Academics, increasingly tied up as they are with bureaucracy, grant
sourcing and faculty politicking, rely on PhD students and contract
research staff who do the donkey work in university labs. The "cheap
labour" argument has *some* validity in academia.
As for earnings potential, one needs to consider the mass as well as
the cream at the top. From what I can see, the pay differential
between academia and the private sector is relatively small at junior
to mid-ranking levels. Or at least it isn't today, with many firms
creating university-style "postdoc" positions with very modest
salaries for young (sorry, "early stage") scientists and engineers.
The cheap labour argument has some validity also in the real world.
It's a buyers' market.
Francis
On 9 Nov 08, at 23:14, Michael Kenward wrote:
> Is it still valid to argue that most academics set out to create
> clones of
> themselves when teaching undergraduates and PhD students?
>
> They use to consider it a failure to "lose" a student to anything
> other than
> a tenured position.
>
> When even the best prof is unlikely to earn anything approaching as
> much as
> an engineer, say, who has risen up the ranks to head a FTSE 100
> company, and
> many have, even if money isn't what you seek it seems perverse to
> insist
> that satisfaction comes only from running on the academic treadmill.
>
> I exclude from this argument those of us who decided to become
> PESTs, where
> even an academic salary, especially the pension bit, looks like
> wealth.
>
> MK
>
> _______________________________________________________________________
> Michael Kenward OBE / Phone: +44 (0)1444
> 401064
> /
> Science Writer & Stuff / My other computer is a slide
> rule
--
Dr Francis Sedgemore
journalist and science writer
telephone: +44 (0)7840 191336
website: http://sedgemore.com
**********************************************************************
1. To suspend yourself from the list, whilst on leave, for example,
send an email to mailto:[log in to unmask] with the following message:
set psci-com nomail -- [include hyphens]
2. To resume email from the list, send an email to [log in to unmask] with the message:
set psci-com mail -- [include hyphens]
3. To leave psci-com, send an email to [log in to unmask] with the message:
leave psci-com -- [include hyphens]
4. Further information about the psci-com discussion list, including list archive, can be found at the list web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/psci-com.html
5. The psci-com gateway to internet resources on science communication and science and society can be found at http://psci-com.ac.uk
6. To contact the Psci-com list owner, please send an email to mailto:[log in to unmask]
**********************************************************************
|