Publish and Perish at Imperial College London: The Death of Stefan Grimm | Hacker News Reader

Publish and Perish at Imperial College London: The Death of Stefan Grimm

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This is not a university anymore but a business with very few up in the hierarchy [..] profiteering and the rest of us are milked for money

This is exactly the impression I have of many American universities, which seem to have collectively fallen victim to a sort of 'administrative capture'. A typical example is the recent pay increases of 20% for the University of California chancellors - on salaries in the mid-$300,000s. The regents who voted for this said they intend to boost the pay of faculty and other staff too (who have also been subject to years-long pay freezes), but to me there's something fundamentally wrong with the idea of starting with the people who have the least economic need and are already handsomely compensated.

http://www.sfgate.com/education/article/UC-regents-award-20-...

Over the last decade, UC has grown the number of executives earning over $400,000 per year by 500%. Thy've also tripled in-state tuition in that time. And since 2008, managers and executives have been the fastest growing segment of the UC workforce. In other words, they're each doing less with more.

So yes, bad. And it gets even worse when you consider the socio-economic status of the people who are being expected to pay for the mushrooming admin layer. "Looting" is the expression that comes to mind. Only here, the people on top are stealing people's future earnings, as opposed to money they've already made. Moreover, they're forcing their victims to underwrite this unjust enrichment by making career choices that prioritize payment on egregiously inflated short-term notes over the kinds of decisions that may be in the long-term interests of students and society alike (e.g., a risky start-up with a long pre-growth lead).

And yes, "forcing" is a fair choice of words. The gun being pointed at their victims' heads is the very real threat of chronic instability (at best) if not outright poverty, which is a depressingly likely outcome for those who forego a college degree. And given the cratering value of degrees from cheaper but lower tier schools is no panacea.

Worth remembering: UC is not (on paper) a profit-making venture. It is an institution devoted (in theory) to public service.

p.s. UC admins can retire and start collecting pensions at at 55 or at 50, if they were hired before 2013. Added bonus: UC carved out an exception to the state's $110/yr cap on pensions. Depending on your salary, you may be eligible for $250k/year for life. Conceivably, this can go on for 40 years, which would mean "earning" $10 million for...breathing.

Presently, UC is spending $1.3 billion per year on pensions, and have been since 2010, when the state of CA stopped covering the full cost of employer contributions to UC's outrageous pension plans.

These fun facts are via Anthony York, formerly of the LA Times. He went on a whisky fueled twitter jag last night, and has more choice detail about the unrestrained banditry posted on his stream.

https://twitter.com/anthonyyork49

"Looting" is an entirely accurate description, and it is a fairly well-studied consequence of institutional structures that allow managers to pay themselves enormous amounts while bankrupting or otherwise destroying the organization they have been charged with taking care of: http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/projects/bpea/1993%202/1993...

The linked paper was written in 1993, and twenty years later looting is still going on, especially in the American banking industry. But it's happening in higher ed all over the place, as professional managers take over from academics in the running of universities. The change is understandable in its motivation: academics are terrible managers.

The problem is that academics have very different incentives from professional managers, and the checks and balances in university organizations have not been adapted to the new management, creating precisely the conditions of "poor accounting, lax regulation, or low penalties for abuse" that make looting inevitable.

Unfortunately, your facts are wrong. This retirement mess came about because both the state and UC stopped contributing to the UC Retirement fund in 1990. That went on for 20 years, until UC restarted it in 2010; the state is still not contributing. If they didn't do the holiday, the pension fund would have been more than healthy. Also, while older employees could retire at 55, the amount of benefits you get is dependent upon years of service (2.5% a year), and penalties if you withdraw earlier.

I'm a new UC faculty member (2014), and personally, I'd rather have a 401k as I'm uncertain as to how long this would be around.

Between 1990 and 2014, California has reduced state funding by 27%, while UC has increased enrollment by 43%. Since 2007/8, UC gets $460 million less in state funding. Finally, while there are many people at UC that make more than $400,000, they are mostly doctors (who bill through the UC hospitals), very senior medical directors (that are literally running billion dollar health care systems), and football/basketball coaches (who get their money from boosters). There are a handful of faculty that have actual salaries paid by the state that get regular pay of approximately get $400,000. At my institution (UCLA), there are only a few administrators that make above 400K and they are mostly medical center directors and the business school dean.

Anyways, I think there could be improvements in reducing the amount of administration, but it's not going to be the sea change you expect.

A lot of the salary and pension information for California public employees is available online anyway for people to decide themselves. For example, the follow is pages of people who make 6 figure pensions. http://transparentcalifornia.com/pensions/2011/university-ca... I don't know of any 401K plans that can top these numbers.

Don't put facts into the way of a convenient political narrative.

Nobody gets what they deserve. You only get what you negotiate.

(from my dad who is a former engineering professor and now a university administrator).

Don't take it as a dig at your dad, but shouldn't it be part of an administrator's fiduciary duty (at least at the top level) to ensure that people do get what they deserve? The longterm health of the institution surely depends on the quality and availability of the intellectual output as well as the balance sheet.

Precisely this. The loss of productivity from disaffected employees is difficult to quantify, but at times substantial. And once a culture of disaffectation takes hold it's near impossible to get rid of it. Administration is well advised to be careful in this matter.

These are wise words that sum up the colossally unfair system we have of compensation for any occupation in any economy in any industry. My own personal aphorism when talking down someone who is annoyed at their compensation compared to a colleague's, is "you don't get paid what you are worth, you get paid what you can blag".

If you have the barefaced cheek and personality profile to be able to convince someone to give you money for old rope, more power to you. I'm not saying it's fair, nor am I saying it's just, but it's reality across the world.

