Academia is good if you are TT at an HRM or are independently wealthy and have either a VLRM TT position or a clinical job somewhere decent. In the former case, you can have a solid research career, and the latter case is effectively a low-stress partial retirement. I'm in the latter camp at an UUUVLRM university. The only PhD programs our students can get into aren't worth going to, so when students ask me for grad school advice, I ask them if they are independently wealthy.
Are grad students given frank advice about the realities of academic careers?
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Great post. The only thing I’ll add is that it’s not clear to me if those who place at the top are really happy. I see bitterness and depression everywhere.
Yes this seems to be the sad reality. I ended up doing better than expected on the job-market but as a seasoned AP I feel a real emptiness and bitterness, even though I "doing ok" compared to my cohort. My HRM advisor is very successful but IMO his research has contributed nothing to our collective understanding, and the idea of being a second-rate version of that is really bleak.
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Great post. The only thing I’ll add is that it’s not clear to me if those who place at the top are really happy. I see bitterness and depression everywhere.
Yes this seems to be the sad reality. I ended up doing better than expected on the job-market but as a seasoned AP I feel a real emptiness and bitterness, even though I "doing ok" compared to my cohort. My HRM advisor is very successful but IMO his research has contributed nothing to our collective understanding, and the idea of being a second-rate version of that is really bleak.
And unfortunately, a lot of those at the bottom are also miserable. I work with several people that think they are massively under placed. In a desperate effort to move up, they put all this pressure on themselves to network with people at top schools, submit to top journals, etc. Since I am at a school that even most people in the state don't know exists, all this effort is a fool's errand, and this completely self generated pressure makes them miserable.
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I believe I wrote in the OP that I excluded places with very low research expectations from my comments about stress.
Even with research expectations. I am at MRM, never work weekends, have 2 kids, home by 6 every day. Love getting paid to basically sit and think and write about things I think are interesting.
You *can* work more, but you can also work on what you want and when and let the chips fall where they may.
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I doubt many people tenured at 'MRM' got to where they are by working on what they to work on, when they want to work on it, and let the chips fall. Maybe you are much, much, much more talented, lucky, or networked than the average bear, but I struggle to believe that your experience is typical.
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Also, as an addendum: even if what you is true and even if you are not an outlier, then your comment only addresses part of the puzzle (e.g., hours worked). For you, maybe, the stress and uncertainty of capricious/subjective or potentially capricious/subjective editorial decisions and tenure decisions doesn't weigh on you. Perhaps because you have an especially strong or otherwise exceptional type. But for most people, these sorts of things are extremely costly.
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Any AP job at a decent research school is a very good job. You dont need HRM. You are being silly here. Schools like MSU, Ohio state, etc or foreign schools in Canada like Queens, Mcmaster, etc. These are all very good jobs.
Academia is good if you are TT at an HRM or are independently wealthy and have either a VLRM TT position or a clinical job somewhere decent. In the former case, you can have a solid research career, and the latter case is effectively a low-stress partial retirement. I'm in the latter camp at an UUUVLRM university. The only PhD programs our students can get into aren't worth going to, so when students ask me for grad school advice, I ask them if they are independently wealthy.
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I want to believe that it varies a lot among departments. Some look OK, but others are more toxic than Chornobyl. Anyone who wants to follow this path has to know that geniuses are going to shine in any context. If this is not your case, and you fall into the noisy part of the distribution, unfortunately, your fate will depend on your networks/advisor/luck. You will see many cases of people without the suitability to occupy places they do not deserve. To undress the behind-the-scenes of some places, this website plays an important role.
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The majority of researchers arent all that good and really contributing. lots of little contributions but nothing great or anything. Academia is very unequal. Most of the glory and resources are concentrated at the top. The problem is that a lot of PhD students think they're special geniuses and will make it to the top of the pyramid. ljl. I've seen a bunch of so called "geniuses" in undergrad completely get wr/ecked once they tried research. It is not easy to do genuinely good research. The problem is that were seeing more and more pseudo scholars takign over and doing nothing valuable while strenghthening their power hold on the institutions.
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Any AP job at a decent research school is a very good job. You dont need HRM. You are being silly here. Schools like MSU, Ohio state, etc or foreign schools in Canada like Queens, Mcmaster, etc. These are all very good jobs.
Academia is good if you are TT at an HRM or are independently wealthy and have either a VLRM TT position or a clinical job somewhere decent. In the former case, you can have a solid research career, and the latter case is effectively a low-stress partial retirement. I'm in the latter camp at an UUUVLRM university. The only PhD programs our students can get into aren't worth going to, so when students ask me for grad school advice, I ask them if they are independently wealthy.
I am OP. I work at a university like one of the schools you mentioned. In fact, I turned down an offer from one of the departments you list in favor of my current job. There are real downsides to this line of work and many (most) of my junior colleagues feel this way. The point is not whether or not the job is "good" (whatever that means); the point is that in my experience, academics present the TT job as an end-all-be-all that it isn't.
Our work is relatively low paying. More importantly, and contrary to what certain voices on EJMR would lead you to believe, the probability that talented and hard-working people fail in academia is way, way higher than in other lines of work. The sort of people that have the skills and profile needed to obtain a job at a "top 50" econ department are exactly the sort of people that are very likely to be successful in counterfactual career pursuits, regardless of whether or not they end up getting tenure.
