One contributor to this pressure is the overproduction of Ph.D-level scholars. For every one of us who breaks, there are 100 eager applicants to take our spot. This allows the administration to keep ratcheting up the expectations. We also benchmark on the best instead of the average. We can't all be brilliant ground-breaking scholars who publish 10 important papers every year. In a given field, there are only a handful of such scholars, not even enough to fill out the Ivy League and similarly prestigious schools. Imposter syndrome comes (at least in part) from this benchmarking. Data fabrication also comes (in part) from this benchmarking. Ironically, if you cheat to get multiple big pubs to keep up with "real" scholars in your field who seem to publish constantly in the most prestigious journals, you're probably cheating to keep up with a cheater. We're finding that out more and more as big names turn out to have built their reputation for brilliance on the foundation of the Excel random number generator.
Today our Faculty is dealing with this with a "mental health morning tea". I declined the Outlook invitation as it clashes with my psychologist consultation.
I graduated from a university that had "accidentally" removed the ability for any non-employee students to report harassment and then changed all its policies so that no officer was even trained to take harassment complaints from students.
Pros and Cons. Paparazzis and media once tried to paint a bad picture on a university because of students' drug abuse. However I do agree that it is compulsory to have a channel to report harassment
I think that applying for scholarships and grants is the worst nightmare. Amount of admin there is enormous. So draining… 😢 but you need to apply not to get kicked.
An ordinary person in a job they can not tolerate, which would make them mentally ill, can usually quit and look for another job. A graduate student with years invested into a degree must do whatever their advisor wants them to do or abandon the goal they have sacrificed so much to attain. Their advisor probably got their job because they were willing to do whatever is required to publish as frequently as possible and raise as much money as possible, regardless of the effort or ethics required. And this is the person that a graduate student is at the mercy of. Is it any wonder that anxiety and depression are occupational hazards of graduate studies?
Grad school really f***ed me up. Almost everything stems back to my Dad’s accident and my advisor’s favoritism. I tried to be one of the favorites but despite always trying and doing everything I could I was always second fiddle to someone who worked half as hard as me. Then my Dad died (due to another university f***ing around with his vehicle) and I was alienated by everyone in my group. Even the grief counselor the school assigned me and my advisor forced me to go to said I could make it up by just working harder to show everyoneI was sorry for leaving to go to my dad’s deathbed and funeral. That I needed to prove my worth and be more productive. Instead I eventually just quit and finally rebelled hanging out with my undergrad friends on the swim club. They at least recognized I needed a friend and I’m only alive today because of them.
@@friedrice4015 I’m trying to be vague due to lawsuits. But let’s just say a major university owns a mechanic shop. My Dad had his vehicle there after minor exterior damage to get it fixed. They removed the engine, had it inspected potentially unnecessarily (my dad said it wasn’t needed and that it was an unnecessary risk but I’ve also been told by others that on paper it might have the right call) then reinstalled it incorrectly. The vehicle was inspected and approved by the university before my Dad could take it back. My dad made it less than an hour away before the engine failed and he crashed into a tree. Years later and this university will not accept fault. And to me and other experts in this field look at it with all the evidence and fault is very clear. Recently I got deposed by their lawyers. And they called me stupid for not being able to remember details from years earlier that didn’t even see relevant at the time. I can tell you the experiments I did the day of both accidents I can tell you I remember screaming “that’s my Dad” and breaking down in the lab when I found out about the accidents. But can I tell you how to maintain this vehicle; no I’m not a mechanic. Can I tell them my dad’s certifications - no, there’s so many. Can I tell you who told me when my Dad got his license; no. It was worse than my final defense or prelim and that was train wreck. They even called me a slur pointing at my intelligence and the abuse I’ve previously suffered and I just broke at that point. Sorry for the rant. But they didn’t care about my Dad’s vehicle. They didn’t care about my Dad’s life. They didn’t care that they wrecked a family. They still don’t even care as to further traumatize the victims family. Why would I think they give two shits about their students? Because the lack of empathy is striking.
@@ninjagirl226 I’m sorry. Not just about your dads death, which was tragic and unnecessary, but about the lawyers behavior. That’s entirely unprofessional. Hopefully if the judge sees they mistreated you that badly they’ll do something, but who knows. I really hope you win, and even if you don’t I’m sure your dad would be proud of your efforts.
Yeah that's bloody awful Just work harder umm no your brain is going through a tonne of anguish. Grad school is essentially a job at the Ph.D. level they should offer a small stipend for grief-related causes and leave to help you recover like a job normally would. I am sorry or your loss and hope you recover by the way. Also if a supervisor plays favorites that ass was likely a narcissist playing the golden child game. It's likely that you were just as capable as the "favourite" but just liked the power trip that game would give them and is of corse a disgusting game to play with people whose lives you got total control off for like 3-5 years. Not sure if that gives much comfort that it is but you where likely just as capable of everyone else and if you were given time off and had a supervisor who treated you like a human and not a robot to extract all of their oil and to rust away outside in the rain once you outlived your usefulness. I am so sorry that happened to you and you where treated that way.
Currently about to start my Masters Project (at 56 yol). Have to agree with most of this… I just want to be finished. No breaks, no vacation, just grinding through.
Thanks for your great video. Just had a conversation with my PI today about my future plans in staying as his PostDoc. I am considering to leave now. I want to conduct my own research (I am in my first PostDoc) and feel confident to do so and have lots of ideas. But the harsh reality today is, that he will not support me. I should just continue his agenda. Therefore, this video came to the right time. I really do not know what to do anymore. Thanks for making such videos. They really help me to relfect more and tell me what I want in life.
feels that way sometimes (just finish my research master's and have pretty much fully decided I wont do a PhD). Academia as an industry feels like the one who gives the most, is the busiest and suffers the most is winning the game
As a former academic (social science) I don't disagree with anything. And I can share many personal anecdotes in support. But I think I know what happened to me during my PhD (when I got physically sick and graduated with depression). No tribe. No community. Isolated. Alone. and that really hurt me long-term. If I had to do it again, finding a tribe would be priority one. But how? A tribe is more than a bunch of people.
Having a group of PhD colleagues to share things with is amazing for that. My team had weekly meetings to discuss our work in progress and it helped tons. They gave you ideas on how to reach breakthroughs on your research, you helped them and got to feel that you also matter a bit, and you also made some friends and networks on the way. Too bad many supervisors just don't care enough to give their students structure, especially in social sciences and humanities.
I am feeling that isolation with you. Like for me I struggle with making any friends due to Rejection sensitive dysphoria from ADHD and a lot truma I accumulated over the last two decades of my life I am lucky that I do have family who I am close with who I can see once a month as otherwise I would be totally broken and not be able to cope at all and lucky to have found a therapist that I pay to help pent and get help for that trauma and having a couple of great housemates as otherwise I would not have been able to cope with this year.
