[tjwebbnorfolk]

Funny, as someone who works in private sector, I always had the opposite view of academia:

A zero-sum system based around a fixed pool of grants and positions that everyone competes for, and a terminal job ladder position where, once reached by successfully having competed for aforementioned grant $$, I become un-fireable.

I would have to sleep with a gun under my pillow in such a world.

There's already plenty of cheating in business, which is full of positive-sum win-win opportunities. I don't even want to imagine how badly I might behave in academia just in order to survive.

[ocschwar]

From 1945 to about 2000, academia in the western world was slowly growing. That made the pool of positions not-quite-zero-sum, and way too many people went into it expecting a much more genial environment.

[tjwebbnorfolk]

If the pool grows at the same rate as the academics who need money from the pool, it's zero-sum. If the pool were ever to grow more slowly, then it's a negative-sum game. That's when all hell breaks loose -- by many accounts, this is unfolding now.

In other words, the academics do not grow the pool through their own actions, as in private business. They are forever reliant on the kindness of strangers.

[whatshisface]

That's not quite right. Academics do grow the pool through public outreach and demonstrating value to companies which lobby the government to fund them, but since there is usually one big pool (such as the NSF budget), it is impossible for people to grow their own pool directly. It's closer to working at a large company, where your impact on earnings is next to nonexistent and your career is determined by the beliefs of the people around you about your impacts on them.

[nothercastle]

Negative sum is the worst outcome. Only the cheaters win in that scenario and they slowly eat the legitimate players, then the weak cheats so only the biggest cheaters remain. The entire pool is then tainted.

We have acquired a couple such companies and the people that survived that environment are some of the most toxic players you ever meet. They are also really good at the game so they immediately rise to power and begin to devour their next victim.

[hnuser123456]

Those whose parents stressed nothing but academics hit a dead end if the parents can't keep paying the kid to get high grades.

[physicsguy]

> I become un-fireable

That's not been true in most countries for a long time

[labcomputer]

You are un-fireable for the usual reasons for which people outside academia worry about being fired.

Layoffs aren't a thing in academia. Poor performance in the classroom isn't punishable. Failure to bring in grants isn't punishable. You can't be fired for disagreeing with your boss. You can (in most cases) publicly criticize the administration you work for, and advocate for many (yes, not all) controversial ideas.

[jltsiren]

That's an American thing. By default, you can fire anyone at any time for no reason. Universities then overcompensate and give extensive protections for tenured faculty.

In Europe, it's more common that a professor has roughly the same job security as a teenager in their first real job. There are some exceptions due to academic freedom, but they are mostly about the substance of the work rather than the performance in it. And other independent professionals, such as doctors, lawyers, and civil engineers, often have similar exceptions.

[physicsguy]

This is totally not true in my country (UK). Staff are laid off. Tenure doesn't exist. Departments are not closed.

[aydyn]

But thats UK, a small backwater island

[physicsguy]

A small backwater island with 4 universities in the top 10 of worldwide rankings and outperformance in the top 100 too?

[aydyn]

yeah

[zipy124]

They are, but extremely infrequently and when they are it is minor numbers, at least at the largest universities. And when they are laid off it is for financial reasons not performance.

[physicsguy]

Not sure if you're following the news, but almost every university is in financial trouble at the moment.

[MangoToupe]

> Layoffs aren't a thing in academia

May not "layoffs", but schools lose funding, get shut down, and fail to track sufficient students to justify continuing employment.

[FirmwareBurner]

Depends what you do. Yes you can get fired, but you have to do some really nasty things (embezzlement, sexual assault, etc) to get fired.

[storus]

Or when your department gets disbanded.

[aoki]

Ah, the “financial exigency” escape hatch

[tjwebbnorfolk]

Look up "rubber rooms". They sequester teachers and professors accused of sexual harassment of children, and keep paying them, because they cannot be fired.

Look up teachers' and academics' unions (e.g. AAUP), and the contracts they have in place to keep them from being fired.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

[physicsguy]

> in most countries

Not every country is the US, lots of Hackernews audience isn't in the US

[77pt77]

Academia.

Nowhere else do people fight so much and so dirty for so little.

[snapcaster]

Why do people say "so little". How is an appointment to a high prestige job for life small stakes?

[mountainb]

There's a more transparent and straightforward pathway to a lifetime appointment as a federal judge (which actually pays OK and has many social perks) than there is to a tenured professorship in most fields. Judges have Solomon-like-life-and-death power, and the lawyers who argue before them (often successful, high-status people in their own right) are professionally obligated to suck up.

