<story><title>“I Quit Academia,” an Important, Growing Subgenre of American Essays</title><url>http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/10/24/quitting_academic_jobs_professor_zachary_ernst_and_other_leaving_tenure.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>drzaiusapelord</author><text>&amp;gt; One of my old math professors had a page devoted to this. He complained a lot about living in Hawaii&lt;p&gt;Wow. No offense, but I can&amp;#x27;t imagine this guy with a real job. The self-entitlement is insane.  I really think there&amp;#x27;s a forest for the tree problem with a lot of academics.  The few I know get massive entitlements, days off, benefits, etc.  I work in IT, worry about layoffs, get minimal holidays, have on-call, and generally get treated like an idiot savant because no one likes techies and techies go against the corporate &amp;#x27;sales guy&amp;#x27; culture that dominates so many companies.&lt;p&gt;I wish my biggest problem was being forced to stay in Hawaii. On top of it, I went to some pretty good schools and honestly half my professors were loathesome misanthropes. I can&amp;#x27;t imagine where they would fit elsewhere. They&amp;#x27;d be destroyed in corporate culture in a new york minute.&lt;p&gt;Perhaps I am suffering from a &amp;#x27;grass is greener&amp;#x27; mentality, but sometimes it helps, i think, to remember where you came from and what you have.  Some problems are real and others just aren&amp;#x27;t.&lt;p&gt;I really wonder if the real issue is the ease that someone can enter many phd programs. With massive private&amp;#x2F;public loans and universities hungry for money, we might have long ago hit a tipping point of being too generous and letting a lot of people in who otherwise would have been unacceptable for phd programs, especially in the humanities. Of the academics I know, maybe one is a stellar thinker, the rest are just upper-middle class milquetoasts who wanted an easy life.</text></item><item><author>mililani</author><text>My wife is in academia.  Although, not in the ivory towers.  She&amp;#x27;s at a community college in California, and she&amp;#x27;s both on the tenured faculty track and administration as a program director.  So, her experiences may not speak entirely to this article.&lt;p&gt;There are lots of problems inherent with academia that most people thinking about this field are not really thinking about.  The biggest problem, I think, is that for most 99% of all professors, once they are tenured, they are LOCKED down geographically.  And, that sucks.  My wife and I have one foot out the door all the time.  We go where the jobs are.  But, now that she&amp;#x27;s on the tenure track, we wonder if this is where we&amp;#x27;ll lay down and die.  It&amp;#x27;s pretty sad, when I think about it.  You hear about it time and time again from so much of these guys. One of my old math professors had a page devoted to this.  He complained a lot about living in Hawaii and how his wife divorced him because of it.  He had a page up here:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.hawaii.edu/~lee/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.math.hawaii.edu&amp;#x2F;~lee&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;But, apparently, after some time he decided to take down the more controversial stuff.  The index.html page to his ramblings are down.  Anyways, that&amp;#x27;s a huge problem for academics.  And, I thought about it, and I think the biggest problem is the whole tenure thing.  I think it should be abolished.  Professors should be able to move to new institutions without worrying about that entire process, and they should be paid a better wage because of it.  It should be like any other free market enterprise we have nowadays.  And, Universities should also be able to get rid of dead weight.  I&amp;#x27;ve had some professors in the past who just gave up on research and life.  For example, said professor mentioned above.  He gave up on math research because the University kept screwing them over on pay.  He retired with only 17 publications under his name.  My other friend who is now a tenured math professor at a 4 year college has 17 publications at just 37 years of age.  My other friend who has been teaching for about 10 years now has only 2 publications: his math Ph.D. dissertation, and a one page paper that probably isn&amp;#x27;t worth the paper it&amp;#x27;s printed on.  Anyways, I think it&amp;#x27;s high time tenure is made obsolete.  It gives professors more latitude to move, probably better pay, and more incentive to do research or teach better.  It also gives schools and students the opportunity to get better teachers and lose the dead weight.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Nicholas_C</author><text>&amp;gt;I wish my biggest problem was being forced to stay in Hawaii.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think Hawaii is as great to live in as it is to visit. Cost of living sucks, traffic sucks, traveling anywhere to visit relatives or another state&amp;#x2F;country requires flying. All of Hawaii only has a population of 1.4M. The metro population of Honolulu is 953,207. The state itself is just a little bit larger than New Jersey if you add the area of all the islands. Sure, the weather is great, but living in Hawaii for the rest of my life is not something I want to do.&lt;p&gt;Now imagine being trapped there until you die because you&amp;#x27;re on a tenure track.</text></comment>
