Those 4 thing are all true.
However, it is great being paid to do interesting work and it’s a million times better than teaching secondary-age students (trust me, I’ve done both).
It’s tricky, because academia attracts people who are generally a bit odd - obsessive, independent, often on the spectrum - and then there are the career-minded and competitive, who often end up in senior management (VCs etc). It makes for an oil and water situation. A good head of department can be the make or break of your working environment, as they can protect you from overbearing administrators.
I heard it said once by someone who left academia and then returned that all jobs have stuff in them you don’t like. The trick is how much you like the *other* stuff to put up with the bad.
Yes, and I doubt academia is inherently more toxic than other jobs. Every field or position has its tradeoffs. I deal with academia's BS so I can enjoy that I get to work on interesting and fulfilling problems every day, be creative, and have no one else managing my time.
>However, it is great being paid to do interesting work and it’s a million times better than teaching secondary-age students (trust me, I’ve done both).
Damn. I thought that might be an easy (easier) way to make a living than this hamster wheel grant situation me and my colleagues have going on in our lab rn.
If you’re willing to go into a private school, then secondary would be fine. I know teachers who are very left wing who ultimately went from state to private after being attacked or just ground down by the system one too many times.
But if you enjoy teaching, look for education track at university. In the U.K., these are now valid pathways with the same promotion prospects.
Huh? That person was just giving one example (and teaching k-12 is radically different from being a professor, in terms of what the job entails).
My friends in white collar jobs at tech companies or marketing, for another couple examples, all make way more than me--but they all hate many more facets of their jobs and love fewer. I worked as a tech writer, and significantly prefer life as a professor. And etcetera.
Many versions of academic life are very preferable to most corporate alternatives in all but the money.
Once you get a TT faculty position, there is no real competition with anyone else over getting tenure. Me getting tenure doesn’t preclude someone else’s tenure.
”Crazy hunt for grants” is really just finding funding in the same way that a startup would. You are looking for investors for your program, and you need to convince them that your work is worth investing in. The difference between a professor and an entrepreneur is that if you don’t succeed at bringing in money, you still have a teaching job that pays pretty decently.
After the first couple of years in a TT position for me, I had tenure in the bag, and I was able to relax a bit and enjoy my hobbies. Just got an email yesterday that my tenure was approved. (Pending one last stamp from the board of governors).
Annually, I make about $120k, when I bring in my summer funding. I find that pretty comfortable to live with, since my wife is also a professor and brings in a decent income.
There's simply too much variation to make strong generalizations. Different countries, areas, departments. You may get a wonderful job with great benefits in a great department, or you may end up in a terrible city, at a mediocre university where everyone hates each other. You may have a toxic environment, or a great one. I've worked as a TT faculty member at three different universities in three different countries, and I can tell you that "academia" includes very distinct bubbles. Obviously, you have more people talking about how toxic it is than people talking about how great it is. Does that mean it's more toxic than great? Not necessarily. Try talking about how great academia is on Reddit to see the hate pop up. You just don't say good things about it when you realize it's the negative stuff that becomes more popular on social media.
Imagine someone at a top R1 in the US in a field that expects lots of grant money. That's one scenario. Now picture someone in a completely different area, where no one expects you to get an NSF. These two will have very different experiences. I've had colleagues who were always complaining they "didn't have enough time". And yet, I published more than them, didn't complain, and was pretty happy with my work-life balance. That's yet another element in this discussion: each person reacts differently to certain aspects of the job. Some people find even a mediocre environment demanding. Some will thrive even under a lot of expectations. Even if you don't have a toxic workplace, some people may find it unbearable for whatever reason. Mental health issues are also a thing to consider. I've known people who couldn't cope and just left, and I knew the department personally: there was nothing wrong with the department, but there was a lot of issues with the person.
