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Not Online!!! wrote:
Diversion.
Basically you won't work aswell when you have to fear that you can't pay rent at the end of the month.

It may be true that one does not perform as well when having a massive debt over your head, however I disagree that academians in the US aren't producing. I'd dare say its one of the few things they are doing.

Most schools in the US require its professorship to be actively pursuing something in their field. The school wants its professorship to be current and active in their respective fields and publishing, or working on publishing of academic works. My undergrad advisor was working on a historical article on baptismal rituals while I was in his program. After I entered business school, and he'd received the chair of a sort of hybrid position (an alum who made some serious money, endowed a chair which bridged the history and business departments) and has just released a book on the historical impact of the democratization of programming and its effect on society.

If I take to google, I can find reviews, or announcements of some book or article written and published within the past 2-3 years. . . Unfortunately in the US, this is largely the "only" way that professors will make any decent money, and that's through constant research and writing articles.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Diversion.
Basically you won't work aswell when you have to fear that you can't pay rent at the end of the month.

It may be true that one does not perform as well when having a massive debt over your head, however I disagree that academians in the US aren't producing. I'd dare say its one of the few things they are doing.

Most schools in the US require its professorship to be actively pursuing something in their field. The school wants its professorship to be current and active in their respective fields and publishing, or working on publishing of academic works. My undergrad advisor was working on a historical article on baptismal rituals while I was in his program. After I entered business school, and he'd received the chair of a sort of hybrid position (an alum who made some serious money, endowed a chair which bridged the history and business departments) and has just released a book on the historical impact of the democratization of programming and its effect on society.

If I take to google, I can find reviews, or announcements of some book or article written and published within the past 2-3 years. . . Unfortunately in the US, this is largely the "only" way that professors will make any decent money, and that's through constant research and writing articles.

I assumed Not Online was talking anout the academic output of students rather than faculty, so I think most of this is moot. That bolded bit though, oh boy!

Other than in very odd and extremely rare circumstances, academics are not paid for articles, chapters, or contributions to proceedings, nor for peer review or editing journals or books, and single author books make very, very low revenue. If you haven't written a standard textbook for a discipline with huge reach, say biology, then you wont notice your royalties.

Edit: I would say we are not paid for any of these things directly. If you have a research contract then you're expected to be using x% of your time to conduct and disseminate research. So you are paid to produce knowledge, but not for specific publications, and not by publishers. If you're on a teaching contract, then all that stuff is totally free. What's more, whilst lots of people may have 50/50 contracts, their actual teaching loads will take up significantly more time than they're meant to, so most of their research happens on their own time - and they ain't getting overtime.

Academic publishing really is a racket.

Edit 2: in case anyone wonders, we don't get paid for conferences, either. We usually pay for them. Sometimes if you're lucky your research budget will cover your flight. Probably not the hotel too unless you're a tenured professor at an Ivy. If you're a big name and a keynote speaker, or in a few fields with bags of money to throw around, the conference might cover costs, but you still won't be getting a fee. Oh, and your university definitely expects you to attend multiple a year to keep up with outreach obligations, even if you lose a lot of money.

nfe wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

nfe wrote:
Few degrees have severe cost/benefit mismatches until you're paying tuition fees.

And here is where your misconception arises. Here in America you will be paying tuition for college education barring a full-ride scholarship - which is quite rare. It's quite likely you'll be paying multiple years of future income in tuition even IF you get a decent job.

Sorry, not following. Which misconception?

You imply that there's only a mismatch in the benefit of a college degree if you have to pay tuition. It may be normal to NOT pay tuition where you are, but here in America you WILL pay tuition unless you get a really good (and rarely issued) full scholarship.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

nfe wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Basically, you get lumped in with the US because you both speak english and english dominates a whole discurs on it's own. Regardless of local differences.

It's the same thing that happens to swiss academic discurse, in general often just lumped in with the "germans" ignoring the sizeable italian and french groups and systems in place. And other peculiarities.

I see. Anglo-Saxon doesn't get used very often to mean Anglophone. Well, outside white supremacist circles.

I think Vulcan just hasn't read all the posts and didn't realise we were talking about the UK, rather than assumed homogeneity.

More like this discussion covers education in general, and not just in the U.K alone.

 Vulcan wrote:

nfe wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

nfe wrote:
Few degrees have severe cost/benefit mismatches until you're paying tuition fees.

And here is where your misconception arises. Here in America you will be paying tuition for college education barring a full-ride scholarship - which is quite rare. It's quite likely you'll be paying multiple years of future income in tuition even IF you get a decent job.

Sorry, not following. Which misconception?

You imply that there's only a mismatch in the benefit of a college degree if you have to pay tuition. It may be normal to NOT pay tuition where you are, but here in America you WILL pay tuition unless you get a really good (and rarely issued) full scholarship.

Sure but that conversation was explicitly talking about how higher education is perceived in the UK and where those perceptions come from - and a large part is the recent introduction, and even more recent increase, in fees. In any case that's hardly a misconception, it's just a problem that has arisen at different times in different places.

Of course the topic is a global one, but that hardly means you can't have localised discussions - especially given the variability off access to higher education, and the US is very much an outlier. (Relatively) low fees is the norm across most of the world.

Most of the western world, at least.