More sad sad articles

Quartz, November 12, 2015
https://qz.com/547641/theres-an-awful-cost-to-getting-a-phd-that-no-one-talks-about/
There’s an awful cost to getting a PhD that no one talks about

Old, but a good one about the mental problems of graduate students. My personal awakening started from this and a handful of other articles.

The Atlantic, Nov 27, 2018
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/11/anxiety-depression-mental-health-graduate-school/576769/
Graduate School Can Have Terrible Effects on People’s Mental HealthPh.D. candidates suffer from anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation at astonishingly high rates.

Again, three years past the previous article in “Quartz” and nothing has changed. Nothing ever changes in the rotten world of academia.

Nature, 21 November 2018
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07479-7
Stop exploitation of foreign postdocs in the United States

I like this one. They are plainly admitting that academia is nothing but a sweatshop with abysmal working conditions. This sweatshop would collapse without continuous influx of cheap foreign labor. Fucking sweatshop!

Allison Harbin, August 13, 2017
https://www.allisonharbin.com/post-phd/2017/8/11/burn-it-down-emails-of-advisor-professor-abuse-expose-a-crisis-in-academia
Burn it Down: Emails of Adviser & Professor Abuse Expose Systemic Crisis in Academia
This is the best one! Simply loving it! It was written by a person who was conned by the Academia, thrown away and now being sued for exposing them for the fraud they are. A masterpiece of humiliation, suffering, and anger.

Reader opinions: UK universities are scum [like it’s brethren in US]

Dear Universities UK

In Britain, there are many thousands of PhD-qualified researchers who  struggle to find suitable employment, let alone careers, and their number grows daily. Indeed, the oversupply of researchers has probably never been greater than it is today.

Enticed into academic research – sometimes with misleading assurances of a ‘research career’ or ‘academic career’ -, they eventually find their qualification and experience all-but worthless, inside and outside of academia.

Many toil for years in junior research roles (is there any other kind?), helping to build the reputations of institutions and advance the careers of professors, only to arrive at a dead end, with little option but to start again from square one elsewhere.

Denied access to a career path or seniority in their own field of expertise, many are forced into low-grade jobs, often subordinate to people who had the sense and foresight never to get involved in academic research.

From a researcher’s viewpoint, this state of affairs seems unsustainable. Therefore it is my intention to make a case to government for a fundamental review of the present, failing system, with the aim to bring it properly into line with researchers’ needs and aspirations.

Before doing so, however, I would be grateful if you would respond to the following specific questions:

1. Do you agree that it is irresponsible, nay unethical, for universities to continue expanding PhD programmes knowing that jobs and careers in research are so sparse that only a small number of qualified researchers can expect to deploy their skills professionally for long?

2. Is it not a criminal waste of talent and resources that most researchers are put out to grass after only a few years of productive work?

3. Do you agree that terms such as ‘research career’ and ‘researcher career path’ are misleading, create unrealizable expectations, and should be excised from academic communications?

4. May we admit that ‘career development’ initiatives on behalf of UK academic researchers have been mostly cosmetic and ineffectual?

5. Recruitment to institutional research support roles generally gives little heed to research qualifications and experience, such that a great proportion of senior support staff possess neither. How do universities justify this? And how can they expect external employers to value research qualifications and experience when they themselves dismiss them?

6. Would you agree that political screening of job applicants has no place in any publicly funded institution?

7. Following from this, would you agree also that the Left’s stranglehold on higher education is limiting free and open inquiry?

8. Finally, would you concur that the present PhD system is essentially a scam configured to fill university coffers and to enhance professorial reputations and careers at the expense of researchers? That the present system should scrapped and replaced by something that restores balance of supply and demand, and works for the people who actually sustain it?

I look forward to your reply.

Yours sincerely

[Name withheld]

A Nobel Prize winner sold his medal for $765,000 to pay medical bills

Here’s the link

Postdocs waiting for a permanent position won’t have a better fate than that.

Blocked by @nature twitter account

I sent a few sarcastic twitter reply to @nature tweets. Very few seem to reply to those tweets. Dry science, low audience, understandable. What’s hilarious is that my sarcastic tweets apparently hurt some fragile egos. @phdscam got blocked by @nature.

 

 

Nobody fucking cares ..this fucking idea doesn’t get into my fucking brain

Lot of you STILL don’t believe the title and that proves the worth of the title.

Think harder. Did anyone promise you money/career after PhD? Do you think beggars get rich just by begging? A reasonable person wouldn’t think so.

So, when are leaving PhD/academia? Still not convinced? Be misery be with you! While we enjoy our lives.

