You approximately can’t get directly useful/ things done until you have tenure.
At least in CS, the vast majority of professors at top universities in tenure-track positions do get tenure. The hardest part is getting in. Of course all the junior professors I know work extremely hard, but I wouldn’t characterize it as a publication rat race. This may not be true in other fields and outside the top universities.
The primary impediment to getting things done that I see is professors are also working as administrator and teaching, and that remains a problem post-tenure.
This is interesting and also aligns with my experience depending on exactly what you mean!
If you mean that it seems less difficult to get tenure in CS (thinking especially about deep learning) than the vibe I gave, (which is again speaking about the field I know, bioeng) I buy this strongly. My suspicion is that this is because relative to bioengineering, there is a bunch of competition for top research talent by industrial AI labs. It seems like even the profs who stay in academia also have joint appointment in companies, for the most part. There isn’t an analogous thing in bio? Pharma doesn’t seem very exciting and to my knowledge doesn’t have a bunch of PI-driven basic research roles open. Maybe bigtech-does-bio labs like Calico will change this in the future? IMO this doesn’t change my core point because you will need to change your agenda some, but less than in biology.
If you mean that once you are on the Junior Faculty track in CS, you don’t really need to worry about well-received publications, this is interesting and doesn’t line up with my models. Can you think of any examples which might help illustrate this? I’d be looking for, e.g., recently appointed CS faculty at a good school pursuing a research agenda which gets quite poor reception/ crickets, but this faculty is still given tenure. Possibly there are some examples in AI safety before it was cool? Folks that come to mind mostly had established careers. Another signal would be less of the notorious “tenure switch” where people suddenly change their research direction. I have not verified this, but there is a story told about a Harvard Econ professor who did a bunch of centrist/slightly conservative mathematical econ who switched to left-leaning labor economics after tenure.
If you mean that once you are on the Junior Faculty track in CS, you don’t really need to worry about well-received publications, this is interesting and doesn’t line up with my models. Can you think of any examples which might help illustrate this?
To clarify, I don’t think tenure is guaranteed, more that there’s significant margin of error. I can’t find much good data on this, but this post surveys statistics gathered from a variety of different universities, and finds anywhere between 65% of candidates get tenure (Harvard) to 90% (Cal State, UBC). Informally, my impression is that top schools in CS are the higher end of this: I’d have guessed 80%. Given this, the median person in the role could divert some of their research agenda to less well-received topics and still get tenure. But I don’t think they could work on something that no one in the department or elsewhere cared about.
I’ve not noticed much tenure switch in CS but have never actually studied this, would love to see hard data here. I do think there’s a significant difference in research agendas between junior and senior professors, but it’s more a question of what was in vogue when they were in grad school and shaped their research agenda, than tenured vs non-tenured per se. I do think pre-tenure professors tend to put their students under more publication pressure though.
I don’t see how this is a counterargument. Do you mean to say that, once you are on track to tenure, you can already start doing the high-impact research?
It seems to me that, if this research is too diverged from the academic incentives, then our hypothetical subject may become one of these rare cases of CS tenure-track faculty that does not get tenure.
At least in CS, the vast majority of professors at top universities in tenure-track positions do get tenure. The hardest part is getting in. Of course all the junior professors I know work extremely hard, but I wouldn’t characterize it as a publication rat race. This may not be true in other fields and outside the top universities.
The primary impediment to getting things done that I see is professors are also working as administrator and teaching, and that remains a problem post-tenure.
This is interesting and also aligns with my experience depending on exactly what you mean!
If you mean that it seems less difficult to get tenure in CS (thinking especially about deep learning) than the vibe I gave, (which is again speaking about the field I know, bioeng) I buy this strongly. My suspicion is that this is because relative to bioengineering, there is a bunch of competition for top research talent by industrial AI labs. It seems like even the profs who stay in academia also have joint appointment in companies, for the most part. There isn’t an analogous thing in bio? Pharma doesn’t seem very exciting and to my knowledge doesn’t have a bunch of PI-driven basic research roles open. Maybe bigtech-does-bio labs like Calico will change this in the future? IMO this doesn’t change my core point because you will need to change your agenda some, but less than in biology.
If you mean that once you are on the Junior Faculty track in CS, you don’t really need to worry about well-received publications, this is interesting and doesn’t line up with my models. Can you think of any examples which might help illustrate this? I’d be looking for, e.g., recently appointed CS faculty at a good school pursuing a research agenda which gets quite poor reception/ crickets, but this faculty is still given tenure. Possibly there are some examples in AI safety before it was cool? Folks that come to mind mostly had established careers. Another signal would be less of the notorious “tenure switch” where people suddenly change their research direction. I have not verified this, but there is a story told about a Harvard Econ professor who did a bunch of centrist/slightly conservative mathematical econ who switched to left-leaning labor economics after tenure.
To clarify, I don’t think tenure is guaranteed, more that there’s significant margin of error. I can’t find much good data on this, but this post surveys statistics gathered from a variety of different universities, and finds anywhere between 65% of candidates get tenure (Harvard) to 90% (Cal State, UBC). Informally, my impression is that top schools in CS are the higher end of this: I’d have guessed 80%. Given this, the median person in the role could divert some of their research agenda to less well-received topics and still get tenure. But I don’t think they could work on something that no one in the department or elsewhere cared about.
I’ve not noticed much tenure switch in CS but have never actually studied this, would love to see hard data here. I do think there’s a significant difference in research agendas between junior and senior professors, but it’s more a question of what was in vogue when they were in grad school and shaped their research agenda, than tenured vs non-tenured per se. I do think pre-tenure professors tend to put their students under more publication pressure though.
I don’t see how this is a counterargument. Do you mean to say that, once you are on track to tenure, you can already start doing the high-impact research?
It seems to me that, if this research is too diverged from the academic incentives, then our hypothetical subject may become one of these rare cases of CS tenure-track faculty that does not get tenure.