
“I Quit Academia,” an Important, Growing Subgenre of American Essays - tokenadult
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/10/24/quitting_academic_jobs_professor_zachary_ernst_and_other_leaving_tenure.html
======
jseliger
Not only are quitters a large, important subgenre, but so are people warning
others not to go—like I do: [http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/what-
you-should-kno...](http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-
know-before-you-start-grad-school-in-english-literature-the-economic-
financial-and-opportunity-costs/) , and like half a dozen others do in various
links from that essay.

If so many people are quitting and/or warning others off the path, there may
be a good reason why.

This especially stands out from the article:

 _Academe is a profession full of erudite free-thinkers who feel disillusioned
by a toxic labor system in which criticism is not tolerated—so those who leave
often relish the newfound ability to say anything they want (talking about “a
friend” here). In its insularity and single-mindedness, academe is also very
similar to a fundamentalist religion (or, dare I say, cult), and thus those
who abdicate often feel compelled to confess._

"A fundamentalist religion:" if so, each heretic who saves someone else is
doing important work. If enough people do so, the message might get out; it
certainly has for law schools:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/business/for-lsat-sharp-
dr...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/business/for-lsat-sharp-drop-in-
popularity-for-second-year.html).

Anyway, it does seem like academia has grown increasingly exploitative along
many measures, especially for workers and grad students. The more people who
know _before they start_ , the better.

~~~
mathattack
This is actually a good thing, no?

If academia is hoarding too many erudite free-thinkers, cut them loose
elsewhere to solve the world's problem. If the best 20% of teachers can be
leveraged via online resources over 80% of the students, it's ok to have some
smart researchers go to the private sector.

Automation combined with cost pressure forces re-allocation of resources, and
that's fine.

~~~
mjn
Depends on whether they actually do research in the private sector, though.
Historically most fundamental science advances have come either from academia,
or from big academia-like research organizations in industry (Bell Labs, Xerox
PARC, Microsoft Research), or from government research labs (Sandia,
Livermore, CERN, etc.). Most industry R&D tends towards different kinds of
problems, applied research with 1-5 years commercialization horizons,
sometimes pushing 10. That's a valuable segment of research, but not all of
it, and it depends on a pipeline of less-applied research to keep it fed.

But due to the difficulty of monetizing indirect future advances that basic
science enables, it's difficult to do it profitably in industry. A scientific
discovery that at some point in the future turns out to be useful in
developing technology is valuable for humanity, but you cannot easily capture
that value, as it simply diffuses to the general benefit. Knowledge advances,
but anyone can use it, and you don't get to own it; you can get some kind of
satisfaction in old age in looking at how this physics discovery you came up
with in your 30s is being used to improve chip fabrication processes 40 years
later, but you don't get royalties on the chips. Patents try to change that
within a 20-year timespan, but they are not supposed to apply to scientific or
mathematical discoveries, 20 years is too short for some advances, and they
have a whole host of problems anyway.

~~~
mathattack
I guess I'd divide the research world like this:

1) Pie in the sky research that is beyond the 20 year time horizon of long-
view companies and 10 year time horizon of VCs.

2) Research that is amenable to teaching people how to research.

3) Research to advance one's career.

4) Research that is relatively close to Development.

There are overlaps, and it can be hard to differentiate between the types
until after the fact, but let's go with this model.

#1 has to be funded federally (i.e. NSF), via philanthropy (i.e. Gates
Foundation) or as a monopoly concession (i.e. Bell Labs). This can belong in
the University or elsewhere, and may or may not be tied to teaching.

#2 belongs in Universities, as it helps generate the next generation of
scholars.

#3 should not be financed by taxpayers. It's also hard to justify this in
aggregate coming from tuition. Do we really need more papers on Ancient
History, or should we invest the same money in better teaching? I understand
you need to be an expert to teach, but it seems like a lot of publishing is
purely to generate citations.

#4 If these people can get real world jobs, why not send them to the real
world where rather than stay in a profession with very scarce jobs?

~~~
theOnliest
> Do we really need more papers on Ancient History, or should we invest the
> same money in better teaching?

This seems to me like a pretty dim view of the humanities in general. Research
in the humanities is not in the same category as research in Computer Science,
for example; there is often little to no free-market value. People who enter
the humanities tend to do so (at least in my experience) because knowledge for
the sake of knowledge is something worth pursuing. Your next company might not
make a fortune knowing more about agricultural practices of the ancient
Macedonians, or the concept of fatherhood in the music of Robert Schumann, but
people doing that research aren't doing it simply "to advance their career,"
and not necessarily just to teach new people how to research either.

