/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.6005431]

Why are academics so stingy? A professor makes almost 100k/year but when it comes to things like conferences, travel, etc., he acts like he's strapped to the bone, like a $20 cab fare would shatter him. Wittgenstein famously gave up one of the largest family fortunes in Europe, Paul Erdos supposedly handed thousands of dollars to a random homeless person, why are today's academics such joyless scrooges?

[Anonymous No.6005486]

100k is pretty high for a professor unless you're at a top private institution. The average is more like 80k, and I've met full professors that make as little as 55k.

[Anonymous No.6005547]

>>6005486
Even so. They lack dignity. I'm just a lecturer and I make around 45k, and you won't find me creating a fucking departmental confrontation over some $100 slight.

Seriously, if you spend 5 hours filling out paperwork to get reimbursement for a $50 ride on the subway, you officially value your time at $10/hr, go work at fucking Inn 'N Out burger

[Anonymous No.6005556]

They spend all their time fighting for funding and it makes them miserly.

[Anonymous No.6005569]

>>6005556
The same can be said for PIs and such, and my PI had no issues shelling out $27 for lunch for me and another guy in the lab.

[Anonymous No.6005593]

>>6005431
Lately universities are putting professors on part time so they pay them very little on top of little benefits. Some schools are pulling in millions of dollars in profits. Not sure what they go through but they get them. I used to work at the Registrar's office at UCLA. There are so many things to pay off yet at the same time there is so much money they rake in. The football games, baseball games, basketball games themselves can pay a large portion of the student fees.

[Anonymous No.6005632]

>>6005486

What? I go to a Canadian public, so the school has to put together a report showing everyone making over $100k. There are over 600 people on that list, and there's only 1200 or so faculty.

[Anonymous No.6005660]

>>6005431
>>6005431
>>6005431
>>6005431
cuz 100k doesn't buy you shit

[Anonymous No.6005762]

They say that in academia, professors fight most bitterly because the stakes are so low. I never understood how true that is, until now.

There are careers where, following standard operating procedures, you can press a button, lose the company a million dollars, and it's simply accepted as part of doing business. Academia is not one of those companies.

Nothing is more pathetic than someone working so hard to scrape every last penny from a job that no-one interested in getting rich should have ever pursued in the first place.

[Anonymous No.6005939]

Academic careers are then sorely beset by chance. When a young scientist or scholar comes to seek advice about habilitation the responsibility which one assumes in advising him is heavy indeed. If he is a Jew, one naturally tells him: lasciate ogni speranza [Canto III, line 9 of Dante’s Inferno, sometimes translated as "Abandon all hope"]. But the others, too, must be asked with the utmost seriousness: "Do you think that, year after year, you will be able to stand to see one mediocrity after another promoted over you, and still not become embittered and dejected?" Of course, the answer is always: "Naturally, I live only for my calling." But only in a very few cases have I found them able to undergo it without suffering spiritual damage. These things have to be said about the external conditions of the academic career.

— Max Weber, Science as a Vocation (1918), translated by Edward Shils

[Anonymous No.6005987]

>>6005762
>>6005939
My father worked his hardest to become a professor but had no one but himself to support him. He went in not understanding the social dynamics of academical and left after learning about the harsh reality of it all. Before he quit teaching, he was an adjunct working his hardest for what little pay they would give him in the hopes of climbing up in life, little realizing the glass ceiling he had built for himself.

I hope one day to pay for the vacations to France he so graciously deserves, or for that nice sports car he never could quite afford. I may be bias in saying this, but I do absolutely despise academia.

[Anonymous No.6006020]

Because they spent many years poor. Depending on the field, the average time to get a PHD is around 6-7 years. That's 6-7 years making around 20k with no hope of a raise or bonus. You essentially live on a fixed income while getting a PhD. You live like someone who collects only social security for their retirement. It makes you think like an old retired person on a fixed income.

All of this occurs *after* you've spent 4 years in undergraduate making nothing and probably getting into debt.

10 years of living like this will have a strong impact on how one looks at money.

If this person moves onto a 5-10 year postdoc they will be making about 30-40k per year. If they get married and have any kids they basically back where they were in graduate school as all the extra money will be sunk into their kid(s), paying off debt, mortgage and a few pennies into their IRA if they are lucky enough to have anything left over (probably not, likely they are running even more debt during this time).

When they finally get a job as an assistant professor they are going to sink the extra 20k per year they get into paying off debt. Living like that for so long makes you hate to spend any money. Every dollar is painful to spend, it makes you anxious. You have to go over the expenditure again and again in your mind trying to make sure you didn't miss some way to avoid it. You are afraid you will regret the expenditure later.

When this person finally gets to full professor that extra 20k is going into their retirement and their mortgage. They will be deathly afraid of not having anything for retirement because of the 15-20 years they spent in relative destitution and probably saving very little for retirement. The reality that retirement is not far off has set in. Now is the time to catch up.

[Anonymous No.6006039]

because america doesnt give a shit about academics, thats why

[Anonymous No.6006072]

>>6006020
Fuck

[Anonymous No.6006082]

>>6006020

Hello!

> 5-10 year postdoc

lol wut

Best!

[Anonymous No.6006089]

>>6006020
>starting undergraduate at 25
>basically already spent the last year at the absolute lowest poverty and squalor one could be without being homeless, which I've only avoided by several miracles over the years
>finally getting full financial aid this upcoming academic year
>will be getting ~5000 a quarter, I've learned to live on less than half that in that same time period
Shit, you make what I view as a blessing seem like a curse. I don't think anyone can truly understand how much money ~20k a year is if they haven't experienced the extremes of poverty.

[Anonymous No.6006091]

>>6006089
Sorry, not the last year, the last seven years*