Comments on: Being a professor may not be as sweet as it used to be

By: Diego

Diego — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 22:15:03 +0000

Nice topic, and controversial I think. In my opinion it all depends on how much you’ve accomplished by the age of 27. If you look at it statistically, I doubt back then more people were getting professor jobs at the age of 27 than they are today — my guess is that it was probably a rare case even then. Well, and as you said those cases are rare today. However, don’t write off the possibility of that happening today either. I know of a few cases in the last 3-4 years of people who’ve landed tenure-track positions before age of 28. Only one of them was directly out of PhD (she actually got the offer when she was 18 months into her PhD) and happened to be in my committee (I was 3 years older =). Other cases I know are of people who’ve gotten tenure-track jobs while still during their PhD (though they are 30 or 30+ since they did something else pre-grad school), but still job offers during PhD days. I think it all depends on how much they have accomplished by the time the time they get their jobs. Impressive nonetheless… but finally and to express my real opinion, it does not make me excited thinking of getting a prof job at age of 27, because this implies being one-minded since you go to college pretty much… and yeah, back then, I had a lot of other things I wanted to do…. like ‘nothing’ for example…

By: Anthony

Anthony — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:16:31 +0000

I agree that from a lifestyle perspective, graduate school is still a great deal and it's much easier to get into than a professorial position. You have good control over your time and there is a good community of other grad students, though the culture of your department and advisor-mentor match can be important factors in the experience. Also, some people find the expectations overly stressful, so it depends on personality. On the other hand, there's this clip from the Simpsons... Brian, I think you're not the only one who thinks we need to change the funding system: here's a recent article in Science. I don't know if I agree with the necessity of "saving" or with any particular proposal, but these things are on the table. Finally, thanks for linking phdcomics! Good stuff.

By: Brian

Brian — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 02:35:51 +0000

@Marissa

I’ve always looked at being a graduate student as a serf that works on pet projects.
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1075

Well I’m fortunate enough to have my own funding from NSF, so I’m immune to this catastrophe!

But, grad school life is pretty sweet.

By: Marissa

Marissa — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 03:27:09 +0000

Grad school itself may be as sweet as it used to be. I’m still absolutely flummoxed that an entity is paying me to read about both cyborgs and the Serengeti.

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:09:03 +0000

Autonomy. That’s the keyword for me and the primary reason why I wish for a job in academia or related. I’ve worked in industry for 2 years and it sucked. Yeah, the pay was good, almost too good for my standards, but I really hated how I had no real freedom.

The competition, etc. with becoming a professor and being a professor really kills the beauty; that’s capitalism’s fault (I’m not anti-capitalism, maybe a little).

Anyway, someone, somebody needs to protect the academic world. If the funding is steady and more or less guaranteed to be there, then things would be better and becoming a professor may be sweet as it used to be.