The Academic System

The current academic system

Academia is equally an opportunity and a challenge, and many times we cannot even say which is which. Some of its elements date back into the ages, and on the other end is academia defined by creating knowledge that evolves, pushing our insights and the way we act based upon them forward, ideally radically changing the world for the better. Academia originated in a resource surplus of early societies, which could suddenly afford to have citizens that concentrated on nothing but knowledge with all its facets. Over time, academia became subsequently more focussed, and scientific disciplines emerged out of schools of thinking. Today, there is a dendritic network of disciplines that divides into ever smaller units with strong identities, which are often defined by their focal topics, underlying concepts and theories, and the associated canon of specific methods. Finding your roles and more importantly your vector of strategies and reflection points in the modern academia is a key challenge that serves as an initial building block of your career. Whole books are available on how to make it in academia, yet such approaches are somewhat beyond the point. If there was a recipe that everybody can follow, then we would reproduce the same academics all over. Academia is defined by evolvement and diversity, or at least it should be. Scientific disciplines often counteract this baseline. Out of the enlightenment and the industrial age, scientific disciplines were initially designed to produce workers of the mind that would administer economic development and colonial abuse. In the 20th century, knowledge became more and more compartmentalised, and ever finer layers of disciplines developed. To this date, the system is strongly competitive and resembles mostly a social Darwinist funnel. While all countries to this day build on a hierarchical system where professors are the highest caste, this system has lately been drastically changed in many countries. Germany is at the forefront of a movement where you have an overall higher number of full professors, but in comparison less assistant professors and lecturers. While in the past much of the teaching was long-term shouldered by these mid-level academia workers, most of these increasingly vanished today, and much of the remaining positions are limited to a maximum of six years. This limited time frame is often one of the main breaking points in modern academia. You have 6 years for your PhD, and 6 years as a postdoc. If you do not have a permanent contract after 12 years, you are legally out. Yet we need to remember that a 6 year contract is an absolut exceptional and many academics jump from one short term contract to the next. You may do project work longer than these 6 years, yet it is still next to impossible to plan your career, which creates and amplifies existing injustices. Other countries have comparable mechanisms, and after such a long time it is anyway clear for most people if you can make it, or not. There is however still a larger convolute of lecturer positions in Scandinavian and English-speaking countries. However, even these positions are now characterised by an expectation that often goes beyond excellence in teaching and includes usually a research impact and the deep commitment towards management tasks and development of the institution. What is clear is that publishing and research grants are the main drivers of academic careers, and teaching usually takes only a side role. There are exceptions to the rule, yet if you want to get a permanent position you need to publish or presih to this day, and best secure prestigious grants. Yet way before the question how to gain a permanent position, other puzzles cross your way: different hierarchies, institutional constructs, tacit barriers and simply too many unknowns to find your way into the system. There are mainly two ways that can help prospering young academics to find their way into a successful career: A solid peer-network and one or few mentors. Without a mentor, life in academia and more importantly life into academia is almost impossible. May it be the medieval apprenticeship in the style of "The Sword in the Stone", shall it be the Kung Fu disciple just as in the "36th chamber of the Shaolin", or may it be "Mulan". Having someone see the raw germ and unleashing its full potential is a collaborative act of learning, and current professors can thus become one of the best bets that future professors will be better. One of my first mentors did actually always say that he only accepts disciples that are better than he is. A mentor ideally helps a learner to deal with all the challenges you face in the system, and does not only explain all cliffs, but also the path how to let them pass. Finding a mentor is like finding any other social relationship, just maximise your serendipity space, and then it may play out in your favour. Beside the knowledge may the serendipity space of your mentor also translate into a larger space of opportunities for yourself. What is most important for any mentorship is that it actually works both ways at the same time, since good students question aspects of the professors, and push the system to evolve, and also ideally turn the teacher into a learner, which is vital. Professors may have more experience, but the innovative drive often happens on the lower ranks, and certainly much of the wider workload. What is almost more important is a peer network, because this is your emotional safety net and lifeline. Joined suffering creates strong bonds, and many of the strongest bonds were formed over a solid network of early career peers suffering together and helping each other out. Such a network can also grow over time, and link into existing networks and create beneficial connections that help you get your career going. More often than not it is not so much about knowing people, it is more about knowing information. Thus, beside the emotional coping is a network a living body of knowledge that helps you to overcome obstacles. The most important information is often that your struggle is not unique, but indeed many people face similar issues. A peer network is also relevant for one main movement: If a lot of lower ranks talk about the same stuff, it actually translates up, and professors will become more interested in what gets the young folks go around.