It has traditionally been the function of universities to foster this sort of
research, as a general goal of "making the world a better, more knowledgeable
place." It's a societal goal that goes way back: people say that humanity was
set back something like 1000 years when the library at Alexandria burned down.
This type of research doesn't fit neatly into any of your categories, and it
is (I think) a more trenchant problem. Disillusioned humanities PhD's often
have problems finding work in the "real world," since companies aren't keen on
hiring someone who knows everything there is to know about Macedonian
agriculture.

\-- a fairly disillusioned Ph.D. student in Music Theory

~~~
mathattack
I have a dim view of research in the humanities. I have a strong view of
teaching in the humanities.

In my mind, much of engineering, computer science, math, and non-lab science
can be efficiently taught online. Probably a lot of business school coursework
too. For at least the intro and intermediate courses, it's about having a body
of material that can be mastered. Discussion isn't as important if you can
learn the material on your own.

Comparative literature, history, philosophy and similar subjects are very
important, and are more likely to require live in-person teachers. Discussions
are important. Subjective grading and coaching of individual papers is
important. Multiple choice exams are less likely to work.

I'm also a strong believer that humanities degrees complement professional
degrees. An accounting major can do my taxes. An accounting and English major
can break arcane financial reports into plain English for investors. A math
major is ince. A math major who studies French literature may also be able to
read French proofs in their original language.

What I question is the relative value of the teacher's research. What's the
right break-up of teaching to research time for humanities? Is it the same as
the sciences? Is the current ratio correct?

I believe that the current ratio is not correct. One needs only to look at how
expensive small liberal arts colleges are. If their teachers spent more time
in the classroom and less doing arcane research, the costs would come down.
Perhaps if you're a top 10 school it's ok, but not as a lower tier school.

I have a right to complain as a parent, as well as a taxpayer whose government
is subsidizing student loans and paying for schools.

Now disillusioned Phds is another problem... Systemically everyone is incented
to produce more Phds than required. It's definitely a situation of letting the
buyer beware early on.

~~~
mjn
> One needs only to look at how expensive small liberal arts colleges are. If
> their teachers spent more time in the classroom and less doing arcane
> research, the costs would come down.

But small liberal arts colleges are the places that already _do_ primarily
prioritize teaching, and expect professors to do relatively little research.
Professors typically teach more courses per semester than at research
universities, and are hired and promoted primarily based on teaching ability
rather than research portfolio. This was the case at the Claremont Colleges,
at least, where I went for undergrad; most professors just did a little
research on the side, maybe one paper a year, and spent nearly full-time
teaching. They're expensive mainly because they have very small class sizes
(big emphasis on small discussion seminars), and typically much smaller
endowments and fewer donations than the famous research universities do. Plus,
since none of the salaries or lab facilities are paid for by research-grant
money, those have to come out of tuition, too. And, since there are no grad
students, professors typically do most of the teaching work themselves, rather
than offloading a significant proportion to a TA, as is done at research
universities: sections, tutorials, grading, office hours, etc. are all the
professor's responsibility.

