Of course, before that time, there were also problems, like the embarrassment of refusing to hire Goeppert-Mayer, that may have led to the relationship accommodations in the first place.
Nah, university presidents are just greedy and wanted to play with that money themselves.
For example, spousal hiring could be seen as nepotism; in the case of Goeppert-Mayer, it famously wasn't allowed because of that. Yet outside of a handful of major cities, the local university is often the only place in the area someone can have a strong academic career, and academic careers often involve moving, so for a couple to both have academic careers, they often need to find a university willing to hire them both, and to search for positions together, something that is very difficult, especially when in different fields, unless the university has procedures to handle it. Add to this that academics often have social lives within academia, and this can become a very common difficulty.
Ain't worth it, man.
For reference, I have a degree in philosophy but ultimately decided not to go for a PhD.
These include: (a) teaching can be really fun, in terms of inspiring the next generation and opening their minds to new topics, (b) no one tells us what to do, we can work on what we personally think is important (though funding that is a separate question), (c) we're considered experts that can be called on by journalists, government agencies, patent lawyers, and immigration lawyers to help out, (d) we can do consulting to help with tech transfer and to learn more about industry problems, (e) thanks to Bayh-Dole act in USA we can also commercialize the technologies we develop.
Again, computer science is quite different, in that there are a lot more industry jobs available, a lot more money sloshing around compared to other fields, and less of a need to do multiple postdocs.
Also, don't underestimate the value of teaching. Not only is it a great value to society as a whole, but it can be highly intrinsically rewarding. I have a large stack of thank you cards and small gifts from students over the many years, and still occasionally get fun emails from students sending me new examples to use in class or stories of how they're applying what they learned.
So yes, there are a lot of tradeoffs involved with academia. But for me personally, I feel that I've made a positive difference in many people's lives, through my teaching, my research, and my advocacy, in ways that I wouldn't have been able to elsewhere.
Second-hand, but the best I could find on short notice. The money quote:
'I remember someone saying that their residency program advertised a "110%" divorce rate: every one of their residents divorced, and of the ones who remarried, 10% of those divorced as well.'
My wife studied law, and we saw every single one of her female friends abandon or pause a successful career in order to have children. Just like academia, careers in law often tend to invade nights and weekends; and that's just not compatible with having children.
Neither my parents nor most of the academic parents I knew growing up paused or abandoned their academic careers. We just spent a lot of time on university campuses. Departments were often fine with even infants being brought to offices, and classes their parents were teaching, as long as they weren't too disruptive. Quite a bit of work could be done at home, and home was often quite close to campus. While I was usually was with my mother, I think there was also easily accessible childcare. By the time I was an undergraduate, I knew the campus and library very well, and many faculty and staff knew me.
Well into the post breastfeeding toddler years, no one but my wife would have been able to satisfy the needs of my kids, and I feel like that is probably nature more than nurture. Mothers should be given at least a year of bonding leave, and fathers too just so the market does not reward men over women.
Decide you want four kids at age 20? No problem. Start at age 33, though? I hope you weren't planning to drink beer for the next decade.
The Earth's resources could comfortably sustain the current population. In terms of resources we could also feed and provide shelter to every single person alive today, which would reduce population growth as child mortality, lack of access to reproductive care (including safe and legal abortions) and parental socio-economic distress are the biggest contributors to high birth rates. But we can't do all of that AND run the Global North's economy the way we do AND afford a billionaire class. Alas that seems to be what we are currently doing.
Good luck convincing everyone on earth to downgrade their lifestyles. The amount of people who are committed to living a ascetic lifestyle to save the planet is negligible.
>The Earth's resources could comfortably sustain the current population
Without lifestyle downgrades? Given how much environmental problems we're running into already I find this to be unlikely.
>But we can't do all of that AND run the Global North's economy the way we do AND afford a billionaire class. Alas that seems to be what we are currently doing.
How much is the "billionaire class"'s contribution to global warming?
https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal...
For the US, the top 1% income bracket generates 15-17% of all emissions, the top 10% generates 40%.
Also:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rich-americans-ha...
This article states that the top 10% in the US generates more than double of the top 10% in Europe and still nearly double than the top 10% in Asia per person.
The article also correctly points out that the poorest half of the US also generates as many emissions as the middle 40% of Europe while being "almost twice as poor", so this is not at all about "downgrading their lifestyles". Even poor people in the US have a larger footprint than wealthier people than them in Europe.