Discrimination and Bias

Academic institutions are deeply committed to integrate diversity into their DNA, and they should, because diversity clearly thrives innovation. However, there is ample evidence that institutions still fail to this end, not on all fronts, but there are too many prominent cases and hard information which more than underline that there is a lot to be done to recognise, appreciate and integrate diversity. While institutions are deeply committed to have gender and diversity offices, responsible colleagues to support people with disabilities, to aid international students and so on, it is clear that academic institutions are strongly biased in many directions. Emotions run high to this end, and many non-minorities currently create backlashes against the necessary pushes towards more diversity. However, I have a perspective spanning over decades now, and what most people are not aware of is that changes are happening. They are not fast enough, which is more than clear. Recent generations are not ok with that kind of a slow adaptational evolutionary process, and the demand for more revolutionary changes is currently creating tensions yet also -at least partly- triggering the necessary changes. Future academics have to integrate questions of diversity and bias more strongly to overcome these, and it is hard to evaluate what to concretely suggest on how to deal with the problems within the current system. Having a dedicated and committed group of people who have experiences on a specific issue or topic is again pivotal, because members of such an in-group can learn tricks on how to deal with the systemic failures. If you know the pressure points and highlight the demands within the respective situation, every institution will increasingly try to implement change for the better. While there is still a long way to go, it is surely worthwhile to team up, share the burden, and drive change. However, there is one point about diversity that is also highly relevant for academic institutions. Having a minority perspective can be a strong motivation to drive change. Deep emotional experiences can be -- as sad as they are in a personal hemisphere of experience -- be a driver to change the system away from underlying wrongs. If for instance someone has strong experiences about being bullied, then there is a chance that this person will not tolerate bullying in the future. If then again someone has a strong experience how majorities dominate minorities, then this person may draw conclusions that cut deeply into the status quo of science. Experiences about identity constructs may translate into more inclusive or deconstructive assumptions about constructs in science. Diversity breeds diversity, and being tolerant and inclusive will be ultimately the better way beyond any dimensions we all single-handedly could ever imagine.