Teaching yourself is exactly what we want in academia as teachers. It's called independent learning and it allows you to really grasp the concepts in the course material.
It’s a generational demographic at play: during the era when the boomers entered the workforce the retirement age was around 55, so very few people became post docs because of the academic vacancies. Gen X got squeezed out because boomers weren’t retiring. And the generation issues have been passed on from there….
Thank you Andy for raising this issue. Thank you for mentioning the sweeping solutions they have to that help little to not at all to solve the problem, or at least maintain better mental health in the "4" years planned for the completion of the PhD--in the best case scenario.
Time Index 8.40 .. I agree. I have a professor who is teaching undergraduates how to read a thesis paper, vs teaching them the strategy on how to solve a problems. He only give 3 to 4 home work questions per week because they are extremely difficult and require a lot of time to complete, but only gives each home work set 3 points. So the overall determinant is whether or not you pass the final. The problem for me with ADHD and 100's of other learning disabilities is .. I need many smaller problems to work through, steps to the strategy that eventually bring everything together. I've found that I've had to study the material on my own using another book on the topic that has answers provided by chegg, bard, or Chat GTP.
This is really true, I have a good understanding advisor. But still I have insomnia, occasional depression and panic attacks and i been TA since the beginning, since my professor don’t have funding. I love teaching so I spent a lot of time into teaching I even took few courses in teaching . and this fall since there were less TAs in the department, I was given 3 courses to teach. How crazy is that. I am okay with teaching any number courses as long as its my subject, but they even gave a something completely different and am learning it for the very first time. When i emailed the guy who do the TA assignment begging him to give me something else , his said its okay you can manage this is going to help your CV 😢.
I actually just quit my PhD to join a new one this spring because of mental health things. I have since found a PI that aligns more closely with my research philosophy and I've also come across a nonprofit which helps to address the mental health issue. As someone with 4 pretty common mental health conditions (ASD, ADHD, GAD, and OCD), this immediately struck a chord with me, and I've begun to advocate for mental health in academia. I'm also hoping to become a professor because I love both research AND teaching. I've taken lots of inspiration from professors I've had who were simultaneously accomplished researchers and skilled teachers, and I'm hoping to do the same when I become a professor as well. It's the kind of career I would want to do all of my life.
You sound amazing! Also glad to see someone else who quit their first PhD and still wants to continue research. I am currently in the in-between-phase too! Hoping to continue my research career with hopefully a better lab and under a better PI!
My anxiety hit only after I left academia and worked in industry. After I got my Ph. D. and taught in college for 3 years I left for industry. My problems were in that adjustment. The creeping timelines were hitting me in my new job more than in academia.
Wrapping up balancing a full-time MBA from a top-tier US university while working 60+ hrs/wk as a mid-career technology consultant and having a family to support and care for... so I can relate to that anxiety! 😅 Next year, I begin a PhD. Luckily, on a part-time basis. 😅😅😅😅
As a late career academic, I appreciate what you're saying here. I loathe the 'back in my day' nonsense. It is a jack-of-all-trades system with training for one of the three elements most of the time. Can you share the citation for the first paper you discussed? Thanks
All reasons why I left, and you get paid a pittance, too. Now I’m getting paid multiple times more what I was making then, my work is fulfilling, has concrete impact on the real world, and I work fewer hours and get way more benefits aside from just the monetary. It would be unthinkable for me to go back to academia.
Lets not forget the number of young academics that are promoted beyond their real pay grade, because a faculty wants to do exactly what your suggesting should happen. Young people promoted to higher positions for a dept to be seen to be fresh and progressive, they then can be at risk of developing an attitude just like any industry. Also - being a researcher is different to being a teacher. Most people are better at one than the other but universities tend to lump the two into one role. Universities should be free-er to allow a stronger distinction between the two. Just my two cents.
As a tt professor, I have been told: "Your teaching evals are good enough, do not improve them because it will send the wrong message: that you are prioritizing teaching too much, and this is not good".
I am currently very depressed.Facing racial discrimination as a PhD scholarship student abroad.I ve had many dark thoughts.I think I m still here because of my son who was born in this country during the pandemic.Academia is a scam!Thinking of dropping my medical degree altogether !
Please, let go of the dark thoughts. I am an immigrant also. Came to where I live now to study and did not get any opportunity until after 12 years. Yes, I got my internship at 36 years old, in the final year of my PhD. I was hopeless for many years. The schooling for me was like walking in the dark since I had no hope. Just said all of that to let you know you are not alone. I pray things get easier for you.
The principal issue with the new "teaching focussed roles" is they are low(er) level, unlikely to lead to promotion, and focused on teaching teachers (teaching and learning faculty), rather than roles as actual teachers within other faculties/disciplines.
Huh. That is a lot to think about. Wading in to the beginning thoughts about stress and anxiety (as a PhD student), Andy seems to imply that uni’s are not trying “head on” to fix this. The thing is, is it really a thing for uni’s to fix? It seems that how I cope and even flourish in the program is so personal and more in the realm of a skill to be developed than something that can be “fixed”. Andy makes me wonder if the uni fix might start at orientation in the first week where students are invited to some sort of skills development workshop BEFORE classes start. The workshop could culminate in a co created anti stress action plan that students could follow during the year. Hmmm…I’m sure there are whole departments of health sciences thinking about this. But Andy is right. No systematic head on solutions are in action.
As a faculty member, the university takes more than 50% of the funds you bring in and you must raise three months of your salary for summer. Every year you are compared against your department peers in terms of how much money you raised. Are they in a hotter field? Did they ignore their spouse and family all year? Did they buy out of teaching and have more free time. None of this matters, only whether you are at or above the department spending average. Faculty may die of heart failure or get divorced, but you still must meet the numbers. For those starting as a PI, the optimum path is to suck at teaching on purpose and to be a mean a$$hole to anyone who can't help your career. You then won't get any large required classes and students will be scared of you. Then, with this increased time your goal is to raise enough funds so you can buy out of teaching entirely. Your teaching load will then be given to another untenured faculty. While this schmuck does your work for you, you can just focus on research and get ahead of your peers. Submit as many proposals as possible, overwork your students by assigning them each the same project so they have to compete with each other and never answer your emails or open your office door so people leave you alone. If you do this aggressively for 5 years you will easily get tenure. This is the sad reality. Selfish behavior is rewarded. Good people get stomped on and burn out.
"...did they ignore their spouse and family all year..." or simply forego having a family. How many of our young scholars simply don't have time to fall in love because they're competing with others who are also not getting tied down with inconvenient human relationships? When my wife and I adopted our son while I was a post doc I was told that my research career was essentially over. By a woman who married a colleague late in life and had no children.
