<story><title>Academics, we need to talk</title><url>http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/2016/01/academics-we-need-to-talk.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>PaulHoule</author><text>There is an attitude of entitlement here.&lt;p&gt;Students spend their money and time to learn something and frequently they get worked like a racehorse and nobody cares about if what they learn is transferable after the academic system no longer needs them.&lt;p&gt;If you are not going to be relevant to society the only thing I can do is vote for somebody who is going to cut your research budget.</text></item><item><author>hackbinary</author><text>&lt;i&gt;I&amp;#x27;m getting kind of sick of this tactic, where this fake concession is made before going on about how academia isn&amp;#x27;t designed well enough to deliver to industry.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This +1, er +1,000,000.&lt;p&gt;I would firmly state that academia by definition is not supposed to &amp;#x27;deliver to industry&amp;#x27;, and not even to society.  The whole point of academia is to give the very smartest people (whatever that means) the freedom to explore ideas, so that a some point humanity may benefit from their ideas, experiments, and research.&lt;p&gt;My point is that it could be any number of generations of research from the current generation of (what seems like quack) research (to the establishment) will turn into being instrumental to our understanding of the universe.  Galileo Galilei (and Copernicus) for instance.  Their ideas (and research) did not sit well with the establishment of the Church (which was pretty much the central authority of everything at the time), but their ideas are now central to our understanding of our Solar system.&lt;p&gt;edit: formatting.</text></item><item><author>forgottenpass</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Now, I don&amp;#x27;t think all academic research has to be relevant to industry.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m getting kind of sick of this tactic, where this fake concession is made before going on about how academia isn&amp;#x27;t designed well enough to deliver to industry.&lt;p&gt;If authors of articles like this didn&amp;#x27;t care about the efficiency of academia to deliver them research, what&amp;#x27;s the big deal if there are a bunch of people somewhere running around in circles?  Hey, at least the CS academics occasionally produce something useful to industry, which is more than I can say about other groups running in circles.  Sure it could be about burning through money, or a real desire to improve the state of CS academia.  But if that was the case I&amp;#x27;d expect these articles to have categorically different discussion and calls to action. Or - at the very least - address goals of acedemia other than performing research for industry.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve never been an academic, and never want to be, but even I gave up reading after the &amp;quot;(I know, crazy, right?)&amp;quot; line.  At that point, I knew for 100% sure, that the target audience of this article is not academics.  Nobody is that much of a condescending prick to the person they&amp;#x27;re trying to persuade.  This is not a &amp;quot;we need to talk&amp;quot; conversation this is a &amp;quot;I need to talk at you, so I can show off to other people.&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hackbinary</author><text>Some would say that we should divide universities up into more separate institutions for Arts, Philosophy, Fine Arts, Natural Sciences, Applied Science, Math, Social Sciences, Business, Law, Medicine (or is that a Science?) and others, but the point of universities is be places of knowledge, and to help foster cross pollination between the disciplines.  The point of independent research is to be unfettered by government, business, and indeed wider society as a whole.&lt;p&gt;Government and business and society should not be fettering independent research, just the same as they should not be interfering with law courts.  The point of independent research is for the independent researchers to have the freedom to follow their research even though it might not be popular with the local Wood Pulp mill pumping dioxins into the local river, and that is pollution is going to cause cancer.  This research may not be popular with many in the community because it will impact their jobs.  This research may not be popular with the government, and elected officials because it will affect their tax receipts and donations.  This research my not be popular with you because it is going to put your family out jobs, but it is important research, we can ultimately make &lt;i&gt;informed&lt;/i&gt; decisions.&lt;p&gt;That is the point of research, information, and knowledge--so we can make informed and reasoned decisions.&lt;p&gt;I just can not believe the attitude and entitlement of some who think that just because they &lt;i&gt;pay&lt;/i&gt; tax they think everything that is not obviously useful to themselves is useless.</text></comment>
<story><title>Academics, we need to talk</title><url>http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/2016/01/academics-we-need-to-talk.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>PaulHoule</author><text>There is an attitude of entitlement here.&lt;p&gt;Students spend their money and time to learn something and frequently they get worked like a racehorse and nobody cares about if what they learn is transferable after the academic system no longer needs them.&lt;p&gt;If you are not going to be relevant to society the only thing I can do is vote for somebody who is going to cut your research budget.</text></item><item><author>hackbinary</author><text>&lt;i&gt;I&amp;#x27;m getting kind of sick of this tactic, where this fake concession is made before going on about how academia isn&amp;#x27;t designed well enough to deliver to industry.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This +1, er +1,000,000.&lt;p&gt;I would firmly state that academia by definition is not supposed to &amp;#x27;deliver to industry&amp;#x27;, and not even to society.  The whole point of academia is to give the very smartest people (whatever that means) the freedom to explore ideas, so that a some point humanity may benefit from their ideas, experiments, and research.&lt;p&gt;My point is that it could be any number of generations of research from the current generation of (what seems like quack) research (to the establishment) will turn into being instrumental to our understanding of the universe.  Galileo Galilei (and Copernicus) for instance.  Their ideas (and research) did not sit well with the establishment of the Church (which was pretty much the central authority of everything at the time), but their ideas are now central to our understanding of our Solar system.&lt;p&gt;edit: formatting.</text></item><item><author>forgottenpass</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Now, I don&amp;#x27;t think all academic research has to be relevant to industry.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m getting kind of sick of this tactic, where this fake concession is made before going on about how academia isn&amp;#x27;t designed well enough to deliver to industry.&lt;p&gt;If authors of articles like this didn&amp;#x27;t care about the efficiency of academia to deliver them research, what&amp;#x27;s the big deal if there are a bunch of people somewhere running around in circles?  Hey, at least the CS academics occasionally produce something useful to industry, which is more than I can say about other groups running in circles.  Sure it could be about burning through money, or a real desire to improve the state of CS academia.  But if that was the case I&amp;#x27;d expect these articles to have categorically different discussion and calls to action. Or - at the very least - address goals of acedemia other than performing research for industry.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve never been an academic, and never want to be, but even I gave up reading after the &amp;quot;(I know, crazy, right?)&amp;quot; line.  At that point, I knew for 100% sure, that the target audience of this article is not academics.  Nobody is that much of a condescending prick to the person they&amp;#x27;re trying to persuade.  This is not a &amp;quot;we need to talk&amp;quot; conversation this is a &amp;quot;I need to talk at you, so I can show off to other people.&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>matthewowen</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s a tremendously short sighted view to take. It&amp;#x27;s very hard to judge relevance to society over short time frames.</text></comment>