"He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches"..........George Bernard Shaw
The above quote translates into the following : "Teachers are those whom the society can spare for repetitive and redundant activities".
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Public academic institutions are overgrown children of Socialism
After seven decades of independence, three decades of economic liberalization, and one full generation of pro-right socio-political shift of India, its prestigious academic institutions are still hanging from the umbilical cord of the State, wanting to sustain on the tax-payer's money. Consider this : If the government is paying you salary from the tax-payer's money, it simply means your work should directly contribute to the nation's wealth. This means that all engineering research must be necessarily application-based. (Core research is a scientist's job). The technological research must primarily be industry-relevant, understanding the market forces of demand and supply. Consequently, someone should be buying and applying this research to solve an actual real-life problem. Even if the research is theoretical, it should have industrial/market applicability in near future. Otherwise, it should NOT be funded by the government. An academician's efforts become worthwhile only if his/her research finding/publication is used soon enough by the industry : as simple as that. Otherwise, it is just Blue Skies Research.
Now, how much of this happens in reality? A fresh faculty, mostly under 35, is pressurized to publish journal papers ASAP, come what may! Journal-publication is the only pre-set criterion to measure their credibility at this stage. In desperation, the faculty member resorts to all strategies (listed later) to somehow get a paper published, as quickly as possible. However, this low-self-esteem panic-stricken action does not necessarily lead to (a) the beginning of a new relevant research, (b) establishing of a strong research group, (c) setting of a state-of-the-art laboratory, (d) industrial contacts and consultancy. All of this takes at least 5-7 years, after which those 'coveted' scholarly and archivable publications just happen, smoothly and automatically. Yet, one is supposed to publish from the first year itself (how man?), when the faculty neither has research students, nor expertise, nor confidence, nor independence, nor leadership skills. Thus begins the frantic 'writing' of random journal papers just for the sake of it.
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The above quote translates into the following : "Teachers are those whom the society can spare for repetitive and redundant activities".
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Public academic institutions are overgrown children of Socialism
After seven decades of independence, three decades of economic liberalization, and one full generation of pro-right socio-political shift of India, its prestigious academic institutions are still hanging from the umbilical cord of the State, wanting to sustain on the tax-payer's money. Consider this : If the government is paying you salary from the tax-payer's money, it simply means your work should directly contribute to the nation's wealth. This means that all engineering research must be necessarily application-based. (Core research is a scientist's job). The technological research must primarily be industry-relevant, understanding the market forces of demand and supply. Consequently, someone should be buying and applying this research to solve an actual real-life problem. Even if the research is theoretical, it should have industrial/market applicability in near future. Otherwise, it should NOT be funded by the government. An academician's efforts become worthwhile only if his/her research finding/publication is used soon enough by the industry : as simple as that. Otherwise, it is just Blue Skies Research.
Now, how much of this happens in reality? A fresh faculty, mostly under 35, is pressurized to publish journal papers ASAP, come what may! Journal-publication is the only pre-set criterion to measure their credibility at this stage. In desperation, the faculty member resorts to all strategies (listed later) to somehow get a paper published, as quickly as possible. However, this low-self-esteem panic-stricken action does not necessarily lead to (a) the beginning of a new relevant research, (b) establishing of a strong research group, (c) setting of a state-of-the-art laboratory, (d) industrial contacts and consultancy. All of this takes at least 5-7 years, after which those 'coveted' scholarly and archivable publications just happen, smoothly and automatically. Yet, one is supposed to publish from the first year itself (how man?), when the faculty neither has research students, nor expertise, nor confidence, nor independence, nor leadership skills. Thus begins the frantic 'writing' of random journal papers just for the sake of it.
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Academic research publishing is Business. Period.
This is the drill : As a young faculty, you slog it out for months defining a decent problem statement, doing research, collecting data, analyzing and comparing results, with or without the help of your graduate students, and put together a manuscript. You submit it to a reasonably good impact-factor journal. If cleared by the editorial office, it goes to the Editor. If the Editor feels it is in the scope of the journal, the manuscript goes under review. Reviewers are exactly someone like you, maybe a little more experienced in academia. But, reviewers are not paid for the peer-review process. It takes a month to almost six months(!) to get the <1-page reviews of your 10-20 page manuscript. It may get outright rejected. If not, the reviewers suggest minor/major revisions. After one or two rounds of revision, your manuscript gets accepted. Take it from the top.