Its like the world system wants us to gets stupider (hehe). Make the academics enslaved by anxiety. Make the newer generations feel abandoned. Focus on those numbers, what is moral? You want relaxation, no need ticket to italy, pizza hut is near! I also agree with early academics struggle. My senior have to absolutely find third party projects because overall wage is "close to enough"...
You've nailed it. Did you know that when the American Revolution was complete... all the functionaries, the establishment officials, judges, peace officers, bankers... the whole lot simply switched sides to work for the new boss? The people that swore allegiance to King George III did not suffer an epiphany that feudalism is bad... they just switched so they could retain their privileges. Lots of people know this but the kicker is what it says about civilization. It reveals civilization as an authoritarian process. The mechanism of this process is to create a privileged class of people. Authorities. These people are distinguished by their willingness to tolerate and use violence to achieve their ends. Authority is distinguished from expertise by this willingness. Authority is distinguished from leadership by the nature of the interests being served. Leaders serve community interests... authorities serve their own... and the authoritarian hierarchy. So when a new authority takes over a political organization, the lessor authorities fall in line... in order to maintain their privileged position in the institutional hierarchies that civilization invariably uses... and, of course, their "opportunity" to rise through the ranks to higher and more privileged authoritarian positions. This is what civilization does. It's distills the will and talent of billions of individuals into a very few invariably short-sighted and petty hands. History itself is the study of this authoritarian process. Academics are suited to expertise... not authority. And power does to them what it does to everyone else power/authority corrupts them and makes them see themselves as less than they should be. Depression. It's not just academics... this problem is inherent to our authoritarian societies. It can not be fiddled away. Poverty and Excess are the byproduct and goal of the authoritarian mindset. This is why civilization and economies have to grow... and it is why civilizations and economies are unstable and fail every time we use them.
Its WAY more welcoming, inclusive and friendly from my experience in 3 large US companies. I worked for almost a decade before coming to do a PhD and the culture shock was SIGNIFICANT.
I am lucky to not be part of the american system but the european system wants to adopt so much from the american system that it is getting worse and worse. I had the luxury to be able to just study at my pace for 10 years and I worked as a teaching assistant for 6 of those years. After all this time I got my master's degree and I still have a huge passion for teaching, especially teaching of the basics. Yet without continueing on the career and get a doctor and then maybe receive a calling as a professor in a university I am no longer allowed to teach in universities. I would gladly take over the so often considered "annoying" part of our curriculum and teach, organise and manage the entire first semester in our university but without following the career path of a researcher I am not allowed to participate in teaching anymore. This is assinine. So many people in our faculty would be happy if they could quit researching and just teach but without continueing to research you are not allowed to, even though it would be so much better to hire passionate people who want to teach and give the option of not having to teach to those who are incompetent or rather want to continue to research. Even some special teaching funds require you to have a doctor in order to even be considered even though there is no reason to have a research history if your job description is to literally only teach.
That sounds dumb too not all great researchers are great teachers and vice versa. So hiring people who only teach or research because that's what they are good at makes way more sense. As research and teaching are incredibly large and varied skill sets to be good at only one of those two, which also takes people with specific temperaments to be doing either of those things.
It's interesting that you criticize the American system because there are numerous community colleges in the US where you could continue your teaching career with a master's degree.
@@timothyrday1390 I am not from the US and do not know enough to have an *educated* opinion, but from what I heared and took up from popculture, aren't community colleges basically teaching base bin school stuff? I was part of some talks with US citizens that wanted to start or continue their bachelors at our university and we had to tell them their education level was that of a 14 - 16 year old for our standards and they should reconsider trying to apply here. What I love to teach is still *higher* education, even if it is just the basics. If I wanted to teach at schools I would have taken our courses for education, not science (at least here you have to have graduated in special school education based university tracks in order to be allowed to teach at schools)
Maybe it's just that neurotics and depressives go deeply into academia ... rather than facing the vicissitudes and challenges of the real world and getting a proper job.
I am attending a conference in Autralia right now and it is even becoming worse. Now they say that they love to be inclusive but they won't let you participate in anything meaningful but they take your papers and more and more of your papers. They are more than happy than getting your ideas for free but giving anything in return: Who are we? You do not have those three letters? Hahaha, get lost.
I had one chap I interviewed for a software developer job, who was obviously very bright, who told me he was training himself to manage on 3 hours of sleep - he didn't get the job, not because he wasn't bright enough for the job but because he was obviously unbalanced and unsuitable for working in my team.
This is worse in the social sciences. At least there is the facade of objectivity in the hard sciences. You can throw that out the door in the social sciences and humanities. The other problem is the lack of professional coherence in academia. Other professions like law or medicine have professional organizations that place limits on what is expected. Also, there are unions that engage in collective bargaining to get better wages and labor conditions. Other than ego and stupidity, I see no reason why academics can't engage in either.
Also, expectations from the teaching professors and the tenured research professors do not align. I think research professors just bshouldn't teach unless they want to. They tend to be poor teachers whereas the teaching ones actually seek to improve pedagogy androgogy. I also think both should be paid the same since they both bring money in... 🤷🏽♀️
A.J.P. Taylor's research into 19th-century and 20th-century European history changed the course of the discipline forever. *And yet* he was also a damned good teacher and lecturer. So much so that when (the tale is told) his university employers wanted to cut him down to size by assigning him the Monday 9am lecturing slot, there were queues of students outside the lecture theatre for half an hour beforehand, eager to hear what he had to say. Surely, surely, it is on Australian campuses alone that the teaching-lecturing side gets marginalised while much-touted 'researchers,' who not only can't devise the simplest PowerPoint slide sequence but can't string five spoken words together without 'um'-ing and 'ah'-ing like half-witted teenagers, get all the prizes and kudos. At any rate, until Australian academe stops punishing the well-spoken, it will deserve to be defunded and boycotted. The Australian academics who can actually teach and lecture will simply (a) go abroad, (b) leave academe, or (c) both.
When I went to University I assumed the poor to sometimes non-existent teaching was because they were all researchers. Then one day I was being a bit naughty and 'accidentally' went up to the staff only floor and saw their department notice board. TL;DR they were struggling to think of and actually do any research, apparently because some were too busy doing outside consulting (teaching it seemed was just their side hussle) and some, shockingly, just weren't very academic!
Much of this is the supervisor biting off more then their postgrads can chew - all for the supervisor's ego. Mine kept changing project course to try to shoehorn the impossible into remaining time budget - the last being 7 months before thesis hand-in. So, at that time, no developed project or toolset, no results, nothing to write up or conclude. This after 18-months of warnings from me that the project was too big... I quit from him, worked from home and completed using my own ideas. Took 2 years and passed with minor corrections. "Fortunately" I've had many nervous breakdowns; the PhD was like living in a rolling 4 years nervous breakdown (with extreme peaks) but I knew how to survive like that. You need friends.
