A view into academic life...

[quantum]

The presenter talks about her experience in physics, but I think this is very applicable to those that pursue academic studies in music.  Those of you who have done advanced degrees may find parts of this story that resonate with your own experiences. 

[pianistavt]

The presenter talks about her experience in physics, but I think this is very applicable to those that pursue academic studies in music. 

I watched this video a few days ago.  Powerful!  I've watched many (not all) of Sabine's videos - a very original & authentic voice in physics and applied science.
I can see how this may be applicable to most fields in science, but I'm surprised to hear someone say it's true of academics in music.  She's talking about how the pursuit of money, the pursuit of grants has limited the kind of projects that are internally approved and submitted.  How does this happen in music?  Are graduate studies in music primarily supported by federal grants?  I didn't think so.  What in your experience brings you to make this comparison?

[quantum]

The endless cycle of applying for grants, writing papers, applying for more grants, applying for post docs.  It is all too real, and what many music students in advanced degrees do where I live.

I have personally met a lot of brilliant musicians in school, people who are both fantastic performers as well as excellent music researchers.  These are people who IMO deserve to teach at the university level because they very clearly can demonstrate the skills needed for the job.  However, these musicians are paid insultingly low wage jobs with few benefits, doing work similar to what tenured profs would be expected to do, requiring a level of expertise and proficiency similar to that required for a tenured prof. 

I have observed a disturbing trend for universities in my area to hire more contract workers and graduate students, rather than hiring more full time professors.  Same job with a different name, and an excuse to pay a lower wage because the school is hiring "students" or contract workers, people the university does not have to commit to giving long term job security.  For example, a university might hire a performing musician with extensive performance experience to teach private lessons to music majors, yet only pay them contract worker wages.  The name of the performer might bring a certain impression of prestige to the school, however the reality is they are not paid the same as a full time prof, nor do they receive the same benefits.   

The section where Sabine talks about selecting a topic for a paper, working on topics that are mainstream enough but not too mainstream reminds me of the graduate research course I took which covered this concept, that there is a prevailing fad in paper topics, and one has to keep up with whatever that fad is.  Sabine clearly explains the workings of this, and also the implications of what it means to follow or not follow one's personal creative and research interests. 

[thorn]

I echo the above post here in the UK too. The contract/pay issue caused a few strikes last year.
 
The best thing I've ever read about academic life from an arts/humanities perspective is The Professor Is In by Karen Kelsky. I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to stay in university beyond undergrad level.

[brogers70]

I'm only an amateur musician, but I was a professional scientist until I retired, and I think Sabine is right. Once upon a time, the goal was to solve problems and figure things out. If you did that, you published papers about your results. At that point it was reasonable to conclude that somebody who published a lot of papers had solved a lot of problems or figured a lot of things out. That stayed true, though, only until the number (and to a lesser extent, prestige) of publications became a key metric for hiring and promotion. Then the perverse incentive developed that rewarded publishing more than actually finding out new, interesting things. And the cycle that that led to is pretty much just the way Sabine described it. There are still people doing good, creative science, but the literature is flooded with unimportant, uninteresting "me too" papers that were only ever written to become an entry on someone's CV. And unfortunately, too many of these low interest papers are also low quality and sometimes even fraudulent. To fix the problem, we need to fix the incentive structure, but it is not an easy thing to change.

[ted]

All I can say is thank goodness I chose to support my music through something else. Mind you, I would never have passed the entrance tests to a music school anyway. While at university in the sixties I did befriend several in the music school, one or two of whom went on to distinguished musical careers. What my tuner tells me about the present cost cutting and contracting there sounds similar to the events described in Neil's post so therefore the deterioration could well be global. Though my musical outlook is highly individual I still desire to respect the ability and integrity of those within academia, and the fact that I cannot now do so in the way I used to worries me somewhat. 

[thorn]

That stayed true, though, only until the number (and to a lesser extent, prestige) of publications became a key metric for hiring and promotion. Then the perverse incentive developed that rewarded publishing more than actually finding out new, interesting things.

I know someone who has been the only person teaching their subject in a particular department for the past 8 years. They started out covering for the previous professor and stayed after he retired, in a non-tenured capacity- which in the UK means you can't supervise students, so this person was teaching all that professor's courses but other staff have had to take students wanting to write BA/MA dissertations in that area (which they know nothing about) and the department can't take PhD students on that area at all.

Here's the thing- a couple of years ago the department got funding for a tenured post. They gave it to someone else purely because the person who had been doing that job for them for 8 years hadn't published enough. Then the other person turned it down and the department offered this person their old (non-tenured) job back.

So the publishing thing isn't just diluting the overall quality of research, it's creating these kinds of situation. I'm sure you could write a book of such stories.

[psipsi8]

I am scientist with a musical background and my career got virtually destroyed because I got sold-out to the grant funders, with which I wasn't contracted, by the university I was employed by, because the terms of the grant weren't adhered to (through no fault of my own as I had no knowledge of these terms at the time and I was under the impression that I was free to work on anything). Furthermore, my scientific output was way too radical, even going as far as overturning a long-held theory in monolithic field which - undoubtedly due to grant pressures, as the esteemed scientist/ Youtuber mentions in her video - discourages deviations from the mainstream, and I was hounded in the very respected, peer-reviewed journals which published my work by my former employers, because I supposedly "inappropriately" used their affiliation for the "unauthorized" work which I completed under their contract.
What's the relationship to music? If I hadn't had a strong musical background (ARCT in piano performance from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Canada) I doubt I would have had either the creativity to successfully deviate from the mainstream or to think outside the box, nor the tenacity to get this work of mine published. Now I just rest on my laurels and try to avoid jail time - yes I'm being pursued in courts, civil as well as criminal, by my former employers. I'm living in Europe but I'm from Canada and Europe is in general a backwards and fascist continent and I'm not leaving until I clear my name, because if I leave prematurely then they will just have a "party" scapegoating me. As an aside, I have discovered how antimusical (not to mention unscientific) and disgustingly conservative lawyers are in their thinking style, and as a result of my forcible interaction with them, I've found a new, extremely gratifying pastime: lawyer pounding (apart from piano studies, I also used to play the drums for 4 years in a high-school band). Heck, the entire justice system reeks and I'm now infamous in the country I live in for my activities, something which makes me kind of proud. Last year at this time I was actually a fugitive for about a month because I got sentenced to a gigantic jail sentence (4 y) which was not suspended, for defaming a lawyer, but I wasn't stupid enough to show up in court and instead I was represented by a (worthless) lawyer, something which is allowed here. Eventually, a higher court suspended the sentence pending appeal but I now have an exit ban, that is I'm not allowed to leave the country(!). This is the fallout for sticking it to "the man" and going against the grain.