This is the drill : As a young faculty, you slog it out for months defining a decent problem statement, doing research, collecting data, analyzing and comparing results, with or without the help of your graduate students, and put together a manuscript. You submit it to a reasonably good impact-factor journal. If cleared by the editorial office, it goes to the Editor. If the Editor feels it is in the scope of the journal, the manuscript goes under review. Reviewers are exactly someone like you, maybe a little more experienced in academia. But, reviewers are not paid for the peer-review process. It takes a month to almost six months(!) to get the <1-page reviews of your 10-20 page manuscript. It may get outright rejected. If not, the reviewers suggest minor/major revisions. After one or two rounds of revision, your manuscript gets accepted. Take it from the top.
Now, your paper gets published a few weeks later and you are not paid a penny! Some journals even ask for fees to publish your paper (Wow! Slow clap)! The journal enjoys subscription (mostly) from academia, making money with free labor from both authors and reviewers! Does that make sense to you? No, right? Then why are you doing it? Why are you playing this losing, draining game? Because, it is translates into lines in your CV! It is expected of you in academia for your promotions! Your academic institution's ranking depends on papers and citations. More students approach you for improving their own CV and bagging your recommendations for their careers. Without publications, you cannot establish to the world what you are working on or what your research area is. But, once you are tenured, do you actually need to publish? Do you get salary increments based on your number of publications? The yearly appraisals are all self-appraisals(!), simply to inform your institute of what you did in the last academic year. No one gets back to you after that.
Now, your manuscript is accepted and processed by the production department of the journal, and finally published. Then? You download the final PDF and store it. OK then? Did anybody read it? Yeah yeah, someone read it and cited it. Who? Most probably, another academician like you. One plain question : did anyone in the industry pick up your paper and use your methodology/results for an actual R-n-D application? Did they call you up/email you for further specific research inputs in a real industrial problem, involving money, commitment, accountability, and deadlines? Which real-life problem did your research help in solving? Your publication lies in the periodical section of university/institute libraries. Let's face it : no one got back to you after that!
Litmus test. Pose a simple question to a typical faculty member of a typical academic institute, i.e., "Why are you doing research?" The typical answer will be, "I need X number of papers for my promotion". A senior faculty member of a premier institute once told me, "I will publish papers since this is what my job demands me to do. I don't mind if it becomes toilet paper after that"!
Cost incurred upon the State: Let's do the simple arithmetic. You drew a salary of ~ INR 12 lakhs per annum (Asst. Professor). 25% of your time was spent in teaching. Another 25% was spent in administrative and grant-related activities. You took INR 6 lakhs per annum to do research and write, say, 3 journal papers. You were helped by a doctoral student, who drew INR 3 lakhs per annum and dedicated 75% of his/her time for the paper (the rest was for TA activities). Another Master's student taking INR 1.44 lakhs per annum worked full time on these papers. Thus the three papers were published by spending 6+2.25+1.44 = INR 9.69 lakhs, making each paper worth INR 3.23 lakhs!!!. Wow! My car and a research paper are worth the same! This was spent entirely by the State (read tax-payers money). You and your students added lines in the CV. You get a promotion and now draw INR 15 lakhs per annum. You induct another doctoral student. Take it from the top!Litmus test. Pose a simple question to a typical faculty member of a typical academic institute, i.e., "Why are you doing research?" The typical answer will be, "I need X number of papers for my promotion". A senior faculty member of a premier institute once told me, "I will publish papers since this is what my job demands me to do. I don't mind if it becomes toilet paper after that"!
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Strategies adopted in the game of academic publishing
Tweaking. A clever way of getting quick publications is the practice of 'tweaking'. It goes like this : pick up a recent publication, re-solve the problem, make a minute change to the problem formulation or the analysis methodology, and compare the results, and presto! Your new manuscript is ready! You can self-tweak, too. Extract your own published paper, re-juggle it, add a new dimension to the problem, and your new paper is ready! Your successive paper titles read almost the same. The same equations and diagrams keep appearing over and over, with some minor modifications.
