A post I read struck me as very interesting when I stumbled across it. It's about the differences in lifestyle, and other soft factors, between getting a PhD and having an industry job. The author is trying to compare life and academia versus life in industry. Since I've been living some of that for the last decade(s), I noticed there are some things that aren't mentioned. So, a thread.
#academia #academiclife #lablife #researchers #universitylife
(1/?)
The OP is comparing their view of academic life, which appears, based on the post, to be comparing their PhD training period with an industry job.
Here in the US, many discussions of academic work versus industry work only compare tenured faculty members against, usually, senior researchers and industry.
In my experience there are lots of people who fill other roles both in academia and industry. My role at universities has always been below the level of professor.
I'm staff.
(2/?)
One of the things that we're constantly told is Central to academic life is intellectual freedom. I'm just going to say it:
Bullshit.
Academic life is nowhere near as free as people think it is.
Let's start with the usual one: you can research whatever you want.
I don't want to overuse this, but again, bullshit. The truth is that in many academic faculty positions a substantial portion of your own salary has to be covered by research. That research has to be funded.
(3/?)
If you're an academic at a major university or a medical school, you don't have the freedom that you think you do going in.
Admittedly, people who end up doing research of medical schools usually only end up there because they're interested in exactly the topics medical schools want. So that may feel like freedom. But try changing focus once you get there. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it is hard.
Your new focus had better be fundable. Or 1/2 your salary may disappear!
(4/?)
Again, this may work for a lot of people and I imagine it does. But so far we're only talking about the professors.
My role has always been below the professorial level. I'm staff. My title has usually been something like "research scientist" or "sponsored project professional." These are fancy ways of saying staff.
Staff don't get to pick their own projects. Staff don't get any guaranteed salaries. Staff have to work on what's funded, or they need to find a new job.
(5/?)
Aside:
A few of you are probably going to respond by saying, something like, "That is on you, man. I would be a professor so I would have all that freedom!"
Maybe.
But most faculty jobs, especially at the level you need to enter a field, have 200+ applicants per position.
In a room full of 200 people, who are all specialists in the same field as you, some of whom probably have more experience and training, are you sure you're the very best?
More importantly, are you the luckiest?
(6/?)
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that you become faculty: assistant professor.
You get all those lifestyle perks, right? Work when you want, where you want? Your day is your own?
Sorry.
You have to divide up your work into three broad categories: research, teaching, and service.
Wait, you didn't know about service? 🤣 Most people don't until after they get hired.
Service is a fancy way of saying you have to cut up a bunch of your time to be on committees you don't care about.
(7/?)
Again, being an academic faculty member is a pretty good gig. You do actually have a lot of freedom.
But, you have to go to faculty meetings, which you don't get the schedule; you have to teach classes, which, again, you may not get to schedule. You'll probably get first pick--oh wait no you're an assistant professor, you'll get second or third pick.
If you're a lecturer, and in the US that means essentially a part-time non-living wage position, then you get the dregs. 8am and 7pm.
(8/?)
Still, it's a pretty good gig. Except you've just been given a class to teach on a topic you really don't know anything about. So, all of a sudden you're reading an undergraduate textbook and teaching yourself a bit faster than the students are learning.
If you're unlucky enough to be a lecturer like I was, you might be assigned to class literally one day before the first meeting. Or, if you want to earn a living wage, you may have to take classes at the last minute to prove yourself.
(9/?)
But let's talk about research freedom. As a professor you can research anything you want, right? I don't know about the humanities. I guess if you're in the humanities anything could be true. I only know about some of the other departments.
There's a term that was used in one of the departments I worked in: "bread and butter research."
This is fundable, discipline acceptable research. If that's what you want to do in the first place, you're fine. But try stepping outside of that.
(10/?)
So, you have meetings with committees you've never heard of around the university, at times you don't get the set. You have departmental meetings, again at times you don't get to set. You do have control of your work hours outside of those meetings so that's something.
Your research is constrained by funding, the acceptability of your field, and your peers in your department. There's freedom, but it's constrained freedom.