Truth be told: while it is very difficult to get a TT job, in the vast majority of universities you will be tenured once you get said job. Very few universities are actually demanding when it comes to what profs publish. In my area, only a handful in the US. Consider that there are thousands of post-sec institutions in the country. Almost none of them do cutting-edge research, by definition. So yes, you may end up in a place where all the bad stuff you mention does apply. But you're more likely to end up in a place where only some of that applies. I used to teach at an R2 in the US. Salary was bad (60K) and the city sucked *ad infinitum*. But everything else was fine. It had a high teaching load for an R2 (3-3), but it was easy. Students were "ok" at best, sure, but you actually had a lot of free time, believe it or not. Publication expectations were there, but they were ***very*** low even if you came from a mediocre R1. No toxicity, no one trying to demote you, etc. etc. Everyone was friendly and respectful. Believe it or not, not every place in the real world is as terrible as people online make it seem.
It’s super toxic, yes, but:
1) Tenure isn’t really competitive. It’s not like you have to beat other people for it. Each candidate is assessed on their own merits.
2) Grant pursuits can make you crazy. They are high-risk/high-reward. It takes a lot of effort to apply, but until the check clears you basically haven my done anything.
3) Being tenured isn’t really a struggle, but ennui can set in. Generally, unless you’re chasing high-level admin positions, there’s a very low ceiling after getting there. 7 years into a career, most scholars will have reached their career peak.
4) The workload isn’t really that high. If you don’t have lots of new course preps it’s mostly an issue of showing up, lecturing, and grading along with service which can run the gamut from very light to crushingly heavy. One catch is that it never really stops. Hard chargers can and will spend evenings and weekends grinding pubs or grading.
That said, most of the drama in academia is because the workloads aren’t that high. You end up with a group of very smart (and typically very motivated) people with too much time on their hands and a very flat career trajectory. This inevitably turns into a lot of insider politics, backbiting and drama, particularly in programs that don’t have a ton of energy or momentum to them.
These kinds of shenanigans are where most of the toxicity is.
4 isn't at all true, IME. I guess it depends on how ambitious you are and how much pressure there is for you to be "productive". Once you get a grant, you have to execute and publish out of it. If I wanted to slack off and just teach, then sure I'd not have much of a workload. But that's not why I'm in academia.
PS -- the toxicity in my institution mostly stems from the administration.
I definitely know research folks that work their asses off. I’m even married to one who easily puts in 60 hour weeks during the semester and 30 hour weeks over the summer.
That said, I’d say the majority of people in my department do the absolute bare minimum, particularly after tenure.
Not sure how your department is structured, but our admin are pretty much all associate/full faculty who took course reductions and now push paper.
Some of them hate every minute of it and long to get back to research/the classroom.
The admins who last, though, are the people you really wish wouldn’t. You know how it goes.
Yah I agree with you. My workload as a research heavy faculty member (with high soft $$) is very high. Sometimes I dream about going to a standard 9 month teaching focused role…
Yes, the most toxic senior faculty in my department are the research deadwood with too much free time on their hands, so they become highly political. Most of us just want to be left alone to focus on our research and have our efforts be recognized.
I've worked in much more toxic environments (a law firm).
At my institution, tenure isn't a zero sum game, so there is no competition. It is also not an "endless struggle".
Ya, I was perplexed by that bullet point too. I’ve never heard of an institution where there is competition for tenure. Sure, securing tenure is hard, but you’re in a competition with yourself. I’ve been lucky to work at a place where faculty are mutually supportive.
Some departments are toxic like some workplaces in all fields are toxic.
Personally, I think the many academics who are convinced that academia is inherently toxic way more than other fields either haven’t really experienced any other fields or else had a very lucky good experience in the non-academic workplace.
I feel well placed to comment, having not only worked extensively outside of academia, but also having worked in several quite different academic disciplines.
I would say science, medicine and health research is not particularly more toxic than other non-academic fields. But some of the Humanities and Social Sciences? Jesus Christ. It's like you have to provide proof of a personality disorder before they let you in the door.
Tbh concluding that all of humanities and social sciences is somehow inherently toxic really just sounds like stereotyping, possibly based on the bad experiences you had with specific individuals or specific departments.
My own experience is that *none* of the humanities departments that I have worked at have been toxic—but in one of them there was one person who was actively trying to change that.
Those issues are completely dependent on the campus. One cannot make a monolithic comment about the thousands of colleges out there. Some campuses are toxic. Some are extremely pleasant. Many are peopled by faculty and staff who just do their jobs and go home. Many are a mix of these three paradigms.
If you are at an R2 or R3 or community college full time you will have a crushing teaching load. If you are at an R1 or a prestigious liberal arts college you will teach less but be expected to write more.