One of the reasons Grigori Perelman gave the finger to academia and turned down the Field’s medal and the millennium prize. Same with Grothendieck. Both top mathematicians.
Not sure about grad students, but postdocs and faculty health care plans at my university also cover mental health services without any copay. They also cover all preventative care with no copay and with rare exceptions, the max you pay at the hospital will be $500. That said, undergrads are given thoughts and prayers. It's absurd and in the last couple years, I've had multiple students in the E.R. for suicide watch.
It's good they offer that and if it's course length support that is the exception, not the rule. Not the suicide watch thing of course, but having access to it. During the first year of my PHD I had to actively put myself into debt to just sort myself out. Worth every penny of course but still should not have been a cost I should have had to pay. Due to the lack of mental health support.
The solution is obvious. You have two paths: teaching and research. You should be paid for the teaching according to how well you teach and you should be paid for your research partly I think on the most important research you have achieved. There should be a bias of quality over quantity. For example if you were the man who discovered relativity then that alone should make you a professor. Furthermore when you admit academics to the university you should assess them on what they are good at. Like in physics, you get some who are superb theoreticians but hate labs and then you get some who are excellent in the lab but need help with their theory. Both types are valuable to the university, and above all the university aught to leave it up to the academic to decide which thing they do more of. They would enjoy life more that way and make them more personally responsible. Having that power to direct your life is a big cure for depression. Depression could be fixed by switching to some other job in the department to give the person a bit of variety and interest.
I couldn't agree more. At least there could be a better set of options based on each academic's strengths, or alternating periods between heavy research and teaching roles. There also needs to be more focus on quality teaching and quality research and viable long-term paths open to whomever can perform well in those areas, separate if need be.
I am italian. After have visited many departments in different countries I start to get convinced are all a bunch of trash in teaching outside Italy. I do not even take in considerations among teachers there it should at least a Master. A real Master as Pytagoras
Academics have sold out. And selling out makes people angry at themselves. Being angry at yourself is what depression is. All over the country corporations are making decisions for university students that actually do nothing for the students and bring more profit to the corporations. And while all this is happening the Ph.D's are sitting around hoping no one starts cutting their pay. While tolerating the exploitation the labor of TA's... a role they recently "rose" through. This authoritarian mindset pervades our academic community. It's enforced by the requirement for funding. And this has actively corrupted the academic's credibility and reputation. Researchers faking results... taking money to make weapons... all these moral faults come at a price to the academic. Academics research what they are told to research, because funding is required for research. Funding comes from doing what the corporation and the rich people want. In other words, academics are depressed for the same reason cops are depressed. They are a human resource, nothing more, they do not have freedom to explore or to even speak up. And this state is payment for them protecting themselves instead of their students and standing up... long ago. Now it a fait accompli... corporations run the state... and they all stood around while it was happening, hoping to retain their position in the authoritarian hierarchy they all claim to hate.
I’d like to ask: do I need a PhD if I want to become a bench laboratory research scientist that isn’t just a technician?. I am currently a chemistry major and I don’t really want to become an academic. But I really love laboratory work and research. And would love to be the person synthesizing new drugs, agrochemicals, polymers, and materials. And test them on either biological systems like microorganisms in the case of infectious diseases or plants or cells. I am also interested in testing their physical properties and things like that. I’m also interested in other areas like biomaterials, drug delivery, etc. but I don’t know if I should go for a PhD because I hear academia is really toxic and I don’t really want to end up doing administrative, management, teaching, or leadership tasks, my main passion is hands on laboratory research and development. But I don’t know if I should do a PhD or if a bachelors or masters would be enough. And also I am not interested in just being a technician and following procedures made by others or doing extremely repetitive lab work. I am from Qatar btw.
Well, academia is not always toxic. I got pretty lucky personally. Choose your team wisely and you can be in both academia and industry (which was my case from my master to my PhD and my current position).
The tasks that you are describing are tasks that seem to require the capacity of being an independent researcher. That's what PhDs prepare you for. I am not from your field so I can't say for sure, but my hunch would be that, yes, you do need a PhD if you want to have a leading role in cutting edge research. Without it, you will need to be following directions assigned to you, which most likely will be the mind numbing, repetitive stuff.
The school is providing information and critical thinking skills for students to figure out what is true. If the student comes away blindly accepting everything the professor says without doing any research themselves, the student is just a stupid person with a degree. Don’t let other people do your thinking for you.
I don't think Dr. Stapleton has one thing right. You can succeed. Universities don't care very much about teaching or mentoring, or even committee duties, if you can bring in a ton of money. Bring in a bunch of money, get out a bunch of publications, promote yourself tirelessly, and pretty much anything else can be forgiven. You don't have to be perfect or excellent. You just have to do the most important things the university wants, which is boost its bottom line and prestige.
Dear Andy, I am watching your video on TH-cam about 3 Unbelievable AI Technologies to Automate Your Literature Review and was wondering about the above as it helps to generate your lit review, but if you had to submit it for an assignment, would it be accepted, say if you were a University student. I hope you can advise me about it. Many Thanks, zena
Was there ever an Academic Golden Age, when the PhD student was happy (not depressed) and satisfied with their experience? I would suspect there was--and it happened before the onset of pyschologizing the student and analyzing the academic "experience."
Part of a graduate attribute is the ability to deal with stress and your mental health. You think public schools go easy on kids. Nope they don't. Why? Because leadership is born in adversity.
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One contributor to this pressure is the overproduction of Ph.D-level scholars. For every one of us who breaks, there are 100 eager applicants to take our spot. This allows the administration to keep ratcheting up the expectations. We also benchmark on the best instead of the average. We can't all be brilliant ground-breaking scholars who publish 10 important papers every year. In a given field, there are only a handful of such scholars, not even enough to fill out the Ivy League and similarly prestigious schools. Imposter syndrome comes (at least in part) from this benchmarking. Data fabrication also comes (in part) from this benchmarking. Ironically, if you cheat to get multiple big pubs to keep up with "real" scholars in your field who seem to publish constantly in the most prestigious journals, you're probably cheating to keep up with a cheater. We're finding that out more and more as big names turn out to have built their reputation for brilliance on the foundation of the Excel random number generator.
That is so true about using the highest achievers as a benchmark. It's very destructive.
Today our Faculty is dealing with this with a "mental health morning tea". I declined the Outlook invitation as it clashes with my psychologist consultation.
You don't need it. Mass consultation is for the poor students.
I graduated from a university that had "accidentally" removed the ability for any non-employee students to report harassment and then changed all its policies so that no officer was even trained to take harassment complaints from students.
Pros and Cons. Paparazzis and media once tried to paint a bad picture on a university because of students' drug abuse. However I do agree that it is compulsory to have a channel to report harassment
That’s a major title IX issue
I think that applying for scholarships and grants is the worst nightmare. Amount of admin there is enormous. So draining… 😢 but you need to apply not to get kicked.
