I think you know what I think about this waste of human life that is the cursed h-index. I fortunately found my people in the Arts and am still in academia, but ours is a more practice-based scholarly work that tends to focus more on student work (all of them, not just PhD students) and less on the cult of personality I experienced in Computer Science.
I really appreciate your critical thinking on this matter, and never thought I would ever post on any form of social media again, but here we are. Hope you are well!
So nice to see you here Andy!!! You know ... since moving to Northeastern, I am 50% in the School of Art and Design, and I find it so refreshing in this respect. There is a much more diverse way of evaluating work, and you are right; there is a strong culture of making stuff with students while also being deeply reflective. Somehow, CS converged into this absurd bureaucratic system that worships publications. P.s. We should get on a call sometime!!!
Not an academic (considered a PhD 4 times in life but backed out because I don’t like reading papers), but this just sounds like Charles Goodharts law at scale. Where a measure becomes a metric ….
I left academia (got a masters) because it was less collaborative and more cut-throat then I imagined, I was spending most of my time writing papers that wouldn't effect or help the communities I was working for (I was documenting undocumented languages), the research is unaccessible to most with a pay wall and there was no funding!
Unfortunately, yours is a common story. I often wonder if this system filters out the people who are most dedicated to research and its potential impact on the world.
This problem has been growing for a LONG time. When my dad got his first professor job in 1957, he quickly understood that 'publish or perish' was destructive. He warned me about it and I listened and remembered. The situation got worse after 1970 when the Boomers started getting graduate degrees. Selection became hugely competitive, and turned toward quantity instead of quality.
Exactly. It would be interesting to trace the history of this system to understand how we ended up here. I am convinced we have reached a critical point. There are way too many papers and reviews to make. Everyone is spinning the wheel while losing focus on what really matters. The time seems ripe for some cultural (if not institutional) reform. Thanks for sharing your story!
It has its risks, but there are other ways of working these days, particularly in some fields. I gave a talk a few years back on some of this stuff.
Slides ...
https://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~paul/Talks/Dept2016/#/
... and resources ...
https://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~paul/Talks/Dept2016/resources.html
... including speaker notes ...
https://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~paul/Talks/Dept2016/index-notes.txt
Some of it is a bit techy, but there are large overlaps with some of the issues you raised.
Thanks for sharing. I love the title!!!
I think you know what I think about this waste of human life that is the cursed h-index. I fortunately found my people in the Arts and am still in academia, but ours is a more practice-based scholarly work that tends to focus more on student work (all of them, not just PhD students) and less on the cult of personality I experienced in Computer Science.
I really appreciate your critical thinking on this matter, and never thought I would ever post on any form of social media again, but here we are. Hope you are well!
So nice to see you here Andy!!! You know ... since moving to Northeastern, I am 50% in the School of Art and Design, and I find it so refreshing in this respect. There is a much more diverse way of evaluating work, and you are right; there is a strong culture of making stuff with students while also being deeply reflective. Somehow, CS converged into this absurd bureaucratic system that worships publications. P.s. We should get on a call sometime!!!
Not an academic (considered a PhD 4 times in life but backed out because I don’t like reading papers), but this just sounds like Charles Goodharts law at scale. Where a measure becomes a metric ….
Exactly!
I left academia (got a masters) because it was less collaborative and more cut-throat then I imagined, I was spending most of my time writing papers that wouldn't effect or help the communities I was working for (I was documenting undocumented languages), the research is unaccessible to most with a pay wall and there was no funding!
Unfortunately, yours is a common story. I often wonder if this system filters out the people who are most dedicated to research and its potential impact on the world.
This problem has been growing for a LONG time. When my dad got his first professor job in 1957, he quickly understood that 'publish or perish' was destructive. He warned me about it and I listened and remembered. The situation got worse after 1970 when the Boomers started getting graduate degrees. Selection became hugely competitive, and turned toward quantity instead of quality.
Exactly. It would be interesting to trace the history of this system to understand how we ended up here. I am convinced we have reached a critical point. There are way too many papers and reviews to make. Everyone is spinning the wheel while losing focus on what really matters. The time seems ripe for some cultural (if not institutional) reform. Thanks for sharing your story!