Co-authorship : Write just once sentence in a big shot's paper and watch your citation scores zoom!
Guest authorship : Doctoral/post-doctoral supervisors often do this with their students/post-docs. The low-paid overworked fellow has no option but to use the adviser's name simply to get the manuscript accepted for publication.
Guest authorship : Doctoral/post-doctoral supervisors often do this with their students/post-docs. The low-paid overworked fellow has no option but to use the adviser's name simply to get the manuscript accepted for publication.
Citation Gang : "You scratch my back and I will scratch yours". This will increase the citations of both. Innumerable such groups exist, which form a closed loop of authors and author-reviewer duos. Outsiders can join the gang by citing all the existing members.
Blind review advantage : As the author of the paper, you do not know who the reviewers are. For a non-rejection review, you are invariably 'advised' to cite more literature, some of which are mentioned in the review letter. Look who is trying to increase his/her citations!
One fat cow for milking in the whole academic career : Many academicians keep on milking their PhD dissertation/post-doc work for future publications, even 5-10 years after graduation/end of contract! This happens even if the global research trends have changed (which are dependent on the global industrial and market trends). Once tenured, who bothers to keep in pace with the trends, yaar! The academy eventually becomes a Jurassic Park!
Inter-disciplinary work : Apply a particular discipline of knowledge in an application of some other discipline (whether industrially relevant or not is irrelevant) and you open a Pandora's box of possible publications.
Buttering : Cite the target journal papers, its editor's papers, and the suggested reviewers' papers, and you have increased your chances of getting your manuscript accepted.
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Buttering : Cite the target journal papers, its editor's papers, and the suggested reviewers' papers, and you have increased your chances of getting your manuscript accepted.
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Once the papers start getting published by all strategies, the academic and academia become like this:
Dunning-Kruger syndrome : Egos fly high in the academic campus. Get published in a 'prestigious' journal and see the arrogance radiate. Academicians tend to self-hypnotize themselves into believing they are doing very 'interesting', 'challenging' work! They unknowingly end up living in a fool's paradise, deluding themselves on an everyday basis. What they need is a jolting to realize that most their "work" has absolutely no market value.
Too many people want to take refuge in academia. It is a place of escapists, who are too scared to face the real world and do real things involving money, accountability, deadlines. Industry employees earn more money (with equal or less qualifications) simply because they take on more risk and higher responsibility. Academia earns less, since it turns out to be the safest job. Does academia fit in the food chain? It is even a part of the economy? No!
Dunning-Kruger syndrome : Egos fly high in the academic campus. Get published in a 'prestigious' journal and see the arrogance radiate. Academicians tend to self-hypnotize themselves into believing they are doing very 'interesting', 'challenging' work! They unknowingly end up living in a fool's paradise, deluding themselves on an everyday basis. What they need is a jolting to realize that most their "work" has absolutely no market value.
Too many people want to take refuge in academia. It is a place of escapists, who are too scared to face the real world and do real things involving money, accountability, deadlines. Industry employees earn more money (with equal or less qualifications) simply because they take on more risk and higher responsibility. Academia earns less, since it turns out to be the safest job. Does academia fit in the food chain? It is even a part of the economy? No!
Academic freedom hype : 'Freedom' is perhaps the most misunderstood and misused word here. Non-academics envy the freedom a professor gets : flexible work hours, no work attendance recording, no stand-up meetings (pictured below left), freedom to take a part of the day off without answering anyone, availability of research assistants (RA) and teaching assistants (TA) 24/7, freedom to ignore emails/calls, freedom to stay alone in the office as per own sweet will (pictured below right) as long as desired, long vacations, 3-7 teaching hours per week, no boss, zero accountability for research output (both quality and quantity), no external appraisals, no monthly progress reports/reviews. Shouldn't it be the life of one's dreams?
