
I’m leaving academia - srl
https://medium.com/@jamesheathers/i-quit-be062295f638
======
alpineidyll3
Perhaps part of the reason quit lit is so common is that colleagues who remain
recoil in horror when they talk with someone who quit. The quitter is left
with no one to talk to but the cold vacuum of internet. For months I would get
emails asking if I was "okay". When I would giddily explain that I've never
made a better decision than leaving my faculty appointment-- that would be
enough to never hear from him/her again.

Academia in its modern, McKinseyfied, perverse form doesn't do much good for
anyone/anything besides endowments. It's really hard to admit that after
you've sunk a decade into it (and are supposedly lucky enough to be faculty).

For my own sake, I wish there had been a faster way to look behind the
curtain... C'est la vie!

~~~
mjburgess
So you're blaming the semblance of market reforms for the overproduction of
PhDs?

The reason we have too many PhDs, and too many students is the same: our dumb
parents generation thought that "education" was important and demanded
government support for all their children.

Without the state artificially funding this no one in their right mind would
do it. Our parents demanded it, and we got it. Turns out its a scam.

Hardly anything to "McKinsey"ificaiton

~~~
chrisseaton
> The reason we have too many PhDs

In what sense do we have too many PhDs? The market for PhDs is pretty
competitive.

~~~
laingc
We graduate an order of magnitude more PhDs than anyone has a real use for.

Even ignoring arts and humanities PhDs which are obvious cases, in fields like
biology a newly minted average PhD has roughly zero people competing for them.
They’ll be lucky to find a job even close to their field. You have biology
PhDs working as Clinical Research Associates, for heaven’s sake.

~~~
chrisseaton
I don't understand - you can do thousands of jobs with a PhD.

You can be a high-school teacher in your subject for example.- I don't think
we have a shortage of teachers! Or you can work in industry.

Not everyone does a PhD in order to get onto a tenure track at a college,
which is what I think you meant.

~~~
laingc
As someone with a PhD who works in industry, that’s certainly not what I
meant.

There is a massive, massive oversupply of PhDs. We can argue about the
magnitude of the oversupply, but the reasonable range of discussion is between
“huge” and “gigantic”.

~~~
chrisseaton
> There is a massive, massive oversupply of PhDs.

There clearly isn't - since there's such huge competition to hire them. If
there was a massive oversupply they'd be unemployed.

~~~
laingc
There is almost no competition to hire them, as far as I can see.

Maybe top-flight CS PhDs from Stanford, I’d believe that. But your average
biology or chemistry PhD? Every single one of them that I know struggled
mightily in the job market.

------
ssalazar
Left academia shortly after finishing my PhD and haven't looked back in the
slightest. Aside from the issues of personal harm touched on by the author, I
felt serious ethical issues participating in a system that convinces incoming
students to make financial decisions that in many cases were demonstrably not
in their best interests.

~~~
stepstop
What about teaching at the community college leve and provide the insight
there?

~~~
ssalazar
Community college is certainly a key part of the solution for students (we
recommended many students pad out their non-major credits this way to save
time/money), but for an academic with an R1 STEM PhD its unfortunately not a
great mix of impact/compensation compared to going industry.

------
whatever1
Welcome to the corporate world where you will have to obey to obscure
requests, work on boring projects, spend all of your day in useless meetings,
and suck it up.

On a different note, the grass is always greener on the other side.

~~~
JamesBarney
Except for the useless meetings, is this that different from academia?

~~~
whatever1
Being a professor is more like being a business owner, than an employee. You
are the master of your own, you get to have people working on your ideas, but
granted you have to submit a lot of proposals to achieve so.

Definitely though you don’t have anybody over your neck dictating you what you
should be doing day-in, day-out.