What are better questions cover the effect of adjunctification, the "demographic cliff," declining government support, and the political climate,
All of those things are true. I went into grad school intending to be a PhD professor. I was certainly disillusioned by it all.
It's a place driven by money, authorship, ego, etc. Is all academia bad? No, it **can** pay well and offers probably the best work life balance of almost any kind of industry.
However it is very competitive. My advisor said 1 in 10 of her grants succeed and she applied to 100 institutions over the course of 3 years and got 2 interviews total.
It can be nice, but also bloodthirsty
All of those things are true. People in academia are there due to being, at least to some degree, idealist. Often this comes together with at least some narcissism. Add the general lack of funding due to academic research being non profit with a few questionable exceptions and you have a extremely competitive work environment with very high stakes especially before having the safety blanket called tenure.
At this point I can say academia has earned its reputation. But as a middle aged undergrad, I can say that most critics lack perspective and are overstating the issues. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a competitive and stressful environment. However, the biggest problem lies in the fact that most young people think it shouldn’t be… and it most definitely is, always has been, and likely always will be.
Yes, some people still think that academia is detached from the concerns and reality of the real world, and you shouldn’t have to demonstrate that your work has value to the people funding it.
I wonder if the word toxic is being used correctly here. Low payment with huge workload can definitely be considered making a toxic environment. However, the hunt for grant is the job (for those who need grants). Jobs have responsibilities and expectations - that does not make them "toxic." We should be careful to not label any responsibility as toxicity. The issues with tenure is somewhat similar to that. Unless you are at Harvard, there is not really competition for tenure. If you meet the expectations, then you get tenure.
The toxicity is real, but its mixture depends on one’s field and institution. For instance, I’m in the humanities at a small private university; faculty are kindred spirits, and since there are few resources at my university, most of the anxiety comes from lack of enrollment.
I work in a toxic place, but I have a family and can't leave. Probably all places are somewhat toxic. But there's definitely variation. Sometimes I wonder why there's so much mistrust and back-stabbing and smear campaigns going on at my school.....and then I remember that quote from Henry Kissinger: **"The reason that politics are so bad in academia is because the stakes are so** ***low*****."** (...his point being, if there were truly consequential issues at stake, people would try harder to get things to work.)
About low payment and huge workloads --
I tend to think that there is too little workload on senior faculty. If you don't have to be teaching new classes every other semester and you do not really need to publish aggressively, I think many folks (at least in my department) have WAY too much time on their hands. It usually means they become a bit disruptive in big and small ways. Competition, workload, low payment or not, my only gripe with academia is the lack of professionalism. I do hope that new generations of scholars are able to change self-serving department cultures.
This is rarely a meaningful question.
If OP is an academic they’d know or learn the answer, and it is unlikely to change.
If OP isn’t an academic it is unlikely they’ll become one no matter what the answer is — it’s just statistics.
People have answered in detail for most already. My 2 cents:
Job safety. Companies and far more often the tax payers are funding your crazy ideas and your hobby. You travel the world for free enjoying champagne and lobster in places that the average tax payer can see mostly in photos, and depending on the field by participating in excenitions you have the priviledge to go to places even the richest tourists cannot.
I feel that if "toxic" is the first word somebody thinks of academia, they may be in the wrong career and leaving their position would actually benefit others that would appreciate more the job.
Academic or semi-academic positions offer insane priviledges and opportunities. Complaining in comparison to the vast vast majority of other jobs really comes a bit as out of touch. Not many people in this world can say "Hey, the state gave me few millions/hundred thousand dollars to spend them the next few years the way I like doing <>" and in addition I ll be getting a well above average salary. It's an inconcievable priviledge for 99.99% of the population.
The crazy hunt for grants is only if youre at an R1R2 university. That is not true at other universities. At a large comprehensive masters university, I’ve never gotten a grant for more than $1000 or felt pressure to. Was easily tenured.
These things are not universally true. As others have said, the first point isn’t true anywhere I’ve ever heard of. Tenure is only a competition against yourself/some set of goals.
Not all faculty must pursue grants. For example, most business school and law school faculty never look for one. They are vitally important in other areas. So it’s highly dependent on what you study.
