I was denied tenure – how do I cope?
nature.com
nature.com
I don't really know how to advise people other than "please consider working in the private sector, research is an expensive hobby".
Then again some colleges seem to think training folks for the workforce to somehow demean their efforts.
That’s… not really surprising? Why would a CS course teach github? Hell I’d be surprised if a CS course taught git, that’s more of a CE subject, and not an amazing one either.
Learning how to use the tools of the trade, e.g. OS, IDE, version control, etc, is not something you need to spend $50k/yr to have a Ph. D. Teach you, it’s something you pick up on your own.
A lot of younger adults these days seem to think that college entitles you to a well-paying job, possibly due to the messaging from previous generation(s), but that is not (and never has been) the case.
What? A* is a brute force solution. Here's a complete description of A*:
A* is a breadth-first search in which we use weighted path length, rather than unweighted path length, to calculate tree depth.
Tons of people will invent it on the spot. The algorithm is just "let's try everything, in order of desirability, until something works".
Edit: most people don’t even think about recursion as a possibility until taught about it in a formal setting, and even then it’s typically a struggle to understand. Even using a queue, that’s a data structure that a person with a task to do isn’t likely to spend the time to invent on the spot.
If you're not dealing with nodes, you won't be inventing A* on the spot because you don't have a problem to which it can be applied.
But otherwise, it's literally a breadth-first search with the queue replaced by a priority queue.
> Even using a queue, that’s a data structure that a person with a task to do isn’t likely to spend the time to invent on the spot.
A to-do list is as simple as data structures get.
A heap is complex, but if you want to insist on developing everything used by the algorithm from scratch, the person faced with this problem is likely to just use a sorted list.
Try it out. Ask some people how they'd find the shortest path between two points through a weighted graph (use whatever terminology you want); see what they say.
An individual isn't going to invent a VCS either. They learn how to use it.
I'm not seeing the difference here. If somebody needs to use A* search, it's entirely plausible they just pick it up in a couple days on their own without spending 4 years studying a CS degree.
In a sense most knowledge these days are just a youtube video away.
To be fair the world has changed so much in the past ~30 years that I think in general universities should be thinking long and hard what their position in society ought to be going forward. They can't gatekeep knowledge any more, and word has gone out that degrees don't imply employability. Lots of people believe universities are required to learn theoretical knowledge, but I don't see what's special about those over trade skills (other than universities' traditional gatekeeping roles).
I'm pretty sure college degrees did open up a lot of doors in the past than today though. A simple matter of supply and demand I guess.
In a country with paid tuition, universities need to provide education that provides the fastest path to paying off student debt, otherwise they are doing their customers a disservice in life.
Far too many programmers exit from university without the skills that industry needs. If universities are places for free learning that's okay, but if you're paying $$$ for such a degree and been saddled with a mountain of debt then I think you've been robbed.
(Not that I disagree with your general thesis though. I just think it applies to free uni tuitions as well...)
Governments everywhere subsidize the arts because a society where people only go in to economically productive careers is culturally barren.
So I don’t think any Government enlightened enough to offer mass free university tuition would be unenlightened enough to see universities as mere training centers for industry, rather than as places of higher education at arm’s length from industry.
Whereas when individuals pay fully for their own tuition then they do need to see degrees as training for industry because they have to pay the money back with interest. Interest accrues with time so they need to be productive as quickly as possible. If universities have their students’ best interests at heart then they need to acknowledge this reality and design courses to give students useful skills that will let them pay the money back ASAP.
Research universities have theoretically oriented curricula, because that's what they are good at teaching. They also operate from the principle that universities are places of learning, not places of teaching. The curriculum is just the bare minimum, and students are expected to learn more on their own, according to their interests. For some people, this is exactly the right kind of learning environment. Others may prefer educational institutions that are more active in guiding them towards the right path.
Or put differently: ask any computer science professor employed at a University if they ever required to explain or use CI/CD, or ask Geoffrey Hinton how different his work on backpropagation algorithms would have been if he had had AWS.
You also make it sound like Github (which is just a commercial Git hosting service) is advanced "CS stuff" that you can't grasp without having this knowledge handed to you at an elite school. Most professionals and students of CS literally learn most or all of it in their spare time.
But even then, I know plenty of researchers who would rather earn half their salary than dealing with the private sector's BS: bad science practices, endless meetings, "Powerpoint or it didn't happen", zero freedom to experiment, having to constantly "dumb it down" to your manager's manager, draconian publication guidelines, "are you sure we can't patent it?", and the list goes on.
Research is only a hobby if you don't care about the impact and quality of your work. I'm sure the scientists who drafted the 1982 Exxon Internal Report on Global Temperatures [1] got paid very well for their report to be buried for 30+ years, but I would rather take a lower salary and make sure the fruits of my work actually get out there.
Sure, but I suspect you could find similar complaints from a lot of academics (UK "REF", for example). The UK situation is pretty dire at the moment and is unlikely to improve without the shock of a respected university simply becoming insolvent.
You might be surprised to know that there's a fairly big environmental consulting sector. It's serious stuff. Multi billion dollar construction projects can be derailed by the discovery of e.g. a particular kind of unique beetle.
I don't know what it's like in the US, but I have met some people in the sector in Australia and they do real work, they're ok with it, they do it with integrity - nobody gets asked to "bury" things.