An ordinary person in a job they can not tolerate, which would make them mentally ill, can usually quit and look for another job. A graduate student with years invested into a degree must do whatever their advisor wants them to do or abandon the goal they have sacrificed so much to attain. Their advisor probably got their job because they were willing to do whatever is required to publish as frequently as possible and raise as much money as possible, regardless of the effort or ethics required. And this is the person that a graduate student is at the mercy of. Is it any wonder that anxiety and depression are occupational hazards of graduate studies?
Grad school really f***ed me up. Almost everything stems back to my Dad’s accident and my advisor’s favoritism.
I tried to be one of the favorites but despite always trying and doing everything I could I was always second fiddle to someone who worked half as hard as me.
Then my Dad died (due to another university f***ing around with his vehicle) and I was alienated by everyone in my group. Even the grief counselor the school assigned me and my advisor forced me to go to said I could make it up by just working harder to show everyoneI was sorry for leaving to go to my dad’s deathbed and funeral. That I needed to prove my worth and be more productive. Instead I eventually just quit and finally rebelled hanging out with my undergrad friends on the swim club. They at least recognized I needed a friend and I’m only alive today because of them.
Toxic environment. PhD I think is more niche and u do not need an academic clicque
What does “another university fucking around with his vehicle” mean
@@friedrice4015 I’m trying to be vague due to lawsuits.
But let’s just say a major university owns a mechanic shop. My Dad had his vehicle there after minor exterior damage to get it fixed. They removed the engine, had it inspected potentially unnecessarily (my dad said it wasn’t needed and that it was an unnecessary risk but I’ve also been told by others that on paper it might have the right call) then reinstalled it incorrectly. The vehicle was inspected and approved by the university before my Dad could take it back.
My dad made it less than an hour away before the engine failed and he crashed into a tree.
Years later and this university will not accept fault. And to me and other experts in this field look at it with all the evidence and fault is very clear.
Recently I got deposed by their lawyers. And they called me stupid for not being able to remember details from years earlier that didn’t even see relevant at the time. I can tell you the experiments I did the day of both accidents I can tell you I remember screaming “that’s my Dad” and breaking down in the lab when I found out about the accidents. But can I tell you how to maintain this vehicle; no I’m not a mechanic. Can I tell them my dad’s certifications - no, there’s so many. Can I tell you who told me when my Dad got his license; no. It was worse than my final defense or prelim and that was train wreck. They even called me a slur pointing at my intelligence and the abuse I’ve previously suffered and I just broke at that point.
Sorry for the rant. But they didn’t care about my Dad’s vehicle. They didn’t care about my Dad’s life. They didn’t care that they wrecked a family. They still don’t even care as to further traumatize the victims family. Why would I think they give two shits about their students? Because the lack of empathy is striking.
@@ninjagirl226 I’m sorry. Not just about your dads death, which was tragic and unnecessary, but about the lawyers behavior. That’s entirely unprofessional. Hopefully if the judge sees they mistreated you that badly they’ll do something, but who knows. I really hope you win, and even if you don’t I’m sure your dad would be proud of your efforts.
Yeah that's bloody awful Just work harder umm no your brain is going through a tonne of anguish. Grad school is essentially a job at the Ph.D. level they should offer a small stipend for grief-related causes and leave to help you recover like a job normally would. I am sorry or your loss and hope you recover by the way.
Also if a supervisor plays favorites that ass was likely a narcissist playing the golden child game. It's likely that you were just as capable as the "favourite" but just liked the power trip that game would give them and is of corse a disgusting game to play with people whose lives you got total control off for like 3-5 years. Not sure if that gives much comfort that it is but you where likely just as capable of everyone else and if you were given time off and had a supervisor who treated you like a human and not a robot to extract all of their oil and to rust away outside in the rain once you outlived your usefulness.
I am so sorry that happened to you and you where treated that way.
Currently about to start my Masters Project (at 56 yol). Have to agree with most of this… I just want to be finished. No breaks, no vacation, just grinding through.
Thanks for your great video. Just had a conversation with my PI today about my future plans in staying as his PostDoc. I am considering to leave now. I want to conduct my own research (I am in my first PostDoc) and feel confident to do so and have lots of ideas. But the harsh reality today is, that he will not support me. I should just continue his agenda. Therefore, this video came to the right time. I really do not know what to do anymore. Thanks for making such videos. They really help me to relfect more and tell me what I want in life.
Grad school is an initiation ritual, the point is seeing how committed you are to the tribe by making you suffer.
feels that way sometimes (just finish my research master's and have pretty much fully decided I wont do a PhD). Academia as an industry feels like the one who gives the most, is the busiest and suffers the most is winning the game
As a former academic (social science) I don't disagree with anything. And I can share many personal anecdotes in support. But I think I know what happened to me during my PhD (when I got physically sick and graduated with depression). No tribe. No community. Isolated. Alone. and that really hurt me long-term. If I had to do it again, finding a tribe would be priority one. But how? A tribe is more than a bunch of people.
Having a group of PhD colleagues to share things with is amazing for that. My team had weekly meetings to discuss our work in progress and it helped tons. They gave you ideas on how to reach breakthroughs on your research, you helped them and got to feel that you also matter a bit, and you also made some friends and networks on the way. Too bad many supervisors just don't care enough to give their students structure, especially in social sciences and humanities.
I am feeling that isolation with you. Like for me I struggle with making any friends due to Rejection sensitive dysphoria from ADHD and a lot truma I accumulated over the last two decades of my life I am lucky that I do have family who I am close with who I can see once a month as otherwise I would be totally broken and not be able to cope at all and lucky to have found a therapist that I pay to help pent and get help for that trauma and having a couple of great housemates as otherwise I would not have been able to cope with this year.
Teaching yourself is exactly what we want in academia as teachers. It's called independent learning and it allows you to really grasp the concepts in the course material.
I agree with you. I was so depressed when I was doing my Master's thesis. I was seeing a counselor.
It’s a generational demographic at play: during the era when the boomers entered the workforce the retirement age was around 55, so very few people became post docs because of the academic vacancies. Gen X got squeezed out because boomers weren’t retiring. And the generation issues have been passed on from there….
Thank you Andy for raising this issue. Thank you for mentioning the sweeping solutions they have to that help little to not at all to solve the problem, or at least maintain better mental health in the "4" years planned for the completion of the PhD--in the best case scenario.
Time Index 8.40 .. I agree. I have a professor who is teaching undergraduates how to read a thesis paper, vs teaching them the strategy on how to solve a problems. He only give 3 to 4 home work questions per week because they are extremely difficult and require a lot of time to complete, but only gives each home work set 3 points. So the overall determinant is whether or not you pass the final. The problem for me with ADHD and 100's of other learning disabilities is .. I need many smaller problems to work through, steps to the strategy that eventually bring everything together. I've found that I've had to study the material on my own using another book on the topic that has answers provided by chegg, bard, or Chat GTP.