Work-Life-balance

Academia faces just like all work environments and increasing demand to balance the work life and the life after hours. Being part of the great acceleration, academia was not spared from becoming increasingly competitive over time, and thus pushing people into higher and more dense working hours. Psychological challenges are increasingly recognised in academia as well, both as a diagnosis and as an epidemic. Creating a balance is often proclaimed, but hardly achieved. In a system that is resource limited, the pressure that is being put on individuals is mounting, and people willing to make sacrifices are still supported by the clandestine and tacit design that is deeply engrained in academia. This creates many injustices that were increased by the pandemic, and we are at a point in time where we need to take stock and look not only at the bigger picture, but first and foremost at the demand and capabilities of the individual. While more work creates more output it should become critical how much output and change people can drive within the work time. The rest should be reserved for friends, family, or other elements to spend the time. The agency to thrive in your personality and to use the time to relax and reflect is increasingly recognised as pivotal, and a paradigm shift concerning work-life balance is slowly emerging. Yet there are very diverse approaches and models how people deal with time within academia. Most academics these days are completely cluttered and slaves of their calendar. There are no mincing words here, many people do not have free time for weeks. We became drowned in tasks, and often need to relearn how to prioritise. The system throws tasks at us scientists at a rate that has become hard to bear. There is more and more administration, safeguards and tasks that are means yet not ends. An academic today has a much more diverse portfolio of tasks as compared to decades ago, and much of the work is delegated down, creating a proportionally higher burden down the hierarchical ladder. These developments create usually increasing injustices, ad the work load is not equally distributed among lower ranks, but creates an intersectional imbalance that amplifies already existing injustices in many settings.. What is more, the publication circus still demands from young researchers to publish or perish. While much in the publication circus is broken, it is clear that society can expect from researchers that the knowledge they create is publicly available. Still, many indicators such as the h-index, the number of papers and the respective impact factor are now strongly associated with researchers and the way young academics progress in the system. This creates a social Darwinist funnel that we need to escape from. It is a clear challenge not only of academia but also other spheres of society that strangely evolved into more control and less action. There are more parts of academic institutions that control us compared to the amount or capacity that can create action. This is rooted in good intentions, because the control tries to prevent injustices. Out of this urge, we created an even bigger injustice that punishes the commons in trying to safeguard the system. It is clear that "safety first" is a mantra to first and foremost protect minorities that face injustices, yet many of these cannot cope with the rising and mounting workload. For instance is it difficult to square the care work as a parent with the schedule and pressure of an academic career, to name just one challenge. To this day the border between public and private life in academia is deeply blurred, and there remain many open questions. While continuous education should be a mantra of academics, many do this in their private time. Our social circle is often an equivalent of the work folks that surround us all day, making is even more difficult to differentiate work from private life if we want to. Shifting work places due to the precarious hiring situation lead to a constant turnover of our social circles. Relationships have to catch up or compromise with a constant mobility. If you look to stay at the same place throughout your career, academia might not be your ideal turf. Continuity is then often designed to take place in the digital work. Social media and other digital skills are these days part of the standard portfolio of academics, yet these new media forms also led to an increasing crumbling of the of the border between work and private life. Being online 24/7 is technically not expected, yet while other branches of our work system try to carve out non-work time more clearly, academia is on the edge of always dragging you into the Maelstrom of more and more work all the time. Stringing boundaries may be a survival skill for many. I have a good friend who works strictly 9-5, and indeed very successfully. He just makes the time he does work really count, and uses the rest of his time to reboot and re-energise. Mapping out the border between academic work time and the rest of your life is a challenge, though. There are too many who love their work so much, that they literally never stop. I count myself among them. Others need time to rest and balance their day more strongly. This creates again injustices, but it is of course difficult to stop people from working who just love their work, and who would find it troubling to stop. After all it is really hard to not think about something if you are excited about it, and many academics are hyped by their work all the time. This creates a penalty for people who need explicit time to recover. This is a problem that is slowly changing, yet will create inequalities and injustices for decades to come. We need to be openly honest, legally clear, and aware of the normative dimensions of academic evaluation, otherwise we will not be able to change academia towards a better state.

Institutions and hierarchies

Academia is a funnel which starts extremely broad and becomes more and more restrictive. There are for instance almost three million students in Germany right now, a number which was rising sharply over the last decades. While there are about 250000 Bachelor degrees per year in Germany, there are way less Master degrees (ca 150000). A fraction of those go on for a PhD, and also external students join German academia. There are about 29000 PhD degrees per year. Overall, there are about a total of 50000 professors in Germany, and considering age and retirement structure, there are professor positions for less than 20 % of the PhD students, and in some disciplines certainly way less. This pyramid structure of the different hierarchical levels of academia brings several challenges with it. First, students feel next to invisible for most professors. Given that there is one professor for about 60 students at an average, it is clear that this notion is more often than not a reality. While this can be argued in a resource limited system, there is an increasing demand to more deeply recognise the demands of the students. 3 hour non-stop lectures in the form of full frontal lobotomies -- which equal the professor talking non-stop without any interaction -- are increasingly questioned. On the other end, students are increasingly driven by the hunt for credits and other optimisations of their CVs. It becomes a rising challenge to have a convincing CV that does not equal a CV of everybody else, which again links to a higher workload and associated inequalities. The grading system is clearly in dire need of reform, yet without any grades is it still a challenge to evaluate students. Creative collaborative formats such as group work are not fully explored yet, and many lectures still build on frontal learning with few reflexive or interactive elements. Worse still, all the learning is hardly contextualised concerning concrete goals and the associated challenges. For instance does academia need to seize a superior role concerning responsibility for and with society, yet this brings several challenges with it that are often ignored. Trying to drive change in a system that is often changing or even characterised by failures is difficult within the increasingly normative agenda of many scientific arenas. For instance is environmental science often a field that links science with activism, and this mutual link creates challenges for individuals that are widely ignored by academia to date. Yet also professors are framed in a form that can be seen critical, because most professors are still to this day a reflexive surface that is supposed to equal endless competence, ubiquitous knowledge and a capacity to be always failsafe. No person can live up to these standards, and the urge for perfectionism serves as breeding ground to reconsider the role of authority and authoritative knowledge in academia. Deep changes are needed to properly designate and relocate the role of leaders and educators in academia, and this process is slow and will need even more time.

