
Academia Is Eating Its Young - irollboozers
http://www.pressbuttongoboink.com/post/46098715071/academia-is-eating-its-young
======
ChuckMcM
For a while now, I've pondered the creation of a new scientific society,
something which has the same 'vibe' as the Royal Society did in the late 1800
early 1900's. Sort of a 'gentlepersons group' of critical thinkers. The
promise is freeing science to once again flourish, the danger is something
like TEDx.

A society to promote the pursuit of science by the common man or woman, with
rigorous debate and discussion. A society where everyone agreed on the ground
rules about what constituted 'science' and what constituted quackery.

We are almost to the point where we have enough multi-billion individuals that
such a society could be endowed to create a place for science and scientists.
Research without the requirement to teach undergraduates, publication with the
requirement of a Ph.D. I could imagine that people who could learn the
discipline to do the research could be supported in that research by some
facilities and a modest stipend. Not the crazy big investment stuff like
Fusion Reactors, but smaller problems like characterizing digestive flora in
developed and undeveloped countries.

Its probably a pipe dream. But I wish such a group existed.

~~~
frozenport
Gentlemen scientists tended to be free of the responsibilities of the common
man. The vibe of the Royal Society was a bunch of stuck up nobility debating
worthless issues. There is a vain of thought that says science was promoted
during the enlightenment precisely because it distracted the nobility from
aspiring for social change. Voltaire in Candide mocked this with a debate, if
I recall on sheep color.

~~~
deathcakes
I'm sorry but your characterisation of the issues as being worthless seems to
be entirely missing the point of intellectual thought. It is very difficult to
predict what is fruitful and what is not when we are unsure of the
destination.

------
wallflower
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner Kary Mullis (the genius inventor of PCR)
talks about this at length in an excellent essay in his book "Dancing Naked in
the Mind Field". The book, overall, is ok - some of the stories/opinions he
holds are "alternative" and a refreshing perspective.

"Because of science - not religion or politics - even people like you and me
can have possessions that only a hundred years ago kings would have gone to
war to own. Scientific method should not be take lightly.

The walls of the ivory tower of science collapsed when bureaucrats realized
that there were jobs to be had and money to be made in the administration and
promotion of science. Governments began making big investments just prior to
World War II...

Science was going to determine the balance of power in the postwar world.
Governments went into the science business big time.

Scientists became administrators of programs that had a mission. Probably the
most important scientific development of the twentieth century is that
economics replaced curiosity as the driving force behind research...

James Buchanan noted thirty years ago - and he is still correct - that as a
rule, there is no vested interest in seeing a fair evaluation of a public
scientific issue.

Very little experimental verification has been done to support important
societal issues in the closing years of this century...People believe these
things...because they have faith."

------
microarchitect
The article is rather vague on what he thinks are the problem with academia.
All I can see is this:

 _Instead, it’s the politics, the inefficiency, and the in-bred hostility
towards change has driven these incredible people out of academia._

Good luck getting politics out of human systems involving more than a few tens
of people. It's just inevitable.

I don't know what he specifically means by inefficiency and in-bred hostility.
One form of inefficiency I can think of is the constant grant writing
professors have to do. But then this is just a product of penny pinching
politicians and our anti-intellectual culture. I am not sure how academia can
fix this.

I have no clue what he means by "in-bred hostility". I'm not the most sociable
person in the world, but the number of positive interactions I've had with
other researchers is vastly outweighed by the few negative interactions I've
had with academic jerks.

