
As Silicon Valley fights for talent, universities struggle to hold on to stars - aburan28
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21695908-silicon-valley-fights-talent-universities-struggle-hold-their?fsrc=scn/fb/te/pe/ed/milliondollarbabies
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jordanb
Academia used to offer smart people the promise of tenure and interesting
work. Now they offer eternal postdocs and publish or perish. Is it any wonder
they can't retain good people?

~~~
newjersey
I think academia has a long way to go to reduce costs. I'm willing to cut
services that universities offer if that means lower costs.

Remove the nice dorms, cafeteria, and fitness centers. Remove the community
outreach programs that isn't really the job of a university. And yes increase
the number of introductory level classes taught by graduate students and post
docs.

I'm not worried about people moving from academia to industry. My hope is as
we increase the rate at which people finish high school and go to college, we
will have enough people for industry and academia. It is tempting to say we
need to offer better wages and benefits for teachers but we can't digress.
Cost containment should be our first priority.

I think it is possible if we understand and agree with the compromises we will
need to make.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
Why don't you start by cutting the football program.

~~~
swiley
Apparently these are a huge net (monetary) gain for most schools.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Is that true? I remember hearing that the University of Kentucky's basketball
program ran a net profit, but also that it was pretty unusual in that respect.

~~~
vinay427
Yes, this is also true for the University of Michigan athletics department,
which in a recent year spent around $145 million and earned $158 million in
revenue.

~~~
barrkel
Of course, it's not enough for something to return a profit; it needs to
return more profit than an alternative use of the funds. Perhaps it could have
made more money investing in postgrad startups?

~~~
PhasmaFelis
My understanding is that the UK basketball program is self-sustaining, and
additionally turns a profit for the university. It's not taking university
funding to begin with.

(Also, much as I'm disdainful of university athletics, declaring that only the
most profitable programs have a place on campus seems like a really amazingly
horrible idea.)

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aub3bhat
Can confirm almost all Computer Vision professors I know work or have worked
at Google/Facebook/their own startup at some point of time. Also these
Professors have tenures (currently on sabbatical etc.). This is actually a
great thing for graduate students too. Internships pay very well and can even
extend beyond summers as part-time contractor positions. Another common method
as highlighted in the article is to convert research group into a startup
which gets acqui-hired by Google etc. E.g. Geometric Intelligence would be a
good example.

~~~
akhilcacharya
..which university is this?

~~~
shahzeb
I'd put my money on Stanford.

~~~
akhilcacharya
Yeah, it's certainly not a common experience for most places.

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RUBwkVjwLsDKgPw
Maybe universities should consider paying more to compete with the tech
companies. It's a free market and whatnot. If the price goes up, you gotta pay
more. Complaining about the price going up isn't exactly productive.

~~~
bertr4nd
I doubt universities can come close to affording it. My CV wouldn't have
gotten me a tenure-track position at a top school, but my income in industry
is much higher than even the best paid professors at my alma mater (ignoring
profs' consulting income, of course).

To be honest I wonder if the academics that _are_ still there just don't
realize how lucrative industry is...

~~~
pbz
How much is the difference between academia and industry? Can you share some
numbers or ranges?

~~~
arjunnarayan
Tenure-track professors in computer science at top universities get paid about
100,000 to 250,000. You can look this up publicly because

a) California state employee salaries are online [1]

b) UC Berkeley is a top school for CS professors and competitive with everyone
else on salaries. Looking at random AI faculty members shows about 100k at
hiring, about 150k at tenure, while machine learning king of kings Michael I
Jordan gets 300k.

Google pays starting undergrads > 160k, and fresh PhD students > 225k[2] (all
in comp including first year vesting stock + base pay + expected 15% bonus). I
imagine if they're poaching faculty, they're getting significantly more than
that[3].

Basically I'd say the industry salaries are at least 2x the academic salaries,
if not higher. The flagship hires are paid a lot more (think Yann LeCun, or
Andrew Ng), and importantly, given the freedom to hire and build mini-empires
to do stuff.

As a final note, I know talking about salaries publicly is awkward, but this
is all public information, and grad students talk freely about this sort of
stuff with each other, so I don't feel like I'm revealing anything super
secret beyond showing you how to look up the relevant information in publicly
available areas.

[1]: ([http://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/state-
pay/arti...](http://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/state-
pay/article2642161.html))

[2]: Source: Glassdoor Google for "research scientist", which is the position
that PhDs in AI/ML are hired into.

[3]: Google levels are public, and while Glassdoor data is sparse, faculty who
are poached are hired at at least the "senior staff engineer" level, which
glassdoor says about 500k, which sounds around right to me, if not a little
low. As an aside, salaries at the higher levels have much higher variance than
at the lower levels, and to entice someone away from a tenured position
probably requires hitting the higher ends of the salary band.

