Re:Professors’ unprofessional programs have created a new pr...
by Balgair on Tuesday August 22, 2017 @05:04PM
(#15076376)
It really does seem like luck is the thing, even in something like the ivory tower. It stinks, but all that hard work is the price of the lotto ticket; it still ends up being just plain luck in the end.
I also feel like it's a race to the bottom now. It used to be 'publish or perish', now it's 'funding or famine'. The paper numbers, impact, and truthfulness have nothing to do with anything. I see so many PIs that essentially end up as one income households, their spouse's, not their own. The 'good ones' just get pushed out or leave, an evaporative effect, leaving only the liars. The academy is in real trouble these days. It isn't on life support yet, but it's not able to climb the stairs anymore.
Yes. Engineering. I don't like to reveal too much about my past, so I won't say the name. Suffice it to say that it's ranked in the top 10 for pretty much all engineering + many of the sciences. EE, CE and CS are all in the top 5.
It was a decade ago, though.
Workload all depended on your advisor and funding landscape. Some were very demanding, and they had miserable lives (mostly pointless, too - most of academia seems to be converging towards a race to the bottom). But not all professors were that way. Of course, standards still have to be met, and laid back professors' students usually took longer to get a PhD because they were more relaxed.
To give you an idea, two of my fellow group mates are now faculty members. And the one whose work was most like what you describe, and who did the best work IMO, never was able to secure a tenure track position.
The lifestyle you describe is really not worth the PhD you get in the end. The ROI is just not there - financially or otherwise.