Academia and capitalism

With this post I try to materialize some thoughts that have been in my head since I quit academia. The reason why I am doing it now, 6 years after I parted ways with professional research, comes from this twitter thread (from an account I have never heard of, but the content tickled me). While I sympathize with the author and deeply feel for his o her condition, my purpose is to show the underlying elitist assumptions and criticize some of its conclusions.

I report it here in full quote:

Academic Job Discourseᵀᴹ is back (it’s never gone).

Tl;dr: There are no jobs.

Headline: Commodification of academia has decoupled the value of research from the chance of employability.

Long read: Research and teaching simply cannot be conducted on business principles… 1/

…but since the marketization of the higher education sector, the output in academia *is* reviewed according to capitalist principles. In effect we are led to believe that people producing research output (primarily social capital: what allows the society to run) should be… 2/

…employed according to the principles of the market. This is insane. There is no „market saturation“ of palaeographers or biochemists. The number of people researching a particular topic or discipline cannot be dependent on the perceived market value of their output. 3/

But in effect researchers (whose output is not monetary capital) are forced to compete for the right to conduct their research as if it was. This causes a severe deficit of jobs and job market becomes job lottery. 4/

This has to be presented as a meritocratic competition because the system will only sustain itself if enough brilliant minds buy the lottery tickets (do PhDs, publish, teach and research in precarious posts). 5/

The technological progress in research is not a byproduct of the marketization. Accessibility of data changes nothing in the sheer knowledge and training needed to assess it in order to produce actual *research*. 6/

The progressive drive to monetize research output (sth that can be given a price, sure, but this price will always be *completely* arbitrary) causes basic research and teaching posts to first precarise and then disappear (no „market value“) 7/

This process only inflates the lottery model making brilliant researchers leave their fields not because they didn’t produce good work but because they didn’t have the resources to keep buying the lottery tickets (they couldn’t survive the precarity any longer) 8/

In completely marketized systems (UK for example) this leads to sharp decline in student numbers in those areas (students are forced to pay large sums of money and thus forced to treat the education system like the stock market) This allows to further limit the number of jobs. 9/

This system allows also monetary exploitation of researchers‘ output and skills through the academic publishing system. Articles become lottery tickets first, research capital second. 10/

• I agree with the idea that it is wrong to try to give a monetary (or market) value to the scientific output of someone/some group
• I lived on my body what here is called job lottery
• While it is nonsensical to try to monetize abstract or highly theoretical research, there is basic research with a direct market value (I am thinking to biomedical research, but also to material science, for example)
• The twitter lyric/canon is awful, especially to convey ideas and themes like this that would deserve some more room for reasoning

Caveat

I am not willing to uphold any capitalistic or econometric point of view here, for example that there is a meaningful way to attribute a value to anything. But. I see as necessary to face at least the matter of the cost related to research.

The argument runs on a slippery slope, so let me be clear: I don’t want to say that one must conform his or her aspirations to the expectations of society.

Last warnings:

• here I often use science as a container term that should also be understood as culture and knowledge
• the way I use the term society is very fuzzy, and I don’t mean to assume that we all agree on the fact that anyone of us is comfortable in being encased in a catch-all concept (I would not), but it is a handy way to indicate our collective mean action as species

The issue

There is a problem that is apparent: having a work in research is a privilege, given someone manages to enter such elusive realm, having overcome the issues clearly expressed in the thread. It is a privilege not only because, as noted, research jobs are scarce and accessing it is a lottery, but also because the possibilities one has to win the lottery are closely related to the class one belongs to. As paraphrased in the cited thread, the more lottery tickets you can buy, the more chances you have to win. This is closely related to, for example, how many years one can manage to survive with precarious jobs, often accepting to relocate in a different nation, maybe a different continent, every 2-3 years.

This is not entirely a matter of class, of course. Assuming academic evaluation to be fair with respect to someone’s class (spoiler: it is not), it is a very personal stance to accept a life like this.

Social expectations

But moving from the personal kind of issues, there are also social ones: a job in research is, usually, well paid. Research activity itself is costly, especially experimental research (because of, you know, experiments; they are usually costly). All of this is often financed with money from states’ budged (by state here I mean nation states). When it is not, it comes from private endeavor. Such funds are not for free, in the sense that the ones (both private and public) giving this money away seek something in return from the professional researcher. As noted in the thread, it’s quite nonsensical trying to quantify research, but this comes from the need to justify the amount of investment made in some specific research, by means of the aforementioned money.