This is really true, I have a good understanding advisor. But still I have insomnia, occasional depression and panic attacks and i been TA since the beginning, since my professor don’t have funding. I love teaching so I spent a lot of time into teaching I even took few courses in teaching . and this fall since there were less TAs in the department, I was given 3 courses to teach. How crazy is that. I am okay with teaching any number courses as long as its my subject, but they even gave a something completely different and am learning it for the very first time. When i emailed the guy who do the TA assignment begging him to give me something else , his said its okay you can manage this is going to help your CV 😢.
I actually just quit my PhD to join a new one this spring because of mental health things. I have since found a PI that aligns more closely with my research philosophy and I've also come across a nonprofit which helps to address the mental health issue. As someone with 4 pretty common mental health conditions (ASD, ADHD, GAD, and OCD), this immediately struck a chord with me, and I've begun to advocate for mental health in academia.
I'm also hoping to become a professor because I love both research AND teaching. I've taken lots of inspiration from professors I've had who were simultaneously accomplished researchers and skilled teachers, and I'm hoping to do the same when I become a professor as well. It's the kind of career I would want to do all of my life.
I wish you well. Sounds like you would be a great advocate for students with mental health difficulties or/and not neuro typical
You sound amazing! Also glad to see someone else who quit their first PhD and still wants to continue research. I am currently in the in-between-phase too! Hoping to continue my research career with hopefully a better lab and under a better PI!
Grad school just put me in inpatient. But I’m terrified of career opportunities outside of advanced degrees, I’m not sure what to do.
My anxiety hit only after I left academia and worked in industry. After I got my Ph. D. and taught in college for 3 years I left for industry. My problems were in that adjustment. The creeping timelines were hitting me in my new job more than in academia.
Wrapping up balancing a full-time MBA from a top-tier US university while working 60+ hrs/wk as a mid-career technology consultant and having a family to support and care for... so I can relate to that anxiety! 😅
Next year, I begin a PhD. Luckily, on a part-time basis. 😅😅😅😅
Careful. Sometimes supervisors will drag your semesters and you pay more money.
As a late career academic, I appreciate what you're saying here. I loathe the 'back in my day' nonsense. It is a jack-of-all-trades system with training for one of the three elements most of the time.
Can you share the citation for the first paper you discussed? Thanks
All reasons why I left, and you get paid a pittance, too. Now I’m getting paid multiple times more what I was making then, my work is fulfilling, has concrete impact on the real world, and I work fewer hours and get way more benefits aside from just the monetary. It would be unthinkable for me to go back to academia.
Lets not forget the number of young academics that are promoted beyond their real pay grade, because a faculty wants to do exactly what your suggesting should happen. Young people promoted to higher positions for a dept to be seen to be fresh and progressive, they then can be at risk of developing an attitude just like any industry. Also - being a researcher is different to being a teacher. Most people are better at one than the other but universities tend to lump the two into one role. Universities should be free-er to allow a stronger distinction between the two. Just my two cents.
As a tt professor, I have been told: "Your teaching evals are good enough, do not improve them because it will send the wrong message: that you are prioritizing teaching too much, and this is not good".
I am currently very depressed.Facing racial discrimination as a PhD scholarship student abroad.I ve had many dark thoughts.I think I m still here because of my son who was born in this country during the pandemic.Academia is a scam!Thinking of dropping my medical degree altogether !
Immigrants are all like that. No pain no gain. Other alternatives are you formed a clique like Chinatown or Italian town
Yo hang on! Turn your depression into anger and use that energy if possible
Please, let go of the dark thoughts. I am an immigrant also. Came to where I live now to study and did not get any opportunity until after 12 years. Yes, I got my internship at 36 years old, in the final year of my PhD. I was hopeless for many years. The schooling for me was like walking in the dark since I had no hope. Just said all of that to let you know you are not alone. I pray things get easier for you.
The principal issue with the new "teaching focussed roles" is they are low(er) level, unlikely to lead to promotion, and focused on teaching teachers (teaching and learning faculty), rather than roles as actual teachers within other faculties/disciplines.
On a positive note, I like your hoodie :D
Huh. That is a lot to think about. Wading in to the beginning thoughts about stress and anxiety (as a PhD student), Andy seems to imply that uni’s are not trying “head on” to fix this. The thing is, is it really a thing for uni’s to fix? It seems that how I cope and even flourish in the program is so personal and more in the realm of a skill to be developed than something that can be “fixed”. Andy makes me wonder if the uni fix might start at orientation in the first week where students are invited to some sort of skills development workshop BEFORE classes start. The workshop could culminate in a co created anti stress action plan that students could follow during the year. Hmmm…I’m sure there are whole departments of health sciences thinking about this. But Andy is right. No systematic head on solutions are in action.
Hit the nail on the head!!!
As a faculty member, the university takes more than 50% of the funds you bring in and you must raise three months of your salary for summer. Every year you are compared against your department peers in terms of how much money you raised. Are they in a hotter field? Did they ignore their spouse and family all year? Did they buy out of teaching and have more free time. None of this matters, only whether you are at or above the department spending average. Faculty may die of heart failure or get divorced, but you still must meet the numbers. For those starting as a PI, the optimum path is to suck at teaching on purpose and to be a mean a$$hole to anyone who can't help your career. You then won't get any large required classes and students will be scared of you. Then, with this increased time your goal is to raise enough funds so you can buy out of teaching entirely. Your teaching load will then be given to another untenured faculty. While this schmuck does your work for you, you can just focus on research and get ahead of your peers. Submit as many proposals as possible, overwork your students by assigning them each the same project so they have to compete with each other and never answer your emails or open your office door so people leave you alone. If you do this aggressively for 5 years you will easily get tenure. This is the sad reality. Selfish behavior is rewarded. Good people get stomped on and burn out.
"...did they ignore their spouse and family all year..." or simply forego having a family. How many of our young scholars simply don't have time to fall in love because they're competing with others who are also not getting tied down with inconvenient human relationships? When my wife and I adopted our son while I was a post doc I was told that my research career was essentially over. By a woman who married a colleague late in life and had no children.
Too bad
Asian here. In my university Master-qualified lecturers teach better than PhDs
Its like the world system wants us to gets stupider (hehe). Make the academics enslaved by anxiety. Make the newer generations feel abandoned. Focus on those numbers, what is moral? You want relaxation, no need ticket to italy, pizza hut is near!
I also agree with early academics struggle. My senior have to absolutely find third party projects because overall wage is "close to enough"...
You've nailed it. Did you know that when the American Revolution was complete... all the functionaries, the establishment officials, judges, peace officers, bankers... the whole lot simply switched sides to work for the new boss? The people that swore allegiance to King George III did not suffer an epiphany that feudalism is bad... they just switched so they could retain their privileges.