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The majority of researchers arent all that good and really contributing. lots of little contributions but nothing great or anything. Academia is very unequal. Most of the glory and resources are concentrated at the top. The problem is that a lot of PhD students think they're special geniuses and will make it to the top of the pyramid. ljl. I've seen a bunch of so called "geniuses" in undergrad completely get wr/ecked once they tried research. It is not easy to do genuinely good research. The problem is that were seeing more and more pseudo scholars takign over and doing nothing valuable while strenghthening their power hold on the institutions.
Yep, this is completely true.
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thats just your opinion. which frankly reeks of entitlement.
Any AP job at a decent research school is a very good job. You dont need HRM. You are being silly here. Schools like MSU, Ohio state, etc or foreign schools in Canada like Queens, Mcmaster, etc. These are all very good jobs.
Academia is good if you are TT at an HRM or are independently wealthy and have either a VLRM TT position or a clinical job somewhere decent. In the former case, you can have a solid research career, and the latter case is effectively a low-stress partial retirement. I'm in the latter camp at an UUUVLRM university. The only PhD programs our students can get into aren't worth going to, so when students ask me for grad school advice, I ask them if they are independently wealthy.
I am OP. I work at a university like one of the schools you mentioned. In fact, I turned down an offer from one of the departments you list in favor of my current job. There are real downsides to this line of work and many (most) of my junior colleagues feel this way. The point is not whether or not the job is "good" (whatever that means); the point is that in my experience, academics present the TT job as an end-all-be-all that it isn't.
Our work is relatively low paying. More importantly, and contrary to what certain voices on EJMR would lead you to believe, the probability that talented and hard-working people fail in academia is way, way higher than in other lines of work. The sort of people that have the skills and profile needed to obtain a job at a "top 50" econ department are exactly the sort of people that are very likely to be successful in counterfactual career pursuits, regardless of whether or not they end up getting tenure. -
thats just your opinion. which frankly reeks of entitlement.
Any AP job at a decent research school is a very good job. You dont need HRM. You are being silly here. Schools like MSU, Ohio state, etc or foreign schools in Canada like Queens, Mcmaster, etc. These are all very good jobs.
Academia is good if you are TT at an HRM or are independently wealthy and have either a VLRM TT position or a clinical job somewhere decent. In the former case, you can have a solid research career, and the latter case is effectively a low-stress partial retirement. I'm in the latter camp at an UUUVLRM university. The only PhD programs our students can get into aren't worth going to, so when students ask me for grad school advice, I ask them if they are independently wealthy.
I am OP. I work at a university like one of the schools you mentioned. In fact, I turned down an offer from one of the departments you list in favor of my current job. There are real downsides to this line of work and many (most) of my junior colleagues feel this way. The point is not whether or not the job is "good" (whatever that means); the point is that in my experience, academics present the TT job as an end-all-be-all that it isn't.
Our work is relatively low paying. More importantly, and contrary to what certain voices on EJMR would lead you to believe, the probability that talented and hard-working people fail in academia is way, way higher than in other lines of work. The sort of people that have the skills and profile needed to obtain a job at a "top 50" econ department are exactly the sort of people that are very likely to be successful in counterfactual career pursuits, regardless of whether or not they end up getting tenure.
What is my opinion? Entitlement in what sense? My post is not a complaint about things being unfair. It is a positive statement about facts.
I have many friends and in fact a spouse with PhDs in economics that were deemed 'not good enough' by economics academia and yet are wildly successful (according to their own criteria) in other pursuits. These people make more money than me, work similar hours, and appear to be held in high esteem by their colleagues. Their work is a bit more dull but they also have clear pathways to success, which is in clear contrast to the undeniably subjective evaluations that academics face in the editorial process.
There are many great things about academic work. But there is a lot about it that is no good, and I think we should be more honest with students about this.
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it is not low paying. enough already. you are disconnected from reality. a prof job at ohio state, especially econ, is not relatively low paying. people who make a lot of money in industry do so because they have qualities that have nothing to do with academia or research. sounds like some of you just dont like research and want a reg job. doesnt change the fact that it's still a very good job that is sought after by many people here.
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A junior academic's job is not to do research. A junior academic's job is to publish research in "good" journals, according to whatever their employer thinks is "good." Those are not all that related in economics.
Separately, and importantly, while I do not know specifically what OSU pays junior people I bet it is somewhere between 120K and 150K. If you think you need to a be a superstar in industry to make 150K 5+ years out of your PhD then you should talk to more people. My partner was rejected from academia in three (3!) job searches and now makes over 200K just a few years into their industry career and is regarded by exceptional by her colleagues.
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youre obv a silly person. comparing industry to academia is a waste of time.
A junior academic's job is not to do research. A junior academic's job is to publish research in "good" journals, according to whatever their employer thinks is "good." Those are not all that related in economics.
Separately, and importantly, while I do not know specifically what OSU pays junior people I bet it is somewhere between 120K and 150K. If you think you need to a be a superstar in industry to make 150K 5+ years out of your PhD then you should talk to more people. My partner was rejected from academia in three (3!) job searches and now makes over 200K just a few years into their industry career and is regarded by exceptional by her colleagues. -
Comparing a career choice to the most natural outside option is a waste of time? What?
Economics isn't pure math or fine art or gardening or cooking or even philosophy. It isn't objective (like the former) and for most people it isn't a passion project (like all of the above).