If you consider anything moving away from all produce available year-round, nearly identical products released every year with an artificially shortened lifespan, AC/heating running constantly because of a complete lack of insulation, car-centric infrastructure because of a complete lack of walkable cities or public transport and disposable everything a "lifestyle downgrade", then yes, it will require lifestyle downgrades. But without a billionaire class (i.e. raising marginal tax rates to 90% so wealth is reinvested into the economy rather than hoarded) many of these things can be resolved without serious downgrades for most people and actually upgrading the lifestyles of the poorest (e.g. because you no longer have to maintain an expensive gas-guzzling vehicle to get anywhere).
>For example, in the producer framework households receiving wage or investment income from a power plant are responsible for the direct emissions it generates, while in the supplier framework households receiving wage or investment income from selling financial services or fossil fuel to that power plant are responsible for the plant’s emissions, proportional to their importance as a supplier
This approach seems questionable. In that model there's some sort of joint responsibility between the producer and the consumer. However, I argue that if someone is driving a SUV, he alone is responsible for all the emissions. I'm not sure why you'd get to blame whoever owns the oil company. After all, the only reason why the oil company is drilling for oil is that people want the oil, so it's questionable to blame the owner. If the driver switched to EVs, the oil consumption will disappear.
>The article also correctly points out that the poorest half of the US also generates as many emissions as the middle 40% of Europe while being "almost twice as poor", so this is not at all about "downgrading their lifestyles". Even poor people in the US have a larger footprint than wealthier people than them in Europe.
I'm not sure what your point is? "Just be like europe"? "America bad"?
>If you consider anything moving away from all produce available year-round, nearly identical products released every year with an artificially shortened lifespan, AC/heating running constantly because of a complete lack of insulation [...] and disposable everything
How much do those measures move the needle? For instance single use plastics (ie. "disposable everything") is basically a non-issue when it comes to overall greenhouse emissions, and might even be better than the alternatives in some cases (eg. https://www2.mst.dk/udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-...)
>car-centric infrastructure because of a complete lack of walkable cities or public transport [..] then yes, it will require lifestyle downgrades
Since US is sparsely populated, not having cars is most definitely a lifestyle downgrade. You could argue "but we can just make public transport better!" but the economics just don't work as well compared to europe, so you'd pay more and/or pay less which is still arguably a downgrade. Moving to denser/"walkable" cities rather than suburbs is also a solution, but is also a downgrade. Except to the most diehard urbanists, most would prefer a 4 bedroom house in the suburbs with a yard than a 3 bedroom apartment.
My point is that the US is doing something that is making everyone's footprint significantly larger without improving their quality of life, so clearly there are other factors to reducing the footprint than "downgrade the lifestyle".
> You could argue "but we can just make public transport better!" but the economics just don't work as well compared to europe, so you'd pay more and/or pay less which is still arguably a downgrade.
Citation needed.
> Moving to denser/"walkable" cities rather than suburbs is also a solution, but is also a downgrade.
Citation needed. Also the US doesn't have walkable cities, so you're comparing suburbs to a thing I already said is bad, not the thing I said would be better.
> Except to the most diehard urbanists, most would prefer a 4 bedroom house in the suburbs with a yard than a 3 bedroom apartment.
Do you think this preference is part of the immutable fabric of reality or do you think this is an emergent property caused by the total lack of public transport infrastructure, horrible zoning and white flight? "Urban center" vs "suburbs" is a false dichotomy caused by the missing middle in American urban planning, namely mixed-use zoning.
You don't need a car in the suburbs because the suburbs are sparsely populated, you need a car in the suburbs because everything other than housing is miles away and despite the roads being ridiculously congested the infrastructure is hostile to bikes and pedestrians and there are no trams, metros or buses. Meanwhile US urban centers are so hyperdense that nobody wants to live there and New Yorkers in 2023 are throwing a fit about the introduction of trash cans because there's literally nowhere to put them without impeding traffic, vehicular or otherwise.
Frankly, all I hear from you boils down to the same old tired "the US can't be improved because it's special" which is not just another boring rehash of American Exceptionalism but also demonstrably wrong. The thing holding the US back is that one of the major political problems has no qualms pushing nonsense conspiracy theories like the so-called "15 minute cities" being part of a dystopian plan to create real-world Hunger Games rather than a catchy "doing the bare minimum" plan to address climate change.
It's kind of hard to reconcile exotic conference destinations and increased travel to visit your family with a future with less planes, and academia being a very small ivory tower with few people is a thing of the past, so this can't be pushed under the rug anymore.