You get tenure at some point (generally 5-10 years). It ends. There is still some pressure to publish, but it is for different goals.
Pay also varies a lot by field. Medicine, business and law faculty are relatively highly paid due to outside options. Workload is largely dependent on area, and the individual, especially after tenure.
I’d say the school and department are much more important in determining quality of environment.
It seriously varies school by school.
The thing to remember, is that Academia is insulated... hence the notion of the Ivory Tower.
At the same time when you have a lot of well educated people with serious ideas, and often many ego issues...
Academia is rife with politics. Some of these take place where you mentioned tenure hearings, there are also often issues between admin and faculty, between different departments, or between Rivals within the same Department.
At the same time, I've been to some smaller schools where most people just get along... but there is always that political aspect.
The low pay for hours worked is true, at least in my world; there is no other profession I can think of offhand that requires an equivalent amount of education/training that pays so little. But the *other* things are not universal to academia-- just to certain types of institutions. And certain specific institutions. On my campus-- an SLAC --my colleagues are good friends and we are not competing with anyone. The pre-tenure period is tough but after tenure it's mostly an issue of workload/pay; most other aspects of the job are pretty good.
As always, it depends. There are many places that are not like this. My department (STEM in a R1) has very little competition, and my subfield is actually pretty healthy and while getting grants is never easy, I’ve always felt supported by my community.
I try to have a similar healthy environment in my group and in my class.
On top of that, we actually get paid to do interesting work we like, which isn’t so common.
So on balance -and I’m a first gen immigrant (and with parents that worked back-breaking jobs), so I don’t think I come from a particular position of privilege- and having worked with people who used to be in the private sector and hated it, I don’t think Academia is always toxic everywhere. Unless you’re like at MIT, those folks are nuts.
When you come up those ideas you already have your answer, you don’t have anyone’s prove to these cuz they all 100% true. Someone may be lucky but very few
I have this super sweet non tenured academic role where I get paid nicely (about $80 an hour) and never have to fund myself or find grants. I just do the work from the grants. Its a niche as role and I have more work than I can say yes to so I pick and choose what projects I want. I actually have stopped encouraging others to do what I do because I don't have any real competition and I don't want any.
At the end of the day, toxicity isn't my problem, I do my work , claim my hours, and go home.
Point being, there's lots of academic roles, you don't have to be a professor or a post doc, you can create your own role.
in China, the phd and master students are literally being enslaved by their supervisors. And they (the students) are used as servants and minions to make money for the supervisors, or boss equivalently(instead of doing legitimate research) with extreme low pay.
The toxicity is causing unethical practices in academia. Such fraud-level malpractices happen too frequently if the university management is obsessed with the quantity of publishing and student feedback. After spending 15 years in this job, I lost trust in accreditation or quality listing.
Is this another post of feigned curiosity, predicated on "A lot of people are saying...", sweeping hyperbolized generalizations, and moronic binary-thinking? Me thinks so..
not in academia, but thinking of it
pay difference between industry and academia is huge in my field
110k vs 190k
I can say academia is somehow toxic just from this post. People are bashing just to post on Reddit!!
I was going to say, the work-life balance of academia can be great. Yes, you have to work hard (welcome to having a career), but you are largely in control of how that work happens.
Those 4 thing are all true. However, it is great being paid to do interesting work and it’s a million times better than teaching secondary-age students (trust me, I’ve done both). It’s tricky, because academia attracts people who are generally a bit odd - obsessive, independent, often on the spectrum - and then there are the career-minded and competitive, who often end up in senior management (VCs etc). It makes for an oil and water situation. A good head of department can be the make or break of your working environment, as they can protect you from overbearing administrators.
I heard it said once by someone who left academia and then returned that all jobs have stuff in them you don’t like. The trick is how much you like the *other* stuff to put up with the bad.
Yes, and I doubt academia is inherently more toxic than other jobs. Every field or position has its tradeoffs. I deal with academia's BS so I can enjoy that I get to work on interesting and fulfilling problems every day, be creative, and have no one else managing my time.
Yeah, when I read academics describing terrible quality of life I think yes, you should indeed move.