There was a great Ben Horowitz blog about exactly why this is incredibly poisonous. If you force people to negotiate for every raise instead of having a fair, scheduled process in place, you create a horrendous atmosphere where people feel like they constantly have to nag for a raise.

Don't think about this from the managerial perspective. think about it in terms of setting goals, exceeding them and ensuring your employer is totally aware of the value you bring. Combine this with being assertive and having good timing for when to ask and you'll get more money regardless of how benevolent your employer is. People who ask will get more than people who seem quietly content.

To be more accurate, the UC pay increases were for the 3 lowest paid chancellors 20%, and one other 5%. All three were the lowest paid chancellors amongst the 100 or so AARU universities. UC system schools are still on the lower end of the spectrum, and on the higher end of the spectrum for AARU schools in terms of cost of living.

True, but being less awful is not the same as being better. I can't take cost of living arguments seriously for people earning many multiples of the median income. Pay for teaching assistants at a mid-cost UC campus starts at $35k and I think people in that position are far more impacted by cost of living factors: http://gradstudies.ucdavis.edu/sites/default/files/upload/fi...

It's not that capping executive pay is going to yield enough savings for everyone else, by any means. But I do think that pay adjustments should be prioritized on the basis of maximizing marginal utility. These TA salaries are less than what I used to make working as a computer technician 20 years ago when I first came to the US (and wasn't too picky about the fact taht I was being underpaid because I was 25 and having a great time).

A TA is a graduate student who is also pursuing a doctoral degree. I don't think it's fair to compare this to a job in a private industry.

Interesting to note that Imperial College appear to have wiped all record of Dr. Grimm from their website.

http://www.imperial.ac.uk/collegedirectory/

http://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/s.grimm

It's heartening to see that some aspects of this institution's operations are apparently well-funded and efficient.

(Sarcasm, for the impaired.)

The flip side of this (at least at an American research university that I have witnessed first hand) is that professors bringing in large amounts of money with R01 grants can get away with nearly anything they want. This intersects with the other front page discussions about H1B visas and the system of exploitation I've seen with foreign post-docs and grad students. I've seen a foreign research scientist (and dear friend) literally work himself to death securing the grants that kept the money flowing into the lab.

There's so much to say about the current state of "research" (which I dare not call science, because seeking to falsify a hypothesis is a terrible way to win a grant) but all explanations are clear if you just follow the money.

Surely that's better than trying to win a grant by proving a known-false hypothesis, which isn't unheard of either.

If that known-false hypothesis is supported by wealthy people,this can be very lucrative.

I don't understand, don't professors have tenure?

Fewer and fewer institutions have tenured professorships these days, for three reasons I can think of:

- The pension plans that typically go with long-term employment like tenured professorships are expensive.

- Tenure gives professors a protected position and more political power, which is threatening to administrators.

- Exactly the reason this article addresses: institutions want to light a fire under people to force them to optimize for the amount of grant money they pull in, rather than for scientific achievement, or (gasp) quality of life.

The context of the story suggests that he was not one of the lucky ones, although it is possible that he was, and the university was going to fire him on grounds of some breach of contract or with the argument that he was otherwise breaching his duties as a professor by failing to bring in money.

The UK does not have the same concept of tenure as the US. Professors would have permanent positions and be subject to usual UK employment law.

It seems that the articles is not available any more... Here is a copy: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s5/sh/cb87dfea-7551-46e7-a162...

Also, here is one of early comments: http://musicfordeckchairs.wordpress.com/2014/12/02/wider-les...

Indeed, this change will only increase the uncertainty for the staff on an LD contract, who by the time they are offered an IC contract will on average be more than 40 years old, quite a long time before knowing whether they can look forward to some long-term stability for themselves and their families.

http://cds.cern.ch/journal/CERNBulletin/2014/49/Staff%20Asso...

Looking at your comment history, you certainly have an axe to grind for some reason. No idea why you think pasting this over and over on marginally related stories accomplishes anything.

There's almost no academic pride left in British universities. There may be amongst the staff and students, but not at the top. So disappointing.

>We had four papers with original data this year so far, in Cell Death and Differentiation, Oncogene, Journal of Cell Science and, as I informed Prof Wilkins this week, one accepted with the EMBO Journal. I was also the editor of a book and wrote two reviews. Doesn’t count.

>This leads to a interesting spin to the old saying “publish or perish”. Here it is “publish and perish”.

Sad to think that incredible contributions like that are still not enough to be deemed an essential part of a research department.

If he was able to publish at that scale with the grants he was getting, then that's not only perfectly alright, but it's damned impressive.

Incredibly unfortunate to hear of his passing, even worse that the circumstances aren't clear.

Apparently 'academic research' is now entirely a synonym for 'making money from funding.'

One of the fun things about the price mechanism is that it reduces everything down to its valuation in currency. Ethics, knowledge, emotion. It's terribly convenient.

This sounds nothing like the experience of where I am at (UCLA) in terms of grant pressure. I don't think the UK has tenured positions though.

My girlfriend is tenured, it does exist still. It tends to come with a 5 (five) year probation period so that if you do not achieve the grant quota they can bump you down to a teaching role and remove you from all research work.

And do not be deceived, all departments in all British universities are like this to some extent. It's just that some places (Imperial) appear to be worse than others, and some environments are more professional and do a better job of hiding the extraordinary politics from students.

Stefan Grimm has just given you a peek behind the curtain.

It's not all of Imperial. Faculty of Medicine is always the one that gets on the news for this kind of bullying.

Have they released a cause of death for Prof. Grimm?

Also the mention of an inquest seems to suggest something unusual suspected of causing the death. (Your average death from natural causes doesn't lead to an inquest.)

It's usually suicide when nothing criminal is suspected and there isn't a statement about natural causes.

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