant to write a textbook this summer, and I see her calendar events to present her group's research at ACS next month (a student of hers was actually going to present), and it destroys me. I still have yet to contact her department and clear out her office.
I will also say that she embarked on her journey because she absolutely loved chemistry, doing research, and teaching students. She was utterly passionate about her field and her life was filled with joy. At two points in her career (PhD program and late in her post-doc jobs), she despaired deeply. She was unemployed for a semester, but fought to find a position somewhere. We then lived in two different states for an academic year, and she'd take a Greyhound bus to come home on alternate weekends, while I drove up to surprise her now and then. We did what was necessary for her to make it, and the reward was worth it. Even now, having been cut short, I do not question one bit the fact that it was worth it. And I know she would say the same thing.
sorry for your loss bro
Sounds like she stayed in academia for the only reason one should ever decide to stay in academia - she lived for it, and loved it. It was her calling. Sorry for your loss.
(Also: contact her department. Speak to the people she worked with. Go bring her stuff home. There's no such thing as closure really, but there might be some stuff in there that's special to you. You might end up feeling even shittier than you already do if they decide to throw it out because nobody's been by. 😔)
This was a lovely story, I can feel the love you had for her and the love she had for her work. Made my day.
Cheers man, I hope you’re living your best life too :)
She sounds like a wonderful person with a heart and soul that was devoted to a worthy cause. Your support for her during her life is inspiring. What you had together isn’t lost unless you let it consume you with grief. Carry on with the integrity and courage she would have wanted and make your remaining time a commitment to her legacy.
RUclips sent me a notice about this comment. Thank you all for the supportive replies. As an update, earlier this week I received an email from her student who did complete and present their research at ACS. It was dedicated to the memory of Dr. Sarah Edwards (my wife) in the second slide. It was a new method for flexibly docking proteins in the TagDock software (which she was co-author of). It was uplifting to realize that her work will continue and her papers get cited.
Thank you all again.
I'm a faculty member at an american university overseas that is mostly teaching-oriented (research wasn't required for most faculty until recently). When I was invited to apply for the position, I made it clear to the hiring committee that I would need to keep my current research job in the industry (mainly because of the much bigger salary the industry offers), and they gladly accepted because that way I could bring what was going on in industrial research to the classroom; even more, as I found out, my industrial employer liked very much my academic position as well, because of the "authoritative status" that is associated with an academic position. I understand this doesn't happen to everyone, but if you're an adjunct professor, instead of looking for more classes to teach next semester, see if you can find a consulting job in an industry that values your expertise to run in parallel with your teaching load, and you should be in a much better position in the end.
Having real industrial experience is the key there no? I know too many with masters and PhD degrees that are clueless when or if they try to get into industry
Kind of hard for many fields, but still a very good advise.
@@MD-nf5rr actually there are some Twitter account users that seem to have made the switch from academic to industry without any experience in the industry. I am certainly no expert but it seems like it is a possibility if you can market your skills.
After all, PhD stands for poor, helpless, and desperate.
I thought it stood for "piled higher and deeper."
@@bigscarysteve😂😂😅
😂😂😂
Not if you do the degree in something highly employable. 😉
I worked at a university. At one point, a manager in my department invited me to apply for a position he had just posted. It would have given me about a 60% pay bump, more interesting work, and honestly a bit less work. Unfortunately, the position required a PhD but I only had a bachelor’s degree. This manager knew I could handle the work, which is why he asked me to apply, but the bureaucracy prevented it from happening. It was a real wake-up call for me, knowing that my career advancement in higher-ed was contingent on going deep into debt and putting my bigger life goals (mostly just having a family) behind by several years. Shortly after that, I jumped ship and got a contracting job that paid as much as that job posting, and now I am making almost twice that amount a short time later. I would highly recommend not establishing a long-term career in higher-ed unless it is your calling or you have a perfect setup.
Similar situation here, similarly did not bust my gut to get a long-term career in higher-ed (although happy to pick up a 1-yr gig as an adjunct from time to time, usually when a new hire can't come on board for unforeseen reasons just a month or two before classes start). I can work-to-rule (use textbook X, here are your lesson plans), but don't have any deep-seated need to play it safe. I just hope it all works out.
there are thing you learn in a PhD, i"m very sure you'll never learn anywhere else... (maybe the same could be said for any long term, low pay internship really) not saying it's worth the effort, but you have to make a breakthrough in a field to get a PhD today. in many ways, it's like writing a novel. so, if the job really needed a PhD, there's absolutely no possibility someone with even a masters could perform it without killing themselves in the process. Just some perspective on the getting passed on the job application.
The main reason I stopped dreaming to be in academia is debt. It feels like gambling your hardwork for an unsecured job.
From this comment section, it sounds like you'll have better luck at a casino.
As a PhD and full Professor with 3 decades behind me I can say there is a great deal of truth in this. It has worked out well for me, but I can tell you that you can’t just sit back these days. In many places tenure is not a lifetime guarantee as it once was, and often a significant portion of ones salary may be soft money. I tell all my grad students to go work in industry and stay far from University settings. You can turn your brain off at 5PM, get paid well, and not have to deal with the BS that occurs in academic settings.
Dude's def an academic, using terms like soft money! LOL. When I was in research getting grants I became expert at laundering soft money subject to 40% overhead confiscation into hard money subject to none. I'd run all my grant dollars through a foundation where I had a buddy who'd take the soft money and put it into the foundation account, then disburse it to me as "foundation" $$$, which were free of having some raked off the top by admin pukes. Love loopholes that fuck over the deanlets!
How do I transition into industry? I'm working on my biochemistry PhD now and got about 2 maybe 3 years left, we don't get any company groups or presentations here
@@Str8UpFaxpick a skilled trade to learn
@@Str8UpFaxmedical lab is probably your first option if you live in a city without pharmacology industry.
If you are near organic chemical plants, such as Ag Chemical or a biotreatment facility, then you are qualified for several office and field jobs.
Since you are skilled on process and protocol, then quality assurance positions fit your personality.
However most employment is birds of a feather just like university cliques. If the plant is run by chemical engineers, then they often only hire their own. However plant environmental officer is often seen by plant managers as the Toby of the staff...and they'll hire academics.
