@petarjovanovic1481
I am currently a junior editor in a very prestigious journal. I get zero money for it while they are hounding me every second day to do this or that. Recently, I wanted to send them an email and say that I will find a different place to volunteer rather than volunteering my free time to a multi-million dollar company. I love the fact that I am leaving academia next week. I'm moving to an industry position where my salary will be 53% higher.
@BugMan_666
All universities should offer a first-year elective course called "The University" that explains the university in its social, historical, political, and economic context - so students have at least some formal understanding of what they're actually getting themselves into.
@brunaborbadecarvalho7197
I just finished my PhD in Earth Sciences and the mining company behind it didn't even watch my presentation online. In fact, they basically abandoned the project half way through because I did not find Ni and Cu where they wanted me to find it. I got to find something academically new and very cool, which ended up to be the main focus of my thesis, but... it will be only one more paper somewhere. One of the questions after my defense was if the mining company was happy about my thesis... My status now is "unemployed" !!
@patiakreles
My dad was a really good researcher in the 80s. His entire research was "stolen". He worked with a professor and was 2 years raising rats and whatnot. When it was time to publish his findings the main professor just stapled his name and like 3 other people's before my dad's. The other people were all new tonthe laboratory so my dad was really pissed, they were like political favors. The others ended up traveling to a lot of conferences with his research and my dad was told to stay here. When they came back my dad went berserk and sent them all to hell.
@pixameha
Amazing video. 100% agree with you. Academia is getting darker, as the time passes there are more and more difficulties. I am about to finish PhD but I don't really see future in this field. I don't want to compete against people that are "warming the chair" 24 hours and succeeding by the contacts. It is really difficult to keep on these conditions.
@nicholashaines8481
Why are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley-Blackwell, Taylor & Francis, Sage Publications, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, University of Chicago Press, and MIT Press not owned and operated as open access publications? The research that they publish is overwhelmingly funded by governments. Therefore it stands to reason that the outputs of this research should be freely available to the public. National governments should set up open access equivalents of all existing journals. The journals would be funded by national governments and run by academics in a transparent and accountable way to achieve public purposes. Authors, peer reviewers, and editors would be paid for their work. Over time the established journals would struggle to attract submissions. The owners of those journals would be desperate to sell their now much less valuable assets. Then national governments could buy the established journals and integrate them into the new open access model. It wouldn't be difficult. National governments that issue their own highly sought-after currency and that can mobilise significant amounts of real resources are far more powerful than corporations.
@abzulooks6012
Agree with all of these. A few thoughts: One thing to point out is that one of the reasons that industry collaborates with unis is.... they get free research. They might put in for part of a PhD scholarship (or a whole one if they're really generous) and in return they get cheap labour and access to all the uni infrastructure. And, for the pathetic amounts that industry contributes, the collaboration gets hyped beyond reason. And the unis always look desperate in these relationships. Also: there's always some bureaucrat who's been hired by the Uni as "Industrial Collaborations Liaison Officer" or somesuch, earns an undeserved six figure salary, and does nothing but get in the way. (The amount of money wasting cruft in Uni administration is appalling. You could sack 3/4 of admin and things would work just fine). Your point about networks etc is bang on too. Usually the Crusty Old Professor will choose an acolyte who they have decided will be their successor and gets bestowed with all their blessings and have their career fast tracked. Everyone else? Tough luck. Sometimes it's because the acolyte is in fact smart, but other time it's for... reasons.... This can happen at the institutional level too: one or two members of staff get blessed with special job titles and privileges while the rest just have to muck along. But really it all comes back to the fundamental question of What Universities Are For. And the answer is: to manage a property and investment portfolio. If you thought it had anything to do with learning and research, you're wrong. They're just the grist for the end goal.
@joannloos17
This is a different take on only choosing people from specific universities. I was looking for a summer job in comp sci. I called up the internship office at Tamdem Computers (a big player at that time) and was told they didn’t take CVs from students at second tier colleges (California State Colleges). I sent my resume in anyway and got a job. I was the only intern that finished my project in the group and had my code included in shipped operating systems. The powers that be are idiots for excluding promising candidates.