The title of "academia eating its young" suggested me to the lament of many in
the biomedical fields who seem go from postdoc to postdoc for years on end
because permanent faculty positions are few and far between. Again, this is a
direct result of the shrinking levels of funding going into research and
higher education. This isn't academia eating its young, it's our society
eating academia.

~~~
anologwintermut
I think academia is eating the young if it lets people do that in exchange for
producing papers that the PI gets the credit for. Precisely because it isn't
the case in all of academia, in the parts where it is, I think it really is
eating the young.

------
simonster
Some scientists are too old to change, and too proud to believe the results of
their younger counterparts. It's stupid and it sucks, but it's crazy to think
Microryza will fix this in any substantial way. Crowdfunding science
encourages projects that are "sexy" but don't build toward real advances, and
so are of questionable scientific value (two examples off the top of my head:
[http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/121115/srep00834/full/srep00...](http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/121115/srep00834/full/srep00834.html)
and [https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/01/science/new-research-
sugg...](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/01/science/new-research-suggests-two-
rat-brains-can-be-linked.html)). Moreover, projects that the average person
can't understand are at a great disadvantage, and your success rate is tied to
the ability to sell yourself, rather than the merit of your research or your
abilities as a scientist, which the average person not in your field will be
unable to assess. For all of the problems with the present grant funding
system, I find it very difficult to believe that crowdfunding could allocate
resources more efficiently.

------
richardjordan
This is part of a broader problem in society with baby boomers not retiring or
stepping aside for the next generation as has always happened before and it
has broken many systems.

Is this because boomers consistently voted for tax via over safety net and
then squandered that money so cannot afford to retire? Maybe. Is it because
they're healthier than prior generations at the same age and the size of their
demographic bulge means there are just more folks who don't feel ready to
retire? Possibly.

In the US tenure systems are killers for younger talent. In my subject they
led to one dominant branch of physics dominating tenure tracks - string
theorists - with no real opportunities for other ideas ...now 20 years on and
string theory appears to have been a terrible squandering of a lot of talent
with little predictive science emerging from all that work.

It's somewhat depressing.

I once had a letter published in new scientist when I was an undergrad
pointing out that there were no career paths for scientists as financially
attractive as the most basic entry level job available to non-scientists. But
that was nearly 20 years ago. Things have just got worse since.

~~~
impendia
> This is part of a broader problem in society with baby boomers not retiring
> or stepping aside for the next generation as has always happened before and
> it has broken many systems.

-1. If a 60-year-old is doing good, productive work, enjoys it, and wishes to continue it, why should he or she retire?

Your argument, at least in the broader sense, seems to rely on the fallacy
that there are a fixed number of jobs, and an older worker who chooses to
continue working is "taking the place" of someone younger.

In more restricted contexts, such as academia, this _is_ more or less true,
and the tenure system does allow for older professors to stop pulling their
weight if they choose. (Most of them don't do so.)

But are you prepared to demand of older, productive workers that they quit
simply because you would like to take their place? I find such a sentiment to
be profoundly selfish.

~~~
richardjordan
I didn't say they should. You're raising a straw man. I merely said this is
the traditional structure on which our society has been working and it is now
broken and having all sorts of repercussions.

To your other point there absolutely are only a small number of academic jobs
in relation to population size. You can't have society made up of academics.
Or any jobs which require a pyramid of supporting jobs to find them and make
them viable.

~~~
impendia
> You're raising a straw man.

Perhaps I have misunderstood your point. If so, then I apologize -- and I also
invite you to explain further. What exactly is broken?

~~~
richardjordan
For generations there was a steady transition of senior roles to you get
generations at a pretty regular pace. For a number of reasons this hasn't
happened with the transition from the baby boomers. This has led to a bunch of
problems. A backlog if talent with no career progression opportunities.
Because younger generations haven't had the positions of seniority open to the
same degree they haven't learned progressively how to manage that transition
either. This means that when the transitions do happen people will be moving
into roles both older and less well prepared. It's a big problem in all
aspects of the public sector in particular.

------
irollboozers
The one person I feel most strongly about this is Elizabeth Iorns.

Elizabeth was named one of the 10 most important people by Nature last year,
for her work in the Reproducibility Initiative and with Science Exchange
(<http://www.nature.com/news/366-days-nature-s-10-1.11997>). She is one of the
most genuinely passionate researchers I know, and she cares deeply about doing
good science.

If she is not teaching the next generation of scientists by the time I die,
all of my work will have been for naught.

I could go on and on about the number of brilliant scientists who are
struggling in today's system. There is a huge bottleneck of innovation and
it's entirely self-imposed. Someone or something is going to blow that
bottleneck to shreds, and the world will start to see incredible things.

