See article below this rant!


Yeah... and its only when read in 'the economist' that a critique of academia is taken seriously and wouldn't you know this write up is hottest amongst post-grads (who are likely trying to discourage any competition, because thats what science is in our society a competition).

It clearly all revolves around money as explained in this paper. Imagine the lunacy in suggesting that we need less educated people (if you even want to call hackademia educational and intellectually empowering as far as I have seen people just end up complaining about their jobs and seldom THINK outside their cubicle) because there is not enough mindful positions for them to fill, and how timely is it now that as we teeter on the brink of financial collapse they are trying to discourage people from getting a PhD because there is no financial security in it, at a time when all maximum ingenuity and the uncensored flow of information is required to fix this mess we are in, they are telling you to not bother with a PhD because its not profitable and need more money for wars, but what they are really saying is DON'T BOTHER THINKING, join the military instead, or just waste 4 years on an unnecessarily extensive and indoctrinating BA. If the overall tone of this article does not speak to the underlying problem with modern science in general (it revolving purely around money) I do not know what does. This is the academic industrial complex in a nutshell!

From the mandated research, to the grants, to the trendy quarky fads and freshman culture its mainly a place to keep an eye on the artificial intelligensia who keep an eye on the drunken fools, and keep them occupied reading each others journals until the military drops some real shit on them every 5 odd years. Keep em all in one place reading each others papers, away from the real world and the real world from them. University segregation, segregation from the universe lol. Thats a sociology paper in itself, but I digress ten times now! He who owns the patents and owns the publishers and owns the kickbacks sets the rules. Thats all there fucking is to it. Keep all these rebel profs locked up in their office staring at their che poster until the times is right to... retire (???). What the fuck man, its a farce baby!

The economist saying there is no money in education, the central premise being education (knowledge aquisition) is about money, to benefit the people ON TOP (profiteers), not human beings or this place we call home. Its right fucking there!!! (BELOW!!!) The motivation is supposed to be to know, to understand and grow, not get a paycheck, you see this is where real scientists and real spiritualists converge in minimalism, they know whats worth pursuing, even though one starts above and the other below. Think about it. Bitches.




__________________________________________________________________________________________________
From the E-Con-omist

The disposable academic
Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time
Doctoral degrees Dec 16th 2010


ON THE evening before All Saints’ Day in 1517, Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg. In those days a thesis was simply a position one wanted to argue. Luther, an Augustinian friar, asserted that Christians could not buy their way to heaven. Today a doctoral thesis is both an idea and an account of a period of original research. Writing one is the aim of the hundreds of thousands of students who embark on a doctorate of philosophy (PhD) every year.

In most countries a PhD is a basic requirement for a career in academia. It is an introduction to the world of independent research—a kind of intellectual masterpiece, created by an apprentice in close collaboration with a supervisor. The requirements to complete one vary enormously between countries, universities and even subjects. Some students will first have to spend two years working on a master’s degree or diploma. Some will receive a stipend; others will pay their own way. Some PhDs involve only research, some require classes and examinations and some require the student to teach undergraduates. A thesis can be dozens of pages in mathematics, or many hundreds in history. As a result, newly minted PhDs can be as young as their early 20s or world-weary forty-somethings.

One thing many PhD students have in common is dissatisfaction. Some describe their work as “slave labour”. Seven-day weeks, ten-hour days, low pay and uncertain prospects are widespread. You know you are a graduate student, goes one quip, when your office is better decorated than your home and you have a favourite flavour of instant noodle. “It isn’t graduate school itself that is discouraging,” says one student, who confesses to rather enjoying the hunt for free pizza. “What’s discouraging is realising the end point has been yanked out of reach.”

Rich pickings

For most of history even a first degree at a university was the privilege of a rich few, and many academic staff did not hold doctorates. But as higher education expanded after the second world war, so did the expectation that lecturers would hold advanced degrees. American universities geared up first: by 1970 America was producing just under a third of the world’s university students and half of its science and technology PhDs (at that time it had only 6% of the global population). Since then America’s annual output of PhDs has doubled, to 64,000.

Other countries are catching up. Between 1998 and 2006 the number of doctorates handed out in all OECD countries grew by 40%, compared with 22% for America. PhD production sped up most dramatically in Mexico, Portugal, Italy and Slovakia. Even Japan, where the number of young people is shrinking, churned out about 46% more PhDs. Part of that growth reflects the expansion of university education outside America. Richard Freeman, a labour economist at Harvard University, says that by 2006 America was enrolling just 12% of the world’s students.

But universities have discovered that PhD students are cheap, highly motivated and disposable labour. With more PhD students they can do more research, and in some countries more teaching, with less money. A graduate assistant at Yale might earn $20,000 a year for nine months of teaching. The average pay of full professors in America was $109,000 in 2009—higher than the average for judges and magistrates.

Indeed, the production of PhDs has far outstripped demand for university lecturers. In a recent book, Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, an academic and a journalist, report that America produced more than 100,000 doctoral degrees between 2005 and 2009. In the same period there were just 16,000 new professorships. Using PhD students to do much of the undergraduate teaching cuts the number of full-time jobs. Even in Canada, where the output of PhD graduates has grown relatively modestly, universities conferred 4,800 doctorate degrees in 2007 but hired just 2,616 new full-time professors. Only a few fast-developing countries, such as Brazil and China, now seem short of PhDs.

A short course in supply and demand

In research the story is similar. PhD students and contract staff known as “postdocs”, described by one student as “the ugly underbelly of academia”, do much of the research these days. There is a glut of postdocs too. Dr Freeman concluded from pre-2000 data that if American faculty jobs in the life sciences were increasing at 5% a year, just 20% of students would land one. In Canada 80% of postdocs earn $38,600 or less per year before tax—the average salary of a construction worker. The rise of the postdoc has created another obstacle on the way to an academic post. In some areas five years as a postdoc is now a prerequisite for landing a secure full-time job.

These armies of low-paid PhD researchers and postdocs boost universities’, and therefore countries’, research capacity. Yet that is not always a good thing. Brilliant, well-trained minds can go to waste when fashions change. The post-Sputnik era drove the rapid growth in PhD physicists that came to an abrupt halt as the Vietnam war drained the science budget. Brian Schwartz, a professor of physics at the City University of New York, says that in the 1970s as many as 5,000 physicists had to find jobs in other areas.

In America the rise of PhD teachers’ unions reflects the breakdown of an implicit contract between universities and PhD students: crummy pay now for a good academic job later. Student teachers in public universities such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison formed unions as early as the 1960s, but the pace of unionisation has increased recently. Unions are now spreading to private universities; though Yale and Cornell, where university administrators and some faculty argue that PhD students who teach are not workers but apprentices, have resisted union drives. In 2002 New York University was the first private university to recognise a PhD teachers’ union, but stopped negotiating with it three years later.

In some countries, such as Britain and America, poor pay and job prospects are reflected in the number of foreign-born PhD students. Dr Freeman estimates that in 1966 only 23% of science and engineering PhDs in America were awarded to students born outside the country. By 2006 that proportion had increased to 48%. Foreign students tend to tolerate poorer working conditions, and the supply of cheap, brilliant, foreign labour also keeps wages down.

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