Lots of people know this but the kicker is what it says about civilization. It reveals civilization as an authoritarian process. The mechanism of this process is to create a privileged class of people. Authorities. These people are distinguished by their willingness to tolerate and use violence to achieve their ends.
Authority is distinguished from expertise by this willingness. Authority is distinguished from leadership by the nature of the interests being served. Leaders serve community interests... authorities serve their own... and the authoritarian hierarchy.
So when a new authority takes over a political organization, the lessor authorities fall in line... in order to maintain their privileged position in the institutional hierarchies that civilization invariably uses... and, of course, their "opportunity" to rise through the ranks to higher and more privileged authoritarian positions.
This is what civilization does. It's distills the will and talent of billions of individuals into a very few invariably short-sighted and petty hands. History itself is the study of this authoritarian process.
Academics are suited to expertise... not authority. And power does to them what it does to everyone else power/authority corrupts them and makes them see themselves as less than they should be.
Depression.
It's not just academics... this problem is inherent to our authoritarian societies. It can not be fiddled away. Poverty and Excess are the byproduct and goal of the authoritarian mindset. This is why civilization and economies have to grow... and it is why civilizations and economies are unstable and fail every time we use them.
@@blogintonblakley2708Yep. The gnostic idea of Archons is true in this way.
Very interesting topic Andy. We as academician need to understand the real environment in university
Its WAY more welcoming, inclusive and friendly from my experience in 3 large US companies. I worked for almost a decade before coming to do a PhD and the culture shock was SIGNIFICANT.
I am lucky to not be part of the american system but the european system wants to adopt so much from the american system that it is getting worse and worse. I had the luxury to be able to just study at my pace for 10 years and I worked as a teaching assistant for 6 of those years. After all this time I got my master's degree and I still have a huge passion for teaching, especially teaching of the basics. Yet without continueing on the career and get a doctor and then maybe receive a calling as a professor in a university I am no longer allowed to teach in universities. I would gladly take over the so often considered "annoying" part of our curriculum and teach, organise and manage the entire first semester in our university but without following the career path of a researcher I am not allowed to participate in teaching anymore. This is assinine. So many people in our faculty would be happy if they could quit researching and just teach but without continueing to research you are not allowed to, even though it would be so much better to hire passionate people who want to teach and give the option of not having to teach to those who are incompetent or rather want to continue to research. Even some special teaching funds require you to have a doctor in order to even be considered even though there is no reason to have a research history if your job description is to literally only teach.
That sounds dumb too not all great researchers are great teachers and vice versa. So hiring people who only teach or research because that's what they are good at makes way more sense. As research and teaching are incredibly large and varied skill sets to be good at only one of those two, which also takes people with specific temperaments to be doing either of those things.
It's interesting that you criticize the American system because there are numerous community colleges in the US where you could continue your teaching career with a master's degree.
@@timothyrday1390 I am not from the US and do not know enough to have an *educated* opinion, but from what I heared and took up from popculture, aren't community colleges basically teaching base bin school stuff? I was part of some talks with US citizens that wanted to start or continue their bachelors at our university and we had to tell them their education level was that of a 14 - 16 year old for our standards and they should reconsider trying to apply here. What I love to teach is still *higher* education, even if it is just the basics. If I wanted to teach at schools I would have taken our courses for education, not science (at least here you have to have graduated in special school education based university tracks in order to be allowed to teach at schools)
Maybe it's just that neurotics and depressives go deeply into academia ... rather than facing the vicissitudes and challenges of the real world and getting a proper job.
3:49 "...when in fact is just STUPID" couldn't agree more XD
I am attending a conference in Autralia right now and it is even becoming worse. Now they say that they love to be inclusive but they won't let you participate in anything meaningful but they take your papers and more and more of your papers. They are more than happy than getting your ideas for free but giving anything in return: Who are we? You do not have those three letters? Hahaha, get lost.
Thanks for this great video
Excellent.
I had one chap I interviewed for a software developer job, who was obviously very bright, who told me he was training himself to manage on 3 hours of sleep - he didn't get the job, not because he wasn't bright enough for the job but because he was obviously unbalanced and unsuitable for working in my team.
This is worse in the social sciences. At least there is the facade of objectivity in the hard sciences. You can throw that out the door in the social sciences and humanities. The other problem is the lack of professional coherence in academia. Other professions like law or medicine have professional organizations that place limits on what is expected. Also, there are unions that engage in collective bargaining to get better wages and labor conditions. Other than ego and stupidity, I see no reason why academics can't engage in either.
Attempting to compete with psychopaths will do that.
Also, expectations from the teaching professors and the tenured research professors do not align.
I think research professors just bshouldn't teach unless they want to. They tend to be poor teachers whereas the teaching ones actually seek to improve pedagogy androgogy.
I also think both should be paid the same since they both bring money in... 🤷🏽♀️
You have to do the numbers
A.J.P. Taylor's research into 19th-century and 20th-century European history changed the course of the discipline forever. *And yet* he was also a damned good teacher and lecturer. So much so that when (the tale is told) his university employers wanted to cut him down to size by assigning him the Monday 9am lecturing slot, there were queues of students outside the lecture theatre for half an hour beforehand, eager to hear what he had to say.
Surely, surely, it is on Australian campuses alone that the teaching-lecturing side gets marginalised while much-touted 'researchers,' who not only can't devise the simplest PowerPoint slide sequence but can't string five spoken words together without 'um'-ing and 'ah'-ing like half-witted teenagers, get all the prizes and kudos. At any rate, until Australian academe stops punishing the well-spoken, it will deserve to be defunded and boycotted. The Australian academics who can actually teach and lecture will simply (a) go abroad, (b) leave academe, or (c) both.
When I went to University I assumed the poor to sometimes non-existent teaching was because they were all researchers. Then one day I was being a bit naughty and 'accidentally' went up to the staff only floor and saw their department notice board. TL;DR they were struggling to think of and actually do any research, apparently because some were too busy doing outside consulting (teaching it seemed was just their side hussle) and some, shockingly, just weren't very academic!
Much of this is the supervisor biting off more then their postgrads can chew - all for the supervisor's ego. Mine kept changing project course to try to shoehorn the impossible into remaining time budget - the last being 7 months before thesis hand-in. So, at that time, no developed project or toolset, no results, nothing to write up or conclude. This after 18-months of warnings from me that the project was too big...
I quit from him, worked from home and completed using my own ideas. Took 2 years and passed with minor corrections.
"Fortunately" I've had many nervous breakdowns; the PhD was like living in a rolling 4 years nervous breakdown (with extreme peaks) but I knew how to survive like that. You need friends.