~~~
ams6110
The entire college/university ecosystem is poised for collapse over the next
couple of decades. After centuries of monopoly in the collection and
dissemination of knowledge, they are being challenged by higher value free
market alternatives on the internet, and they have absolutely no cultural or
instinctive capability to react to it.

I'm not sure where Research will end up, but I don't think academic
institutions as we know them today will be around a whole lot longer.

~~~
pekk
There is no higher value free market alternative to academic research. This
does not exist. Publication is a different issue altogether.

What do you have in mind - huge companies like Microsoft trying things and
occasionally letting out crumbs? People blogging their speculations about the
cause of autism? The problem with depending 100% on non-academic research is
that either real information is not being produced in a rigorous way, or that
details like methods are not published so it's reproducible, or that the key
stuff is withheld for business purposes.

~~~
burntsushi
Perhaps you have not heard of Microsoft Research. [1]

[1] -<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Research>

~~~
Q6T46nT668w6i3m
I took a random sample of 25 papers from:

[http://research.microsoft.com/apps/catalog/default.aspx?p=1&...](http://research.microsoft.com/apps/catalog/default.aspx?p=1&sb=no&ps=25&t=publications&sf=&s=&r=&vr=&ra=)

68% of the authors hold academic positions.

~~~
irollboozers
Many of those academic positions are just for show, so that another university
can't lay claim on them.

University of Washington has many 'sponsored' positions, but basically what it
amounts to is Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft giving money in exchange for that
researcher's time. Latest example would be Babak Parviz, EE prof who spends
all time at Google ([http://news.cs.washington.edu/2013/01/26/babak-parviz-on-
goo...](http://news.cs.washington.edu/2013/01/26/babak-parviz-on-google-
glass-200-on-february-1-cse-403/))

~~~
Q6T46nT668w6i3m
I just checked. Most had verifiable course loads (i.e. personal websites with
course information).

------
namank
The reward structure we live by is oriented towards extrinsic motivation even
when work produced by intrinsic motivation is known to be of higher quality.

There goes a story that Edison was taught this lesson when he tried to sell
his very first voting machine. He was told, "we don't want it if we can't mess
with it". That's when he is suppose to have decided to only work on projects
that people wanted.

Then there is Tesla - worked on projects without much regard to their social
or economic relevancy.

Do not make this into a debate about Edison vs. Tesla, this is just to show
how fucked up is this world we live in. I think all of us, hackers, hustlers,
and designers, have made a similar choice at one time or another when we've
decided to _do it for the x_ or _be true to yourself_.

~~~
jacoblyles
The problem with intrinsic motivation is that people use it as an excuse to
exploit other people.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
The problem with intrinsic motivation is that it often makes itself
unaccountable to _getting results_.

And I don't mean _economic_ results, I mean results of any kind. This is
actually one of the reasons I'm in CS grad-school right now rather than
anything else: I _could_ spend my life hacking away at Cool Stuff as open-
source projects, joining open-source projects, coding whatever for a day job.
I could. But I've already done hobby stuff in realms that intersected
partially with research, and found that it's just too easy to _completely
bullshit myself_ if I don't have real research training.

So I'm here getting the real research training, in hope of writing things that
are less prone to self-delusion and bullshit.

No word yet on my final career plans, because the grandparent was definitely
right about one thing: I do my best stuff when intrinsically motivated and I
find money-motivated careerism more of a burden than anything else.

------
anologwintermut
I always wonder when reading these just how much the author is rationalizing
their choice to leave. If( and I'm assuming here) they were in grad school for
CS and left , most of those problems really don't apply.

There isn't the glut of adjuncts and postdocs one sees in e.g Micro biology
because industry absorbs most of them. Tech transfer isn't nearly as big a
problem (though may still be a problem). And reproducibility and data fraud
are not nearly as pervasive for the simple reason that a lot of CS work is not
experimental in that sense.

