Universities Became Bad Places for Work
Fictional/sensationalist story about what academia is like or what sort of person John Forbes Nash Jr. really was (he was conveniently propped up by the nuclear weapons agenda, just like R.D. with "Selfish Gene" and numerous people who help sell regime change, exploitative banking, or hype up "quantum", "hey hi" etc.)
Andy, a former university lecturer, wrote about it yesterday when he said it like it is: "And WTF!!! is a "professor of marketing" anyway? Seriously? Is that a job!? You wasted your life, not to mention those of others."
We added these links:
Last year: Microsoft 'Studies' Again? Leon Musolff is Writing Papers With Microsoft.
Earlier today: Willis Towers Watson (WTW) Producing More Propaganda for EPO "Cocaine Communication Managers"
You basically get "ahead" (even in academia) for lying on behalf of rich people. This is what gets "grants" or "sponsors" for your lab/department.
Speaking from my own experience, academia died a long time ago and I assume it used to be alive because I occasionally hear stories about it (from much older people). When I was 20 my project supervisor (called Andrea) showed me what she was doing in preparation of lectures. She studied her slides, she had piles of exams to mark up, and if she had any time left after all those chores (including mentoring/tutoring people like me) she could do some reading, research, maybe prepare a paper to publish (a huge toil; peer review is slow and presenting papers can involve international commute/travel). So the idea of academics as researchers or teachers was euphoric already; a lot of time was spent memorising things, dealing with piles of exams (tuition fees are the 'cash cows' after all), and repetitive administrivia [sic]. After I got my Ph.D. I spent a few years working as a postdoc and saw the same thing - chores, chores, and more chores. Who has time to build complex computer programs and publish papers anyway? Who has the energy/will?
The term popularised by many and coined by Doctorow mostly refers to Web services. “Enshittification” is a condition where you start with something attractive to rope users/customers in and then, over time, it gets worse. I don't think that's a useful analogy for what happened to academia. There will always be some "morons" trying to somehow interject words like "hey hi" to explain what happened. The simplest explanation is "cheapening"; they offloaded many tasks to lecturers, as if they were mindless administrators or even clerks. They also curbed/limited freedom (not limited to free speech), which made many university professors almost indistinguishable from corporate managers. When I left academia some of my colleague were part-time employees of the private industry - a hallmark of the problem at hand.
In popular old films - especially American movies - the professors are painted as celebrities in classrooms; academia is painted as some glorified "scene" of cutting-edge inquiry, open debate, and innovation. Whether that was ever a reality, well... ask the original Lost Generation. Nowadays it's merely nostalgia or fiction. █