@@Str8UpFaxStill an undergrad, but maybe u can reach out to ur acquaintances and course mates for industry contact and advice? Maybe start in a technical position in an industrial lab or sales for lab equipment if u are good at socializing. You can always pivot later on.
I did grad school twice, left with two Masters'. My attitude was always rather piratical. I knew that the more I personally invested in the system, the more I would wind up like my classmates, who were gaslit, exploited, and treated like garbage. There seemed to be zero appreciation on the part of the faculty of the sacrifice that my classmates were making to be there - moving to a different city, putting their earnings on hold, not starting a family, and quietly tolerating a sadistic and arbitrary evaluation process in which anyone with an original thought or opinion would be crucified. The faculty was at best clueless, at worst sociopathic. So I just took what knowledge I could and found out my own way of making money from it. In other words, I used universities in the way they said I should use them - to learn.
What bothered me is how my classmates would get brainwashed into the system. They began to believe that failure in this sick world was the worst type of personal failure, that making a living wage did not matter, that this was the only way to live "a life of the mind". Because, according to them, anyone outside tenure track is incapable of thinking or reading a book. And, what bothered me even more was how more and more they pushed me out of their social circles. They enforced the ideology much better than any of the faculty could ever do.
I wonder when the jig will be up. The US still has the highest-ranking universities, I cannot imagine these places will much longer be centers for innovation and creativity. Brainwashing only works for so long, until brilliant, talented people realize there are much better, more socially relevant, and certainly more remunerative ways to use their abilities.
Well for the jig to be up, we have to build mass conciousness. Revolution does not form out of thin air.
Your comment, this video and other every criticism agaisnt the status quo is a paper cut on a giant that oppresses all.
The messages have to be heard and known for them to be effective otherwise what conciousness is there to be built on the masses. So we should struggle to form effective strategies.
You describe being surrounded by the backwards, well you need to find and connect the advanced first. Sure you found some in this online space, but this is effectively controlled opposition. You need to find real people in the real world to engage with in the struggle.
The number of times I was asked to compromise my scientific integrity as a graduate student for the sake of a publication was shameful. I absolutely refuse to have my name associated with fraudulent research practices, and too many at my university were more interested in quantity over quality. Leaving was the best choice I ever made
@@user-ts8ec7mm7ufraudulent research practices?
Genuinely appreciate how the sentence structure, spelling, grammar and punctuation are all top notch in the comments for videos about academia.
Thank you. If I had watched this before I invested 20+ years in academia, I might have assumed that you were simply being bitter or cynical. Today, I feel this is a fairly accurate picture. I am not bitter or cynical. The emperor is not wearing clothing.
I gave up on my masters when I scrolled through my public university's professor list and realized all of them were from either that school (adjuncts only), an ivy league, oxbridge, or an elite European school. I realized that my degree would essentially be worthless in academia if even in my own school if I wanted to teach. It's not that it was a bad school, it isn't. The academics are actually pretty respectable. But if the only people given tenure and made full professors are the highest level then I wouldn't fit there. I'd just float along from one post doc to another until I die drowning in debt. No thanks. I'm a travel agent now and making more than some of my old adjunct professors.
I could see the same thing, Im not the top of academia, an therefore would not make the cut.
Schhissh! 🤫. The reason for academics is to put incompetent people there where they can do no harm. 🙂
Any professor who says "many of you will fail my class" should be fired immediately on the grounds of failure to successfully perform the task they were hired to do.
You could do an entire follow-up on the ponzi scheme (and under- or un-paid labor) of graduate research. A colleague of mine was told, after contributing to landing a new research grant for a lab group, that there was no funding available for him - the grant money was all earmarked for others farther along but not even associated to that research.
I was surprised that yhis video didn’t include that fact.
Biomedical PhDs are a big scam.
I think this would be very interesting. There seems to be a backlog of promises in some cases, resulting in an insane amount of toxicity. It's odd to be in a place where people who have already graduated (post docs) are still stuck in the system because they couldn't find jobs. Having to work alongside postdocs is very detrimental to graduate students today.
Damn wtf!
The problem with academia is personal opinions matter so much, it's like being in a club of cool kids you really wanted to be with.
Then one of them suddenly hates you for no reason and damn you are done for.
Exactly why I got out of my PhD and settled for a masters. I had enough seeing all my professors who were in their late 40, early 50s, looking like they are 80+ years old. As the video mentions, a ton of money gets wasted on sports teams that don't do shit for driving profit for the university (Hint: It's the researchers when they bring in grant money for their hard work!). The administrators get to siphon the hard earned and entirely deserved grants that was supposed to be for research purposes, even though the assistant professors and postdocs sometimes are already teaching at the school. It's only getting worse as the administration grows and they want more money, they also allow for the admission standards to lessen so they can get more tuition fees while not hiring more teachers so they can increase the profit margins. So these poor teachers continue to get shafted and screwed over. It's a horrendous sight to behold honestly. It reminds me of the quote from Steve Jobs where he said "The minute you get people in charge who have no idea what the product is, the company is in trouble." because that is exactly what universities have become, including public ones. There are no more public institutions in the US. They are all private, including the ones that label themselves public and this is because there is dog water for education funding by both the federal and state. Therefore, if an institution wants to survive, it needs to become a for profit and that is why you have CEOs as presidents, not academics. This hierarchy is not any different from the commercial realm because we as a country don't care about education nor science in comparison with the EU which actually does.
Funnily enough, proffessionals and other tech industries from the EU tend to leave for the states because of money
@@potatosalad9085 yeah I know about that but that's not due to disrespect and under appreciation for science. That is just fundamentally the way the economic system in the EU is. Pay is either the same or less and way higher taxes due to more socialist policies. That's also why I myself chose not to move to the EU after grad school for that exact reason because I'll stomach getting disrespected if it means I can scrape up a few more pennies for my research. Everything I said was within the context of the US economic system. We are severely underpaid for how much we endure and what we contribute.
@@banzaipiegamingsocialism, lmao
@@banzaipiegaming "That is just fundamentally the way the economic system in the EU (socialist) is"
There's so many things wrong with that sentence.
@@bastobasto4866 You're correct, I was mistaken to say that. However, there are many more socialist/progressive policies within the EU than the US, thus that helps drive the higher tax rate.