So, what does the lenders (and society at large, we might say), do expect from a research professional?

• Measurable output (publications, patents, conferences)
• Teaching (i.e. the transmission of one’s specialized knowledge in the field of study)
• (ever more frequently) Public outreach (in the form of social media active presence, public speaking as a recognized expert, popular books on the matter)

I may say nothing here is unreasonable: given that the possibility to earn a living with science is mainly a public (or private, for what matters) founded activity, one might very well cope with these obligations. The main problem here is that the amount of money society puts into science is limited and, to decide how to distribute it, a very nasty concept is used: value.

Value?

The way value is attributed to this research is, in my humble opinion, ludicrous, and I’ve seen quite a few times the young professional scientists season into either the research workforce manager or, even worse, some form of sales representative for his or her own research line. I don’t mean to judge anyone with this words. I am not in a different position now: having chosen to enter professional software industry does not shield me from the very same critiques. Nevertheless, the ideal conception I upheld once about the brave intellectual, working for the sake of human knowledge advancement, armed only with the clarity of pure reasoning and scientific honesty…has been notched a bit along the way.

Back to the value, is is often a matter of either: potential return of investment, mainly in research fields that may have practical industrial applications (material science, biomedical research, computer science to name a few); or brag (i.e. the possibility for the moneylender to boast the achievement as its own praiseworthy and wise choice) ^[1]I am admittedly ignoring political motivations, for example when a research line is encouraged (read: financed) for some political aim, to lay ground for some claim shielded by some scientific … Continue reading.

While these reason are laughable in light of pure scientific advancement, they determine, together with the underlying omnipresent drive for profit, the main research lines in every scientific field I know.

So what?

Where all these rumblings meet ends with the academic career stuff? The fact is that there is paucity of jobs in research is true. What upsets me is that it is often met with contempt the idea to seek a job outside research. Why should a brilliant mind™©® like those who roam the highness of reason descend into this purgatory of everyday people ^[2]As it is noticeable from the last words, I might be a bit resentful with that world.?

Being employed in research is a privilege, and should be understood as such. While I embrace fully the idea that society should invest more and more in research and education, this is not the current reality. And I would also love to see demands of wealth redistribution from that side, asking more funds to be taken from the wealthy (using wealth and not income as indicator).

So, to me is unacceptable the idea that one can safely live thinking that his or her position of privilege are just and deserved, just because one managed to sneak into the right place.

It also seems arrogant the very premise of the thread. Let me paraphrase in this way: because science is the truth and the highest human activity, it is of course reasonable that the best minds want to do science, so be scientist fed and be science nurtured ad libitum.

The assumption should be inverted: science is not a market because of the output it produces, but (mainly) because of the demand the community of scientists has to keep on existing. This generates competition for the (scarce) resources: money and jobs.

Should I suffer?

Let me finish, going back to the personal aspect of this quarrel.

This is obviously far fetched and does not apply in equal measure to anyone, but the issue here seems to be twofold:

1. from one side a research professional, while in the game (i.e. while still holding a job in academia) may fairly fear that leaving academia and finding an employment outside of it automatically corresponds to a devaluation of his or her professional value, and that it will not be possible to fully take advantage of the knowledge acquired in any other job;
2. even more, the fundamental question might be “why should I give up my privilege? why should I assume I have not earned it?”.

As for the first point, I might humbly point out that this is an issue shared by any elitist profession: the professional dancer or musician, artists in general suffer the very same dilemma.

I might also note that the very narrow sectors that attract interest from some industry have the opposite problem to paucity ^[3]toc toc: AI and machine learning PhDs, I am thinking of you, academia suffers such a heavy competition from the world of production that retaining people into academia is a problem ^[4]because you know, academia pays well, but FAANG pays waaaaaaaaay better.

Regarding the latter, I let the easy task of answering the question to the reader ^[5]Before thinking I am a total douchebag, let be reminded that this is the pun used in most scientific books (mainly in mathematics or quantitative sciences) by the authors to encourage the readers … Continue reading.

Note for all my friends still into research

I am sorry, this might have sounded rough and unfair, especially for the many that are keeping hard, working in research and living a tough life because they are doing what they love. These words are not aimed at hurting you. But I feel this is the best approximation I could paint of the current state of life in research. You are (as always) very welcome to send me your thought, also the harsh ones.