Well, not really. Even a house cat is free 24/7/365 to do what it wants : who cares? Thinking that 'No one will disturb me in academia and I can work at my own pace' actually translates into 'I don't matter and I don't stand accountable'. There is no stake and no one is counting on you. Wake up! NO one cares what you are doing. Your degrees, medals, awards, certificates, recognitions, mementos, plaques, trophies, have no value if you are not contributing to the economy. Why are your ex-students earning (much) more than you now? Do they email/call you back to clarify any technical doubt? Why did they stop counting on you since their graduation?
Don't get it wrong. Teaching is extremely important for the development of human resources. We don't have the time to learn everything in the hard way and reinvent the wheel. Governments must invest in education on a priority basis. Also, effective teaching is a rare skill; quite difficult to pick up and execute. Most academicians suck at their pedagogical skills (I have seen that personally, whether in India or USA). The rare effective teacher, who kindles the young minds in the classroom, gain ever-lasting respect. It is a challenge to ignite them year after academic year : you need to constantly up your game by learning more and keeping yourself updated about technological developments and industrial applications.
But why burden teachers with research? "Padhaana hain toh Padhaao. Yeh research karne ka naatak kyun kar rahe ho?"
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Last few words : Don't do a PhD unless absolutely interested. Finish it within 3-4 years max. As for a post-doc, Hello! What is that????!!!! Get out of this exile ASAP. You deserve a better life with a better work environment, exciting projects, supportive colleagues, and a (much) higher paycheck.
Well, not really. Even a house cat is free 24/7/365 to do what it wants : who cares? Thinking that 'No one will disturb me in academia and I can work at my own pace' actually translates into 'I don't matter and I don't stand accountable'. There is no stake and no one is counting on you. Wake up! NO one cares what you are doing. Your degrees, medals, awards, certificates, recognitions, mementos, plaques, trophies, have no value if you are not contributing to the economy. Why are your ex-students earning (much) more than you now? Do they email/call you back to clarify any technical doubt? Why did they stop counting on you since their graduation?
Academia is a lazy place. It operates at a very dilated time-scale. It is an extremely slow and boring environment. The biggest problem is : NOTHING HAPPENS! It is like watching a snooze-fest flop movie again and again, year after academic year. It is a fargiyappa of epic proportions : a black hole. Slothfulness breeds more slothfulness, procrastination is cumulative, mediocrity breeds more mediocrity.
Academia is a huge Ponzi scam. A researcher writes a paper in order to write more papers from it! A professor guides a student in order for the latter to become a professor and guide more students!
Academia is an exploitative place. PhDs and post-docs are paid less than half of what they are worth, after slogging out twice as long as a normal non-academic person. Weeknights and weekends are also spend in the 'lab'. Finally we graduate a burnt-out, frustrated, disillusioned, (may be) job-less person!
Academia is an intellectually stimulating environment. Well! only for the students, NOT for the faculty. It is a one-way process. Students grow because of the faculty, but not vice-versa. As a faculty, you have to grow them up. You have to tolerate and handle their day-to-day immaturity, irresponsibility, unprofessionalism. You have to take s**t from them and then rectify them for their future.
-------------------------------------------Academia is an intellectually stimulating environment. Well! only for the students, NOT for the faculty. It is a one-way process. Students grow because of the faculty, but not vice-versa. As a faculty, you have to grow them up. You have to tolerate and handle their day-to-day immaturity, irresponsibility, unprofessionalism. You have to take s**t from them and then rectify them for their future.
Don't get it wrong. Teaching is extremely important for the development of human resources. We don't have the time to learn everything in the hard way and reinvent the wheel. Governments must invest in education on a priority basis. Also, effective teaching is a rare skill; quite difficult to pick up and execute. Most academicians suck at their pedagogical skills (I have seen that personally, whether in India or USA). The rare effective teacher, who kindles the young minds in the classroom, gain ever-lasting respect. It is a challenge to ignite them year after academic year : you need to constantly up your game by learning more and keeping yourself updated about technological developments and industrial applications.
But why burden teachers with research? "Padhaana hain toh Padhaao. Yeh research karne ka naatak kyun kar rahe ho?"
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Last few words : Don't do a PhD unless absolutely interested. Finish it within 3-4 years max. As for a post-doc, Hello! What is that????!!!! Get out of this exile ASAP. You deserve a better life with a better work environment, exciting projects, supportive colleagues, and a (much) higher paycheck.
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