This reads like someone's grab back generic issues with academia that don't
all apply to any given field.

~~~
jurassic
For all but the superstars with a desire to pursue academia, it is irrational
to stay. Especially outside CS, a lot of quality people are heading towards
oblivion (middle age with no job, no prospects) by doing a PhD. I know some of
them, and it makes me sad to think about it. There just aren't enough jobs and
funding dollars to go around. It's not to humanities adjunct-hell level yet,
but it stopped being a sound economic decision a long time ago.

When people criticize academia I listen because I think everybody's got
something to say, even if part of their message is self-justification. In non-
CS sciences with fewer pathways to industry, it takes guts to speak out about
the truth of the situation because the culture selects so strongly against it.

~~~
XorNot
What we desperately need is far less people _wanting_ to do a PhD, and its not
because it would reduce competition - it's because then the entire postgrad
student environment would be forced to seriously consider how it attracts
students.

Unfortunately its very hard to make a rational sort of choice at the junction
point where you choose, because by then you've already decided you want to do
a PhD and so any offer seems like a good one.

But you really shouldn't do this: you need to turn a critical eye to the
facilities if you're looking at physical sciences, get a feel for the
environment (basically, if people are joking something is _always_ broken,
that's a red flag because it won't be funny 18 months in), and try and figure
out where your supervisor is at regarding publications - anyone who's
established but say, lacks a Nature paper, or has one, needs to be treated
suspiciously because their incentive to help you get papers published is low
compared to wanting you to pursue high-risk/high-reward type activities. You
also really need to pay attention if the project you're being asked to do
matches up with what the lab/group you'll be in can do.

A PhD is taking effectively a massive paycut for nebulous future earnings
potential, not to mention is asking a lot of your enthusiasm and creativity
for a long duration.

------
marcelsalathe
There really isn't anything substantive in this post. Almost all of the
problems that are linked to are due to funding cuts.

"Science and academia are entirely broken today, but we can longer afford to
wait for the dinosaurs to die." Please - what exactly is the author trying to
say? What exactly is broken, who are the dinosaurs, and what do they have to
do with it? Science works very well, as it long has, and in fact in works much
much better than it ever has, due to increasing transparency and fairness in
all aspects of the academic pipeline (admission, graduation, funding, peer
review, publication, etc.)

Certainly, funding is tight, which might drive a lot of very creative people
away - but a lot of very creative people remain, and not everybody wants to be
in academia anyway.

Also, it's true that academia can be very inefficient, but that's not globally
true, and neither is it an academic problem alone. Most importantly, it's
something that can be fixed.

------
eridius
The comments for this article are loading on top of the article itself. It's
completely unreadable. Anyone else seeing this?

~~~
irollboozers
Sorry, someone else mentioned this. It's working on mine, but I'll get a fix
in later.

~~~
frogpelt
It's still doing it.

------
wfunction
All I saw in that post is basically:

\- Science is broken and needs to be fixed

\- A 22-year-old bioengineer taught himself how to code

\- The author started Microryza

and now this is on the HN front page. Did I miss an important sentence
somewhere, or is that the actual summary?

~~~
streptomycin
It fits the meme of "entrepreneur saves the world with a simple hack that
revolutionizes a stagnant market", so it gets upvoted by people who aren't as
familiar with academia (i.e. most people here) and thus can's see past their
biases and through the platitudes.

~~~
irollboozers
Science is notoriously bad at fixing its own problems. The meme plays well on
HN because most people here believe in building solutions for themselves.

We were scientists. We didn't want to deal with stupid shit. So we built
something for ourselves. This is my cofounder crowdfunding her own project:
[https://www.microryza.com/projects/repurposing-potential-
ant...](https://www.microryza.com/projects/repurposing-potential-anthrax-
therapeutic-for-new-staphylococcus-epidermidis-antibiotic)

~~~
streptomycin
I can't wait to write a grant application targeting the average Internet user
rather than experts in my field. That will surely be a productive use of my
time, and will undoubtedly result in a more fair distribution of money.

Honestly, I'm not trying to be an asshole and I commend you for your spirit,
but I just can't see how you and others think crowdsourcing science funding is
a good idea. Science has problems, but Microryza solves none of them and
introduces myriad new issues (well, it would introduce new issues if it was
successful, but I find that to be a dubious proposition).