This is true. I was on my way to tenure track. I had a little girl. One day, she was playing school. She said if she studies enough, she can go to college do she can be with daddy. I felt all the measure of the monster I had become. I resigned.
Sick thing is, it is 12 years later, and I miss it. Academia is a drug.
Starting my 9th year of adjuncting this coming semester. That tenured position is right around the corner! 😍
Okay, you keep believing that.
Unfortunately, many adjuncts have this delusion that they will one day make full time and get a decent pay.
The reality is many schools now have 90% adjuncts.
Decades ago, it was 90% full time professors.
Full time positions are dying by the day.
Good luck. Wish you well.
😂
As a full professor and chair of my department, I have to agree with what is said here. Even if you want to treat everyone in the hierarchy well, including the adjuncts, the reality is you will likely be frustrated, and the best you can do is just not be a jerk about everything. Honestly, not being a jerk really goes a long way towards making you respected and well-liked and pretty much everyone will let you run the department because no one else wants the job.
Other people are living in their car and you’re worried about people liking you?
Have you heard of sociopathy
@@soonaheroI think you need serious psychiatric help if that is what you got out of my response. No one can, or should, have the burden of lifting everyone on the planet out of poverty. Instead, we should just do what we can for those who are around us to the extent that we are able to do so when it is in our power to do so. The problem is that most of us in the academic hierarchy lack the power to raise salaries or otherwise provide financial assistance to others to the extent needed, but far too many people in the hierarchy actively abuse those around them, wielding power in order to punish those who they see as their subordinates (aka they behave like jerks). A department chair’s job is not to pay everyone what they should be paid because a department chair lacks the power to do that. Instead, their responsibility is to not be a jerk and instead treat everyone with respect and understanding, trying to help students, staff, adjuncts, lecturers, and tenure-track faculty as best they can within the confines of their actual authority, while advocating on behalf of those who lack the ability to advocate for themselves (in other words don’t be a jerk).
@@drmadjdsadjadi first of all, you can always leave academia and create better paying jobs.
“No one can, or should, have the burden of lifting everyone out of the planet out of poverty” says who? Really, what kind of an emasculated, spineless, low testosterone take is that. You’re an educated brown man in 2023. You should be able to do anything besides cure death by now.
Actual poverty is basically fixed. Remember starving Africans? They aren’t starving anymore.
Poverty is real and what adjuncts go through is not poverty. Subjectively, Our federal poverty line is 14.5k a year and Americans making that much live like kings and queens compared to the rest of the planet or all of human history.
fascinatingly, if you really do start behaving as an abuser in your role, they could start receiving lawsuit money from suing your institution. And if it’s just legal jerkiness, maybe they would leave the institution earlier than they otherwise would raising their lifetime income. I don’t see why you think not being a jerk is helpful
Edit: hilarious to respond to my line of a psychiatric status with you identically responding with a line of psychiatric status
I am a retired HS teacher and do some adjunct work. It's a good fit for me because I can walk away at anytime, and the school knows this. For most though, they live a horrific existence. I turned down the PhD route way back in 1990. So glad that I did so and became a lowly HS teacher. I was FAR better off.
I'll share a Romanian Prof's story he gave during the 90s. In the 40s, the Nazis marched all the students into the stadium, made them chant for Hitler, and rewrote their text books to be awful. Then the Soviets did the exact same thing, made them chant for Stalin, rewrote their textbooks, which were horrible... except for math. Soviets did have some good mathematicians and it was not politically risky, so he decided to become a math professor.
Well, I guess that puts the sickness of academia today in perspective. It could always get worse!
I dunno . I had a math teacher who went to an elite math and science program at a local university say she left a high paying stats field because it was just political and they could spin the facts to fit the narrative.
Soviets had good physicists, too - especially theoretists. We used to joke if a Russian was in the audience and raising his hand to speak there was a 50% chance he would remark that actually they already calculated what you presented 20 years ago and you did only cover and edge case of that.
.. and today they’re trying to do that for Trump.😮
I spent fifty years working in various colleges and universities around the world on the administrative side of the house in IT. In a very few places in the world teaching matters more than publishing, but sadly 99% of the world’s educational institutions have the unsung motto, “This would be a nice place to work if it wasn’t for the students.”
Wish I'd seen this 16 years ago. They got me good in science but I'm self employed now. Thank goodness!!!
Just to be clear: while academia pays their lower-level employees far less than what they should get given their skill level, several of the problems listed in this video are based on the assumption that you're planning to work in the U.S. The problems with job insecurity experienced by American adjuncts are non-existent if you're in a country with properly legislated worker rights, since the work conditions described in this video would then just be outright and unambiguously illegal. Interestingly, I hear stories every now and then about Americans being hired as managers in my own home country (Sweden) and they sometimes need a stern talking to after implementing business practices that were perfectly standard in the U.S. that could get their new company in A LOT of legal trouble considering just how illegal the shit they do often is. All I can say is that you guys need to get your unions back, and you need it real bad.
Only some of the problems are specific to the US. Even in Europe, the system of academia is rigged the way that only very few will make the step from Postdoc to permanent positions. This is by design. The idea is that only the very best reach full professor. Whether the selection criteria used in pratice are in any way meaningful, is doubtful to put it mildly.
For anyone pursuing PhD and beyond, always look for exit strategies! It is generally possible to get a job outside academia with a fresh PhD and some postdoc time is ok as well, but there will be a point when leaving academia gets difficult. Do not miss this point!
the problem with expansive worker rights is that employers (which means ultimately the customers) have to pay for unfireable employees that aren't producing value for them. Another side effect of "worker rights" is that employers are much more reluctant to hire, because a hiring mistake becomes very expensive. Whereas if it is easy to fire employees, there is not as much risk in giving a chance to someone who is questionable. And yeah, f-k unions, in practice they are run for the benefit of the union bosses and the worst workers, and are a curse to anyone who is good or even mediocre at their job.
@@adrianmizen5070 I assume this is a troll post? Otherwise, wow. I know that there must be people out there stupid enough to buy the narrative you're presenting, but it's actually quite shocking (and entertaining) to see someone being so out of touch with reality. Godspeed my friend, let's hope for both our sakes that you never ascend to a position of real societal power.
@@timpani112 i.e. you don't actually have a counterargument so you resort to insults. Weak.
