I don’t think you’ve spent much time in academia. It’s not an all-you-can-eat buffet, it’s a trek through the desert where every drop of water counts. One of the big reasons why the whole thing is falling apart is that postdocs and undergrad researchers, who do all the actual work, have been tragically underpaid for years. Add in a tiny chance to be arrested and deported on top of that and it’s instantly not worth it to tons of foreign students who were thinking of going to college in America.
And one of the reasons I left was how blatantly corrupt and awful it was, just like everything else in our society. Everything was about money and politics. Everyone who did good work got shafted, and those who played the corruption game got rewarded.
And most of the ‘underpaid’ people were all rich people living off family money anyway. They were not living off their stipends and grants. that includes a lot of the foreign students.
Yeah, that’s how life works. Every Dept and University has a different culture and you have no idea what you are getting into before you’re already committed. They all sell you the same lies, but for sure some people have ‘golden tickets’ in terms of who where they went and who they studied with and they will never understand the experiences of those who didn’t get those tickets.
And human biases will make them think it was their own superior efforts, because most of us are totally blind to the personal and institutional privileges around us, and they rationalize their hypocrisies.
My issue was I went to a stellar undergraduate institution that lived up to all my academic ideals, and a not-so stellar graduate program that destroyed my ideals. And I was never going to get into a stellar graduate program because I didn’t study with the ‘right’ people at my undergrad institution, but I realize that until I was already halfway done with my PhD, and that ‘mistake’ would basically mean my job prospect would be non-existent, and at my grad program I kept getting punished for it. That’s all politics.
I don’t think you’ve spent much time in academia. It’s not an all-you-can-eat buffet, it’s a trek through the desert where every drop of water counts. One of the big reasons why the whole thing is falling apart is that postdocs and undergrad researchers, who do all the actual work, have been tragically underpaid for years. Add in a tiny chance to be arrested and deported on top of that and it’s instantly not worth it to tons of foreign students who were thinking of going to college in America.
I spent 10 years. It was too much time.
And one of the reasons I left was how blatantly corrupt and awful it was, just like everything else in our society. Everything was about money and politics. Everyone who did good work got shafted, and those who played the corruption game got rewarded.
And most of the ‘underpaid’ people were all rich people living off family money anyway. They were not living off their stipends and grants. that includes a lot of the foreign students.
For people who spent about the same amount of time in academia, we had very different experiences.
Yeah, that’s how life works. Every Dept and University has a different culture and you have no idea what you are getting into before you’re already committed. They all sell you the same lies, but for sure some people have ‘golden tickets’ in terms of who where they went and who they studied with and they will never understand the experiences of those who didn’t get those tickets.
And human biases will make them think it was their own superior efforts, because most of us are totally blind to the personal and institutional privileges around us, and they rationalize their hypocrisies.
My issue was I went to a stellar undergraduate institution that lived up to all my academic ideals, and a not-so stellar graduate program that destroyed my ideals. And I was never going to get into a stellar graduate program because I didn’t study with the ‘right’ people at my undergrad institution, but I realize that until I was already halfway done with my PhD, and that ‘mistake’ would basically mean my job prospect would be non-existent, and at my grad program I kept getting punished for it. That’s all politics.