<p>“I am wondering, what do people like you who end up at such top schools think got you in?”
I’m not sure. I took lots of graduate classes and got A’s in most of them. I also did summer reading/research projects with profs at Caltech that taught me a lot but weren’t terribly succesful (no publishable results). I had recommendations from very well known professors who supervised my research and whom I had for grad classes, but I can’t imagine they were particularly glowing, as I was demonstrably nowhere close in ability to the best math majors at Caltech they had worked with. I was rejected by MIT and Princeton but got into Chicago, Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia and other nice places.
If you’re doing really well in grad classes at Berkeley and do some math research through REU’s or equivalent, I don’t think you’ll have much trouble getting into grad school.
There is room in the world for mortals.</p>
<p>TT professor job is one path I’m interested in but given the tough job market in history, I’m willing to be flexible (but am forced to keep my mouth shut in front of the entire academia except for a very few trusted friends/professors).</p>
<p>But sometimes I question the “family-friendliness” given that I watched my female professors manage their work and personal lives. They appeared to be pretty satisfied but if they’re not tenured, they make sacrifices, usually at the student’s expense. One of my professors loved how she could volunteer to carpool her daughter and a couple of kids to a private school that’s more than 30 minutes away and just be back at her office in time for her 10 AM class or leave her office by 3 PM if she needed to. But she had her daughter during her tenure review period- a good couple years after she received her PhD. My mom was horrified when I told her about this- “You’re not planning to not have children until you’re 40?! Then I’ll be too old!”</p>
<p>But you know what? The right time will come. And the kids go to bed by 8 PM anyway and you have all night to yourself.</p>
<p>Not scaring me yet.</p>
<p>I am in fact taking advantage of our graduate program and so far doing well, and yeah a few grad students told me that’ll be a good strength, given we have a good caliber one. </p>
<p>That’s a pretty awesome list of schools you had to choose from by the way! Yeah, I consider myself perhaps a little similarly to how you described it - pretty hardworking, a mortal, but taking a good schedule. I also have a decent idea of what kind of math I’m interested in. And yeah good amounts of summer reading and/or special topics work planned. </p>
<p>I am convinced by what you say, though, that the guy who was accepted to Princeton probably got in because of a glowing recommendation from a super renowned professor. He had a fair number of grad classes, but mainly he took some pretty sophisticated ones, and I’m pretty sure impressed that professor. Who knows what he did though =]</p>
<p>It seems like the eventual solution will be the complete and total dissolution of the tenure system and a massive readjustment in wages due to the dramatic oversupply of most degrees (primarily in non-technical disciplines). Pay scales in technical disciplines will have to stay relatively high because they compete with private industry for applicants.</p>
<p>A few schools will likely keep “tenure” positions but these schools will only be on the pinnacle of the US educational superstructure and will have hundreds of applicants for each spot (basically how it is currently).</p>
<p>Questions?</p>
<p>I understand why tenure is desirable for an individual, but is tenure beneficial for the rest of us? Restated, how would academia suffer without tenure?</p>
<p>Which will disappear first - tenure for High School teachers, or tenure for university professors?</p>
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The idea behind tenure was to encourage professors to write the facts without fear of reprisal (in short, the promotion of academic freedom). Put another way, universities prefer professors to be concerned with factual correctness rather than political correctness.</p>
<p>Tenure as a mean of ensuring political freedom is a crock. That is not really why it still exists, it just sounds good nowadays. </p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong: I greatly benefit from tenure and would personally hate to give it up. But I fail to see how it ensures freedom of thought and expression. </p>
<p>Sure, there are some circumstances whereby we need academic freedom. But for remaining 99% of us, we aren’t exactly doing work that has political ramifications. Why should highschool teachers need tenure? Moreover, most of us that do research for a living, we typically are not working in areas that need such protection. </p>
<p>On top of that, there are plenty of other huge constraints on research anyways, from what kind of work that gets funded, to corporate sponsorship, to what can get accepted in journals, to the socialization of particular values up to the point of tenure. </p>
<p>And as we see from examples discussed in the media, if a professor wants to be REALLY controversial, universities will find creative ways to ‘disassociate themselves’ when it’s political expedient to do so regardless, making tenure not ultimately protective at all anyways.</p>
<p>Sssssshuuussshhh tenure is good people don’t question =] I want it when I work some day in the hazy future</p>
<p>free of political reprisal also refers to your research field. Before I had tenure, I did think that it was not going to change my behavior. However in the many years since tenure, I now see that I am the one free to stand up for my junior colleagues and for research approaches by others that I think are highly relevant but not popular or “dogma” correct. </p>
<p>Tenure for research faculty (who also teach) is essential if US research is to continue to have the world wide impact that it currently enjoys.</p>