~~~
irollboozers
We openly tell researchers that crowdfunding isn't for everyone, at least not
yet.

If it isn't valuable for you, that doesn't mean it can't be valuable for
anyone else. Just don't do it and wait around for others to validate it.

I don't believe you're being an asshole. You're just picking up the mantle
that being a scientist automagically entitles you to know what's best for
other scientists.

~~~
vwinsyee
I'd have to share the parent's skeptism. I'm in biostatistics and
neuroscience, and for the most part, could evaluate a stats or neuro proposal.
But, if I were to look at, say, an astrophysics or physical chemistry research
proposal, I'd probably have little to no idea on the proposal's merits. So I'm
curious how Microryza will help non-domain experts evaluate proposals.

------
Janteloven
Whilst academia has its problems, they tend to be no different to any other
walk of life. Yes there are politics, yes there are cliques and annoyances,
and yes inefficiencies and crazy decisions made. But I don't think there are
many institutions that don't suffer these problems because generally they are
staffed with human being, and humans, being what they are, tend to be flawed,
political, mistaken, and sometimes brilliant.

Academic institutions are unique for enabling people to work on research
problems in an environment that is extremely rich and productive, its not for
everyone, its certainly not going to make most people rich in cash, and its
structures can infuriate as well as enlighten. Thankfully there are other
options in life, and other opportunities, but before you rush to reduce the
universities to ruins and homogenise research activities, lets just stop for a
second and ask what it is the universities uniquely bring to the table.

Maybe, just maybe, there is something worth saving in the idea of a
university. Something that may not fit certain people, that may pass over some
brilliant people, that may even struggle to satisfy the instant always-on
consumerist education that is so fashionable today. Indeed, the university on
a social level is a public good. And that public good, transcends the
inefficiencies, the politics, and the other complaints pointed toward the
universities. When universities are working at their best, they are for the
public good, contribute to the public good, and help make society a better
place for everyone.

------
alexirobbins
I think you're touching on a really interesting subject, which namank
elaborated on in his comment. It's too early to tell, but it seems education
is heading in a more 'intrinsic' direction, with less structure and more
exploration. On the issues of publishing and funding scientific work, these
are kind of the same problems facing all creators now. The rate of creation
has gone up tremendously quickly, and we are still developing the tools to
improve efficiency.

------
_delirium
The article implies that Microryza funds independent scientists, but their
website says they only fund scientists working at established academic
institutions, and I verified in the last discussion of the subject [1] that
that was indeed the case, at least for now.

[1] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5280236>

~~~
irollboozers
We're already experimenting with independent researchers, see: Elizabeth
Iorns' BRCA project which will be outsourced through Science Exchange.