Big research universities, like MIT or Stanford or University of Texas or
UCLA, are the ones that primarily emphasize research track record.

~~~
theOnliest
This has been my experience as well. I went to a small liberal arts college
for undergrad. My teachers there did very little research, but all taught
their small classes by themselves with no TA.

My particular field (music) tends to be much more expensive per student since
private lessons must be taught one-on-one. One physics professor could teach
15 students for three hours a week, but a piano professor needs essentially
needs 15 hours to teach each of those students for one hour a week. Some of
this work can be done in small groups/classes, but higher music education is
much more individual.

Some of my colleagues who have graduated now teach at liberal arts schools
where their tenure requirement is essentially one presentation at a regional
conference or one publication, with a strong record of teaching. Compare this
to a large institution, where the expectation has traditionally been that you
need a book deal in order to obtain tenure, whether or not you're much good as
a teacher of undergraduates.

------
mjn
It's somewhat interesting that this is specifically an _American_ essay genre.
People join or leave academia in Europe as well, but people seem less angry
about it either way. You can work at a university or you can work at a company
or a think-tank or in the government or start your own company. Different
choices, different pros and cons. I like the university, though there are
things I don't like about it certainly. Some people will go in both directions
during a career (this highly varies by country within Europe, though). One
graphics guy I'm acquainted with spent almost a decade in academia, then spent
4-5 years working as senior technical staff at a company, and now is back in
academia.

In CS, the typical tradeoff is that you get more resources but somewhat less
direct freedom at companies. In academia you have fewer resources and have to
bring in your own grants, but the resource constraint is the main constraint,
a sort of indirect restriction on your research freedom (how strong of one
depends on your resource needs). Lots of other differences depending on your
preferences. Easier to publish papers in academia (no approval needed and it's
valued); easier to do software development in industry (resources/coordination
exists, and it's valued). Academic schedules tend to be more flexible; work-
from-home and non-9/5 schedules are common and don't typically require
approval. Teaching is typically required, which can be a pro or a con. Etc.

------
mililani
My wife is in academia. Although, not in the ivory towers. She's at a
community college in California, and she's both on the tenured faculty track
and administration as a program director. So, her experiences may not speak
entirely to this article.

There are lots of problems inherent with academia that most people thinking
about this field are not really thinking about. The biggest problem, I think,
is that for most 99% of all professors, once they are tenured, they are LOCKED
down geographically. And, that sucks. My wife and I have one foot out the door
all the time. We go where the jobs are. But, now that she's on the tenure
track, we wonder if this is where we'll lay down and die. It's pretty sad,
when I think about it. You hear about it time and time again from so much of
these guys. One of my old math professors had a page devoted to this. He
complained a lot about living in Hawaii and how his wife divorced him because
of it. He had a page up here:

[http://www.math.hawaii.edu/~lee/](http://www.math.hawaii.edu/~lee/)

But, apparently, after some time he decided to take down the more
controversial stuff. The index.html page to his ramblings are down. Anyways,
that's a huge problem for academics. And, I thought about it, and I think the
biggest problem is the whole tenure thing. I think it should be abolished.
Professors should be able to move to new institutions without worrying about
that entire process, and they should be paid a better wage because of it. It
should be like any other free market enterprise we have nowadays. And,
Universities should also be able to get rid of dead weight. I've had some
professors in the past who just gave up on research and life. For example,
said professor mentioned above. He gave up on math research because the
University kept screwing them over on pay. He retired with only 17
publications under his name. My other friend who is now a tenured math
professor at a 4 year college has 17 publications at just 37 years of age. My
other friend who has been teaching for about 10 years now has only 2
publications: his math Ph.D. dissertation, and a one page paper that probably
isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Anyways, I think it's high time tenure
is made obsolete. It gives professors more latitude to move, probably better
pay, and more incentive to do research or teach better. It also gives schools
and students the opportunity to get better teachers and lose the dead weight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~~~
EvanKelly
Hawaii is awesome to live in for some people. Cost of living isn't that bad,
especially without a family. Once you start thinking about private education
for your kids (since public is in the bottom quarter of the country) you will
feel the squeeze.

I absolutely love living in Honolulu, though there are plenty of people that
move here and are disillusioned or miss the mainland very quickly.

------
AaronFriel
There are two kinds of people who quit academia: those who want to produce
research and those who don't. To the latter, I say, oh well, it perhaps was
not the place for you. Good luck and best fortune.

To the former, I lament their opportunities outside of academia. Basic
research, the research that built the foundation that makes this comment
appear before your eyes and zips packets of data around to make this economy
function, has been on the decline for near a decade now. And the decline in
corporate, non-university basic research has been even more profound.

People who read Hacker News are probably in a better state than most when it
comes to this, there are many choices of research lab to work at in computer
science. For basic mathematical research, your choices outside of a university
setting are a little more slim; and nearly nonexistent, if you, like most of
the readers here, have ethical problems with producing classified research or
working with 3 and 4 letter agencies of recent disrepute.

But to my peers in other academic programs - I wonder how much the world will
lose because ethicists, geologists, and even people who are pursuing the art
of pedagogy in advanced educational degrees are leaving academia.

 _Postscript_ : I don't mean any of the above to be exhaustive lists of
academic fields affected or not affected. It's not _just_ computer science
that has ample opportunity for postgraduate research outside of a university,
and it's not _only_ the philosophers, geologists, and educators who are
finding difficulty. To wit, I don't even know if that's the case for
geologists, but I have heard of the woes of finding even graduate study
programs in philosophy and education.

 _Post-postscript_ : I forgot to cite sources, and one summary, though five
years dated, is here:
[http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsb0803/start.htm?CFID=1237996...](http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsb0803/start.htm?CFID=12379966&CFTOKEN=70354711&jsessionid=f0307725d648dd553ba513586d223fe107f4#declining)
\- there the NSF documents declining basic research from industry and
declining funding from government.

~~~
PaulHoule
It might gain.

If you spend much time with the literature it's pretty obvious that U.S.
agencies regularly blackball particular research areas.

