Academic Productivity

Cambridge zoologist Peter A. Lawrence has published a thoughtful piece on the frustration of scientists (whether young or not so young) facing the ruthlessness of the research granting system (Real Lives and White Lies in the Funding of Scientific Research). He suggests how a “drastic simplification of this grant-writing process would help scientists return to the business of doing science” and quotes a passage from a recent NYT column by Stephen Quake, who asks what sounds to me like a challenging question:

Could we stimulate more discovery and creativity if more scientists had…security of…research support? Would this encourage risk-taking and lead to an overall improvement in the quality of science?

I take this as a genuine question in search of a convincing empirical answer.

• The full article is available in PLoS Biology.
• CC-licensed photo courtesy of A. Kuzminski.

Cal Newport says people think that the more hard things they do, the more impressive they’ll be to potential employers. He calls this the diligence hypothesis. This is a leitmotiv in his blogging.

However, this trend of getting (and looking!) as busy as possible is not exclusive to undergrads (his audience). I don’t know any academic that doesn’t look stressed. We mostly hoard more tasks that they can realistically accomplish. But academics love their jobs (or so legend has it), whereas most people don’t. People who have day jobs say their long-term strategy for dealing with no life is to amass enough wealth to have more freedom of time to be able to do  things they love. We try to do the opposite: a job we love that invades every corner of our lives.

(more…)

In a supremely honest piece, (part II) T. H. Benton says that basically, it makes no sense to get a PhD in the humanities right now.

His predictions are gloomy (and I think this applies to other disciplines):

We are entering a period in which large numbers of tenured faculty members will be released under "financial exigency" only to be replaced by adjuncts doing essentially the same work for no benefits, no job security, and much less money. Those future adjuncts are the current crop of prospective graduate students, following their dreams, embarking on a "life of the mind," doing what they "love."

Kudos to the Chronicle for publishing opinion articles like these. Ycombinator thread here.

It’s becoming painfully obvious to many academic writers that, once we remove the romantic component, faculty positions are just not that desirable (see Greenspun’s Women in science for a similar view). I think it is important to make the facts as popular as possible, so those who remain in the academic track do it with full knowledge of what they are getting and what their prospects are.

From Pascal Cavalier’s blog, I got a pointer to a nice article on Thesis time management. Looks like I’ll have to check this Canadian online-magazine on Higher Education in the future:

Perhaps what is most daunting about writing a thesis is realizing that if you want to be an academic, this is a good introduction to the rest of your career. Writing proposals, grant applications, journal articles and books will be a significant part of your life from here on. Gaining the skills to be a productive and prolific writer is key to success as an academic. That means making writing part of everyday life.

Wrestling your writing to the mat, By Käthe Lemon.

The Chronicle has an interesting piece: “Is Your Spouse Hurting Your Career?”:

in some “mixed marriages,” with no malice or sabotage intended, the nonacademic partner’s behavior or ideas can undermine or even cripple the scholar’s career — because of mutual ignorance and mistaken assumptions. And in those cases where the relationship is failing, the academic’s work can be but one collateral casualty of a wider war.