academia is fat and lazy. they are not lean and mean.
our entire education system needs to be leaner and meaner. but that’s hard work, so we won’t do it. we’d rather pay 50% of the grant money to the PI and then pay everyone else peanuts and wonder why none of our own citizens want to do research…
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.
academia is fat and lazy. they are not lean and mean.
our entire education system needs to be leaner and meaner. but that’s hard work, so we won’t do it. we’d rather pay 50% of the grant money to the PI and then pay everyone else peanuts and wonder why none of our own citizens want to do research…
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.