@@adrianmizen5070 Still not convinced you're not a troll, so why would I bother arguing? But if you want me to make an argument then how about this: all the points you made in your original comment lack any sort of basis in reality, and most of them have been directly debunked. It's basically corporate propaganda that higher-ups push hoping that nobody challenges these nonsensical talking points. Just because you make a bunch of bs claims doesn't mean that the onus is on me to disprove every single one of them. It's up to you to argue why they are true in the first place, and to back them up with legitimate sources.
Having competent teaching skills is held against tenure track professors since good teachers foster envy in those who lack it and is regarded as a proxy for not being a good researcher. I struggled to find letter of reference for graduate school because the teachers whom I most learned from and had the most positive feedback for me had relocated to another school by the time as I was completing my undergraduate degree
I’m so glad i switched directions after my Master’s. For various reasons I knew it’d be an uphill battle, and switched fields completely and went corporate world. I very much miss the academics of academia but that’s about it. And frankly there’s not much academics left there anyway.
I am just about to complete my PhD and it has been a great decision. I did work that is industrially extremely useful and because of that work I have landed a nice industrial job. I am treated well, paid well, and have good hours. The PhD was very important for this position. I would NEVER go beyond this in Academia. That part I absolutely agree with.
That is because surely you live in a good country and did a PhD in an area that has applications in industry. Other areas have only chance of work in universities and academia, for example my field is biology, plus, I live in a country where PhDs make you overqualified for other jobs. So, is preferable to have just a master, or just go straight to work in a well paid area. This video refers specifically the generalized case of academia, a lot of PhDs that can go from their degree to industry like you are doing well generally.
I had the same experience. Looking back at it ten years later, the PhD was a learning experience, but it was right decision to leave academia.
@@VonTyrant If I had remained in academia I would hate my life. Working is much less stressful and better paid.
I went straight to industry afte bachelors degree. I consider myself more knowledgeable and useful on many levels than PhD's in my same field.. And I am paid very well.. Your route is not the only route to the top of industry trust me
@@MD-nf5rr I never said it was. However, I am doing work right now that it is very rare to have people without PhDs hired to do. All related to biotech simulations.
A law school classmate of mine got a job at the law school, tutoring the students that the school shouldn't have accepted in the first place, as the "Academic Success Director." She did a PhD in Education while there, for free, and even though bar passage rates began to tumble, she failed all the way up to Dean of Campus Engagement.
Depressingly true. In leaving academia, I inadvertently dodged a lot of bullets.
I disagree that "grad school isn't worth it." It was a serious experience for me, and I actually learned quite a bit both from lecture and lab practice on my research.
But seeing the academic rat-race from a distance, I don't envy the people in it. This analysis is pretty much 100% spot-on.
Also, the commentary about "petty people" in high places in the pyramid. There aren't very many. But the vicious ones - they make up for their small numbers in the volume of the damage they do.
The problem with never go to grad school is for those of us wanting to do things other than work in academia it is now unnecessarily required. Up through the end of this year in my chosen field, you can get your legally required state licensure with a Bachelor's degree. Starting next year you will be required to have a Master's before you are able to be licensed. There is absolutely no good reason for this - it's just about money.
Idk what field it is but most likely if you want to keep going in it: get do a non-thesis masters!!! It’s absolutely critical if you want/need to put “MS” after your name but also want to peace out back to industry before you end up like the people in this video. Non-thesis is an almost bulletproof defense against “publish or perish”.
Not pursuing PhD was the best decision of my life. Unfortunately it was preceded by the worst decision that was doing my Masters
Tenured professor here. Yes, to some extent, it does sound like a "golden ticket" that you can use to further practice your academic and creative freedom with no worries. However, I have seen my fair share of great "teachers" who got booted out due to the publish or perish requirement. It's heartbreaking every time that happens.
Thank you for this. Academia is frustratingly imbalanced. I would love to study more within a formalized system, but after undergrad, and with the advent of the multitude of novel resources for self learning in recent years, it is just a poor life choice in my eyes.
I made my Ph.D. in Germany and in the last 30 years, I work at a university in the northeast of Brazil, paid for by the government. For many years I wished to emigrate to some university in the USA or Europe. Watching your video it turns clear enough to me that this would be a great mistake!
Someday I hope to do my Ph.D. in Germany as well as work at a public Brazilian university for a little while too!
Could you give advice about academia in both countries to a bachelor student in physics who has both brazilian and german passaport ?
I'm not sure that "You should never go to grad school" is the right recommendation. I did a humanities Ph.D. in an obscure topic, made a bet that I'd get the same management consulting job with that as I'd get with a top MBA, and that worked out as planned. I think the better recommendation would be: "Do not put all your eggs into the one basket of a labor market that has many people willing to work for essentially free and even those don't make it." The same would be true, for example, about not putting all of ones eggs into the one basket of becoming a successful country singer, but from that it doesn't follow that learning to sing is a waste of time. Have a business plan for your life and have options.
I was on the fence between physics and computer science but I think this has really helped me decide. I want to have a life after college lol
I have a horror story with a happy ending. Friend worked as an adjunct for several years on a "tenure track position." He had a little boy who he knew from ultrasounds would be born with a hole in his heart. Needed to get it fixed. Needed insurance. Found a six figure job with a major consulting firm (because the universities jerk even talented people around as long as they can.) They offered him tenure the instant he offered his resignation.
He was too pissed to take it.
So he made major bucks in a high stress corporate job, but then transferred out after he had the experience. Not to academia, but another research institution.
You forgot to talk about the PhD slav-, I mean ‘students’
I'm trying to figure out where I'd put PhD students on here. In a lot of ways, I felt more respected and better cared for while getting my PhD than the one year I decided to do the adjunct nonsense. I know my grad stipend was better pay than I got as an adjunct and I even had health insurance.
@@MichaelMorissette yeah the adjuncts do have it bad, I’ve heard of adjuncts having to get on food stamps
I definitely should have included the graduate students. As I said elsewhere, I did this video on a whim because of the "How to Email your Professor" video I made that had the pyramid. I had graduate students at the same level as the adjuncts but failed to include them in the video I need to make an additional video that takes a specific look at graduate students.