<p>Yeah I mean, as a totally inexperienced outsider, I can see that ParAlum raises one important point. Which is that one can do things which are controversial within the given department…need not just be denouncing a president or something. I.e. controversy exists everywhere. I’m sure workers in standard industrial position are a little more measured about their tongues than a tenured professor is. Why? One has a bigger immediate danger of getting fired. Opinions on how to conduct a project, research, etc, are opinions, and I think tenure is an important sort of guarantee to give to particularly talented, dedicated scholars.</p>
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<p>Well, the only reason I can think of is to keep older more experienced teachers around, since they make more and would be shoved out without tenure. Also the pressure to give high grades might overwhelm teachers w/o tenure - but maybe not.</p>
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<p>And yet it it is not hard to find stories today of researchers who take an unorthodox approach and are shunned by the majority, and who have a hard time getting their unorthodox ideas published and getting research funded. I’m thinking especially of medical research.</p>
<p>One of the strongest arguments for tenure (@ the college /university level) is that it liberates people to do their most creative research, including the kind of project that might not yield a major publication or grant within just a year or two, or might even bomb completely. The vast majority of scholars do their most significant work post-tenure. It also tends to make faculty invest in their life of their institution–there’s a real feeling of having become a life partner. Tenured faculty know that they will almost always be around a lot longer than anyone in the administration, for example.</p>
<p>Without tenure it would be much more difficult in biomedical research. I say this from experience. Without tenure, you do not have time nor ability to develop innovative ideas before being asked to move on to another position. Instead, non-tenured individuals tend to stay to the “safe” areas that may have more modest impact and contribution.</p>
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<p>Yes, yes agree with the fact that tenure enables one to do longer term/riskier projects. Ceratinly has been true for me (though I’d concur my rate of productivity follows the general trend of less post-tenure) But this idea of time for broader horizones is valued and noted largely because we have this thing called pre-tenure (where its not possible and hence the contrast is so stark!). The argument does more to defend the value of <em>having tenure</em> not necessarily the value of a <em>tenure system</em>. My point being, we could have an entirely different non-tenure system that would enable everyone to do riskier work with a longer time horizon (not just those post-tenure). </p>
<p>There are pros and cons to having long-term faculty (be it in highschools or colleges). Research institutions benefit from some degree of movement of people and ideas. Some of the younger faculty are far more fresh with their work and teaching ability than some of the old folks who have not continued to seek growth but ride on their cushy laurels (because they can). We all know plenty of ‘dead-wood’ in academia, people doing the bare minimum, taking up a spot that should go to those with more energy and contribution.</p>
<p>I spent my entire career in academics and never regretted that decision. My colleagues were by and large wonderful people and I loved teaching/advising students as well as doing my research. The two things I disliked most was the committee work and preparing seemingly endless research proposals.</p>
<p>Yes the hours were sometimes long but when you are doing somethiny you love it cannot be considered work.</p>
<p>New York Times article yesterday relevant to this discussion. </p>
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<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/science/20angier.html?_r=1&em[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/science/20angier.html?_r=1&em</a></p>
<p>ticklemepink, I definitely think you keep pursuing the job. But I suspect the parents were chuckling about this:</p>
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<p>One of the reasons people decide to work in industry is because of the dollar signs. Here’s an anecdote:</p>
<p>About three years ago, three physics graduate students were about to get their Ph.D’s. They all decided to go into industry and make a lot of money because (i) it would take them six to eight years to make full professor at a good place; (ii) we were spending money that would normally go to DOE-funded basic science programs on the war, so competition for grants would be keen; and (iii) at the time, the stock market was doing pretty good, and people who could write fancy financial models were in high demand. Physicists are (well, were) recruited regularly for this kind of thing here, and the positions are highly incentivized. The chief reasons for these three migrating into industry, though, were opportunity cost and paucity of funds.</p>
<p>I’ve had friends who would have made wonderful professors, but they became lawyers instead. Why? Because they could see that there weren’t a lot of jobs available (their fields: one in Chinese poetry, one in classics) and LOTS of competition for each slot. Each decided not to either pursue or finish their PhDs. </p>
<p>Getting your start in academe and climbing the ladder to tenured professor is tough sledding. But I have one friend who did it and loves her job.</p>
<p>Does it even make sense to get a PhD if you don’t want to be a university professor?</p>
<p>In the science field, I can say definitely yes.</p>