Just a quick follow-up to last week’s post on changes in higher education. The New York Times published an article on Friday, highlighting two new books on the future of the American academy and picking up some of the points I discussed last time:

The labor system, for one thing, is clearly unjust. Tenured and tenure-track professors earn most of the money and benefits, but they’re a minority at the top of a pyramid. Nearly two-thirds of all college teachers are non-tenure-track adjuncts like Matt Williams, who told Hacker and Dreifus he had taught a dozen courses at two colleges in the Akron area the previous year, earning the equivalent of about $8.50 an hour by his reckoning. It is foolish that graduate programs are pumping new Ph.D.’s into a world without decent jobs for them.

But the real meat of the article is an overview of some interesting, but slightly terrifying, proposed solutions:

As for the humanities, let professors do research after-hours, on top of much heavier teaching schedules. “In other occupations, when people feel there is something they want to write, they do it on their own time and at their own expense,” the authors declare.

The authors being “Andrew Hacker, a professor emeritus of political science at Queens College, and Claudia C. Dreifus, a journalist (and contributor to the science section of The New York Times)”. You can thank them below.

There’s nothing like an overtly contentious statement to bring in the traffic. And as they go, this is a pretty good one: “Why higher education is like a Ponzi scheme“.

The linked post is actually for a radio program, the content of which was based on this original article by a professor of psychology from the University of Kentucky. In it, she argues that there aren’t enough tenure-track jobs to support the PhD students coming through the system and that students are exploited to prop up the teaching and research of over-stretched professors:

“In short, I think academia shares many of the classic elements of a social trap: It is in most faculty members’ and departments’ best interests to recruit a lot of graduate students. Churning out PhDs is one of the major metrics of departmental ‘success’. Departments need graduate students to teach their classes, and faculty members need them to run their labs. Yet, as in any social trap, when everybody acts in their self-interest, a negative collective outcome ensues.”

Her solution? Not to accept any more PhDs:

“I’m no longer willing to pin my students’ prospects for their futures on an ephemeral job market that shines in the distance like a mirage … I don’t want to be part of the problem any more, and I think I will sleep better knowing that I am no longer contributing to an academic job market that bears an uncomfortable resemblance to a Ponzi scheme on the verge of falling apart.”

I take issue with some of the article being rather loosely written. For example, she states that during the admissions interviews, “I ask them [prospective students] what they want to do with their PhDs. They all reply that they want a tenure-track job at a research university.” (emphasis added). Now this may have something to do with psychology as a discipline, and she does comment that applied jobs in that field are in decline, but anecdotally I would say that a large portion of post-docs, let alone PhDs, are in those positions not to gain an academic post, but to acquire unique skills for an increasingly competitive private sector. To pull a number out of the air, I would say maybe 1 in 5 post-docs goes on to an academic post. And in the UK, this is all part of degree inflation: 1385 full-time doctorates where obtained in 1994/95 and 14165 in 2008/9, a 10.2 times increase! In the same period, the total number of full-time HE degrees obtained (only) rose by a factor of 6.7, from 15601 to 104260 (data from HESA). So in this case, we shouldn’t stress too much about providing everyone with tenured positions.

The corollary to the “all PhDs want academic jobs” thing is that, assuming consistent cohort sizes, it implies we should have the same number of PhDs as post-docs as lecturers as professors, lining up along a smooth career path. Clearly this isn’t the case: academia is inherently hierarchical, always has been and always will be.

But this, I think, is where things get interesting. Let’s make the heroic assumption that PhDs (and post-docs) are cheap labour. Is this such a bad thing, provided that these individuals enter into the arrangement with open eyes? This site is, after all, called academic productivity: if PhDs and post-docs can do teaching and research more cost-effectively than professors and tenured staff, wouldn’t that be better from a societal perspective?

For those of us in the UK, this may not be a hypothetical question. There is currently an “Independent Review of Higher Education Funding and Student Finance” underway, led by Lord Browne (ex-chairman of BP). It has a pretty broad remit to consider how higher education should be funded while ensuring access for talented individuals and one idea I’ve heard suggested is that professors should do less teaching and instead leave it to post-docs or dedicated teaching fellows. From an economic perspective, the appeal is obvious: post-docs earn a fraction of the salary of professors, who of course can better use their time securing grants etc. Indeed, this already happens to some extent with tutorials and labs, but why not lectures as well? Why should a world famous professor be teaching first year calculus?

Well there are a couple reasons. First, many professors enjoy it. Teaching enables them to keep in touch with students and the contact is not one way: students can often ask off-kilter questions that inspire new ideas for research. Second, for new lecturers, teaching is an essential part of professional development. It provides a valuable opportunity to practice presentational skills and, through the planning and preparation of course materials and activities, it can help lecturers to solidify their existing specialist knowledge while also learning new material.