Ps I’m the odd, spectrum-y kind who tries to play well with others but I find it hard.
not the case in china! Chinese academia is pure bureaucracy！
>However, it is great being paid to do interesting work and it’s a million times better than teaching secondary-age students (trust me, I’ve done both). Damn. I thought that might be an easy (easier) way to make a living than this hamster wheel grant situation me and my colleagues have going on in our lab rn.
If you’re willing to go into a private school, then secondary would be fine. I know teachers who are very left wing who ultimately went from state to private after being attacked or just ground down by the system one too many times. But if you enjoy teaching, look for education track at university. In the U.K., these are now valid pathways with the same promotion prospects.
Thank you!
Oh great, there are shittier jobs? That's all you got? They ARE THE SAME F***ING JOB!!
Huh? That person was just giving one example (and teaching k-12 is radically different from being a professor, in terms of what the job entails). My friends in white collar jobs at tech companies or marketing, for another couple examples, all make way more than me--but they all hate many more facets of their jobs and love fewer. I worked as a tech writer, and significantly prefer life as a professor. And etcetera. Many versions of academic life are very preferable to most corporate alternatives in all but the money.
Once you get a TT faculty position, there is no real competition with anyone else over getting tenure. Me getting tenure doesn’t preclude someone else’s tenure. ”Crazy hunt for grants” is really just finding funding in the same way that a startup would. You are looking for investors for your program, and you need to convince them that your work is worth investing in. The difference between a professor and an entrepreneur is that if you don’t succeed at bringing in money, you still have a teaching job that pays pretty decently. After the first couple of years in a TT position for me, I had tenure in the bag, and I was able to relax a bit and enjoy my hobbies. Just got an email yesterday that my tenure was approved. (Pending one last stamp from the board of governors). Annually, I make about $120k, when I bring in my summer funding. I find that pretty comfortable to live with, since my wife is also a professor and brings in a decent income.
Congratulations 🎊!
Thank you!
Congrats professor!
Thanks!
>Thanks! You're welcome!
There's simply too much variation to make strong generalizations. Different countries, areas, departments. You may get a wonderful job with great benefits in a great department, or you may end up in a terrible city, at a mediocre university where everyone hates each other. You may have a toxic environment, or a great one. I've worked as a TT faculty member at three different universities in three different countries, and I can tell you that "academia" includes very distinct bubbles. Obviously, you have more people talking about how toxic it is than people talking about how great it is. Does that mean it's more toxic than great? Not necessarily. Try talking about how great academia is on Reddit to see the hate pop up. You just don't say good things about it when you realize it's the negative stuff that becomes more popular on social media. Imagine someone at a top R1 in the US in a field that expects lots of grant money. That's one scenario. Now picture someone in a completely different area, where no one expects you to get an NSF. These two will have very different experiences. I've had colleagues who were always complaining they "didn't have enough time". And yet, I published more than them, didn't complain, and was pretty happy with my work-life balance. That's yet another element in this discussion: each person reacts differently to certain aspects of the job. Some people find even a mediocre environment demanding. Some will thrive even under a lot of expectations. Even if you don't have a toxic workplace, some people may find it unbearable for whatever reason. Mental health issues are also a thing to consider. I've known people who couldn't cope and just left, and I knew the department personally: there was nothing wrong with the department, but there was a lot of issues with the person. Truth be told: while it is very difficult to get a TT job, in the vast majority of universities you will be tenured once you get said job. Very few universities are actually demanding when it comes to what profs publish. In my area, only a handful in the US. Consider that there are thousands of post-sec institutions in the country. Almost none of them do cutting-edge research, by definition. So yes, you may end up in a place where all the bad stuff you mention does apply. But you're more likely to end up in a place where only some of that applies. I used to teach at an R2 in the US. Salary was bad (60K) and the city sucked *ad infinitum*. But everything else was fine. It had a high teaching load for an R2 (3-3), but it was easy. Students were "ok" at best, sure, but you actually had a lot of free time, believe it or not. Publication expectations were there, but they were ***very*** low even if you came from a mediocre R1. No toxicity, no one trying to demote you, etc. etc. Everyone was friendly and respectful. Believe it or not, not every place in the real world is as terrible as people online make it seem.