To Michael's point, the graduate student position really can go below, at, or above the adjunct level. I recently heard of unpaid postdoc positions, where they essentially told the candidate we don't have to pay you because our name on your resume will be worth it. And really, with the academic job market so saturated, they know people will take it because you don't want that gap on your resume. Academia is really sick.
Slaves don't pay their employers to work. But the best science comes out of universities because they don't have to worry about turning a profit.
I'm a grad student. I haven't met my advisor in months. When I mentioned that we weren't scheduled to meet anymore, he hadn't even noticed. 🙄
Sorry about that. Higher ed can really be faceless sometimes, esp. for undergrads and grad students. I think part of the problem is the medium itself, which has the tendency to exacerbate this disconnected way of life.
I just got a couple emails over a 4 year period asking me if I was ok.
I’ve supervised some phds where l have written the thesis for them they were so hopeless and some who l saw the absolute minimum and they all passed - I’ve only known one “fail” as compared to plenty who don’t complete. The “reality’ of higher education is that everyone who turns up passes - the real work is producing something original, everything else is repeating back what you were told.
At 3:30 you say your colleague was denied tenure because he rocked the college's boat. I bet that counted against him more than being slow on publishing. Tenure is a perfect way for unscrupulous management to purge people for extraneous reasons. It is also a very convenient way for management with suboptimal credentials to turf out people who have better teaching/research performance than they do, and therefore make them look comparatively bad.
Yeah, he wasn't really that slow on publishing...it was more of an excuse to out him. And yes, I think there was definitely some jealousy for his superior teaching and rapport with students. There were quite a few students who chose to major in history just because of him. Of course the university bureaucrats didn't have the vision to see that this is a real asset for the department.
@@worthlessprofessor6477 thats... depressing
@@worthlessprofessor6477 That really so sad. Why would you want to dept to consists of average skill teachers. You'd want stellar researchers with stellar teachers. Difficult to find people who are both at the same time. Not everybody can be a Feynman.
I was a PhD student in France and saw the scheme from inside with my own eyes. The fight was real to gain those coveted, very few nationally positions. I was out quickly and found a much better paid job in industry.
lol then the same academia clowns, say corporations are greedy, and everyone shoudl work for the academia ponzi scheme lmfao
Academia is full of the most redditor ass people in general. Its a genuine crime how they receive some taxdollars.
We need to defund universities and fund research organizations like Bell labs instead.
During my first semester as a musicology graduate student, while meeting with my favorite adjunct professor who specialized in my area of academic interest, I learned that he made less than $30k/year and worked side jobs to make ends meet. I also learned that semester that my chances of becoming a tenured musicology professor were probably less than winning the lottery.
I couldn't believe that my university encouraged me to pursue this path that was a clear dead end. At the time, I had faith and trust in academia. No more.
I should have quit that first semester, but I was too proud, having moved across the country to pursue my degree. While I finished my master's degree, I gained experience and interned in marketing, where I've been working ever since, making more money than the average tenured musicology professor.
I'm still blown away that this Ponzi scheme is legally allowed to continue.
I hate people that try to shame you for being uneducated for refusing to take useless degrees.
Degrees like musicology and art should be free or extremely cheap
You should be telling young people this, at least put a video or blog out there.
@@TravisHi_YT I was just thinking the same when I typed out the comment. Maybe I will!
@@honkhonk8009 I also take some responsibility that I personally did very little research on my career plan before I pursued it. I was young. But it never occurred to me that universities would encourage people to pursue careers where there was virtually no chance of making a proper living.
This is why people who care about money changed universities. It’s not a job training program, you’re already supposed to be rich from parents
Fun video. For what it's worth, after my military service was finished, I used the GI Bill to attend grad school (I earned an MA in Communications). I was dumb/smart enough to go back a few years later and earned an MBA. I know that the final line of "don't go to grad school" was tongue in cheek, but I liked attending, probably because I didn't take on any debt. The first one had a study abroad program that sent me to Italy for a little while, and the second one kept me busy during the pandemic. So I don't have too many complaints. No chance in Hell that I'll ever work in Academia though.
The demand of leaving academia & transition to industry is so high that there are already multiple for profit businesses build on such demand. I have not seen anything similar in other legit careers.
From what I have seen there are similar consulting companies for lawyers that were specifically in law firms, likely for similar reasons. There is definitely a pyramid structure from associate to partner and a lot of trimming along the way.
It used to be my dream to get a PhD (in Maths), but my advisor told me that I won't do that. Apparently you need to be a genius for that. I don't know what adjuncts and a few other things are, but I've heard that working conditions for postdocs are not very good because they mostly give out limited time contracts. Still, in the USA I would have thought the students are at the bottom, both because they know the least and because they often take huge debts, which is fitting for a pyramid scheme, I think.
Math ability has to be at the 99.99 percentile i.e. 9,428 people per 1 math professor.
@@AdrienLegendre What do you mean? Why 9428?
@@artey6671stay away from the math PhD. RUclips struggling math grad
@@AdrienLegendre Not necessarily. People with great math skills are often attracted by better jobs.
Wow. I am an undergrad, and I had been thinking about continuing to become an English professor and author. Not sure why I blindly thought the job would not entail terrible politics and corruption. Well then.
You don't need a PhD to be an author. Just write.
I just got off that merry-go-round and got a job in research in a research institute. I get holidays and sick leave and they tell me to not work late! just went back to my old university for a visit and was told by several people how happy and relaxed I look. I think my hair is turning brown again.
The reality and sarcasm of it hits right in the feels. Thanks for this video which brings out both the perspectives in a very implicit fashion
I taught Japanese in an Australian university for 5.5 years as what you call adjunct (sessional tutor in Australian term). I found that everything was decided by the people who knew nothing about language education and my opinion as someone who had masters degree in this field didn't count. They didn't even care how cancelling the class affected not only me but also students. When they decided not to teach a second language any more, I was rather happy . I became an aged care worker and earned more than I had as a university tutor.
As someone who will complete his PhD in chemistry in the next year, I'm definitely heading to industry after graduating.
There’s like 1 job per 200 chem phds let us know if you find anything.
