#academia became a turd that you can't flush down the toilet and keeps farting toxic gasses all over the place. Worst still, "we" keep playing the game, pretending that everything is fine and cheerily announcing another publication in a meaningless rat race of factors.
@Mencjusz@academicchatter It seems that many of our social institutions have just become tools for funneling money/power/attention to a small group, but it seems particularly bad for academia to be in this state as it’s the tool that often initiates reform.
I suspect the only way to fix it is radical change, but if you could make any changes to improve academia, what would they be? Also, how do you define academia in this context?
It seems like the first step would be reconstituting public funding. Profs need tenure and secure salary and institutions need stable support free of pressure for funding through research grants.
Sabine Hossenfelder’s recent video on why her dream as a research physicist died offers the most concrete testimony why this is the case. A commercial footing is a prion on the good function of science/tecahing/scholarship imperatives of universities.
I'm not sure there has ever been a time when it has been the case that a large number of people have had stable tenure AND freedom from pressure to justify their research to those that would resource them.
Even in the government funding age, when scientists were like artists and supposed by patrons, you still had to convince the patron.
Go back 50 years, and its true that most university professors were under less pressure to secure research grants, but this is only because most professors only spent a small amount of their time on research. Plus there were far fewer professors then.
@IanSudbery@GhostOnTheHalfShell@Mencjusz@academicchatter When thinking about change, should we focus on what researchers would like or on what structures are most successful and efficient at producing results? I suspect those two will come into opposition at some point. (1/4)