Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal by Zach Weinersmith for October 23, 2020

Silly me. And I always thought the purpose of an institute of higher learning was to teach students, not to have its staff gallivanting about in the vainglorious pursuit of recognition.

Tenure and graduate TA’s.

“Publish or perish” in most cases is not comparable to “Do your job or get fired.”

Almost the opposite, the way it worked out for people I’ve known.

 

I see people complaining because the professor was too busy doing work in his field to teach…

I saw it from the other side…

I’ve had friends and relatives who became professors because that was their calling.

they loved teaching, and were good at it.

 

But to maintain standing in academia… even keep their positions and/or stay on a tenure track…

they HAD to to spend time away from the classroom, do research and publish in their fields.

Some love it, others wish they COULD just “do their jobs”… which they consider to be teaching, not becoming authors.

 

Blurbs about professors on university websites mention their published works…

not their teaching expertise or their great reviews from students.

Peer review is intended to prevent gibberish from being printed. However, collusion and greed have come to circumvent the process. Actual gibberish has been printed in trials of the system.

Contrary to some of the above remarks my experiences with the higher level academia both professionally and personally showed most no better that your average person except most were elitist and extremely conceited.

I have been in academia for more than 30 years and I never saw someone doing this “vainglorious pursuit of recognition.” If you’re after recognition there are many places and professions where you are much more likely to get it.