[dekhn]

I used to be a postdoc at berkeley and I've seen older professors exited from the university to make room for younger ones- even though they were extremely good teachers.

You can't make the same amount of money just teaching classes- professors have to bring in money to pay their summer salaries.

Note, also, that the general trend in universities has been to move away from full professorships- while the tenure program is great, it reduces the freedom of the administration when it comes to dealing with low performers (I'm not making a value judgement, just an observation).

It don't know what it means for biology to be less mathematically difficult (I'm a biophysicist by training and I assure you the math is pretty hard, especially when you get into grad-level quantum chemistry).

[frozenport]

>>It don't know what it means for biology to be less mathematically difficult

It means that wet lab biology can be learned after a few years of work, making professors less valuable as a source of knowledge.

>>grad-level quantum chemistry I would be suprised if the guys running the elisa have more than second semester calculus. Certainly not a requirement for undergrads at our school.

[dekhn]

You're talking about technical work, not biology. The same applies to any number of other domains. Sounds to me like you just have a chip on your shoulder.

[frozenport]

>>You're talking about technical work, not biology.

Well, people get PhD for it. Tell them its not biology :-)

>>just have a chip on your shoulder

Yeah, I blame the academic system

[dekhn]

Nobody gets a PhD for doing lab work. People get PhDs for publishing papers and they do lab work because there isn't enough grant money or capable techs for doing really hard experiments.