They have a strong perverse incentive to glut the PhD market since their control of grads then becomes nearly absolute - the graduate students' futures depend on their profs letters of recommendation. Not just wage slavery but "Weinberg benefits" and "pump and dump" (steal the graduate students ideas and then kill their careers and publish those ideas) results. One helluvan incentive.

With such a power disparity, I wonder how long before the stories of professors sexually abusing their positions start coming out. The situation sounds like a breeding ground for that sort of exploitation.

"start"? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/24/sexual-harassm... andhttp://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/03/23/top-uc-berkeley-... are recent stories from one college alone.

I'm not going to do the search, but there are already quite a few stories of that.

Follow female scientists on Twitter for like, a week. It'll be an eye opening experience.

I will echo what has been said earlier- "start?"

http://academiaiskillingmyfriends.tumblr.com/

I often wonder whether a much older professor sleeping with a much younger student (with consent; both adults obviously) is always a case of attraction based on intelligence and maturity as is often portrayed - esp. in books and films? e.g., One I watched recently - Pelican Brief. Just a random example really but my curiosity is broader in the sense that I want to know from people’s experiences - what they have seen around them.

My example seems to make my question sound like having fixed gender roles in this context - it kind of is so. I mean I rarely come across examples of such relationships with reversed gender roles. In fact when it’s an older female faculty member and a younger male pupil it’s often portrayed as, directly or subtly, something perverse or an abuse of some sort and isn’t shown to be as open and accepted as its counterpart (my example). Maybe the historical patriarchy or so?

Anyway, this has always intrigued me. Partially because where I am from this is rarely heard of and is a not at all socially accepted. In fact it was a taboo till very recently (maybe it still is), where as in the west it seems to be at least socially accepted (I am not sure how the reaction is at much smaller like concerned families level) and very common (unless I read it wrong from the films).

(typed on mobile)

>I mean I rarely come across examples of such relationships with reversed gender roles. In fact when it’s an older female faculty member and a younger male pupil it’s often portrayed as, directly or subtly, something perverse or an abuse of some sort and isn’t shown to be as open and accepted as its counterpart (my example).

The current President of France met and fell in love with his wife when she was his teacher.

True. But in popular culture it's not depicted in the same proportion at all. Right? How is it in reality there, comparatively?

PS. Why the down-votes?

I am not asking directly to @logicchains (I can't edit that comment now so adding it here). I am really perplexed. I was not trolling or being offensive (hope I didn't turn out to be so) and it is one of the aspects of western culture I don't understand and tried to understand it from the people who live there or have been there since I noticed a comment on the same lines (or perceived so). Also I assumed there would be lots of (ex) grad students here. I was thinking is there intimidation, misleading, fear of losing career chances involved in such relationships (and a whole lot of things)?

I have noticed this quite a few times. Comment down-voted that were neither offensive, nor unconstructive (I would like to know if mine was either of these or something else and learn from my mistakes).

I have recently got the ability to down-vote (seeing the up and down arrows both) and I hardly down-vote (on other forums too I've the same habit). Am I doing it wrong? The saying that "don't down-vote just because you disagree or don't like something" is just for saying and in practice we should just down-vote based on whims and likes? Or is there a methodology to it?

> The current President of France met and fell in love with his wife when she was his teacher.

Conincidentally, she also has a very rich father.

Ooops. That should be "Weinstein benefits", of course.

In the physical sciences (soft sciences too, perhaps) NSF proposals that don't have explicit funding for graduate students are D.O.A.

This was really surreal to me the first time I worked on an NSF proposal, because the NIH is far more accepting of straight postdoc proposals.

Little incentive, but some of us try to as good stewards of the field.