> All three of them bailed out this year and headed for industry. All three of
> them told me they are immensely frustrated with academic life, the
> restrictions, the ridiculous emphasis on publishing, the incredible social
> stratification based wholly on who you have published with, the non-stop
> politics that are involved in trying to get published with someone who has a
> good name, and the way the work and its value is repeatedly overlooked by
> the emphasis on publishing in the right journal, with the right person. The
> arrangements they face are suffocating. The creativity allowed is nil.
> Everything has to be OKed with an advisor who may not understand the work
> you are trying to do, and who absolutely will not understand it if you try
> to do something terribly new and interesting, especially if that is outside
> of their field of expertise.
>
> This is a system designed to do basic research. It does not do product
> development. It certainly does not do marketing.
>
No argument that academia is frustrating, snobbish, and stifling, but is it really a system designed to do basic research? Aren't research grants primarily a means to grow endowments, with any knowledge produced a secondary by-product? I'm not trying to be glibly cynical here, either; IIRC, back in the late 80's SUNY Stony Brook took 50% off the top of any grant it got, and I was told that was small compared to the prestigious private universities.
If the goal is to maximize research funding, then the actual research just becomes a marketing tool for future grant applications; hence the importance of publication in the right journal, working with the most prestigious people in the field, etc.... -- Curtiss