For instance, the tap got turned off suddenly on work on quasicrystals, MPI-
style parallel computing, and on work related to the semantic web.

In the meantime, huge amounts of research money goes down the drain in areas
such as internet QoS.

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

~~~
PaulHoule
Parallel computing, at least based on the MPI paradigm, isn't benign.

Once the DoD got the state of the art up to the point where they could get
enough workers for Los Alamos and Sandia labs they didn't want to subsidize
educating people from India and China in the techniques used to simulate
nuclear weapons.

As for other fields I think it's an issue of fashion and a zero sum game.

~~~
redblacktree
What about the semantic web? What reason might the DoD have for cutting off
that research?

Edit: Never mind. Upon re-reading, I see that you chalked those up to fashion.

~~~
PaulHoule
It could be the DoD there. An astonishing number of people do semantic web
related stuff in Virginia. They just don't publish what they do. ;-)

Thanks to the government shutdown some of them weren't very busy and they made
me a nice little piece of software...

------
mrcactu5
I left graduate school bitter and resentful. Now I'm hearing it's a cliche.

Once you leave academia, you pay for all of your thinking time & how have to
confront that humans decisions collectively by what looks and feels good in
the short term. These days I am hoping to pay for my own "academic freedom"
through service -- by working.

Then people go to the opposite utilitarian extreme. Not everything I do has to
buy me a car or impress girls.

Actually, that could be very persuasive...

    
    
      Learn algebraic number theory, get a car, impress girls!™

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

------
agilebyte
Wouldn't quitting actually fix the problem? The supply side of the equation is
_too big_ at the moment.

~~~
PaulHoule
For one thing this is an unlimited supply of very good BS students from poor
countries who want to get the hell out, and the time it takes to do a PhD or
even a postdoc is enough time to get a real job or get married or otherwise
become nationalized

------
noillusions
This year I hacked my academic job.

The previous two years, like a lot of junior academics, I become extremely
disillusioned with academia: long hours, low pay, and no job security.

I was about to quit my fixed-term assistant professor position (Maths) until I
became curious: what would happen if I didn't care about being fired?

So Dec 2012, I made the decision to only focus on high-quality research that I
care about (quality over volume), to do a decent (but not amazing) job
teaching, and to secretly do consulting/contract work on the side.

It's been really interesting. Suddenly, when I didn't care anymore, they gave
me tenure and bumped my salary. Over the year, I've also spent roughly 2 days
a week sneaking around and doing contract work which has been amazing
financially...

Would anyone be interested in my story?

~~~
xanmas
Absolutely!

------
rollo_tommasi
Maybe I'm wrong about this, but haven't most of these 'quit/don't go' essays
come from academics in the humanities? Are there similar essays coming from
science or engineering grad students / tenured professors?

~~~
chubot
A notable one that's made the rounds on HN before: [http://matt-
welsh.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-im-leaving-harvar...](http://matt-
welsh.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-im-leaving-harvard.html)

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

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

~~~
w1ntermute
> I see the "I quit" genre more from CS/engineering professors, but that's
> probably because I'm on HN a lot.

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

------
raverbashing
Well, here's the thing

Academia does not have a monopoly on knowledge anymore.

They are also usually not on the latest developments (some schools are better
than that).

Not to mention the money-grabbing aspect of it.

Unfortunately, a "certificate by an upholding institution" has a certain
value.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>They are also usually not on the latest developments (some schools are better
than that).

Please tell me the last new theory in basic science to come out of some place
other than academia.

~~~
raverbashing
Academia (and knowledge) is not only basic science.

But yeah, there have been discoveries:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_cosmic_microwave_b...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_cosmic_microwave_background_radiation)

See how many schools can offer a Machine Learning course. See how many
professors know what's Map-Reduce.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Ummm... Map-Reduce is a system infrastructure based on functional programming.
It has applications in Machine Learning, but it isn't fundamentally based _in_
machine learning.

~~~
raverbashing
I didn't say Map-Reduce was based on machine leaning (nor vice-versa).

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Ok, I think I see what you meant a bit more clearly now.

It's just that _every_ respectable CS department I've seen has _some_ course
in machine learning, and most of them also have some kind of course in
"Programming Language Paradigms" or something where functional programming,
including the map and reduce functions, will be taught.

Though admittedly, the number where functional programming and its related
disciplines are taught or researched, or even _acknowledged_ , at any _real_
level is _pathetically_ small. Yet, FP and programming language theory in
general are _still_ far more advanced in academia than in industry.

------
da-bacon
I wrote one of these! It was fun and cathartic, as you can imagine. But,
because it's complicated, and because I wanted to play around with d3.js,
instead of a long diatribe, I built a model of my brain to explain why I left:
[http://dabacon.org/pontiff/?p=10176](http://dabacon.org/pontiff/?p=10176)

------
daveyoon
Isn't this the exception that proves the rule? And I don't think very many
academics at top universities leave the field, unless it's to do something
they might think is more interesting, not to leave in disgust (perhaps a fine
distinction, but a distinction nevertheless).

