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Comment by StandardFuture | Hacker News Reader

So, in other words, there really is not any "publish or perish" in academia. It's simply that to outcompete your fellow graduate students in getting a top job in industry (or a tenured position in academia) you need to have the most publications with the most "novelty". And that can be justified at any cost.

So, is this, at the end of the day, that the ratio of students willing to study graduate level studies, and jobs that require graduate level studies is dramatically imbalanced?

Sometimes, we as humans like to avoid the obvious discussion because it is the most uncomfortable discussion to have.

The truth is that we need more restrictions and an even higher bar on education that artificially pipes the best of the best in corresponding numbers to estimated availability of jobs in 4-5 years.

I am pretty sure that the medical world already does this.

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Yes, the would be the outside solution if you were an all seeing God. But in the real world we have to make do with local incentives. And that is leading to a ballooning of academia, professors want more grad students for more papers and more prestige, some of whom also turn into profs and it snowballs. It's great while the music is playing, but then when winter comes back, what will all these people do then? Things are already insanely competitive to the degree that many profs even say they couldn't make it into a graduate program now, you already need top conference papers just to get accepted at grad school (in better groups).

In a way, I think a lot of the internal squabbles regarding diversity etc. in the AI community come from the animosity due to a shrinking cake and more hungry mouths.

As long as there's a possibility of making more money by lying and cheating, people will lie and cheat. Especially when it's a lot more money. But I don't think there's any unemployment danger among CS PhD's to worry about. Unless they somehow managed to avoid learning how to use any tools or technologies of value to anyone. PhD's do not have to be at academia or a "top job" to be employed in a research or at least R&D capacity.

By the way, tenured positions do not pay eye-watering salaries. It's still the same vicious low stakes.

> But I don't think there's any unemployment danger among CS PhD's to worry about

This is why my comment specifically addressed top positions and tenured positions i.e., a position with a specific world-renown research group. Competition for the positions that putting all that time and effort into a PhD would be for.

> employed in a research or at least R&D capacity.

Sure, jobs exist. I am not seeing where I denied this fact anywhere.

> tenured positions do not pay eye-watering salaries

Tenure is what I am specifically referring too. It's a form of intellectual and economic freedom.

So you want to restrict people from getting a phd unless they can get a top job out of it? What about people who want to do research but aren't worth the pay/responsibility of top jobs? Is your goal to increase the value of a phd by limiting it to highest quality people possible (like with MD's)?

Tenure is a benefit that is given instead of money to keep you from leaving for more money. It may be nice to have late in your career if you want to keep working forever or bizarrely want to stay at your research-focused school but focus on teaching. But money adds up nicely and has more flexibility. And like with job offers and promotions everywhere, it's something you generally can only get if they need you more than you need them.

The AMA artificially restricts the supply of doctors through their licensing monopoly, in order to keep salaries high.

This is bad and shouldn't be emulated in other industries.

Would there be enough people willing to go into Medical School debt without a high salary on the other end?

The entire point of game theory is to align incentives. It is not to simply paint pictures of ideals and deny that humans are human.

I understand that the AMA has incentives that are not nearly as noble as simply ensuring the world has a steady stream of doctors. Nonetheless, the answer is not to simply say "the AMA has some impure incentives" as an actual dismissal of a different argument.

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