Academic Advice

Education theater refers to investments made in education designed to provide the appearance of improving learning outcomes for students while doing little or nothing to actually achieve this. Universities originated based on the principles of “training professionals, scientific investigation, improving society, and teaching critical thinking and research“.  The modern research university is sometimes referred to […]

A friend of mine is at the early stages of his job hunt for his first faculty position and already has 3 offers in hand – what can I say, he’s good!  He’d be happy at any of the three positions, and each has appealing elements the other two don’t.  While it’s reassuring for him to know […]

The topic of your thesis is one of the most important elements of your graduate career.  This will determine the research community you’ll become a part of, the “brand” you’ll job hunt with, influence grant applications, and will be the focus of a major part of your career.  It’s possible to change your research direction, […]

I once asked a professor in my department “why do professors have graduate students?”  He was taken aback by the question and said it was somewhat like asking why firefighters put out fires – in both cases, it’s kind of their job.  With professors, there is flexibility in how many students they take on.  I […]

In her book, “The Professor Is In“, author Karen Kelsky makes the assertion “Do not take out new debt to attend graduate school.”  I would go further than this and say do not pay for graduate school.  What I mean by this is, only attend graduate school if, after tuition and living expenses are deducted […]

There’s a myth in academia that all successful academics work insanely hard for an ungodly number of hours.  This is likely true at the upper echelons of the profession but certainly is not true everywhere for everyone. This post was inspired by a posting on Dynamic Ecology, which was inspired by a couple of comments readers of their blog had […]

I previously wrote some general advice on negotiating once you’ve gotten a job offer from a company.  While I believe almost everything I wrote there holds for negotiating junior, tenure-track positions, this post is intended as an extension to that one – focusing on negotiating your first assistant professor position. Go read that post!  I’ll wait for […]

When I started my Masters I remember being floored at the first few academic meetings I went to where people in my group seemed to be speaking a different language.  I couldn’t even follow the conversation, let alone contribute.  No one ever told me how to get up to speed, but I couldn’t believe all the […]

Some Ph.Ds. graduate and start their first tenure track position.  Others do exceptionally well and line up a tenure-track position before they’ve actually defended.  Some give up on academia and get a job in industry (or as a post-ac or alt-ac – I’m lumping these all in as non-academic careers).  Others end up in a purgatory […]

Years ago I used to blog on a personal finance blog called Money Smarts as Mr. Cheap.  One of the posts there that I was particularly proud of was called “Ideas Are Cheap“.  I’ve long felt that this is an important concept that many people have a misunderstanding of.  This post is my attempt to articulate this idea […]