~~~
unmei
Yeah, but remember there are far more grad students obtaining PhD's than
faculty positions - in other words, sure, not many who make it to faculty
leave, but far more people leave than stay overall.

~~~
rrrrtttt
The fact that 10x as many people train to be scientists as those who become
scientists only shows how attractive academia careers are. I like to compare
this to sports. Only three people in the world get an Olympic medal once every
four years in each discipline, while everyone else spends most of their
childhood and youth in arduous training with nothing to show for it.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
That only makes sense if you hold the "supply" of scientist jobs constant.
What we've actually observed is that:

1) Scientist jobs _are_ high-status, you're right, and permanent positions
usually come with a comfortable (though rarely really flush) salary and other
upper-middle class perks.

 _However:_

2) The number of available permanent jobs as a scientist has been trending
down for reasons that have nothing to do with the number of people willing to
do those jobs. Basically, research funding has been dropping like a rock.

3) The "professor -> undergrads -> grad-students -> post-docs -> new
professor" career model is structurally senseless. There's nothing wrong with
having a severe filter on the number of undergrads who become grad-students
(in the sense that there have traditionally been many fields where most of the
undergrads can get a job that applies their undergrad-level education), but
you simply can't set up the entire science career on the basis of an
exponential increase in workers without an exponential increase in jobs. The
system only even works for computer-scientist types because most of _our_ PhD
grads _leave academia by default_ to get applied research or high-level
development jobs in industry.

Now, I'm not going to be a pure-academia wanker and say, "Nobody should get a
job in industry EVAR!", but neither is it all right to say, " _Everyone_
should just get a job in industry after grad-school!". Companies simply don't
want that many PhDs in most fields.

Also, the oversupply of PhD labor and overspecialization thereof in most
fields has enabled many universities to shift to a teaching model in which 2/3
of teaching staff are adjuncts without livable salaries, fringe benefits, or
any contract for permanent employment.

As much as I really, really like what academia and research are _supposed to
stand for_ (and I say this as I current graduate student), I can't give any
kind of endorsement to the career model involved. Not while I'm earning
approximately $1400/month after taxes as an "entry-level academic" (ie: grad-
student) and a friend of mine (whom I decline to name here) with a fairly
close skill-level to me earns something like five times that (again, _after_
taxes) working for a major Silicon Valley company.

Hell, _I_ earned three times that much money _interning_ at a Silicon Valley
company over the summer! I _wasn 't even entry-level_ in industry, and yet I
made more than I do in academia and had a clearer, more secure career path in
front of me.

The thing I'm thankful for is that we're a bit less "ideological" about the
industry-versus-academia split here in Israel. Professorial jobs have _never_
been very well-paid here, so alternating between industry and academia
throughout one's career is just considered _normal_. Oh, and of course the
fact that my health insurance and pension funds aren't tied to just one job
:-p.

------
mahesh_rm
I guess our startup fit into this subgenre..

[http://blog.coffeestrap.com/2013/05/06/something-
meaningful/](http://blog.coffeestrap.com/2013/05/06/something-meaningful/)

Didn't know was something that common. Would love to hear from somebody else
with similar experience.

ps> almost 1 year into CS, 10/10 wouldn't go back! :-)

~~~
dcre
Interesting post. Just a tip — the font is distracting. Especially in Chrome
on Windows, which for some reason can't do font smoothing. In other browsers
it's better, but still unnecessarily quirky.

------
knowtheory
I had seen the link to Zac's jumping off post, but had neglected it (because
frankly most of these discussions are pretty similar).

The exception for this particular case is that i have met Zac and had some
interesting conversations, because i also work on the University of Missouri
campus.

So when the author of the slate post writes " _And finally, in a rare coup for
humanists, Ernst is departing for a lucrative job in the private sector._ "

I can say categorically this should not surprise people. Zac is the brand of
humanist who is in the humanities not because they are not technically
proficient, but _because_ they are of a technical proficiency that allows them
to pursue whatever they want.

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af3
nice article, thanks for the submission!