~~~
math_and_stuff
You're setting the bar for hiring faculty members far too high. Perhaps you
mean tenured CS faculty? (Source: Stanford faculty in the process of moving to
Google Research)

~~~
pgbovine
Brand-new CS assistant professor hires at any research-intensive CS department
(there are ~80 of these schools in the U.S.) probably come in around $100k
right now (as arjun said, many salaries are public) ... now that's a 9-month
salary, so if you get grants to fund your summers (which you will if you're in
the groove), that's a starting of $133k annual. That's not bad, considering
most of these schools are located in low-ish cost of living areas. Of course,
there are no stock options, huge bonuses, and other lavish benefits of
industry, but it's definitely still a financially privileged position.

~~~
math_and_stuff
I meant that the parent's analysis in his footnote of what the minimum
position and starting salary would be for a faculty member to ever move is
setting the bar too high; it seems my wording was vague. His academic numbers
seem spot on, but I question footnote [3].

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sktrdie
For stars and talents, academia provides something the private sector can
never provide: freedom.

Established professors can dictate their own rhythm. They can work hard all
year long, or they can slack for some months and concentrate on their families
more. They can change sub-fields of interest as they see fit, and work on
problems they want to solve. Also, they get to teach which is by far the
biggest privilege one could ever achieve.

Of course private research provides very interesting deals, but most stars and
talents are exactly that because they had the freedom of doing things as they
see fit. Putting them in a company structure with quirky rules is not their
natural habitat.

~~~
stared
I would strongly argue with that. I run away from academia _exactly_ to pursue
freedom: [http://p.migdal.pl/2015/12/14/sci-to-data-
sci.html](http://p.migdal.pl/2015/12/14/sci-to-data-sci.html)

In short, in academia you are bound by hierarchy, local politics, grants and
bureaucracy, 1-2 year lag in anything. As a freelancer I have enough $$$ I am
free to pursue my intellectual interests (any side projects, teaching students
topics of my choosing, etc). And when it comes to teaching - I get _only_
students that are interested, not - diluted by the crowd who just wants to
fulfill the curriculum.

~~~
sktrdie
I like your article, but certainly your PhD experience is not comparable to an
established professor position which was really the hole point of this thread.
PhD's are harsh different realities. You're still a student as a PhD and it
shouldn't really be compared to anything else; certainly not a contractor
position.

You're right that there are professors that are bound to hierarchy, local
politics, grants, etc.. But the important point is that it is _their choice_
to be bound to that, not someone else's.