Another rebuttal is that students will demand to be taught by professors. I can’t say the extent to which is true but clearly, higher education is increasingly being seen as a paid-for service with the accompanying “client” expectations. If I go to university X for course Y, it may be because of their Nobel prize winning professor and I may be very cross indeed if that person never sets foot in a classroom. To some extent, I think this is an issue of managing expectations. Universities should offer prospective students courses taught to the highest standards, supported by quality assurance mechanisms like training for teachers and regular feedback from students. But this does not mean that the professors should be doing the teaching per se. There’s no reason to think that a well-trained teaching fellow couldn’t develop and deliver a course as effectively (if not more) than a tenured professor who may excel at research but not teaching.

All of this is to say that calling academia a Ponzi scheme is (obviously) a bit sensational. However, academia is certainly a hierarchical institution and its functioning does depend on the cost-effective labour of PhDs and post-docs. Indeed under current budget constraints in the UK, this labour will become increasingly important and may substantially redefine the delivery of undergraduate higher education. It doesn’t mean that potential PhDs should be discouraged from entering the system but certainly there needs to be upfront clarity about their true role and career prospects.

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.

So the ideal Cal advocates is that of a hyperspecialist, that does one thing well, and that’s about it. This also fit the description of many successful academics: find a corner on your field where you are the undisputed king, and maybe start a fight with someone else on something obscure only the two of you care about. Penelope Trunk (one truly great blogger) seems to agree on the value of hyperspecialization in the corporate world too (and by the way, she does not recommend anyone to do a PhD ).

But are academic employers really impressed if you do that? I have no clue. It’s hard to guess what’s in the mind of hiring committees. But by looking at some recent hires on top depts in my field, I’d say it pays off to be an specialist, at least for an early career.

Cal got this very insightful comment (as usual):

I came to the conclusion that being stressed out and busy was for some reason a sought after way of being in western society.

Surprisingly, in the academia we manage to look really busy (as in trying new ideas) and hyperspecialized at the same time… Something doesn’t add up. Is being hyperspecialized a consequence of the market, or a way to alleviate stress (i.e., I don’t care about the theories that work two meters away from where I stand, I have plenty on my plate already)? Do you prefer to be perceived as a deep-but-narrow thinker or a risk-taking ‘trying new things’ explorer? Do you act in consequence with what you prefer?

Study Hacks » Blog Archive » Diligence vs. Ability: Rethinking What Impresses Employers

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.

Today, while googling for “tenure rat race”, I found Jonathan I. Katz’s page: “Don’t Become a Scientist!“. I find his honesty devastating:

Are you thinking of becoming a scientist? Do you want to uncover the mysteries of nature, perform experiments or carry out calculations to learn how the world works? Forget it!

Science is fun and exciting. The thrill of discovery is unique. If you are smart, ambitious and hard working you should major in science as an undergraduate. But that is as far as you should take it. After graduation, you will have to deal with the real world. That means that you should not even consider going to graduate school in science. Do something else instead: medical school, law school, computers or engineering, or something else which appeals to you.

Why am I (a tenured professor of physics) trying to discourage you from following a career path which was successful for me? Because times have changed (I received my Ph.D. in 1973, and tenure in 1976). American science no longer offers a reasonable career path. If you go to graduate school in science it is in the expectation of spending your working life doing scientific research, using your ingenuity and curiosity to solve important and interesting problems. You will almost certainly be disappointed, probably when it is too late to choose another career.

I think he is right in many levels. But let’s concentrate just on the simplest, easiest to measure: money.

If we academics do the computations proposed in Figuring Out Exactly How Much Your Time Is Worth [The Simple Dollar], we may be in for a surprise.

Basically, you determine your true hourly wage by subtracting all of your work-related expenses from your salary, then calculating the hours you devote to work each year (including commute and other time-sinks) and dividing your remaining salary by your total hours.

Since we work silly hours, the actual pay is quite ridiculous. Of course, one has to factor in the liberty to think, flexible hours etc.

One other thing that hasn’t changed . . . There are still people who make the transition into a new job quickly and relatively painlessly, and other people with similar experience/credentials who go months or years without these same nibbles. I credit the difference to two things: 1) How the person felt about their expectations of success, and 2) How far they strayed from their computer.

Dave Jensen, Moderator at scienceCareers  has this interesting post on how bombarding people with new communication channels (e-mails etc) won’t work better than face-to-face or any other traditional means. Networking seems to be fashionable, with books like Ferrazi’s Never eat alone getting really popular. Is it really the case that academics do no not pay much attention to email networking? Do you really need to get away of your computer to keep your contacts alive? I find this surprising considering how multi-authored papers have grown with the use/abuse of email. But of course, looking for a job may be a different thing. Is really a phone call better?

The November 2006 issue of PLoS Computational Biology has a short editorial with ten rules for evaluating postdoc opportunities. An interesting — albeit commonsensical — collection of hints, if you’re approaching the end of your PhD and looking for job opportunities after your defense.

Ten Simple Rules for Selecting a Postdoctoral Position

Thanks Benoît for the pointer.