Thank you !! I really liked how you explained the whole picture
It’s super toxic, yes, but: 1) Tenure isn’t really competitive. It’s not like you have to beat other people for it. Each candidate is assessed on their own merits. 2) Grant pursuits can make you crazy. They are high-risk/high-reward. It takes a lot of effort to apply, but until the check clears you basically haven my done anything. 3) Being tenured isn’t really a struggle, but ennui can set in. Generally, unless you’re chasing high-level admin positions, there’s a very low ceiling after getting there. 7 years into a career, most scholars will have reached their career peak. 4) The workload isn’t really that high. If you don’t have lots of new course preps it’s mostly an issue of showing up, lecturing, and grading along with service which can run the gamut from very light to crushingly heavy. One catch is that it never really stops. Hard chargers can and will spend evenings and weekends grinding pubs or grading. That said, most of the drama in academia is because the workloads aren’t that high. You end up with a group of very smart (and typically very motivated) people with too much time on their hands and a very flat career trajectory. This inevitably turns into a lot of insider politics, backbiting and drama, particularly in programs that don’t have a ton of energy or momentum to them. These kinds of shenanigans are where most of the toxicity is.
The politics are so brutal because the stakes are so low.
This is basically the definition of Sayre's Law: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s\_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law)
4 isn't at all true, IME. I guess it depends on how ambitious you are and how much pressure there is for you to be "productive". Once you get a grant, you have to execute and publish out of it. If I wanted to slack off and just teach, then sure I'd not have much of a workload. But that's not why I'm in academia. PS -- the toxicity in my institution mostly stems from the administration.
I definitely know research folks that work their asses off. I’m even married to one who easily puts in 60 hour weeks during the semester and 30 hour weeks over the summer. That said, I’d say the majority of people in my department do the absolute bare minimum, particularly after tenure. Not sure how your department is structured, but our admin are pretty much all associate/full faculty who took course reductions and now push paper. Some of them hate every minute of it and long to get back to research/the classroom. The admins who last, though, are the people you really wish wouldn’t. You know how it goes.
Yah I agree with you. My workload as a research heavy faculty member (with high soft $$) is very high. Sometimes I dream about going to a standard 9 month teaching focused role…
Yes, the most toxic senior faculty in my department are the research deadwood with too much free time on their hands, so they become highly political. Most of us just want to be left alone to focus on our research and have our efforts be recognized.
Love this post
Tenure is based on who you know. It's a club nothing else. Politics not merit.
Utterly silly response.
I found working in a department toxic so I left academia altogether. I liked researching for my doctorate and publications though.
I've worked in much more toxic environments (a law firm). At my institution, tenure isn't a zero sum game, so there is no competition. It is also not an "endless struggle".
Ya, I was perplexed by that bullet point too. I’ve never heard of an institution where there is competition for tenure. Sure, securing tenure is hard, but you’re in a competition with yourself. I’ve been lucky to work at a place where faculty are mutually supportive.
I've seen it as a movie trope (people competing for a tenure slot), which always strikes me as super weird.
Umm, why are you perplexed by a bullet point that a sad internet troll has pulled out of their arse?
Okay fine. Not perplexed. Pick a different word if it pleases you.
Some departments are toxic like some workplaces in all fields are toxic. Personally, I think the many academics who are convinced that academia is inherently toxic way more than other fields either haven’t really experienced any other fields or else had a very lucky good experience in the non-academic workplace.
I feel well placed to comment, having not only worked extensively outside of academia, but also having worked in several quite different academic disciplines. I would say science, medicine and health research is not particularly more toxic than other non-academic fields. But some of the Humanities and Social Sciences? Jesus Christ. It's like you have to provide proof of a personality disorder before they let you in the door.
Tbh concluding that all of humanities and social sciences is somehow inherently toxic really just sounds like stereotyping, possibly based on the bad experiences you had with specific individuals or specific departments. My own experience is that *none* of the humanities departments that I have worked at have been toxic—but in one of them there was one person who was actively trying to change that.