------
frozenport
This article is wholly devoid of motivation and characterization.

~~~
irollboozers
It was intended for the HN crowd who believes in build first, ask questions
later. Hoping to get more people to build solutions that fix science.

------
bmpvieira
Besides all the reasons here why the system is broken, academia is also
frequently a source of free/cheap labor from students trying to publish
something or just get some experience. So, at least where I came from, in the
constant presence of fund cuts, the PI just replaces whoever lost their grant
with a volunteer student, or perhaps keeps that person working for free with
the perspective of finish and publishing the work or with the vain hope that
he/she'll get paid when the next round of funding comes. No matter what, the
PI gets his name on every paper and also his salary (in most cases, that is).
Seems not surprising that people start leaving this "profzi" scheme
(<http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1144>).

------
omnisci
Wow, this is an interesting article and I agree with much of it. I've had my
PhD for about 2 years now (neurobiology) and I agree that academia is
eating..itself. The inefficiency, politics, hostility are some of the things,
but much like any other governmental thing, it's just run poorly...and that
trickles down to the PIs, students, departments etc. [edit] this got really
long, I'm going to create a blog post on this instead and host it at another
time [/edit]

Here is an example:I applied to a training grant (t32) that will pay my salary
and help me through my PhD. It was not funded initially because my PI's
funding was running out in a year. <angry bold>I was applying for funds to
continue my education so my PI wouldn't have to pay me (so we could use that
money for my research), but they wouldn't fund me because my PI was running
out of funds...to fund me. </>

I resubmitted the exact same grant, with zero changes, but I included a letter
staying that I'd be covered if my PI ran out of money. Then I got funded.
Total time? 1 Year! It took a year for a paragraph to propagate through the
granting agency, as I had to resubmit the grant again and wait 6 months to get
a vague answer (priority score).

This is one of many examples I have that are consistent with the OPs article,
the system is broken. And this is a wide spread problem that is going to
require all of science to really make a change happen. I'm intending on doing
so with my startup (just applied to YC) to bring transparency, efficiency, and
opportunity to scientists. My goal is to bring the semantic web to academic
science to start linking data sets between fields. Positive, negative and
pilot data all available in one spot so I can run meta analysis on these data
and create preliminary data for a grant or future studies. (there is more to
it, but this isn't the place to plug my site)

What I'm most concerned about isn't the technology, it's the people using the
technology. I recently got this comment, "Wow, that is a brilliant idea....but
good luck getting scientists to use it." The dinosaurs are scared of change,
and their fear(ignorance?) is by far the hardest thing I'm going up against.
It's also one of the biggest problems we are going to have in science.

Still gotta try though:)

~~~
irollboozers
Thanks for the response. You included real world examples from academia, and
your supportive attitude means a lot to us.

I'm really interested in what you're working on. If you need help with your YC
app, send me an email and I'd be happy to look through it.
(denny_at_microryza.com) I'm always happy to hear what other scientists are
working on.

Keep going!

------
jdmitch
If (American) Academia isn't eating its young, it is chasing us away. This
article explains exactly why I couldn't bear to do a PhD in the US - instead,
I can do it with better funding in half the time without any coursework or
comprehensive exams in the UK. It may not be as "valuable" in the US, but it
keeps a number of options open for the future, while not boxing me into
academia, which could end up being a dead end anyways if the bubble bursts.

------
scottfr
It seems to me that Microryza itself is an example of one of the key problems
facing Academia.

You have very successful sites in this space, and Microryza doesn't seem to
offer much beyond these in exchange for their smaller user base and less
validated templates and formats (please correct me if I am wrong). It seems to
me that everyone on Microryza would have been better served by using
Kickstarter or one of the other more established options in this space.

So why don't they? Why does Microryza exist?

To me the answer is the standard academic elitism. A persuasive thread in
academia is that everything outside academia is inferior to what is done by
the elite in the ivory tower. So accept the long hours and long pay, because
you are a member of the elite. Research this arcane irrelevant problem,
because you are a member of the elite. Submit to only these few journals and
conferences, because you are a member of the elite. Etc. Etc. Mycroryza seems
to be embracing this elitism.

Now, this isn't to bash on Microryza; if they can pull academia into this
space, that would be fantastic. But I think the fact that they need to exist
to make it happen is a shame.

------
jessriedel
(This will be hopeless to find in this massive thread, but...)

The OPs service-have laymen fund science-solves exactly the wrong problem
(though he's on the right track.) The problem is _not_ too little money, it's
too much research because of the massive incentives to crank out crap, and the
inability of the expert funding committees to sort through it all.
Kickstarting this will just lead to funding the flashiest pseudoscience. We
need to allow researchers more freedom to produce rarely, not encourage hype
even more.

------
rogueriver
1\. Couldn't read the article, but get the gist. 2\. Years ago I got a B.A. in
business. 3\. I can honestly say 90% of the courses were, pretty much a waste
if time. I literally had one instructor tell his students, "I really don't
want to be here, so I don't exect you to even show up". Being young and naive,
I went to a few of his classes; He literally read, verbatim, from a Accounting
Book.

