Why I left academia

For a very long time, I had the utmost admiration for members of the academic world.  They do research for the sake of advancing humanity, independent of social-economical forces.  This is, I think, a privilege, of being able to manipulate ideas so complex that most people simply do not have the comprehension.  We trust academics for their creativity, and we give them the freedom to exercise them unhindered.

However, there were a few things I became aware in my experience as a PhD student through which prompted me to re-examine my value towards the academic system.  I think these are symptoms of a bigger phenomenon, through which the fundamental aspects of academia has twisted into something else.  So here are my episodes:

The Perpetual post-doc

One day, I found a USB stick somewhere on the corridor outside my lab.  A PDF of his CV saved in the stick confirmed the identity of its rightful owner, and it was returned to him very quickly.  He was a middle-aged man who was a post doc in a nearby lab.  He received his PhD some 10 years ago, and has been hopping from Post-Docs to Post-Docs ever since.  He in his fifth post-doc when met him over his USB stick.  While he seemed to be at peace with his situation, but more because he has accepted his fate.  While I personally don't think he was faculty material, I also see that his situation is not all that uncommon.  It could very easily happen to me.

The Professional grant writer

Later, I managed to reconnect with an old colleague of mine.  He was a few years ahead of me, who received a tenure-track position a few months back.  He decided to "invite" me for a talk, and afterwards we discussed my "options" as an academic in general.  He mentioned, his department just hired a new faculty member, but he deciding factor was his ability to pull in 20 millions of research funding a year.  He also lamented that, now, in his fledging career, he spent way too much time writing grants and wooing companies for research money.  He no longer has so much time to provide guidance for his students.  I also have a similar type of supervisor.  As much as he is supportive of my idea, he did not have the time for me.

Academic pedigree preferred

New faculties are always more eager to look for new research staff to boost their research capacity.  Browing their wanted-pages, a lot of these faculty names I have not heard of, even though their research area(s) are not all that different from mine.  Strange, then I looked at their CVs, and they all have one thing in common.  Their supervisors were those I quickly recognized.  My academic lineage is not so persuasive, however.  Though I still applied for these positions, I doubted I would hear from any of them, and I was right.  Another episode involved another colleague of mine, a definite genius, who got his PhD in 2005.  Though he's no longer in Post-Doc Purgatory, he is still not faculty, all because his supervisor is not someone famous.

The Glorified technician

I did not have the luxury of having a post-doc lined up for me, so I spent some days towards the end of my PhD for research positions.  Things have evolved in academia, that professors preferred people with specific skills, whether it be ability to program sophisticated simulation models, or experience in certain specific experimental techniques.  Aptitude and ability to make breakthroughs no longer play a role.  Simply put, faculty members are looking for skilled people more than talents to serve their purpose.  Isn't the point of academia is to solve new problems in new ways, as opposed to doing the same thing over and over again?  There is a famous saying:  If all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.  This brings me to the last point.

Lack of research insight

In recent years, there is a definitely shift of focus in research approach.  I was raised in the school where you gather the results, think very hard about why things happen in such a way, and then summarize them in the most direct way possible.  There is elegance, and it also gives purpose to the paper.  Whenever I write a paper, I abide to this principle.  However, the majority of the papers I read, or I was asked to review, simply tried to overwhelm readers with many figures, in the hope that the readers would be impressed by the shear amount of data.  These authors neither have the will nor the capacity to scrutinize their results in meaningful ways.  Many peer reviewers, who do not want to offend their mediocre efforts, approved the papers indiscriminately.

Part of a bigger phenomenon?

I think all of what I have observed is not so uncommon, and I have not said anything that my peers would disagree, whether they want to remain in academia or not.  "Economics" sums up my reasons for leaving academic very well.  By "economics" I do not mean financial rewards; I would sacrifice pay for academic freedom anytime.  By "economics" I mean how academia acts in a two self-contradicting aspects of the economy.  On one hand, professors are reduced to salesmen of their ideas in the name of attracting research capital.  On the other hand, costs of hiring talents were kept artificially low to increase head-count and therefore throughput.  As a result, what used to be an institution for higher learning now becomes a sweatshop for low-quality high-tech data.  I still believe that you need to start low and work your way up to build a career, but I have no longer desire to be any part of this intellectual Ponzi scheme.  Academic freedom is no more.