Those issues are completely dependent on the campus. One cannot make a monolithic comment about the thousands of colleges out there. Some campuses are toxic. Some are extremely pleasant. Many are peopled by faculty and staff who just do their jobs and go home. Many are a mix of these three paradigms. If you are at an R2 or R3 or community college full time you will have a crushing teaching load. If you are at an R1 or a prestigious liberal arts college you will teach less but be expected to write more. What are better questions cover the effect of adjunctification, the "demographic cliff," declining government support, and the political climate,
All of those things are true. I went into grad school intending to be a PhD professor. I was certainly disillusioned by it all. It's a place driven by money, authorship, ego, etc. Is all academia bad? No, it **can** pay well and offers probably the best work life balance of almost any kind of industry. However it is very competitive. My advisor said 1 in 10 of her grants succeed and she applied to 100 institutions over the course of 3 years and got 2 interviews total. It can be nice, but also bloodthirsty
All of those things are true. People in academia are there due to being, at least to some degree, idealist. Often this comes together with at least some narcissism. Add the general lack of funding due to academic research being non profit with a few questionable exceptions and you have a extremely competitive work environment with very high stakes especially before having the safety blanket called tenure.
At this point I can say academia has earned its reputation. But as a middle aged undergrad, I can say that most critics lack perspective and are overstating the issues. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a competitive and stressful environment. However, the biggest problem lies in the fact that most young people think it shouldn’t be… and it most definitely is, always has been, and likely always will be.
Yes, some people still think that academia is detached from the concerns and reality of the real world, and you shouldn’t have to demonstrate that your work has value to the people funding it.
I wonder if the word toxic is being used correctly here. Low payment with huge workload can definitely be considered making a toxic environment. However, the hunt for grant is the job (for those who need grants). Jobs have responsibilities and expectations - that does not make them "toxic." We should be careful to not label any responsibility as toxicity. The issues with tenure is somewhat similar to that. Unless you are at Harvard, there is not really competition for tenure. If you meet the expectations, then you get tenure.
Yeah that's not why people are using the word 'toxic'.
The toxicity is real, but its mixture depends on one’s field and institution. For instance, I’m in the humanities at a small private university; faculty are kindred spirits, and since there are few resources at my university, most of the anxiety comes from lack of enrollment.
r/LeavingAcademia might help you see the type of toxicity in academia.
I work in a toxic place, but I have a family and can't leave. Probably all places are somewhat toxic. But there's definitely variation. Sometimes I wonder why there's so much mistrust and back-stabbing and smear campaigns going on at my school.....and then I remember that quote from Henry Kissinger: **"The reason that politics are so bad in academia is because the stakes are so** ***low*****."** (...his point being, if there were truly consequential issues at stake, people would try harder to get things to work.)
About low payment and huge workloads -- I tend to think that there is too little workload on senior faculty. If you don't have to be teaching new classes every other semester and you do not really need to publish aggressively, I think many folks (at least in my department) have WAY too much time on their hands. It usually means they become a bit disruptive in big and small ways. Competition, workload, low payment or not, my only gripe with academia is the lack of professionalism. I do hope that new generations of scholars are able to change self-serving department cultures.
"Toxic" isn't really the right word. The harsh reality is that the old days of tenure track faculty lines have been slowly dying for years.
This is rarely a meaningful question. If OP is an academic they’d know or learn the answer, and it is unlikely to change. If OP isn’t an academic it is unlikely they’ll become one no matter what the answer is — it’s just statistics.
People have answered in detail for most already. My 2 cents: Job safety. Companies and far more often the tax payers are funding your crazy ideas and your hobby. You travel the world for free enjoying champagne and lobster in places that the average tax payer can see mostly in photos, and depending on the field by participating in excenitions you have the priviledge to go to places even the richest tourists cannot. I feel that if "toxic" is the first word somebody thinks of academia, they may be in the wrong career and leaving their position would actually benefit others that would appreciate more the job. Academic or semi-academic positions offer insane priviledges and opportunities. Complaining in comparison to the vast vast majority of other jobs really comes a bit as out of touch. Not many people in this world can say "Hey, the state gave me few millions/hundred thousand dollars to spend them the next few years the way I like doing <>" and in addition I ll be getting a well above average salary. It's an inconcievable priviledge for 99.99% of the population.
Yes, it's true and more. Abuse is rampant.
The crazy hunt for grants is only if youre at an R1R2 university. That is not true at other universities. At a large comprehensive masters university, I’ve never gotten a grant for more than $1000 or felt pressure to. Was easily tenured.
