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Here is a post that took me a long time to write. A long time, because I didn’t want to write such a post too soon after taking a leave of absence. Indeed, time could have eventually changed my perspective on the academic world. In the end, it didn’t. I also wanted to wait until my last Ph.D. student defended his thesis, mainly to avoid him hearing any stressful comments about his thesis supervisor.
As a reminder, I’ve been on leave since September 1, 2014, after 2 years as a Full Professor at the University of Caen, 5 years as an Assistant Professor (MCF) at Paris-Sud University, 1 year of postdoc at École Polytechnique, 2 years as a teaching researcher at EPITA, 1 year as an ATER (Temporary Research and Teaching Attaché) at Paris 7, and 3 years of doctoral studies at Paris-Sud.
Since my departure from academia in 2014, I’ve had many opportunities to meet former colleagues. I’m often asked questions, and I notice that, implicitly, the only accepted reason for leaving academia seems to be financial. Money, the great fantasy: if you leave, it’s to earn more, right? In fact, that wasn’t the case for me. That’s why I’m writing this post, to present a few good reasons for leaving academia, the reasons that led me to go. And now, even if I can say that financially I’m probably better off, it’s more a result of the productivity gains you can achieve in a more flexible structure than of the supposed wealth of the private sector.
Finally, I’m talking here about academia (mainly the university environment), but some of the points I’ll mention can be directly applied to other public sectors (sometimes even worse, for example, when in addition to a strong administrative apparatus, you have to deal with the whims of an all-powerful elected official).
Here are some good reasons to leave academia, in no particular order:
This is the most obvious point and probably the one everyone agrees on. It’s now almost impossible to clearly define what the real tasks of a faculty member are: teaching and research, that’s clear. But does managing schedules and rooms fall under teaching? Is handling the contracts of adjunct lecturers a task for a PI (rather than an HR mission)? Does grant hunting fall under research? Is managing offices, supplies, coffee capsules, and library periodicals part of the job? In short, you get the point: more and more tasks are being assigned to the only personnel that can't be "downsized," probably to save money, at the cost of a bleak future for the quality of French science.
The support function encompasses all the people who, in theory, are there to serve the academic mission by offloading faculty members from tasks that aren’t really their job but are necessary for it. This includes various secretariats (teaching, lab, etc.), system administrators, technicians, HR, accounting, etc.
Let’s be clear: nowadays, in most universities, it’s the support function that effectively runs the show, with increasingly absurd constraints. Did you know, for example, that in some computer science labs, you can’t be admin on your machine, and system administrators don’t hesitate to question the technical choices of researchers? Or that some administrations require handwritten, non B&W documents in multiple copies to process reimbursements?
More recently, the head of "bureau des thèses" tried to explain to me what a thesis supervisor is; needless to say, the explanation ended up going the other way to set things straight...
This is a direct corollary of the previous problem: disgruntled and disillusioned support staff (rightfully so) apply rules without any consideration, even if it means penalizing everyone and stressing out students, etc. For example, what can you think of a university that prevents someone from being officially listed as a thesis supervisor because “you should have asked earlier,” even if this person contributed to all the student’s articles and closely supervised them?
The latest trend in the public sector is objectification (= bean counting), such as counting the number of publications, the number of students in a degree program, the number of jury memberships, seminars, etc. This objectification comes from the fantasy of “doing it like the private sector” (which shows how little the public sector actually knows about the private sector).
The problem with this objectification, beyond its intrinsic foolishness, is that a performance measure without possible punishment or reward serves no purpose other than to create stress and humiliation (since the only way to punish is to publicly shame the underperformers).
Not much to add here; there’s no more money for essential things like conference travel (it’s not uncommon to pay out of your pocket in regional universities) or equipment (without research grants, it’s difficult to have a decent desktop computer or laptop in some places).
But alongside this lack of funding, there is constant waste. This waste is due to the exploitation by certain suppliers who take advantage of procurement rules to sell more expensive items that could be found cheaper elsewhere (very noticeable with IT equipment, for example). But the biggest source of waste is in human aspects: a one-hour meeting with 10 people at average MCF level costs nearly 300 euros. How many hours do you spend in pointless meetings? You can easily calculate the money wasted FOR society…
In addition to these reasons, with which a highly motivated person might be able to cope, there are far more serious issues.
The more the system deteriorates, the more certain individuals try to obtain positions of "power" (for whatever it’s worth in academia, where there’s actually no real power) to have control over resources or to be more comfortable. Once these people are in place, they will either be tyrannical, engage in shady dealings, or make others pay for imaginary offenses. Of course, not everyone is a petty tyrant, but let’s be honest, they exist, among colleagues and administrative staff alike, leading to workplace suffering that can sometimes have dramatic effects on individuals.
Today, it’s very rare to meet visionaries among scientists. Indeed, bean counting tends to favor technical aspects, micromanagement, and incremental research, and so people with vision either stay silent or leave. At the level of lab management, leaders tend to be managers of a mosaic of topics, some important, others completely outdated, but no one has the courage to impose a coherent, long-term vision. We are still waiting for the emergence of a generation of charismatic researchers whom others will follow blindly, to improve society (whether it works or not is another matter).
To continue making myself unpopular, I ask a simple question: you, who are a faculty member reading this, how many books on pedagogy have you read? Books on society and its relationship to technology and science? On the sociological uses of your discipline? On ethics? Or even more simply, on other sciences? There is a decreasing level of reflexivity and intellectual curiosity in universities, and it will eventually become apparent and have an impact.
My last point, the one that literally made me run away: the acceptance of the impending death of the French academic environment. It is unacceptable to me to accompany a system to its death while believing it’s the only way to save it (how many believe that doing admin work is “normal” and that things will eventually improve?).
So, here’s a rather dark list that I fully stand by. But is all this unique to higher education and research or even the public sector? For some points, yes, but clearly not for others. The difference is that these undue costs are paid by society, that is, by us, the community. Whereas in the private sector, this isn’t the case.
However, in both the public and private sectors, workers are free to look elsewhere, but it’s not always that easy, far from it, and for some positions/jobs, it’s actually impossible (there are positions in the public sector that don’t exist anywhere else, which in itself is quite revealing). It also requires a certain amount of courage or even a lack of awareness of the risks. But, when we turn 90 and look back on our lives, what do we want to see? I’ve made my choice.
In the end, why did I leave? For all these reasons, but especially for the last four. All the others are painful and depressing but bearable if people work together “for the greater good.”
