Is there any reason to pursue a career in academia? Why not just cash out by working for big oil, consultant or bank...

Is there any reason to pursue a career in academia? Why not just cash out by working for big oil, consultant or bank, for example? I get that its "noble" to pursue science just as a virtue, but is the trade off worth it?

interest

Why do Americans think about money all the time?

Some people like doing theoretic work and academia is their best shot at getting paid for it.

From my experience I think there are people who can't do real jobs.

There are people who literally cannot be held accountable for anything because they are cry babies and there are people who are so useless they would never be able to actually make the money that sustains them... so they work in academia.

In academia you don't even directly make money. Your university gets students and then, after they paid, they give them to you. After that your actions will have negligible effects that no one will ever confront you on unless you rape a student or something.

The same goes for jobs in high school teaching or people who work at charities. There no one will ever held you accountable because you do not even make money for your company.

Yeah, damn pathetic academic crybabies
Good thing there are bankers and stock brokers to make all the important discoveries and advances for humanity.

Lets be real, not even you think that people who work in academia actually make every dollar they earn, right?

You cannot be that delusional.

I don't know about the US of A, but in the EU funding doesn't fall from the sky, if you only have the money you get from the university you can have 2 or 3 phd students. And the people giving you money for all the others, industry or whatever public office, will shit you to death if you don't give them results and can even cancel a project if they see that you just produce bullshit. If you fuck up one EU funded project they will never give you money again, they are basically costumers that pay in advance.

In my experience, people who work in academia work a lot of hours and get paid very little, except if you're a professor. Meanwhile there are a LOT of people working for a company who get more than EUR 3000 a month sitting around all day doing nothing.

>Is there any reason to pursue a career in academia?
These days: no.

It is an ugly rat race and even if you win you are still a rat.

Having said that it is often a good idea to pursue a PhD and do 2 postdoc rounds in different countries but not with an eye for an academic career. instead make sure your field has industrial applicability (solid state is pretty safe, good, interesting and well paid) and go to industry.

I did that.

>t. american anti-intellectualism
just like in the Russian revolution of 1914

I still don't understand who American professors aren't bajillionares considering how much they charge their students

extreme jewiness

As opposed to those noble and selfless bankers and stockbrokers, slaving away for every hard-earned penny right?

It all goes to the football coach.
Not even kidding. At my uni, the top paid profs bringing the research $ make $70-80k. The average tenured prof is like $50-60k, assistants, associates and lecturers far less. Deans make ~200k, the uni president makes $350k, and the fucking head football coach makes almost $750k /yr.

They all want to be tenured profs. At that point, they get a pretty decent paycheck, permanent job security, and a gold-plated retirement. If they're at all political, they also get an undue amount of influence over the next generation.

That's the dream. Most of them will never be tenured.

Some of them actually do it because they love science, and don't want to be limited to pursuing only ideas that have immediate commercial applications or have to deal with end-users (customers). You can take intellectual risks that would be irresponsible if you were working for a company.

Some of them do it because they love teaching.

Being a full-time professor in a science is probably one of the most stressful careers I can think of
They also put in far more hours than what they're paid for
Fuck off bud

>It all goes to the football coach.
This user gets it. Pic. related. Very much so.

t.Former Researcher

What areas in particular would you suggest? Are 2d materials a meme? Is nanotechnology a meme?

I've been thinking recently.

Is learning math/science formulas in the era of smartphones, internet and scientific calculators pointless?

Nobody sits down and learns maths of science formulae outside of pre-uni for the sake of exams.

kek'd hard

Lmao the world is fucked beyond repair

speak for yourself nig

If that's all you do, then congratulations, you're no better than a formula booklet or wolfram alpha with no ideas of your own.

>working for big oil
lol oilcrash enjoy unemployment
>consultant
of what?
>bank
HA- banks are downsizing firing people left and right

also all those things are souless and boring, would rather do something interesting with my life rather than something boring so I can say to people it was worth it due to making more money

jocks ree

>be an expert in a field, leading to consulting or speaking opportunities ($$)
>discover something new and patent it or spin it off into a company (basically all med bio)
>have personal interest in what your doing and like science
>chance to discover something important
>chance to be an important person that people seek out

Generally what I observed working in a lab for a few years.

That happens for 1% of people though

There is so much poverty and materialism, life is pretty miserable when you don't have it. We aren't lucky enough to live in a nanny state like some other nations. When you don't have money you don't have a lot of things many people take for granted, such as transportation, health coverage, access to basic human luxuries.

Academia and research in general does not pay well. Most people doing it would not be described as rich or well-off. Private companies doing non-research related activities tend to pay more. This is because most research is funded by grants which are hard to come by, and don't often last more than a few years. Researchers are kind of like people on the side of the road begging for spare change, they get whatever people give them and it's usually not a lot.

I'm planning to pay my dues in academia (i.e. get a PhD) and then bounce to industry.

What shocks me is that people agree that this is the best possible system and don't support politicians like sanders.

>Academia and research in general does not pay well.
I didn't become a researcher thinking would be rich. I had however thought that I would earn enough to pay down my student loans. And that was a mistake. And that was already while living a spartan life style, meaning no smoking, no alcohol, no GF (possibly the largest expense you could have), no car, no flat and, well pretty much not much else.

At the same time people simply demand the latest and greatest in tech, medicine and healthcare and more. People simply think new products just materialise on the shelves.

Economics is about alleged optimal resource allocations. I understand putting it all int R&D is a bit over the top. It is just that when bread and circus takes it all that allocation is far, far from optimal. When people are in bad health it is much too late to start thinking about new medicine. That takes 15 - 20 years to develop. By which time they are dead.

Have been to big oil company HQ a few times with student groups, their prognosis is that they will be able to get oil from the ground until 2070-ish. Either way, they are big in investing into biofuels, so they can just continue using their refineries with very little need for adjustment. They aren't going away anytime soon.

>their prognosis is that they will be able to get oil from the ground until 2070-ish.
That is possible. The question remains: at what price? All low hanging fruits are already picked and the latest wells are deep, at high pressure and very high temperature.

A large part of oil pumped up is used for fuel for transport, for heating and power but also a large part is used for synthetic fertilizers and plastics. A lot of this can be replaced by green power, and especially solar power is falling so quickly in cost that it will be everywhere in 20 years time.

This means that markets will also dry up and a large part will be third world farmers who cannot pay much for fertilizers and already find the cost heavy to bear.

So yeah, I'd go for biofuels too.

are american's fucking stupid?

HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN?

because most professions can't just go work for the government and get coddled by them if they can't find a job

People rarely think about the long term. Or as the Romans put it about 2000 years ago: panem et circenses.

The dollar is directly tied to the price of oil, so when oil will become extremely scarce, the dollar will skyrocket. This is the plan and why they will fornicate you in the butthole.