When tenure never comes

Every student considering going to graduate school should read this article. Professors are very misinformed about how likely someone is to get tenure (most of them got it &gt; 20 years ago, in a much better academic job market). This misinformation trickles down to students.<p>The simple fact is that right now the average professor is graduating more than 10 phd students, only 1 of which can become a tenured professor at a research university. The job options in academia other than tenured professor are horrible and exploitative. I know many post-docs who have gone into industry after slaving away at temporary and low paying jobs for over 6 years. These post-docs were very bright and dedicated people, but the tenure track position requires lots of luck in addition to skill.

UK University chair of a STEM dept graduate school chipping in here: Every September during induction I point out to the PhD students that there are (around) ten of them in the room and our department advertised (around) 1 job last year. We also tell them this when they are applying for the PhD in the first place. They seem unfazed. Our PhD course lasts no longer than 4 years (good students are out in 3) and they appear to be highly employable at the end of it - both as postdocs and in industry. Having seen the US system at first hand as well, I&#x27;d say that the lower opportunity cost (time to finish) makes the whole process fairer on the students - graduating with a PhD at 25 still seems like a great opportunity. Doing the same at 32 is a very different prospect. I have no idea what the situation in the humanities is like. Finally - UK research councils (who often fund PhD students) are very open about the fact that PhD students must now be taught a host of &#x27;transferrable skills&#x27; to equip them for non-academic jobs.

I consider myself fortunate that I realized most of what was talked about in this article was true while I was about halfway through grad school. The fundamental realization that given the size of my classes, where my peers were competition for any academic job, combined with the fact that I would literally have to wait for someone to die before I could get one of those jobs, was enough to knock me right off of the academic track.<p>I might&#x27;ve even put up with postdoc hell, and the &quot;6 year job interview &quot; that is the tenure process if I thought it would have come to something. But, when you have 50 people competing for the same three openings in a year, and only one chance per year to apply, the odds don&#x27;t look very good.

I&#x27;m just an adjunct and will likely never break into the tenure track (not having a master&#x27;s degree being one of many factors against me), but I was sad to see that even this purportedly slow and deliberate process be affected to some degree by ageism. A good friend of mine entered grad school (in the humanities) around 2004, when most folks he knew were easily finding tenure-track jobs after their PhDs. He found himself the runner-up for highly-contested jobs, and family events took him out of the hunt for a bit, but as the years went on and he was content to be hired by not top-tier schools, he ran into the &quot;We&#x27;d love to hire you but your resumé is <i>too</i> prestigious for us and you might just use us as a stepping stone&quot; and &quot;If you haven&#x27;t been snapped up despite such a great pedigree, then something must be wrong with you&quot;. He eventually got a tenure-track offer which he happily accepted, but he was close to giving up on his decade-long career path.<p>I think these struggles are endemic to nearly all professions but it seems to me that in academia, there&#x27;s fewer opportunities to get tenure-track (or non-tenure, but decently-paying) positions once you&#x27;ve deviated from the usual path, even before you factor in the scarcity.

Many people have pointed to an overpopulation being the root cause for this, but I believe that ignores the increasingly inflating administrative staff at universities. That is, it is also a budget problem. The budget for the increase in professor staff is being diverted into additional administrative positions that do... something, apparently. I&#x27;m not convinced that the administrative bloat is worth a fraction of what it costs.

The author of the article never mentions <i>what</i> faculty or program they&#x27;re in, or references any of their work. No doubt this is a real problem, but in this particular case they could just be a lousy researcher in a faculty that doesn&#x27;t have a high demand for new professors.<p>IOW the &quot;psychology&quot; &#x2F; &quot;liberal arts&quot; over population. I&#x27;m not trying to knock any of those studies, but there is a large excess where I&#x27;m from.

It&#x27;s interesting to see this story on the front page at the same time with another one titled <i>&quot;We Should Not Accept Scientific Results That Have Not Been Repeated&quot;</i>. It&#x27;s easy to solve both problems (killing two birds with one stone?) by implementing protocols of purging scientists with track records of non-repeatable results from &quot;personal opinions&quot; and fraudulent scholars gaming publishing systems, including titles, positions, degrees and&#x2F;or grant money ever awarded. This should at least release <i>some</i> vacancy in the academia (given a 11% repeatable rate from the Amgen study).

FWIW, this story parallels the reality that most professional artists have experienced for a long time: hyper competition, extremely limited grant opportunities, no direct commercial market, everything paid out-of-pocket. A &quot;compulsory hobby&quot; is a great phrase.

Being out of an academic job is a painful experience. I have a PhD in math and, entering grad school, was aiming only for an academic career.<p>However, it was very clear to everyone in my grad program (as well as to my friends doing physics PhDs across the street) that this requires 1-2 competitive postdocs (3-6 years at low salary) and a stiff competition to a tenure track. And you do not usually get a choice: i.e., if you get offered a position, you grab it, be it in Maine or Texas (I decided to avoid this race and went to the industry; there are pros and cons to both paths).<p>IMO, the tenure system, at least in the US, is highly inefficient. Things are pretty top-heavy (older, tenured professors who originally were expected to retire by ~60, often do not) and graduating PhDs with decent, but not stellar results have a very hard time on the academic research track.

Does anyone else see the contradiction: the amount students are spending on college keeps going up, but the budget for professors seems to keep going down. What accounts for the discrepancy?

Every time one of these articles is posted, there are a number of comments about how we need to tighten the number of students accepted into PhD programs, to line up with the number of academic jobs realistically available to them. Of course, I understand where these comments come from. But if so many people are so keen to become researchers in a field they love and are clearly highly qualified to work in, I would hope we could instead find a way to broaden the number of people supported in doing such work. Attacking the problem from the more troubling end.

