Well just came back from the lab, after a day of failed experiments (on a Saturday no less) when I read this great commentary on Confessions of a Community College Dean.
The post discusses an article in Inside Higher Ed that I don't agree with. (Whiny GenX faculty?? Please.) And scrolling down the IHE article it got worse and worse until I ended up in crapville in the comment section:
"Having a life" may be fine for humanities faculty. It would be dangerous for our country if that culture became the norm in the sciences, mathematics, and engineering faculties. In those fields we have to compete against a world where that culture does not exist. We cannot afford to fall behind. We are already in trouble, barely keeping up while working to the max.An "embedded professor".
Then:
As a member of the "Silent Generation" who has the privilege of long term intuitive observation, we are now reaping the harvest of the protesting sixties generation whose value systems (or lack thereof) were implanted unconsciously in their children, the Gen Xer's by role model and action.These children, the Gen Xer's, are now seeking the same lack of discipline in their chosen fields and want the "job" to be given to them without the effort expended.
Likewise, their pampered children, the "Net Generation" are seeking a value system with "structure and discipline" in their lives that a higher education offers, but not finding it. Therefore, they are casting about in all directions trying to find what their parents threw away. Given that the proper value system will emerge through their continued searching and with contact and collaboration with those dastardly "embedded" professors, there is hope for this country's future. I have a lot of confidence in these "net gens" to turn things around.
These guys are clueless. As the Dean points out, this is a horrible time to be in academics. Low pay, high debts from years of schooling, and no time to have a family. Gone are the days when you can clone a gene and then get a faculty position out of grad school. But I guess our role today is to be kamikazes for the good of the nation, and if we don't like the situation it's because we're a bunch of whiney lazy GenXers.
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I'm with a commenter on the original article named yawn:
Seriously, its been a "horrible time" to be in academics for a long time. To young folks thinking about grad school - if you want to be rich, do something else.
Here's a statistic to think about for those complaining about money - the median household income in the united states is about $43k. That means that a household with two _grad students_ with normal stipends is actually doing quite well, and two _postdocs_ are comparatively wealthy.
It's pretty amazing how the old-timers whine and yet - their PhD Dissertations are sometimes at the level of seniors honors research today; they are never at work, either lab or classroom; they cannot publish in any journal that is on the first 20 pages of the Index; and they refuse to retire. Yet they feel competent to evaluate the job candidates who are, for the most part, Nobel-Prize winners compared to the old fogies. And they whine if one of the young professors asks for a paternal leave when his kid is born.
Kamikaze, my ass. Why the hell do they think so many students leave for industry?
For an depressing reflection on scientists' salaries and working conditions, read this:
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science
(found through one of the other Science Blogs posters - can't remember which one).
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Two offtopic comments:
1) I am actually geeky enough that I ran blast on your scrolling sequence to see from whence it came.
2) The second is a request that you integrate the sequence into the title in a way that doesn't scroll. It's horribly distracting in the same sort of way that moving flash ads are.
2) The second is a request that you integrate the sequence into the title in a way that doesn't scroll. It's horribly distracting in the same sort of way that moving flash ads are.
I second the motion. I have to admit that whenever I read your blog, the very first thing I do is scroll down so that the moving text is off of the page.
See http://brahms.phy.vanderbilt.edu/~rknop/blog/?p=35
-Rob the untenured and extremely stressed out faculty member
Wow, even Forbes readers think scientists are grossly underpaid (see poll).
That said, we physicists appear to have it pretty good. Most universities higher people to tenure track positions whom they expect to get tenure. At every step (PhD, postdoc, asst. prof), there are lucrative escape hatches, so faculty salaries have some upward pressure. Some gross statistics are collected by APS.
I'm so glad I'm not the only one...
Wow such fascination & hate over my scrolling transcript - and I thought that it just invoked jealousy. Someone was telling me that my ticker was not displayed correctly on Saffari. Is this true?
Yeah there are problems in Netscape too (don't ask me why I'm using natscape - please)
Your ticker shows up on Safari on my machine, however, it doesn't scroll all the way across as it does on Netscape or IE.
Here's an old post about stress/whining in academia. Overall, I'm with dlamming, only more so.
Yes I guess it's not as bad as going through the Cultural Revolution or living in a war-torn country. But you have to admit that it is stressful. And I don't think that certain people complain because they're GenX (in that regard I agree with "Yawn").
About 5 years ago it used to be a lot worse in the biomedical sciences in terms of pay. Things got better when a group of senior faculty went down to the NIH and lobbied the powers that be to boost the NIH income guidelines. With the current pay they can't attract Americans to academia and hence they rely on foreigners (I being one of them) to keep academia moving along.
The ticker started working for me in Safari a few weeks ago, after you moved from blogspot...
To tell you the truth, I notice a lot more whining about lifestyle in meds, than I did back in science. The difference here, though, is that meds are used to always getting what they want, and so it is called 'maintaining balance', and is heavily promoted as a desirable thing. In science, grad school exists primarily to scare a work ethic into the students. You end up with scientists afraid to not work weekends; some actually believe that they want to work weekends, because they're so dedicated, failing to see their role as monkeys at the typewriter...
I'm sorry: "'Having a life' may be fine for humanities faculty"??? Please. As if humanities faculty have lives.
But seriously folks. Science geeks need lives, too. Most of us, anyway.
People like that commentor ruin it for the rest of us.