Research positions should be considered like professional sports positions. Few slots, lots of varying levels of interns, farm teams, and semi pro teams, and all of them being funneled to the “real” professional ranks. Huge supply of applicants for limited slots. Not a great position to put yourself in, unless you have some basis for believing that you’re just better than the rest at some combination of researching and lobbying for a position.
Not completely wrong, but the difference is of course that even though it is true that the academic bigshots are much more productive as others, the situation is not quite as extreme as in professional sports (where, e.g. no one wants to watch tennis players that aren’t at least in the top 100 in the world). Hence the pay structure or the institutional structure should hardly be as extreme either.
I agree. The research pyramid isn’t quite as pointy as professional sports, but you still need to do the math on applicants vs. positions, and factor in that researchers at the top have much longer careers.
Research positions should be considered like professional sports positions. Few slots, lots of varying levels of interns, farm teams, and semi pro teams, and all of them being funneled to the “real” professional ranks. Huge supply of applicants for limited slots. Not a great position to put yourself in, unless you have some basis for believing that you’re just better than the rest at some combination of researching and lobbying for a position.
Not completely wrong, but the difference is of course that even though it is true that the academic bigshots are much more productive as others, the situation is not quite as extreme as in professional sports (where, e.g. no one wants to watch tennis players that aren’t at least in the top 100 in the world). Hence the pay structure or the institutional structure should hardly be as extreme either.
Well, strangers don’t. There’s a built-in audience for things like high school football games, though.
I agree. The research pyramid isn’t quite as pointy as professional sports, but you still need to do the math on applicants vs. positions, and factor in that researchers at the top have much longer careers.