<i>I don’t need to be dealing with signing religious codes of conduct or dealing with campuses where eighteen-year-olds can carry concealed guns</i><p>Quelle horreur! So he wants tenure at a US university, but he won&#x27;t go to the UK or Europe because...oh dear, that might involve sacrifice.

Can someone please explain to my why tenure is needed? I&#x27;ve had some professors attempt to do it to me in the past and I never got it.<p>I <i>maybe</i> understand it for a humanities subject, but for STEM no chance for me.<p>I don&#x27;t have tenure when it comes to working in the industry. If I&#x27;m a good enough employee I&#x27;ll stay on, if I&#x27;m a bad enough employee I&#x27;ll be replaced.<p>Tenure just seems to protect mediocrity. Can someone help paint this in a different light to me?

Just an anecdote... a professor whose classes I&#x27;ve taken, which were fantastic, recently got tenured. In the liberal arts, too!<p>I like to think that tenure isn&#x27;t quite dead yet. Depends on the college, naturally. (I deliberately use the word &quot;college&quot; instead of &quot;university&quot;; I find that the liberal arts college at my university is more organized than the computer science department.)<p>Eventually the college loan bubble will burst, and universities will no longer be able to be run like businesses.

&gt;<i>I don’t need to start building a life from scratch in my late thirties. I definitely don’t need to do it for a nine—or three-month contract without benefits, or costs of moving.</i><p>Well, it&#x27;s not like the academic world, even when it was much better itself, has done much to protest and assist with the same and much worse situation in blue collar (and even office) jobs.<p>First they came for the McDonalds burger flippers, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a McDonalds burger flipper...<p>et al

Something doesn&#x27;t add up. University education costs have been increasing over at least the last one or two decades. But universities keep reducing costs by hiring adjunct, sessional, or contract faculty who are presumably less well paid than full-time professors. So where is the universities&#x27; money going to? Are they losing it by mismanaging their endowment funds? Are they spending more in other areas?

Saddening story. However, as an academic myself, some bits were misleading or odd:<p>&gt; funding regulations meant the grant couldn’t pay my salary as its lead researcher<p>I&#x27;ve never, ever heard of anything like this occurring. The most I have seen are cost sharing pieces where a grant cannot more than a certain % of your salary. But these are often known upfront by the PI!<p>&gt; The two disclosed who had submitted a grant proposal and whose book was near publication—all of which are needed for tenure. I was the only one in the room with books, articles, and a recently awarded grant.<p>This strikes me as a highly bitter position to take. There is far more to tenure than only the number of grants, books, articles, etc. Were the articles published in high impact journals? How much $$ was the grant for? A researcher 5 years younger might get a tenure-track position with no prior grants, but a hot research topic, a few good publications and an excellent pedigree.<p>&gt; My financial reality still makes it hard to keep up with conferences. I haven’t had access to professional development funds since 2010<p>The author states he has funding grants but these did not explicitly cover several conferences? I&#x27;m very surprised by this, and this is not at all consistent with my experience. I had funding to attend conferences as a first year graduate student.<p>&gt; There are jobs in the southern US and in the UK, which would take me away from family and a new relationship that I cherish. I don’t need to start building a life from scratch in my late thirties. I definitely don’t need to do it for a nine—or three-month contract without benefits, or costs of moving. And if we’re talking about the US, I don’t need to be dealing with signing religious codes of conduct or dealing with campuses where eighteen-year-olds can carry concealed guns.<p>The sad truth of the matter is: if you want to get a tenure track job, 99% of us will not truly have a choice in location where you live. Expect to move across the country (or across countries!). That is quite apparent when you sign up. You take what you can get. A friend took a position in upstate NY, and he hates the cold...

This article has been posted and discussed on HackerNews before. I mean, not this exact same article, but the same narrative written by different authors. That shows on the one hand that a lot of people are unfortunately affected by the same problem, but it also means that it&#x27;s not a new problem.<p>Whether it&#x27;s academia or industry, after working at the same place for some 8 years or so, I think it&#x27;s only human that you get a feeling that your employer &quot;owes you&quot; for your commitment. And perhaps they really do? But people lose their jobs all the time, why would academia be any different to any other work place?

As somebody looking to go into research (in a STEM field), this is a rather chilling article... And it&#x27;s by far not the first time I have heard about this problem of getting a long-term job in academia.<p>I&#x27;m just wondering: this guy was from Canada. What&#x27;s the situation like in Europe? Especially Germany?

My experience in finance was that 50% of quants (especially physics PhDs from the 90s, when all the Cold War-era funding dried up) were failed academics.<p>Most of the rest were PhDs jumping straight to industry to avoid chasing tenure for years.

Does HN have any advice for those looking to get a PhD because they love the field (Computer Science)? And then follow up the PhD with a job at one of the tech companies&#x27; research arm?

An academic career should never be your only option. Make sure you study something that is useful in the real economy.

I hate having to enable JavaScript just to read a website.<p>It was worth it for this one though, just one main thing; still I almost didn&#x27;t click it, I often don&#x27;t.<p>-<p>I see that same mentality reflected in far too many places, no one wants to hire for a career anymore; and that&#x27;s what &#x27;tenure&#x27; is at a college. The &#x27;contract&#x27; in society between the working class and those who employee them is beyond broken.

The fun part of this article is where he never mentions his field...

&quot;I forked out over $2000 to attend two conferences [..] at the second I was cut off half-way into my paper.&quot;<p>I have never seen this happen at any conference. It makes the author sound like a crackpot.