During my postdoc, I was getting so burned out from working 70 hours a week. I would wake up every day feeling physically ill and wondering how I was still alive. The only reason I wanted to go into academia is because I loved doing research, but my advisor told me that this was the time in my life when I would have the most time to do research, and after the postdoc I would have so many other responsibilities that I wouldn’t have much time for research at all.
I saw a study that said professors work 60-70 hours per week on average, and they spend 2 hours of that time on research. Of course that will vary based on field and type of university, but looking at my advisor and mentors, it seemed to track.
I did the math. If I have an industry job where I work 40 hours per week, I could use the “extra” 30 hours I’d get back to do as much research as I wanted (plus the rest of my free time), which is 15 times as much as a professor would get! And I would make a lot more money… that along with the fact that I want to choose where I live started me on my path to industry. I know it’s not all rainbows and butterflies, but I’d like to get some of my life back!
So, so, so true! Thanks for posting! The world--especially the young--needs to know this.
Oh I think we could add a few more layers to this pyramid. Like the grad students working for effectively the cost of room and board, and maybe even the undergrads going into massive debt because college debt is "good debt" (ppssst, there is no such thing).
Me "laughs in UK" where all student debt is blanked written off in my late 40s/early 50s.
I agree with the video. I’m a first year PhD student and I plan on submitting my withdrawal to my graduate program director and department chair next week 😅
You got out!
Do it, good decision. I can't reveal my position in the university, but no body is above me. But still this is junk, don't get caught in this.
I've seen this. I've lived this. I wasn't even an adjunct professor. I was a physics grad student TA/GA who taught 5 labs, effectively by myself, a semester since I was the only English speaker. After setting up, giving the introductory lectures, helping people on my feet all day at their lab stations, cleaning up (usually alone since all the other GAs would scatter like roaches in the light), and grading all the depressing sub par lab reports... only then could I start my own personal research and homework around midnight. I'd have to show up at 4am sometimes to eek in an x-ray spectroscopy slot for myself. I eventually crashed and burned due to sleep issues, chronic untreated depression, and no sense of autonomy based world ethic after I was dumped. There was no money or time to deal with my issues. I stopped teaching and took out loans thinking that would help, but it just played into my apathy.
Kids... go to trade school out of high school in either construction, electricals, coding, or machining (or multiple). Make yourself skilled labor this way. In high school as early as freshman year study to 100% perfect score the ACT and SAT. This will set you up for incredible scholarships. LEARN TO MEDITATE OR DO YOGA. It is immeasurably helpful for setting your tempo and establishing self actualization (google it). If you have to join a club sport make it something not terribly time consuming (self defense classes outside of school are great). Scouting and getting final rank helps. So do service hours. For the love of christ STAY IN YOUR PARENTS' HOME AS LONG AS YOU ARE WELCOME to save up. Buy your own house with at least a sizeable down payment and an escrow account. Take out a credit card you religiously pay off every month. Learn how to budget and DO NOT blow your money or have kids. Get that abortion or 3 if you have to. THEN get in cozy with a job you can kinda bs and have time to dick off on shift consistently. Now go to school. NO. FUCKING. GREEK LIFE. Alcohol and drugs are only misery. Research all possible scholarships and apply for them. HOPE scholarships, S-STEM Grants, Pell Grants, and privately offered ones. Get a STEM degree in something the marketing is growing in like EECE, Nuclear tech/sci, chemical engineering, biomedical, or mechanical. Do your research on what you want to do and be damn sure! Graduate in 4 years if you can. Do not fuck around. Be resolute with your decision to finish on time. At this point you can look for a job while approaching graduation that has something to do with your degree. Just get your foot in the door with a job that will reimburse you for going to school and has insurance benefits. I recommend St. Jude where I work. There's tons of time to just fuck off for engineering or technical staff you can use to prep for grad school. Get through your first year or w/e set time period they have before you're eligible for school credit reimbursement. Apply, follow up with your organization to check your eligibility for reimbursement and your deadline. Congrats. You now can go to grad school without participating in the rat race of blood and suffering. Eat right, sleep right, emotionally regulate (be adamant about seeking help quickly if needed), and date. Sexual, emotional, and intellectual companionship is very important throughout this entire process. Learn to love yourself first and foremost before you try to love others. Never be afraid to walk away if you need to. Remember, you teach people how to treat you by setting your tone and boundaries. Have at least one interesting hobby that's not video games or anime/manga/manwa. Aaand I think that's just about it.
In grad school it's all on you. You either thrive through sheer devotion and force of will, or you wash out and it takes years to emotionally recover. Learn to do research and how to do technical writing in undergrad. Statistics are incredibly important as are deep mathematics and coding. Study over summer breaks and on your own time. Consistently review your old material and work. For reading research papers I recommend reading the abstract first, then the conclusion, and then going back to see how they did it. Be constantly reading something, especially if you have a learning disability Iike I do. It'll help to keep your brain's "stats" up if you will.
Be good to yourselves. Hope this was instructional to at least someone.
Thanks ❤
A lot of useful advice in here
Solid
I don’t know how i got to your video but I’m glad i did!
I had a friend with 2 PhDs who was full tenured and could have kicked back and done the minimum. Instead, he taught full time, loved his students and they loved him, had an amazing knowledge of both fields and made sure his students did too, and spent every summer doing field work in the Mojave Desert. The professors outside his department hated him and wanted to get him out but couldn't. We can't have people like that teaching students, I guess.
I'm a physician, and in my graduation I didn't focus on publishing articles like many colleagues, but on playing the guitar (I have a heavy metal band) and going to the gym. I think I made the right choice.
My father was a community college professor, he did nothing all day & complained bitterly about his coworkers. He was forced to retire early so they didn’t have to pay him a full pension. I went to work in the UC system years ago as a secretary & saw nothing but losers everywhere anyone who really cared about teaching got burned out & left or became apathetic we also had a union for paper pushers like myself, I didn’t joint but still had to pay them. I left because a coworker was harassing me & following me around off campus & the union protected him. I was never able to get into college & feel relived now I didn’t see many happy people & a good friend of mine has a PhD in biochemistry & doesn’t use it. She tried teaching ran into spoiled kids offering bribes for better grades so they can get into med school. Academia is full of lazy people.
Interesting, and thanks to the youtube algo for showing up. Though did a Bachelors degree. Don't work in academia, don't plan to. This is really the best of youtube ... Thankyou
Please note that the pyramid is not to scale. 75% are adjuncts. Chances of becoming tenured is infinitesimal for many adjuncts.