Of course, they DO get asked by their customers what the absolutely cheapest possible way to (legally) solve their problems might be :)
He was kind of miserable at this job. He wasn't asked to bury things or hide anything, but he had studied environmental engineering because he wanted to make the Earth a better place, not to work out the limit of meeting legal responsibilities. I suspect a lot of his misery would have been mitigated if his employers paid a higher salary, but that's what the market demand was for those skills.
This is an unfortunate reality of much of the private sector, not just environmental engineering. You get into career X in order to [build interesting stuff | solve problems for the world | improve life for your customers], but instead end up in endless discussions with managers and lawyers, deciding what is the bare minimum the team needs to do in order to comply with the exact wording of the contract, while spending the least money.
Also pensions. Often, if you start early, you can retire with a full pension at 55 or so.
I would like to see universities prioritize undergraduate teaching. Stop abusing adjuncts and hire professors with a long-term interest in the success of the university's undergraduate programs.
Otherwise scientific education becomes like school teaching, and you end up learning that science is the things that your book says are true.
Rather, science is the living of body of knowledge based on experiment and logical thinking. It's a very subtle difference that I don't think can be taught if you're not an active researcher, it's not sufficient to state that in the abstract.
I'm not sure that's actually true. It's not financially--at least in the short term.
There are more smallish teaching-oriented liberal arts colleges/universities but most of the big engineering/science schools probably regard undergrads as largely necessary annoyances if the powers that be were being honest.
For better or worse, the overall trend is for a lot of the smaller liberal arts colleges to be going out of business as home economics/finishing schools really aren't especially useful any longer.
I recall one definition of a school including elementary right up to University being an institution that passed knowledge from one generation to the next. The suggestion that students are considered an 'annoyance' really is quite galling in itself. It defeats the entire purpose of the institutions and questions why we justify giving them tax money.
I doubt this. Having an undergraduate degree vice not is a major social status symbol, at least in the US. Someone with a degree from a liberal arts school is much more hirable/datable etc than someone without.
Whether or not hiring college grads is overall a good heuristic, it's probably just one that companies apply for a bunch of reasons--whether those reasons are generally valid or not.
I think this really depends on which universities you look at. Top of the field research universities.... Undergraduates are just a small piece of the overall pie, research (impact, etc) and grant writing are the primary factors in determining who gets tenure (and of course department politics).
Smaller universities, or less research focused universities I can imagine your teaching starts to take on more weight... But really, it all comes down to cost-benefit analysis between the university choosing you vs someone else. Especially when it comes to tenure which is like a long term investment. And there are only so many tenure spots in each department, sometimes it's more beneficial to leave them open than to fill them... Waiting to poach or acquire the next big name. Prestige brings in research money, investment money, students (grad and undergrad). So unfortunately, it's not really the meritocracy it is held up as.
If you're smart enough to do research at an academic level, go off the beaten track: start some courses on your subject on Udemy, save up some money while you're still IN academia, and when get out the first chance you get and do something else.
Every time you feel like the system burns you to the ground, rise like the phoenix and remake yourself. If something isn't working for you, discard it and push hard to fight against it.
Not to say it's fair or anything, but it seems like this is the way it is at least at some institutions.
But they will probably come up with something else sadly
That is not an option in this environment; too many companies use that as the gatekeeper. From a company's point of view, if someone refuses to take the test, that's okay because there are hundreds of other applications who will gladly do it.
Not a LeetCode example but my point is the coding exercises are silly.
(Plus Activision was apparently using Perforce at the time and not git)
How long ago was that?
If it's the latter, you don't have to switch jobs every 1-3 years, you can find a stable company and stick with them for the long haul. You may not get paid as well as the job hoppers, but you're probably making considerably more money then you would in academia, even tenured.
Many "stable" companies are still laying people off. There aren't as many companies one can "stick with for the long haul" as there used to be.
I am for fighting/hustling this if this is doable
Don't be like Amy Bishop.[1] She was a neurobiologist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville who didn't get tenure and, during the middle of a meeting, pulled out a gun and shot dead several of her colleagues, some of whom were on the committee that denied application.
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/02/11/a-loaded-gun
Easy. Just understand that most things in life resemble "Trip to Jerusalem" game.
Apologies but I stopped reading after that sentence in the very-very top of the article.
What does she mean "I had never considered"? What kind of immature and juvenile mindset is that? You plan for the success, and you also plan for the failure.
It's sad that this happened (I take no joy on someone else's pain), and at the same time I am surprised this happened.
To the positive outlook, you have built a team and have some equipment? Where/how else can you use that? As I know very little about your space, can you start doing blood-lab-work collaborating with clinics? Can you do a 23-and-me-like service? Can you sell all the hardware, cash-out at a loss, chillax for a few months, re-group and figure out what to do next? Perhaps go work for a big pharma or similar?
It's never the end, it's always one hurdle and perhaps a change of direction. Hang in there, all will be well. In 2-3 years you will be looking back at this moment and think "huh.. why was I even worried???"
EDIT: I read the full thing halfway through my note, but didn't go back up to change it.. still.. that phrase is a facepalm moment. I propose to many the "The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living". I've gone through it twice, read/think/journal daily. It asks some very good questions, and it would have prepared the author of that post for such outcome.
The subjects are happy to share their experience of getting denied, but they're probably too embarrassed to share why that happened.
So no, they can't just start doing private work with their equipment/staff. Especially when you consider the low salaries paid to their staff (graduate students) who will regularly work for 60+hr/weeks for $40-$60k/yr depending on university. And those students are there for their education and the name of the university, not for the PI.
So they will need to start from scratch, with no money, equipment, etc.
Edit: Ninja'd by doctorwho