this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2024
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I think it's funny how academia selects people based on their scientific aptitude and research experience and then puts them into positions where they have to spend much of their time teaching (something they may not have the aptitude for and definitely aren't trained to do) and writing grant proposals. The more experience people have, the less time they have to do research (with the exception of a relatively small number of celebrity professors).
With that said, I'm not sure how things could be changed for the better. I'd say that some training in teaching would be good, but I think most academics don't actually want that. Being a TA was already an unwelcome imposition back when I was a grad student, so I wouldn't have wanted to spend more time away from my research to become a better TA.
It's obvious how to make it better: spend as much money on scientific progress as we do on figuring out how to blow brown people up.
I wouldn't be opposed to more funding but there would still have to be some way to decide who to fund and making a good case that one's research is worthwhile is always going to take a long time.
Maybe pay people who's only job it is is to talk to the researchers and write the proposal for them? Someone smart enough to get stuff explained to them, but with the communication skills to boil that down into something the money people can understand?
It's a pretty common position in software engineering because programmers and business people are pretty bad at communicating with each other.
Create gov science centers for each major branch of science, provide funding. Allow them to delegate within their narrower and narrower fields with loose requirements such as x-y% is salary a-b% is resources, and maybe something like each new study can get no less than $z and no More than $r.
I'm not saying this is perfect but spending more money towards it in general and allowing some branch delegation of funding would hopefully at least resolve the grant writing part and ensure salary. Though I'm not sure how one would ensure that they are being productive and not doing frivolous things on purpose. Perhaps q amount of hours a year must go to a gov decided research project and the rest is up to the researcher.
Maybe funding for a project is aquired through hours contributed to projects the gov deems with a standard for high social benefit? I.E. You help with the research on this new hydro electric tech (regardless of outcome because we feel it's an important study topic) and we pay ($p per hour spent on hydro tech) towards a study of your choice.
No, it only takes a long time because there's so little to go around. Do you think defense funding takes months and years to award grants? No.
There are literally decades-long proposals, initial R&D and prototyping for big defense contracts.
No, they aren't taking years to award a new contract for the paper provider, but they are for new weapons and vehicles.
Yeah because they're so big. This guy is not asking for a grant for 2000ppl, multi-year project around nuclear fusion, it's just him and a couple students mucking around in a petri dish
I wonder what you'd might call that "figuring out" thing
I sure wouldn't call it scientific progress, if that's what you're implying.
Science isn't just about nice stuff
Why not?
It's just how the term is defined. Blame English language users, I guess
Ah yes. Nice science and evil science.
Yeah. Goes all under "science"
Problem solved then! Everyone just needs to do killing people science in order to make a living.
Are you really upset that the term "science" includes even things we might personally find upsetting?
Yes
Why though
Because our (US) current priorities fuel a worldwide arms race, while real investment in basic sciences would benefit humanity and keep postdocs from starving. The entire NIH budget for everything is $47 billion, while the Department of Defense budget is $825 billion, $145 billion of which for R&D. You think we should be spending $100 billion per year more on killing people than on making people's lives better?
I don't know what you imagine I was saying, I was just trying to say that a lot of that is science.
All I'm saying is that postdocs shouldn't be living below the poverty line with a side of stop killing people.
You'd have to overhaul the funding system drastically.
Measuring scientific output by publications and citations is useless at best, but it's easy so that's how you're measured.
Writing grant proposals is 95% useless bullshit, there's no useful content in the proposals, but it gives a false sense of objectivity and competitiveness, so that's how you're funded.
Thing is, most of the world operates like that. Corporations measure useless KPIs and demand empty reports. There's an entire caste of administrators whose entire existence is founded on this overhead to exist. I don't see a way to change that without a very very serious disruption (that is, a major war, not a startup).
Some researchers make terrible teachers. It's ridiculous to me.
Maybe some graduate-level classes need to be taught by a researcher in the field and so students will simply have to deal with any deficiencies that researcher may have as a teacher, but IMO undergrads will probably learn more at a community college because the professors are actually there to teach.
I still wouldn't recommend the community college because the diploma from there won't get the graduate as much respect, but I do know a community college graduate with a bachelor's who makes way more than I do. She had trouble getting her first job but once she had some work experience, employers cared a lot less about where she studied. I also know another graduate who got her associate's at a community college and then transferred to somewhere more prestigious; she saved money without compromising her education.
Not to mention people managers. Oof.
Oh yeas definitely. Lab directors make the worst managers.
It's almost like the two skill sets are not actually equivalent.