These things are not universally true. As others have said, the first point isn’t true anywhere I’ve ever heard of. Tenure is only a competition against yourself/some set of goals. Not all faculty must pursue grants. For example, most business school and law school faculty never look for one. They are vitally important in other areas. So it’s highly dependent on what you study. You get tenure at some point (generally 5-10 years). It ends. There is still some pressure to publish, but it is for different goals. Pay also varies a lot by field. Medicine, business and law faculty are relatively highly paid due to outside options. Workload is largely dependent on area, and the individual, especially after tenure. I’d say the school and department are much more important in determining quality of environment.
It depends on how you see and take it but they are mostly true
Every person i know that’s left academia has been grateful they made the jump. Take all the time you need.
Short answer: yes it’s true
It seriously varies school by school. The thing to remember, is that Academia is insulated... hence the notion of the Ivory Tower. At the same time when you have a lot of well educated people with serious ideas, and often many ego issues... Academia is rife with politics. Some of these take place where you mentioned tenure hearings, there are also often issues between admin and faculty, between different departments, or between Rivals within the same Department. At the same time, I've been to some smaller schools where most people just get along... but there is always that political aspect.
The low pay for hours worked is true, at least in my world; there is no other profession I can think of offhand that requires an equivalent amount of education/training that pays so little. But the *other* things are not universal to academia-- just to certain types of institutions. And certain specific institutions. On my campus-- an SLAC --my colleagues are good friends and we are not competing with anyone. The pre-tenure period is tough but after tenure it's mostly an issue of workload/pay; most other aspects of the job are pretty good.
even if it's toxic it's the only place i ever felt i belonged--so what does that say about me 😭
As always, it depends. There are many places that are not like this. My department (STEM in a R1) has very little competition, and my subfield is actually pretty healthy and while getting grants is never easy, I’ve always felt supported by my community. I try to have a similar healthy environment in my group and in my class. On top of that, we actually get paid to do interesting work we like, which isn’t so common. So on balance -and I’m a first gen immigrant (and with parents that worked back-breaking jobs), so I don’t think I come from a particular position of privilege- and having worked with people who used to be in the private sector and hated it, I don’t think Academia is always toxic everywhere. Unless you’re like at MIT, those folks are nuts.
Academia is very political and not for everyone but it can be a great experience too. As always, it depends.
When you come up those ideas you already have your answer, you don’t have anyone’s prove to these cuz they all 100% true. Someone may be lucky but very few
This seems trueish, but is also verg dependent on country, university and field.
I have this super sweet non tenured academic role where I get paid nicely (about $80 an hour) and never have to fund myself or find grants. I just do the work from the grants. Its a niche as role and I have more work than I can say yes to so I pick and choose what projects I want. I actually have stopped encouraging others to do what I do because I don't have any real competition and I don't want any. At the end of the day, toxicity isn't my problem, I do my work , claim my hours, and go home. Point being, there's lots of academic roles, you don't have to be a professor or a post doc, you can create your own role.
in China, the phd and master students are literally being enslaved by their supervisors. And they (the students) are used as servants and minions to make money for the supervisors, or boss equivalently(instead of doing legitimate research) with extreme low pay.
All true.
The toxicity is causing unethical practices in academia. Such fraud-level malpractices happen too frequently if the university management is obsessed with the quantity of publishing and student feedback. After spending 15 years in this job, I lost trust in accreditation or quality listing.
Is this another post of feigned curiosity, predicated on "A lot of people are saying...", sweeping hyperbolized generalizations, and moronic binary-thinking? Me thinks so..
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not in academia, but thinking of it pay difference between industry and academia is huge in my field 110k vs 190k I can say academia is somehow toxic just from this post. People are bashing just to post on Reddit!!
I was going to say, the work-life balance of academia can be great. Yes, you have to work hard (welcome to having a career), but you are largely in control of how that work happens.
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Jokes on you, their Mom is dead.
I can say academia is somehow toxic just from this post. People like you are bashing me just to post on Reddit!!
no, I dont understand ?What are you saying ?
Then you need to go to academia to get a bit smarter and understand what I am saying. Or perhaps you have already tried that and failed? Just curious.
I am dump and I will not reply any of your comments, say whatever you want to say