Academia is just messed up because the path to the top is to become an absolute expert in some topic, (PhD, postgrad), then become a performer/people manager/grant writer/office politics master (professor). It is really dumb. You are rolling the dice twice for expert level skills, and the second roll comes after huge personal investment.
Not really sure what the solution is. Maybe a huge increase in the number of national labs, as a vent for those who hit the first roll but fail the second.
We also need a vent for people who are good at teaching but not super focused on research. Drastically increase the community college system, IMO, and start paying the instructors enough to have nice middle-class lifestyles. Stop making people-people and weird nerds compete for rare grants and let them both do the things they are better at.
The alternative would be that public performance/management/grant writing/office politics are handled by someone who has absolutely no clue about what science is.
It doesn't take very long to find corporate examples of this alternative, and why it's not great either.
Not really sure what the solution is. Maybe a huge increase in the number of national labs, as a vent for those who hit the first roll but fail the second.
We also need a vent for people who are good at teaching but not super focused on research. Drastically increase the community college system, IMO, and start paying the instructors enough to have nice middle-class lifestyles. Stop making people-people and weird nerds compete for rare grants and let them both do the things they are better at.