4\. The Internet can teach a person much more than most colleges, with the
exception of a professional degree--medicine, or engineering. Even then, the
degree will just open the door. I've met engineers that couldn't build a
house.

5\. If you have the money, go for a degree. The women are plentiful--that's
about all I remember. Oh, yea--learn what the placebo effect is, and don't let
others take advantage of you. Be careful with the student loans-- they are not
bankruptable--at least for now. Hopefully, that might change.

6\. The most successful tech guys I have know dropped out of school, and
learned to program on their own.

7\. I've met too any people who feel guilty not completing the degree. I
truely, feel they are better off--really. I have seen too many Ivy League guys
"skate" on projects, while the high school drop out works 2x as hard, and in
the end; most managers do take notice of the "Contributers" and eventually
realize the guy with Stanford sweatshirt doesn't do much, besides look cool in
the company pictures.

~~~
graycat
> 6\. The most successful tech guys I have know dropped out of school, and
> learned to program on their own

To a large extent, given the values of US universities, that's mostly
inevitable.

What are such values? In a university, the profs are expected to be doing
'research', not just teaching what's already on the shelves of the libraries
or in commercial products. In computer science, the 'research' is supposed to
be finding the 'fundamentals' of computing, e.g., the question P versus NP.

So, there can be some first courses in computer science that concentrate on
teaching a programming language, maybe Java, and then some later courses in
algorithms, data structures, compilers, database, etc., but, still, turning
out people ready to 'hit the ground running' in a serious programming team is
not really the goal.

Now, there are community colleges, but there is a 'quality' problem: First,
the better students tend to go to universities. Second, where is a community
college going to get someone who is a right up to date software team leader to
teach and, also, do a really good job teaching with preparing the course
materials and giving individual attention to the students?

Net, at least in the US, it's long been the case in computing that mostly or
even entirely have to be self-taught. Heck, I've taught computing to
undergraduates at Georgetown and to graduate students at Ohio State but I
essentially never took a course in computing and, instead, was self-taught and
before such teaching had a good career going in industry.

Self-taught's largely where it's at. Sorry 'bout that!

Solution? If you can think of a topic that needs some good teaching, then get
smart on the topic, write a book, sell it in some form, maybe Kindle, develop
some lectures and put them on YouTube, have a blog, etc.

------
graycat
The good stuff is on the shelves of the research libraries, and it's not going
anywhere.

If someone does a lot of good research early in their career and publishes it,
then they can get funded to continue. In the US, there are billions a year for
research from NSF, NIH, DoE, etc.

For teaching, did I mention that the good stuff is still on the shelves of the
research libraries and is not going anywhere?

------
MWil
I read everything he said and then read it again substituting "law school" and
"law" where needed and it still worked.

------
xenophanes
Look at the URL in the picture at the top. He did a search before doing the
autocomplete.

This changes the results.

Try it. If you don't do the search for what you want to autocomplete, you will
not get the same autocomplete options, in this particular case.

So he's basically posting a picture of doctored autocomplete options. If he
just went to google.com and typed that in the search box, he would not get
that dropdown.

------
michaelochurch
I've been doing a lot of analysis of organizational decline over the past
month, and what characterizes R&D (including academia) is extreme convexity:
[http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/gervais-
macle...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/gervais-
macleod-9-convexity/)

Convexity pertains to the shape of the curve for output (profits, value added,
impact) per input (investment, skill, effort, and just plain luck). It
pertains to desirable risk behavior (convex => seek risk; concave => limit
it). Most of the "fun" work (arts, sciences) is convex. It's creative and
difficult and you usually don't get directly paid, but when you have a hit,
it's Big. The problem with convex work is that everyday people can't handle
that kind of income variability. Institutions can, and if they're working
properly, they buy that risk.

Some areas of work are _so_ convex that only altruistic financing (public or
academic funding without repayment expectations, long-term implicit autonomy)
are tenable. Science and most of what academia does _will_ return value to