~~~
JamesBarney
Isn't that just tenured professors, a small portion of academia, which doesn't
include adjunct professors, teacher assistants, or research assistants?

~~~
throwawaygh
_> tenured professors_

It includes all tenure-track professors.

 _> which doesn't include adjunct professors_

Yeah, those are called "temp teachers". Don't get distracted by the fact that
they teach courses at a university instead of a high school. The job is
functionally the same.

 _> teacher assistants, research assistants_

That's not a job. That's a thing a student can do to receive funding for their
studies. It's up to the student to make sure that they use the time they
invest in their phd program wisely. Good professors will help.

------
semi_good
Real world rewards brevity. I predict a learning curve.

------
klyrs
So much of this resonates with me, and I quit for a lot of the same reasons.
My immigration experience was a bit easier as an American immigrant in Canada,
but for example, "universal" healthcare is a myth. You can't get public
insurance in your first 6 months. You get travel insurance, except when you
visit your home country "because it's presumed that your home country will
cover your health needs." Guffaw.

~~~
petermcneeley
" but for example, "universal" healthcare is a myth. You can't get public
insurance in your first 6 months."

We also have "universal" voting rights as well that are not accessible till
you become a citizen.

~~~
__s
You also have felony disenfranchisement in the US

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_disenfranchisement_in_t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_disenfranchisement_in_the_United_States)

------
supernova87a
Certain relatively more "pure" sciences have a very bad habit of making people
feel bad about leaving -- or people who are in those fields going through a
lot of "departure guilt" placed on themselves.

I have learned that this is not because they have some objectively better life
(or prestige) in academia, but rather because most people within the field
don't know what the real world is outside and subject themselves to a hostage-
like mentality.

The sad thing is that everyone leaves academia at some point (practically
speaking, except for the few lifelong people who get to the very top -- and
that is like hitting the lottery, so why bet on it). If you're sure to leave,
why contribute to giving people angst about leaving? Why feel guilt over
something that is an unavoidable part of the path?

These fields should more actively show students and researchers that there is
life / jobs outside of the field and what you can do with your degree and
education. The field I am pretty sure will only become better because of it.
It will not be like you turned traitor to it and are worthy of only being
talked about in hushed tones as "someone who left".

------
phkahler
Do these guys ever talk about how they love teaching? The primary purpose of
universities is ostensibly teaching, yet these people are all about other
things. That's fine, but perhaps they really are working in the wrong place.

~~~
goldemerald
I don't think a university's primary purpose is teaching; I believe it's for
research.

For example, a PhD prepares you for a life of research, not one of teaching.
At my institution, advisors strongly prefer their PhD students are RAs and not
TAs (research assistants who do no teaching, vs teaching assistants who might
be responsible for an entire class).

If you look at a professor's job description, it's often 16 hours teaching
duties per week, with the rest for research. Most professors I know rarely
work less than 60 hours a week, so the majority of that time is on research
related work.

~~~
mattbk1
It depends on the university and the department, something that is lost on a
lot of undergrads picking a school.

Perhaps I'm old-school, but IMHO (as someone with a PhD), the obligation to
teach comes with the advanced degree/advanced knowledge. You were trained to
know more about this subject than most other people in the world, therefore
part of your job (whether paid or not) is to teach others in some way.

~~~
magicsmoke
That depends on who you assign the professor to teach. If they're teaching and
training new PhDs and researchers that need to know the latest knowledge in
the field, then that's a reasonable use of the professor's research time. It
could be this professor is one of dozens of people around the world actually
qualified to teach and interpret the results of ongoing research. If they're
being assigned to teach undergrads Chem 101 than that's a waste of valuable
time.

Universities should be bifurcated into research organizations and public
education organizations. Research organizations should still teach, but to an
audience of trainee researchers. Public education organizations can focus
their time teaching the majority of students using polished pedagogical skills
and collating key results from research organizations into more accessible
formats.