@29062008
I've been following your work for over a year now. I really think what you do is incredible. It's an oasis in the middle of the desert of ideas in the academic world. In Brazil, we call our articles salamito (small salami), we slice them up and produce new articles. Quantity over quality, so that we can do well in the scorecard for federal university entrance exams. And if you're not aligned with the epistemology of the selection board... forget it, your chances are close to zero.
@gianlucafarrugia19
This video resonates with my own awful and long-drawn experience in academic research. All true. Thanks for speaking out.
@mattiacosta7568
Andy, on journals being a scam. I agree. Ideally, we would need a blockchain-based system where researchers get paid tokens to publish their papers
@justaname999
the fact that as a young researcher you're told that you just need to tough it out, take a low paying job, then maybe another, move around or live hours away from your spouse and family, have zero job security, etc because that shows that you truly "want this" and are truly "passionate" about science is crazy. I've had tenured professors tell me that if I'm not willing to take a job in a different country and live off of a third of what an industry job would pay me after my phd, all while commuting 5 hours and spending 1-2 nights away from my family every week (and this was considered "mild" since I wasn't forced to be near campus 24/7), then I clearly am not truly interested in science. The same professors that "supervised" me during my postdoc but one of them literally couldn't present the research on his own because he had no idea about the math. The same professors that earn 200+k and have their phds and postdocs do the work for them. And their reasons for saying all of this were always a variation on "I did it. I was really passionate about this and put the work in, so I got my big important position. Perseverance pays off and all who failed just weren't driven enough." I would sort of look past idiotic statements like these if they were not literally people whose central "thing" in life is understanding the scientific method and statistical analyses and understanding what things like survivorship bias or confirmation bias are. They clearly have a highly selective way of choosing when to use logic.
@charlesd4572
If you have a new idea - go get VC money and develop it yourself. Otherwise academics will either 1) bury it because it's not their idea or 2) ignore it because it doesn't help their idea.
@Yoshokie
I recently attended a conference where industry professionals were shitting on academia lol saying that academics often don’t know how to turn their ideas into viable products and instead expect industry to do it for them. They argued that this lack of practical application skills is why many ideas and products fail, as there’s no effective bridge to connect academic innovation with industry implementation. They called it, "The valley of death, where ideas go to die".
@scribbey949
Regarding the academic journals Sarah Lamdan has written an excellent book called 'Data Cartels' which goes not only into the ideas you brilliantly outline but how the journals sell information i.e. your research to companies for tons of dosh who pool the information from other researchers as well and sell that for even more profit.
@jozsefbodnar6177
Science communication can go off the rails in a much more interesting way too. I always hated these usual flashy, colourful, playful experiments and shows, not for the reason that they don't prepare you for the boring parts, but for the reason that they don't tell you anything about the motivation of a scientist and the true beauty of science, they don't reflect the excitement of understanding. On the other hand, I loved well-written books explaining the scientific concepts on kids' level, and I still love well-crafted youtube videos illustrating AND explaining the scientific phenomena, or reflecting on how amazing it was that someone was able to achieve this or that in that point in history. And what did I find? That the love of science history and science communication did not prepare me for DOING science. Only for appreciating good science communication. I am willing to read the same book or watch the same youtube video three times, just to praise and enjoy how well-written or well-edited they are. If I was interested in science, and not science communication, I would look for something new once I got the concept for the first time, and I would find the second read or view already boring...
@josephsimoncurran9994
Thanks for the video. Lots of interesting things here especially about the pitfalls of cooperation. However I would be careful with the generalisations about age. As others have pointed out 'early career' and 'young' are not necessarily the same thing. I might be a bit sensitive about age generalisations as my second supervisor was a (now deceased) retired historian who was unbelieveably good at encouraging me to think beyond the narrow details of my thesis. Perhaps it may vary by discipline but the historians I met who were PhD students in the 1960s, 1970s, and even 1980s often had the most original ideas and really encouraged collaboration. I am a much more detail focused person so I found this very beneficial. Yes I have interacted with older academics who gave terrible career advice and had no knowledge of the current job market, but I also know others who actively worked with students to get better job opportunities outside of academia because they did not like the way academia had changed. Thanks again
@jackmuir5314
Please talk about how science being portrayed incortectly is hurting other, non-STEM areas of academia
@leonepearsall5067
It's not just young academics who need a chance - I imagine you actually mean "new" or "early career" academics, as there are a lot of mature students these days who have moved into education in midlife.
@jonanlsh