Followed a university career to the level of an non-tenured assistant or associate professor (depending on how you compare academic systems between countries). In my forties, I switched to R&D in industry which turned out to be the right decision. No regrets regarding academia. It was a valuable time and experience, but in the end, the downsides took over the upsides. My adult children are both in STEM subjects and have completed or are about to complete their MSc program. They have started excellent, well-paid jobs in industry (or will most probably do so). In fact, I advised them against pursuing a career in academia. Unless you absolutely burn for fundamental research or academia in general, it's better to leave after an MSc or PhD at the latest.
Currently pursuing my MBA, not for the title but because I am positive that it will improve my skills and my career. I am not planning on getting any further than that unless I am 100% that it is needed.
What an awesome vid, too bad you stopped making them 😩. Too busy with your 10h professor workweek I guess...
College is not what it used to be. It’s become a real scam. With that being said, I’m grateful for my good education because I know stuff.
I've experienced corporate, military and academic environments in my life and I can tell you that academia is the worst of the 3 by far. The frustration you feel when a sergeant screaming at you for your unkempt uniform that you woke up 1 hour early to prepare, seems cute compared to the professor that pretends months of your work just never happened.
Academia needs a complete overhaul, right at the foundation and straight to the top. No more tenure, no more adjuncts, a totally new system is needed.
I was in grad school (obviously not for chemistry) and my professor told me “our business model is not curative but symptom management, because if ww were in the business of curing ailments we would soon be out of business” i dropped out that day realizing that having to toe the line of a bunch of people who have been dead for decades or even centuries because “thats how we’ve always done it” wasn’t for me.
As a recovering adjunct professor, you hit the nail on the head!
This is SO true, every word of it. I was an adjunct for 5 years and it is worse than what he talked about. At the end he said that you should not go to grad school. I disagree, do not think about going into academia but getting grad degrees in areas where industry research is happening can be really good. I switched to industry 10 years ago and it was the best thing that I could have done.
I'm happy your story had a happy ending!
This is part of the reason I am leaving academia after my PhD in bioengineering to start a garden centre. Wish me luck!
Yup. Spouse and I both have PhDs and did six post-docs between us, plus one stint in industry, before deciding to take government jobs. Not nearly as intellectually stimulating, the bureaucracy is godawful, and some of the key decision makers are complete morons. But you get to clock out at 5 pm, have weekends to yourself, and if your latest manuscript was rejected, no biggie because nobody's keeping score anyway. I love teaching and still get to teach as adjunct if I want to, I get a constant stream of student interns and occasional fellows coming through my program that I can mentor, and my spouse and I have had plenty of time to raise our kids. We still love what we do passionately, and like to think we're providing a valuable service through our work, but it's not all-consuming the way working in academia tends to be. It's also a good feeling to be a big fish in a little pond, and a little ego boost whenever some people refer to you as "Doctor". My heart does go out to those who take on adjunct work and teach multiple courses to survive, and to all those assistant profs who've worked their butts off for several years, only to be denied tenure.
Education is a business run by profit driven people. People need to open their eyes and see the world for what it is.
Yeah but this is sad. With most universities being run aggressively in ruthless big business fashion, no wonder they're ruining it for so many people.
My grandpa forced me to learn basic electrician skills (he himself is a professional electrician on retirement) before I chose a university.
I have a masters degree in telecommunications, although I didn’t go any further as I saw it a worthless grind to stay and the only way to make liveable wage is corruption (giving students good grades for money). So I work as a project manager in an IT company. My dad still thinks I work in my field lol.
And I know that if shit hits the fan, I always could try working as electrician. Even harder stuff that requires licenses in my country, it wouldn’t be impossible for me to learn that stuff and take the exam if I tried. Because it won’t be from scratch. Thank you grandpa.
Wow, that’s exactly why I did continue past my 5th year. In a nutshell, I could see the setup. Good vid, thank you.
I am a full professor of physics, a couple of years from mandatory retirement. Things are probably worse than they were when I started out, but even back then we all knew that the attrition rate was high in academia. Our group of graduate students used to discuss that fact a lot, even using the term "pyramid scheme"! What I can say now is that if you really love a subject and want to spend at least part of your life understanding the nuts and bolts of it, participating in basic research and passing on your joy and wonder to young students, go for it! You don't have to do it for the rest of your life and in fact, most people move on to other careers that are intellectually satisfying, more exciting, and more lucrative. The best piece of advice I can give, whether or not you wind up in academia, is to meet people in your field and make a lot of contacts while in graduate school, or possibly even earlier! That is how you stand out and it is also helps you tremendously in the job market. Good luck to you all!
Left the career 16 years ago after getting a PhD and working the post doc research scientist route and never looked back. Woke up to the fact that career prospects are so poor there and i am sick of going after soft money all the time, and that money really is important in real life. Nowadays i work 2x my old science income--and add a zero to that as well. Never looked back on it and the only regret i have is not leaving sooner.
i'm on my fifth postdoc. Only two more and i'm gonna get that tenure for sure!!!
This information is so important to put out there, the more you get into academics you realize that you are either exceptional or literally nothing... And you will be a student until your 30's!!! So you have two choices, being a genius or don't have personal live, and even being a genius could be worse because there is a bunch of geniuses out there and they will compete for the same positions... And yeah the payment is crappy.
I usually stay away from those public comments, but this video is I think spot on. In general, when foreign young scientists ask me about my experience coming to the US as a postdoc (that's been a while...), I simply tell them to stay away from the postdoc "scheme". It's not all bad, but it's mostly bad: my life got better once I quit that scheme. In general, I advice foreigners to accept positions in the industry in the US, or at best, if a University offers a position other than postdoc (which rarely happens).
The video at end seems to suugest to not even go to grad school. I would recommend to get a PhD. The use of PhD is not just an academic job, but the training helps you to think clearly about abstract problems, perseverance and also helps to teach you to communicate your ideas better. All these tools are useful in not just academia but in various other research/management fields. I dont want young students to be discouraged in getting a PhD.