One of the reasons Grigori Perelman gave the finger to academia and turned down the Field’s medal and the millennium prize. Same with Grothendieck. Both top mathematicians.
If more people than needed are willing to do something sh!t, despite it being sh!t, then maybe it should become more sh!t rather than less sh!t?
The pizza remedy is real
Not sure about grad students, but postdocs and faculty health care plans at my university also cover mental health services without any copay. They also cover all preventative care with no copay and with rare exceptions, the max you pay at the hospital will be $500. That said, undergrads are given thoughts and prayers. It's absurd and in the last couple years, I've had multiple students in the E.R. for suicide watch.
It's good they offer that and if it's course length support that is the exception, not the rule. Not the suicide watch thing of course, but having access to it. During the first year of my PHD I had to actively put myself into debt to just sort myself out. Worth every penny of course but still should not have been a cost I should have had to pay. Due to the lack of mental health support.
Unfortunately, I think mental health is on-par with society
Yes it's pretty much the same across the board
you are 100% right, its a world wide problem, even in germany. its bad.
The solution is obvious. You have two paths: teaching and research. You should be paid for the teaching according to how well you teach and you should be paid for your research partly I think on the most important research you have achieved. There should be a bias of quality over quantity. For example if you were the man who discovered relativity then that alone should make you a professor. Furthermore when you admit academics to the university you should assess them on what they are good at. Like in physics, you get some who are superb theoreticians but hate labs and then you get some who are excellent in the lab but need help with their theory. Both types are valuable to the university, and above all the university aught to leave it up to the academic to decide which thing they do more of. They would enjoy life more that way and make them more personally responsible. Having that power to direct your life is a big cure for depression. Depression could be fixed by switching to some other job in the department to give the person a bit of variety and interest.
I couldn't agree more. At least there could be a better set of options based on each academic's strengths, or alternating periods between heavy research and teaching roles. There also needs to be more focus on quality teaching and quality research and viable long-term paths open to whomever can perform well in those areas, separate if need be.
well, only if universities stop playing the ranking game!
I am italian. After have visited many departments in different countries I start to get convinced are all a bunch of trash in teaching outside Italy. I do not even take in considerations among teachers there it should at least a Master. A real Master as Pytagoras
Academics have sold out. And selling out makes people angry at themselves. Being angry at yourself is what depression is.
All over the country corporations are making decisions for university students that actually do nothing for the students and bring more profit to the corporations.
And while all this is happening the Ph.D's are sitting around hoping no one starts cutting their pay. While tolerating the exploitation the labor of TA's... a role they recently "rose" through. This authoritarian mindset pervades our academic community. It's enforced by the requirement for funding. And this has actively corrupted the academic's credibility and reputation. Researchers faking results... taking money to make weapons... all these moral faults come at a price to the academic.
Academics research what they are told to research, because funding is required for research. Funding comes from doing what the corporation and the rich people want.
In other words, academics are depressed for the same reason cops are depressed. They are a human resource, nothing more, they do not have freedom to explore or to even speak up.
And this state is payment for them protecting themselves instead of their students and standing up... long ago.
Now it a fait accompli... corporations run the state... and they all stood around while it was happening, hoping to retain their position in the authoritarian hierarchy they all claim to hate.
"taking money to make weapons" --Engineering departments in a nutshell.
Short answer yes. But also: so is most of the rest of society
I’d like to ask: do I need a PhD if I want to become a bench laboratory research scientist that isn’t just a technician?. I am currently a chemistry major and I don’t really want to become an academic. But I really love laboratory work and research. And would love to be the person synthesizing new drugs, agrochemicals, polymers, and materials. And test them on either biological systems like microorganisms in the case of infectious diseases or plants or cells. I am also interested in testing their physical properties and things like that. I’m also interested in other areas like biomaterials, drug delivery, etc. but I don’t know if I should go for a PhD because I hear academia is really toxic and I don’t really want to end up doing administrative, management, teaching, or leadership tasks, my main passion is hands on laboratory research and development. But I don’t know if I should do a PhD or if a bachelors or masters would be enough. And also I am not interested in just being a technician and following procedures made by others or doing extremely repetitive lab work. I am from Qatar btw.
Well, academia is not always toxic. I got pretty lucky personally. Choose your team wisely and you can be in both academia and industry (which was my case from my master to my PhD and my current position).
go for an MBA?
+ PMP?
there is a lab scientist certification you can get...fyi...or a clinical laboratory certification you can get.
The tasks that you are describing are tasks that seem to require the capacity of being an independent researcher. That's what PhDs prepare you for. I am not from your field so I can't say for sure, but my hunch would be that, yes, you do need a PhD if you want to have a leading role in cutting edge research. Without it, you will need to be following directions assigned to you, which most likely will be the mind numbing, repetitive stuff.
nailed it
Health mental in academy = freshness
Over recording under achieving……miss selling ask for your money back
We had pizza talks
The school is providing information and critical thinking skills for students to figure out what is true. If the student comes away blindly accepting everything the professor says without doing any research themselves, the student is just a stupid person with a degree. Don’t let other people do your thinking for you.
I don't think Dr. Stapleton has one thing right. You can succeed. Universities don't care very much about teaching or mentoring, or even committee duties, if you can bring in a ton of money. Bring in a bunch of money, get out a bunch of publications, promote yourself tirelessly, and pretty much anything else can be forgiven. You don't have to be perfect or excellent. You just have to do the most important things the university wants, which is boost its bottom line and prestige.
Dear Andy, I am watching your video on TH-cam about
3 Unbelievable AI Technologies to Automate Your Literature Review
and was wondering about the above as it helps to generate your lit review, but if you had to submit it for an assignment, would it be accepted, say if you were a University student. I hope you can advise me about it.
Many Thanks,
zena
my man
Was there ever an Academic Golden Age, when the PhD student was happy (not depressed) and satisfied with their experience? I would suspect there was--and it happened before the onset of pyschologizing the student and analyzing the academic "experience."
Yes. Before the 90s. Nice try.
Did he just say "Give us more resources" as a solution....
hahahahahaha 😂😂😂😂
What you saying ? What is finally one must do ? You saying to close academics? What you mean at the end ,
Of course it’s hard getting an advanced degree. Like your degree - solve the problem yourself.
Is it your job's responsibility to fix an employee's mental health?
what if it is the working conditions deteriorating mental health?
With the progressive politics that are being pushed through these institutions today, i would say yes they are failing you.
Yes, this is the biggest problem in academia. Why did true academes let it happen?
Because it is all by design. Once you know the truth, everything will finally make sense.
@@jayerbee7147 Oy.
@@jayerbee7147 Hmmm . . . 🤔
Part of a graduate attribute is the ability to deal with stress and your mental health. You think public schools go easy on kids. Nope they don't. Why? Because leadership is born in adversity.
We are talking abuse here, not 'Leadership'.
@@oanap642 same thing