<story><title>“I Quit Academia,” an Important, Growing Subgenre of American Essays</title><url>http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/10/24/quitting_academic_jobs_professor_zachary_ernst_and_other_leaving_tenure.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>drzaiusapelord</author><text>&amp;gt; One of my old math professors had a page devoted to this. He complained a lot about living in Hawaii&lt;p&gt;Wow. No offense, but I can&amp;#x27;t imagine this guy with a real job. The self-entitlement is insane.  I really think there&amp;#x27;s a forest for the tree problem with a lot of academics.  The few I know get massive entitlements, days off, benefits, etc.  I work in IT, worry about layoffs, get minimal holidays, have on-call, and generally get treated like an idiot savant because no one likes techies and techies go against the corporate &amp;#x27;sales guy&amp;#x27; culture that dominates so many companies.&lt;p&gt;I wish my biggest problem was being forced to stay in Hawaii. On top of it, I went to some pretty good schools and honestly half my professors were loathesome misanthropes. I can&amp;#x27;t imagine where they would fit elsewhere. They&amp;#x27;d be destroyed in corporate culture in a new york minute.&lt;p&gt;Perhaps I am suffering from a &amp;#x27;grass is greener&amp;#x27; mentality, but sometimes it helps, i think, to remember where you came from and what you have.  Some problems are real and others just aren&amp;#x27;t.&lt;p&gt;I really wonder if the real issue is the ease that someone can enter many phd programs. With massive private&amp;#x2F;public loans and universities hungry for money, we might have long ago hit a tipping point of being too generous and letting a lot of people in who otherwise would have been unacceptable for phd programs, especially in the humanities. Of the academics I know, maybe one is a stellar thinker, the rest are just upper-middle class milquetoasts who wanted an easy life.</text></item><item><author>mililani</author><text>My wife is in academia.  Although, not in the ivory towers.  She&amp;#x27;s at a community college in California, and she&amp;#x27;s both on the tenured faculty track and administration as a program director.  So, her experiences may not speak entirely to this article.&lt;p&gt;There are lots of problems inherent with academia that most people thinking about this field are not really thinking about.  The biggest problem, I think, is that for most 99% of all professors, once they are tenured, they are LOCKED down geographically.  And, that sucks.  My wife and I have one foot out the door all the time.  We go where the jobs are.  But, now that she&amp;#x27;s on the tenure track, we wonder if this is where we&amp;#x27;ll lay down and die.  It&amp;#x27;s pretty sad, when I think about it.  You hear about it time and time again from so much of these guys. One of my old math professors had a page devoted to this.  He complained a lot about living in Hawaii and how his wife divorced him because of it.  He had a page up here:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.hawaii.edu/~lee/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.math.hawaii.edu&amp;#x2F;~lee&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;But, apparently, after some time he decided to take down the more controversial stuff.  The index.html page to his ramblings are down.  Anyways, that&amp;#x27;s a huge problem for academics.  And, I thought about it, and I think the biggest problem is the whole tenure thing.  I think it should be abolished.  Professors should be able to move to new institutions without worrying about that entire process, and they should be paid a better wage because of it.  It should be like any other free market enterprise we have nowadays.  And, Universities should also be able to get rid of dead weight.  I&amp;#x27;ve had some professors in the past who just gave up on research and life.  For example, said professor mentioned above.  He gave up on math research because the University kept screwing them over on pay.  He retired with only 17 publications under his name.  My other friend who is now a tenured math professor at a 4 year college has 17 publications at just 37 years of age.  My other friend who has been teaching for about 10 years now has only 2 publications: his math Ph.D. dissertation, and a one page paper that probably isn&amp;#x27;t worth the paper it&amp;#x27;s printed on.  Anyways, I think it&amp;#x27;s high time tenure is made obsolete.  It gives professors more latitude to move, probably better pay, and more incentive to do research or teach better.  It also gives schools and students the opportunity to get better teachers and lose the dead weight.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>saraid216</author><text>Being in Hawaii isn&amp;#x27;t automatically a happy fun lifestyle. It&amp;#x27;s a popular tourist destination, but it&amp;#x27;s still just a place like any other.&lt;p&gt;And it&amp;#x27;s a pretty shitty place when your spouse leaves you because you can&amp;#x27;t go with them.</text></comment>