What I learned doing a PhD, apart from obv the science:
* how to manage a project, aka get sh*t done (rudimentary, but at least you learn to not wait for others to tell you what to do)
* how to write (at least you get to work that muscle a bit)
* how to do a presentation (badly, but at least you aren't scared to speak in front of an audience any more)
* how to work together in a small team (important, considering that up to that point the entire education was just solo-ing everything)
* how to sell an idea (this may seem unexpected, but if you can't sell your sh*t in science you aren't getting any funding)
* working on a lathe and milling machine (at least teaches you respect for the pros)
* how a public tender process works (can be useful in business)
* how to appear smarter by listing your thoughts as bullet points
Those are all valuable for businesses, especially the first one "get sh*t done". This is why many PhD end up on leading non-scientific positions - they learned to take initiative and not wait to be told what to do. Of course you can also end up doing sciency stuff in business and everybody envies those people.
proud to say i never made it past entry level masters. bosses tend to snub people that have achieved anything more than an undergraduate degree as they're a direct threat to their own advancement. do not waste you money or precious time
I wanna get a masters in Computers. How much of a scam you think it is?
Should i just grind online certifications cus i really wanna be working on bigass computing projects and ion know how else Il get to it.
@@honkhonk8009Get you certs, get your experience. An IT degree should only come into play if there's a guarantee it will advance an already budding career.
Certs like A+ are recognised world wide and are wayyyy cheaper to attain. You don't even need to go to the class, just order the bundle online, study up and pass their exams.
Once you're playing around with hardware software, and can add Net + and Security +, (maybe even ITIL for good measure) you should be more than set for more than decent job in tech.
This video is HILARIOUS, well done!! btw, what SW did you use for the doodles? they're spot on!
I was thinking about pursuing a 2nd degree eventually and maybe going further, but... nah. Thanks for letting me know what should have been obvious, but I didn’t know how bad it was.
This explains why my Calc II teacher department head was so much more, "w/e, good job" than my Calc I professor.
In this video you explained the pyramid-shaped hierarchy of academia, but not the "SCHEME" itself. The "scheme" that keeps the system going is that (a) tenured staff recruit graduate students to do the gruntwork of research; (b) they harvest part of the credit for themselves (via coauthorship on publications); and (c) in the process of doing A+B, they end up creating several times many more graduates with doctorate degrees than there are existing tenure-track positions.
This will gradually drive down the value of postgraduate degrees -- at least in terms of their ability to help someone get a similar tenure-track job -- until it is practically near zero. (I would personally argue we already reached that point, but that's my own opinion as a STEM PhD graduate.)
In the long run it's a zero-sum game, although it can appear viable on short enough time scales; in this case a handful of generations of students. But its ultimate outcome is the same as a ponzi scheme, in that it's going to be everyone at the bottom -- i.e. everyone that invested time & money in going to graduate school -- who are going to be left "holding the bag."
The "scheme" is really a scam. The incentives are perverse. Being close to - but not actually *in* - the game, I saw how an academic's worth was ultimately judged by how much money they could rake in for their faculty or institution. All else becomes secondary.
@@derikuk2967you wouldn’t expect high school grads to all become high school teachers. They can do other things
I'm so glad I didn't go this route. I got my undergraduate degree in Investment Banking, decided not to pursue my Masters, and now I work at a ski resort and ski half the winter and have a very stress-free life. I have a friend who got her engineering degree, makes six figures, but due to her mortgage, car payments, and medical expenses for her wife: is often more cash poor than I am. She owns her house and I rent but I have wayyy less stress in my life than she does.
Still your career lacks prestige and is quite meaningless, tbh.
Kids are stress free too. Maybe you're trying reach that infantile mental state 😅
@@ghazanhussain2070 Actually it's extremely meaningful. I know someone who's job is literally being a professor of computer software architecture at a prestigious Ivy League school. He's got tons of fame, prestige, etc. But his job is basically just designing better computer error messages. I mean cool? People can exist just fine without better software architecture. (They did for thousands of years.) But without a connection to nature, people's lives increasingly have become stale, hollow, and joyless. I bring genuine joy to people. And put them in touch with nature and the planet in a way that I have seen time and again, has a profound impact on them while they experience it. That's incredibly meaningful.
I'm not so insecure that I feel the need to receive validation from others to have meaning in my life. My meaning comes from my spiritual practice, meditation and yogic practices. I know that the universe is an incredibly joyful place, if we look deep enough, and I get vast peace and joy from that. I have a very happy life, and very little stress. And one that is full of meaning for me. I've dedicated my life to my yogic practice, and I pay for that with an extremely fun job that brings a lot of connection to joy and nature to other people. And when I die, I will have lived a very full life, with many adventures, having spent my life making myself a better person, and helping other people experience joy in their own lives. That's not something I regret. :)
Those unpaid academic research roles sound like they are designed for people from Middle Class or Upper Class backgrounds who's families can financially support them with rent, bills and food. The same system put in place in the corporate world on unpaid interns. It basically is there to gatekeep people from poorer backgrounds from achieving financial and social success.
Security+, Ccna, Ccnp and you are golden!
No college needed unless you want to take a related class.
Hello there, thank you so much for the wonderful video! You've really got me contemplating my life decisions since I planned to ultimately work as a professor. I'm currently in my third year as an undergraduate studying systems engineering at the University of Virginia. I'm taking my courses in such a way that I can get my master's in systems engineering after taking one extra class over the summer after graduating. I'm currently on the fence between going into industry or trying to go for a PhD and then become a professor in some capacity, as I've found teaching others to be my passion in life (I was a tutor in high school and am currently a UTA). Would it be a reasonable idea to try for a PhD and then decide on whether I go into industry or attempt teaching, or am I better off finishing my master's and going into industry? Is it possible (or a good idea) for me to work in industry and work as an adjunct professor on the side? Thank you for your time and consideration, it means a lot to me. Have an excellent rest of your day!
I am a Mechanical Engineer in industry. I have just completed my Systems Engineering Certificate (first year of a masters) and I don't see a lot of specific System Engineering jobs. But many companies who want people that understand it. I see very few PhD's in industry. I am paid well (much higher than I could earn in academia) and have an interesting mostly low stress job. I do not do much teaching so I cannot answer to that side of your question but a masters in Systems Engineering will go well in industry if that is what you decide. Maybe go into industry and start a RUclips channel. :)