The academic ladder

Going up the ladder in academia demands funding. PhD students need funding to get paid, just as most postdocs are also funded by external grants. At this stage of the career it becomes of increasing importance that you also secure your own funding, where a prestigious and large enough grant can to this day be the single biggest predictor on whether a young academic gets a permanent position, or not. A funding at such an important institution as the German research council (DFG) of a ERC grant can be career makers, yet changes of getting such grants can be lower than 5 %. It can equally be a strategic move whether you get funding that plays it save, or do something radical. More normal science -in the sense of Kuhn- has often higher chances of getting funded, which creates a conservative backlash in science. Many young researchers thus play it safe and go for more disciplinary funding, making it even harder for interdisciplinary researchers. Similar effects are known for female researchers that are not part of the "Old boys" network, and thus now increasingly build their own networks. Getting funding early is thus highly relevant, yet also often depends on your position and surrounding. For instance can postdocs often not even apply for funding, and there are huge differences between different countries. Time will tell whether there will be more funding in research, yet today funding is beside publications often the best career predictor, which is nothing to be happy about, yet one can also hardly ignore it.

Science communication?

An altogether different but equally complicated topic is the role of communication of science. This text cannot even glimpse the surface on this nexus, yet it is clear that most of science fails in communicating their research to society. Marketing of research results as dictated by the media led to research being oversold or oversimplified. Communicating the context and caveats of research is next to impossible, which is one of the many reasons why the trust in academia got increasingly eroded, and to crude representation of pseudoscience and alternative facts. On the other end should academia make sure that their results are available to contribute to societal discourse. There is still a long way to go out of the postcolonial ivory-tower that much of academia is still stuck in.

Plan your career

While much more can be reflected about academia, for better or worse, the above text is a mere starting point to reflect about the academic system and structures. It is clear that all constructed institutions are forever changing. Academia is defined by change and supposed to drive change. Knowledge evolves, and so do knowledge structures. The rise of Western science did however lead to a diminishing of other forms of knowledge. Thus, while disciplines evolved and become ever more branching into finer domains, whole other forms of knowledge were ignored or neglected. Academic structures need to decolonize and take all inequalities into account, better today than tomorrow. Future academics need to reflect and position themselves in order to become drivers and amplifiers of such change. On the other hand do future academics also need to recognise their limitations concerning which changes can be implemented in which time frame. If we try to drive change concerning aspects that are static, frustration may arise. For instance are the resource limitations in academia a fact of our current reality. I do not expect that we will get way more positions any day soon, although I would more than welcome this. Wanting to change this notion is if at all only possible in the long run. On the other end can several changes be in a shorter time window. For instance did we move the welcome lecture of new professors into the afternoon, allowing people with family to attend, who before could not make such gatherings if these were in the evening. While such changes seem minute yet obvious, they represent important shifts in the wider landscape that designs and locates academia. Learning the difference between short-term changes and long-term changes is a key goal in the reflection of how you locate yourself in academia. Which aspects do you want to change? Where do you believe your energy is worthwhile to drive fast change? Where you can focus your limited energy and resources? There are often people who try to throw all their might against injustice that we have to change in the long run. It is up for everybody on their own to evaluate this, yet many negative emotions yield whenever unchangeable or at least only long-term changeable challenges are attacked head on, with an expectation to change theses now. All perceived injustices should be always called out and if identified attacked head on. Yet we need to be gentle with our head, and make sure we do not endanger ourselves in this process. I invite you all al sit down and reflect:

1. What do you want to change in the wider academia in the short term? 2. What do you want change in academia in the long run? 3. Which challenges in academia -- but also for yourself -- do you consider to ignore for the time being? 4. Which challenges do you ignore for now, but plan to engage later on?

Academia is both place-based and non-physical at the same time. We always speak of norms, tacit knowledge and practices, mechanisms and processes that are part of the wider hemisphere that makes all of academia a non-physical entity. On the other end is academia being practiced and changed in places that have a clear location, and it is here that we need to understand and evolve our impact to begin with. We may be able to drive change in academic places, and if these prove their worth, the change will spill over to other places. In the long run, this may change academia as such. Take your time and consider what you want to change and what you chose to ignore or change later. Be mindful of your energy and capacity, yet be equally realistic about how the current rules and norms of the system are, which things you can change, and which challenges are futile to address -at least short term. No one needs more frustration or yet another overworked academic. Be the academic you want to see in the world.