By comparison almost all professorships are like becoming the most important hobo on a given street corner.

[wisty]

Yeah, it's mostly either students or academia who admire their hobo kings.

It's kind of like a sport like tennis. If you're in the system, you think that the world number 150 tennis player is amazing, but they barely make enough to afford travel to the matches.

[throw-qqqqq]

This is a really sharp take IMO.

In all fairness though, it's very difficult to become a judge. At least in my country, you have to have been both a defense lawyer and a prosecutor in order to become a judge. It takes many years of experience that is not easily gained.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

At the state university in my smaller city, an actual professorship (not some adjunct) earns up towards $200k/year salary. Maybe pretty modest by FAANG standards, but for many people outside of tech that sounds like a lottery jackpot. So it's not just prestige, though that's on offer too.

[pohl]

Especially once you factor in the lower cost of living (relative to FAANG jobs) in that smaller city.

[hyperbovine]

Don't forget 3-4 months off in the summer too.

[Fomite]

Professors don't get the summer off. If you have a heavy teaching load, summers are your one window to get research work done. If you don't, like me, the difference between the summer and the rest of the year is its easier to find parking.

[hyperbovine]

Fine, 3-4 months to think about interesting things all day long with basically zero expectation that you’ll be anywhere or show up to anything. Call it what you will.

[aaronbaugher]

It's a slam on how petty many of the internal grudge matches are. But of course they don't seem at all petty to those engaged in them.

[davidgay]

The quote is referring to fights between people who already have tenure.

[coderatlarge]

in many countries the salaries are unbelievably low by US standards, but they generally do come with healthcare, benefits and a pension.

[coderatlarge]

maybe those who fight for it have better information.

for example they realize that once they achieve tenure, the amount of work truly required to retain the for-life annuity is risibly low so they can go on to do just about whatever else they want or “consult” for extra dollars as needed.

[Fomite]

My workload has only steadily increased once I got tenure. The nature of the work changed, but the "Kick back, relax and enjoy your zero effort forever job" is a fantasy of people who don't actually know what they're talking about.

[coderatlarge]

i’ve personally known a number of tenured professors who’ve systematically shirked all responsibility after their tenure event. they’ve been willing to live as semi-pariahs within their peer group though.

even when required to teach they simply repeat classes they’ve taught many times before making no effort to optimize for reviews.

i don’t doubt your experience but i wonder how much it has to do with not wanting to endure your colleagues’ and departments’s disapproval vs actual threat to employment.

and fwiw, i’m not saying it has to be this way just that it can be this way due to the structure of the system. similarly there are many corporate situations in which one can scrape by for extended periods of time, but there is rarely a “for life” clause. even so, it hasn’t prevented the university system from helping to catalyze all the amazing discoveries we all benefit from in society every day.

[coderatlarge]

fwiw, i agree with most of the points in @Fomite’s response below. the people i’ve known fall into a perverse version of his “ego” point.

they felt that when they got tenure they “won” and their “ego” was strong enough to allow them to ignore the disapproval of their peers for not doing the conventionally expected things. they felt that they knew better in their hearts what the discipline truly needed and that the rat-race of establishment approval wasn’t it. so they turned inward. which is not necessarily the healthiest path imo.

[Fomite]

There's definitely a few of those.

[Fomite]

I mean, there are definitely people who coast, because there are people everywhere who coast.

But the vast majority of tenured professors I know don't do so, for one of the following reasons:

- I can't get fired, but I also don't need to get paid. My position has a non-trivial soft money component to it, and it's actually low for my field, which ranges from 50% to 100% soft money depending on the institution. A double-digit pay cut is motivation for most people.

- There are still promotions to be had, and those promotions are really the only way to get a raise beyond cost of living increases. At my institution there are two steps beyond Associate Professor with Tenure, and both of them are not obtained by phoning it in.

- Ego. It's hard to understate this one. Most academics are smart, determined people. There are other easier, more lucrative jobs. But there's a sense of purpose and ego that channeled them to the career they're in. Said ego is usually not fed by being in the doldrums. That's not how you get awards and invited to talks, and recruited elsewhere, etc.

Sure, the stick of "You could get fired" isn't there, but there are also ways to make a tenured professor whose coasting's life less pleasant. But even if not, I don't think it's nearly as common as the popular imagination (or this thread) think it is. Most people I know only really take their foot of the gas in the last few years of their careers, often well past retirement age.

[karmakurtisaani]

Student politics, perhaps.