But all of this is professors. The 1 in 200+'s.
(11/?)
(Stick with me, I'm getting to the end.)
Like I said above, I'm staff.
I'm actually senior staff, with grant writing privileges. In short, I'm kind of like a professor in that I can write my own grants, collaborate with colleagues, and do all that sort of stuff. Something that I wasn't able to do until I got to my most recent position, because it my other positions I wasn't given grant writing privileges.
Let me tell you a bit about staff life.
#academicstaff #academia #lablife
(12/?)
At most institutions I've worked at, they don't know what to do with senior research staff like me.
Most places don't include me on faculty email lists, because I'm staff not faculty. Despite the fact that I work with the faculty and collaborate directly with them and have a certain amount of independence.
Weirdly, I'm sometimes excluded from staff emails, because those often go to hourly staff, and I'm salaried.
Except for that one place that made me use a time clock.
(13/?)
I have a certain amount of work freedom. I have to conform the schedules that match the people I collaborate with, so I don't get to set a lot of my own meetings, but beyond that I can work from home or I can work in an office.
Well, at my current job I can work in one of two offices. Which sounds really cool until you realize that if I didn't get an office assigned to me by one of my collaborators, I would have actually been assigned no office at my current institution.
(14/?)
Yes, you read that right. There would be no office assigned for me if it wasn't given to me by one of the people I work with.
This has been incredibly common for me over the course of my work in #academia.
As a lecturer, I was regularly told to teach four or five classes while being assigned absolutely no workspace at all. Nowhere to meet with students, nowhere to write lectures, nothing.
It's not just me, I know a lot of other lecturers in that situation.
(15/?)
So what is my point?
We talk about freedom in academia and we seem to imply that there's freedom to do whatever research we want, freedom to work whenever and wherever we want, and freedom from a whole lot of activities that sound like the sort of stuff you do in an industry job.
From what I've learned from my industry friends and colleagues, and what I've seen with my own eyes at least six different academic institutions, I really don't see that much of a difference anymore.
(16/?)
Most research positions in industry come with a lot of freedom in work lifestyle. I think academia is about equal on this.
If you work in industry, and pick a company that aligns with your interests, then you're probably going to do research you enjoy, and feel like you have freedom.
I think that's pretty much exactly what happens to the professorial class in academia. They probably think they have more freedom than they do because of their alignment with their field's goals.
(17/?; edited)
But I think a lot of the freedom that is claimed for academia is something of an illusion. Or at least it's become more of an illusion over time as the academic world has become a lot more like the corporate.
And I think, on the other side -- at least for researchers -- the corporate world has imported a lot of the academic lifestyle choices. Because they used to have to give those to people to get them to leave fancy professorships.
(18/<=20)
I'm not trying to put anyone off of choosing either academia as a career, or industry.
I have been awash, over the last 20 years, in stories of how academic freedom is this amazing thing.
It feels like the majority of people I've heard talk about this topic seem to be living in a parallel universe where academics have a kind of total freedom that I have never seen, at least not here in the US.
(As always, the humanities are probably different. I don't work there.)
Caveat emptor!
(19/20)
If you've been harmed by any of the issues raised in this thread, we're here to talk to you. 🙂
If your experience has been completely different, I'd like to hear about it. I know that a lot of people don't ever get a perspective like mine on this topic, and I think there are a lot of people like me out there. I've met a bunch of them.
Also, somebody needs to invent a Mastodon thread composer. Posting these step-by-step is a real problem. (That's the only way xitter beats this place.)
(20/20)
(21/20)
Apparently, the comments I made to a thread that someone else had posted came across as rude.
I am sorry for anything I did that was rude, either in the comments I made on their post, or here.
I genuinely didn't think I was saying anything that was mean spirited.
They have deleted the post, and I have updated the first post here to take away any reference to them, because they didn't like it.
I doubt they'll see this, but I am sorry if I caused them a problem.
Thanks! I was just reading your thread on fans and heat pumps and the like and I have to admit, that one spoke to me. 🙂
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