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Comment by blt | Hacker News Reader

I hope this faculty shortage is still in effect when I finish my Ph.D. :)

Anecdotally, many of my peers are going to industry instead of academia, because 1) better pay, 2) no begging for funding, 3) they don't want to teach. Academia is seen as signing up for a difficult life. Many industry research labs are allowing their staff to publish papers, so you can even participate in the academic research community. Look at how many NIPS papers come from Google-owned companies.

Personally, I'm interested in academia mainly because I'd rather not be part of an institution whose main goal is making money - but that attitude is not common in CS.

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Having watched a few rounds of CS faculty searches, I'm certain the shortage will still be there. (At least at my university.) The reasons are more or less what you mention, but objectively, it really isn't a particularly difficult life and teaching can be fun - especially when you hire a student to grade.

How sure are you that a university's main goal isn't to make money these days?

Based on the evidence it seems that is very much the point of universities these days, and research only exists to secure funding and prestige, not to push the boundaries of knowledge.

This is not a happy situation, but it seems to be where we are. And it probably won't change for a long time.

It's not impossible to disintermediate teaching and accreditation. But I can't think of any workable way to disintermediate high quality research, especially when significant resources are required.

The best approach might be to herd postdocs into research-only facilities - like Bell Labs and Parc, but independent - and throw money at them to see what happens.

That's not very imaginative, but research-only labs seem to work well when they're managed correctly, and a lot of smart people would like the chance to do pure research without having to teach, mark, and justify their existence with constant grant chasing and committee meetings.

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