Collective begging by Max Plank students | will NOT work

 

Editor’s note: One reader alerted us to a long (19 pages) email. Soo desperate. If you have that long a grievance, why don’t you leave? Collective begging doesn’t work. Leave and find a job in industry. You love science, but academia will not pay you. As an adult, you should choose and choose to look elsewhere.

20160118 Current Perspectives(1)

Some of us involved in the drafting of this letter are in our late 30s and early 40s ALREADY and are still working as ‘slave’ postdocs under our bosses since many years or have been forced by the short-term stipends & various funding organizations which demand perpetual mobility for granting fellowships/grants (as if scientists are supposed to live gypsy lifstyles) to constantly hop from one lab & country to another! But slowly we are getting tired of this INSECURE, EVER-mobile, short-term stipends. It has already taken huge toll on our lives. Most of us do not manage to meet/find suitable partners (as our long working hours hardly leaves much free time to lead a sound & healthy private/social lives) and for those who manages to find a partner have constant problems/fights/stress in our relationships due to negligible time we dedicate to our personal lives! No wonder MANY young scientists often end up being single or paired up with OTHER scientists as the only possible partners one can meet or who can understand the reasons for the lack of free time! Is this not a matter of great pity & shame for the scientific system? The perpetual mobility expected for a successful scientific career & short-term stipends cause major negative impacts on our personal lives like – not be able to settle down with a partner (most nonscientific partners want to settle down at ONE place and can’t keep hopping around the world, most of them can also not work all over the world as many qualifications for eg those typical for Germany are not internationally accepted (and vice versa many international qualifications are not accepted in Germany), often causing non-scientific partners to become unemployed during the years of mobility (which is often detrimental to their careers & also selfish from the scientific partner to expect). This is specially problematic when the non-scientific partner has a better salary (MOST of the TIMES) and thus the major source of our livelihood is lost due to such incompatibility in professions caused by the mobility (expected by the funding agencies)! Of course this often causes broken relationships/ marriages, when the non-scientific partner is not ready to give up their career, which is very much understandable, but becomes unavoidable if the scientific partner needs to pursue mobility to fulfill the grant criterion! Hence unhappy personal lives of scientists begin. Besides professional problems, mobility also causes scientists to plan personal lives like – family planning (getting kids), settling down (to feel at home and have a sense of belonging to a city/lab), gain some financial security (like buying whatever property one can afford from the poor earnings as a scientist). And for those who are having kids its even more difficult with the whole mobility aspect, as moving countries with small kids with new schools, environments and life-styles is a highly stressful. In short we feel afraid/insecure that inspite of making all the above sacrifices (NOT USUALLY DEMANDED by other professions), we will one day be in our mid 40s, without a permanent position (not even Scientific Staff), hence UNEMPLOYED but OVERQUALIFIED for the rest of the jobs, and have a FAMILY of kids and an unemployed non-scientific partner (who sacrificed MOSTLY her/sometimes HIS career for our constant stints of “mobility” with the hope to BUILD my career)! We hope that the readers of this letter can understand the gravity and seriousness of our concerns and will be convinced to take necessary steps to improve the situation of work and life of the young scientists in the GAS! Before we end, we agree that many of our statements might have been perceived as purely emotional outburst & frustration laden criticism to certain readers (Univ Prof/MPI Directors) who might find them uncomfortable, but then we are human after all and we don’t think there is anything wrong in freely communicating human problems and issues with other humans with the hope of being humanly heard and the rightful to be done in a human way! Furthermore if someone feels uncomfortable then it shows that there is something WRONG about the whole issue and it causes them to be uncomfortable while deep down in their hearts they know well that there is truth in our raised points and its not right the way they are being allowed to go on as now! Not just the raised problems, some readers might find many of the suggested solutions as restrains on/questioning their authority, which shows that they DO ADMIT/FEEL that they DO wield some sort of authority/power/sense of control over the issues which is probably not the way science should be RUN! And just because Science has grown into this ugly affair as depicted above, with ‘big-shot’ Profs/Directors running the show & jeopardizing the lives of millions of young scientists without any control (till now), does not mean that things should continue to run in the same chaotic, UNSUSTAINABLE way. ENOUGH is ENOUGH! Its time to change the system for greater good of the scientific community. Science ORIGINALLY was the endeavor to unravel the secrets of nature and generate technological advances for the betterment of this world and NOT an industry monopolized by paid publishing of ‘PUBLISHABLE research’ often “generated” by the exploitation of young scientists paid on short-term stipends/contracts and expected to constantly hops labs, until mid 40s before they end up without a permanent job to be thrown out of the GAS! Please do the necessary to make Science the holy discipline of pure reason based on the pillars of genuine curiosity, reproducible experimentations and freely shared knowledge! Thank you for reading and feel free to share with all those who might be relevant! Sincerely, A random bunch of ‘young scientists’ from the MPI BPC.