David Graeber once said "Every society has something to do with brilliant,
imaginative and extremely impractical people ...we used to put them in
academia, but now academia is all about self marketing." \-
[https://youtu.be/IHAJiuU5xhk?t=9s](https://youtu.be/IHAJiuU5xhk?t=9s) \- I
think this really hits the nail on the button. Academia was and should be a
place where these impractical stars can shine to their potential.

~~~
stared
I agree that the gap for academia to industry is very different for young and
established researchers.

No, I am not a PhD student (I defended 1.5y ago). And I saw that I really
don't want be a postdoc; not even as a "purgatory" to go through - I didn't
envy professors either. While professors do have a lot to say, they are still
bound by administrative duties, pointless meetings, maneuvering grant calls so
they can use it for something they actually consider useful, etc.

Sure, for some its fine (or at least - acceptable; or - they don't have other
intellectually challenging job opportunities). Some others (e.g. the ones in
the article) are happy to join Google. And I am sure it is not only about
money.

It's a very different experience than being a professor in 50s or 60s; e.g.
one day I talked to (now late) Kenneth Wilson and he told me that he had
changed his field overnight (into one that gave him the Nobel prize). Right
now it is unimaginable.

Sure, I also consider the current shape of academia sad. But... when it comes
to the "impractical" dreamers, let's not colorize the past. Vide my another
writing: [http://crastina.se/theres-no-projects-like-side-
projects/](http://crastina.se/theres-no-projects-like-side-projects/) (for
academia, look at the John Bell's example).

------
swingbridge
Top talent has been fleeing academia for a while now. Lower pay, limited job
security (unless you manage to win a few rounds of the the publish or peril
game), limited freedom to do what you want (in large part due to games around
funding and publish or peril).

The private sector now offers top talent what they used to go to universities
for in terms of access to the best resources, freedom of exploration, a great
talent pool of co-workers and decent working environment. Therefore is it any
surprise people leave academia?

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pkaye
Maybe they should pay their talent more than the administrators and paper
shufflers.

~~~
dublinben
And football coaches.

~~~
vinay427
I and a few other posters mentioned this elsewhere, but at many universities
athletics programs make profits that are able to be used elsewhere in the
university. This often doesn't include donations on the order of a hundred
million dollars at many schools for upgrades, etc.

~~~
pkaye
As I read it, a vast majority of university athletic program are unprofitable.
Many of them force their students to pay a special fee to fund their athletic
programs. The following is probably not the best article but a start...
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/sports/wp/2015/11/23/runnin...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/sports/wp/2015/11/23/running-
up-the-bills/)

------
mrcactu5
what happens to mediocre people? are we fucked?

and being successful at one time does not necessarily guarantee later success.
Mozart died alone and with no money. Turing killed himself at the age of 41.
It's not hard to look for more recent examples.

~~~
RGamma
Seems so; become a grunt programmer/admin and hope you don't get automated
away too quickly (with my current academic performance I count myself to that
group of people).

As for the second point: Depends on how you define success in life. If life's
a paycheck maximization game to you, many science superstars weren't very
successful...

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mathattack
What's wrong with this? Right now universities produce far more Phds than
tenure track positions. If the free market is providing jobs for many of them,
all the better.

The head of the CS dept of my undergrad once said to a corporate recruiter,
"You can hire our undergrads, but we exist to turn them into Phds"

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altotrees
I started out college wanting to be a professor. That was fleeting, once I saw
what my most respected professors and advisors were up against, grinding out
papers, looking exhausted and subtly hinting that I should pursue anything but
my initial goal.

When I started college, for some reason, I also thought the most interesting
work was being done in academia, without exception. Now, a few years out, it
is clear that the most interesting work is done at a crossroads - between top
CS and engineering universities and industry. I do think it is getting harder
to resist the lure of industry (based on the experience of my friends with
PhDs), mainly because of comparable pay and far fewer peripheral
responsibilities like managing labs, advising students, etc.

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siscia
Only lightly correlated, but I would like to start this discussion.

Maybe it is just me, but I have a lot of interests in a lot of different
areas, but AI just isn't one of those areas.

Maybe I simply didn't study it enough, but I can't see in AI the challenges
that makes interesting programming.

There is some resources I should explore before to say that I simply don't
find AI interesting?

~~~
llamaz
Modern AI is closer to math than the ad-hoc but often creative solutions of AI
in the 70s/80s. This is a very good sign, but it brings AI closer to the kind
of work that engineers do with MATLAB. I personally prefer it that way, but
it's definitely quite different to other types of programming.

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jasonjei
While they used Google for the example of large companies hiring academic
talent, IBM did this too back in the 90s for chess.

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ehudla
Has the distinction between basic and applied research become irrelevant?