------
brofallon
Many folks, especially those in academia, really seem to value academic
positions, but I'm not really sure where that comes from. Teaching isn't often
the greatest part (though I recognize that not every professor has to teach,
much), the success of much of your work is at the whimsy of a small handful of
reviewers who typically aren't held accountable for the quality of their
reviews, and the schedule can be very demanding pre-tenure, at least. Of
course, many annoyances also exist outside academia, I'm just saying that
academic jobs are no panacea, and I'm not sure why so many people value them
so highly

I have a PhD but ended up working in "The Industry" and it's been awesome -
good salary, interesting problems, smart co-workers, real-world impact.

~~~
lambdatronics
It comes from the ideal -- the freedom to work on big ideas/problems, with an
approach of your choosing. There are a lot of parallels between running a lab
as a professor and launching a start-up. The whole grant & publishing review
process has really gotten ridiculous -- but incoming grad students aren't
informed about this, generally.

------
marcus_holmes
Other scientists on HN: are his comments about how badly science is being done
accurate?

If so, why/how did it get this way?

Have you had any experience of it?

I'm kinda horrified that all the comments so far are about academic careers
and no-one's mentioned one of the fascinating parts of the article: that
science is being done badly and the task of spotting that and clearing it up
is not considered valuable.

------
sequoia
> in a state which mainly grows corn and racism.

He sounds like a condescending prick. He even admits as much. Why did he apply
to work somewhere where he would be surrounded by people he considers so
infinitely inferior to himself? One can say "I don't want to live there"
without insulting everyone who does live there.

His work sounds immensely valuable, it's sad he hasn't internalized the fact
that working with other people & in institutions requires patience and
personal compromise. Or perhaps he has and that's why he's quitting. I'm sorry
to say I predict he'll have a rude awakening when he learns that most of these
compromises are neccesary in the private sector as well.

I understand his complaints & they seem legitimate, but buddy... "if you walk
around running into assholes all day, perhaps you're the asshole." And his
considering his condescending, archly superior tone towards those he considers
beneath him, I'd wager you could lose the "perhaps."

EDIT: If you just read the bits between "Resistance / lack of options for the
work I want to do" and "Conclusion" it's quite an interesting and informative
blog post!

~~~
NotSammyHagar
In academia, it's often so hard to get a job you'll take that place that
offers you one, no matter where it is, so you can get started. The thing that
bugs me is that article is just laid out in a painful way. It's like a fluff
article that has just a few things to say but shreds the short version and
fills out a much longer space.

~~~
sequoia
I totally get it, my dad moved to Tennessee for a professorship, and I
followed him a few years later while in highschool. It wasn't my first choice!
But after a month or two of grousing about what a shitty little 2-bit town I
thought Johnson City was as a highschooler, my dad suggested I chill out on
criticizing the town and the people in it all the time, and I think that was
good advice. While it may not have been a great "culture fit" for me, that
doesn't make me better than the people who live there.

I also would not move away from where I like to live for a job.

------
codezero
It's quite a bummer that he identified two things I identified that caused me
to decide to leave academia, age and pedigree.

I was working in a field that wasn't super hot or trendy, but for which there
was a lot of low hanging fruit that a ... lesser physicist could actually work
on to move the needle. It was gratifying, but the "system" for granting PhDs,
and granting funding isn't designed for "B" players, and it's a bummer.

My age and experience in other fields helped me contribute to the rest of my
team's goals in ways that I think wouldn't have otherwise happened if someone
from a more traditional path had been on the team instead. Oh well :)

------
NicolasGorden
I read the article in full. I love his disclaimers at the end, it avoids
people using this for their own confirmation bias.

It seems there must always be a balanced tension between those that cooperate
and those that pressure against cancerous cooperation within any system.

I think as the world becomes more complex and interconnect, as people become
more specialized and interdependent, there's a trend that is skewing our
reward system toward cooperation to the detriment of the balance needed
between the two forces.

I think this is happening at multiple social levels including the business
level, but it's most visible in academia since academia lacks a clear success
metric.

------
ed25519FUUU
> _I’m working out of state, but I refuse to uproot my wife, who has an
> excellent job where we live and doesn’t want to move for very good reasons,
> and my cat, who I’m afraid is now chronically ill, for an allegedly-tenured
> job at a university in a state which mainly grows corn and racism._

I find that most people who hold these prejudices against "flyover country"
have the privilege of never having their worldview tested.