society, with interest, but the convexity puts such a time gap between the
creation and capture of value that an institution required to capture value
generated (e.g. a for-profit corporation) wouldn't survive at it. You need
implicit trust and autonomy for that.

I like the idea of academia and like the idea of saving it, but it'll be hard
to do. The system is now generationally _broken_ and it will take heroic
efforts to heal it.

When you start studying institutional decline as I have, you learn a few
things. First, institutions are all about moving risk-- finance, in other
words, although sometimes of a more abstract kind than what happens on Wall
Street. There's nothing wrong with that. Risk transfers are great. The
professor gets stable financial mediocrity (which most people would accept,
even me; I've met the $2M/year Wall Street crowd and they're just as unhappy
as anyone else) while doing exciting work, and doesn't have to worry about
capturing the value. However, the second thing you learn is that the MacLeod
cartoon (Losers, Clueless, Sociopaths) is the truth (a Loser/Sociopath risk
trade) and The Bad Guys really do exist. They turn what were once fair risk
transfers into "heads, I win; tails, you lose" affairs. That's what academia
is, these days. Professors no longer get the autonomy (freedom from market
risk) they were promised until their most productive years (due to the
unsustainable nature of what it takes to get tenure, and midlife burnout) are
behind them. Instead, post-1980 they have a great deal _more_ career risk than
they should have, given the obvious convex value of what they (as a group)
achieve. They work really hard for many years for someone else's benefit, and
most get tossed aside at the end of it. Heads, I win. Tails, you lose.

Obviously, the "trickle-down economics" 1980s were horrible and started this
looting and tearing down. The demolition of the academic job market started
then and hasn't stopped. However, looking into it objectively, there is one
thing that professors did that ruined their game (for most of them). They
began, as a culture, to devalue teaching.

It's not the fault of the people who are 28 now and trying to get
professorships. They weren't even alive when it started. But the Baby Boomers
created an academic culture in which research (often esoteric or inaccessible
to outsiders) was "the real work" and teaching was just commodity grunt work,
to be tossed aside to $15/hour TAs and otherwise scaled back (200+ student
classes). This "teaching is a commodity" attitude led to a greater society
(unable to see the value of research) hitting back with, "then why the fuck
are we paying so many of you?" Now academia is dying. When you have
uneducated, right-wing idiot state senators who didn't get feel like their
professors gave a shit, they repay the favor in 20 years by cutting funding
for 20 years.

The moral lesson (and it applies to us as programmers, too) is that _teaching_
(for us, documentation and outreach) isn't commodity grunt work. It's vital.
It's often where most of the value is added. If you blow teaching off, the
world will lose interest in you and pull investment. I would say "you deserve
it" but, in the academic sphere, it's a different (younger) set of people
getting whacked for it.

Sadly, that karma was slow to act on academia. It was Baby Boomer careerist
narcissists who copped that "fuck teaching" attitude, and Gen-X/Millennials
who got the shaft... like so much else in society.

~~~
yummyfajitas
This is silly. It's purely a historical fluke that the role of professor
(scientist/teacher) even exists.

There is no reason whatsoever why the same person should both create new
knowledge and also teach calculus/cs 101/etc. I was good at research, but I
sucked at teaching [1]. In contrast, many people are really terrible
researchers, but actually pretty good teachers. (As you note, there is a glut
of such people, so their wages are low.)

Separating these roles is a good thing.

[1] Due to a lack of standardized tests at the college level, I have no way to
actually know this. But I do know my students didn't like me, complaining that
I was too hard and unsympathetic.

~~~
bokonist
My ideal world: Basic courses should be taught by professional teachers.
Intermediate courses should be taught by practitioners who also have good
teaching skills. So an junior year software engineering course might be taught
by a Google programmer who was good at teaching and was taking a one year
sabbatical from Google to teach. Or the course might be taught by a
programming researcher who was good at teaching. Master level courses should
basically be the student doing an apprenticeship under an existing master
practitioner. So someone wanting to be a computer science researcher would
apprentice with an existing researcher. Someone wanting to be an engineer at
Google would do an apprenticeship at Google.

------
ucee054
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ym2L1urOz8>

