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I'm not 100% down on academia itself. I would have gladly endured years of poverty wages, multiple postdocs, and the stress of the tenure process if I thought the light at the end of the tunnel weren't a freight train. In fact, some of the happiest years of my life were when I was making around $12k a year as a graduate student. Like I said, I started down the path, and would have continued had there been a reasonable probability of getting a job I could live on at the end. But, that's a large part of the problem. Most people with PhDs are either not using them, or are low-paid adjuncts making barely minimum wage cobbling together 5 courses a semester at 3 different schools. Guess how much research those people get to do? In many fields (those where you need a lab, basically), the answer is "none," and that further contributes to keeping them second-class citizens. They are disenfranchised for all practical purposes. > btw tenure track is not the sole option for doing fundamental research Yes, there are industry and government research labs where you can do research and publish. But, for many fields, the tenure track is it, full stop. And, even in fields like CS or physics, where these other options exist, relative to the number of degrees granted, the number of jobs is pretty pitiful. Sure, I can sit in a cafe and do fundamental math research, but not many fields are like that. A ton of math and CS papers are online in one way or another, but not all fields have it that easy. Most of the time, you need a lab, or a university-equivalent library (which you must physically go to to access the resources). > Sound almost like corporate salesmanship for getting talented people out of Academia, into useless soul-destroying jobs. That's the point. My post is 100% reality. I've lived it. Why should the best and brightest go to grad school and get PhDs when their prospects are so bleak? I'm really glad some do, but unless that's all they can ever see themselves doing, it's just not economically rational. |