PROFESSOR’S PERSPECTIVE: The Current Landscape of Academia

In Fall 2022, the UC San Diego undergraduate campus slowly returned to an in-person class modality. Students’ day-to-day schedules jumped out of Zoom and Google Calendar and into packed lecture halls and small-group discussion sections often led by graduate teaching assistants. Yet behind the scenes, negotiations between the UAW academic worker union and the University of California reached a tipping point, resulting in the largest academic worker strike in history. Protests, chants and signage surrounding fair pay for academic workers and graduate student researchers were found on nearly every corner of campus. Across each UC school, people at all levels of education were asked to consider the current well-being of researchers in academia.

With discussions disrupted and classes canceled, UC San Diego undergraduate students were left wondering: What does my future in research look like? In this interview feature, we asked three UC San Diego biology faculty to help us tackle this question.

There is an inequality that is present throughout our society across all different sectors of the economy that has been making its way into academia for a long time, and the humanities felt it first, but it’s now getting to the sciences, and that is pushing a trend that is frankly very worrying.

I think the way society claims to value those things is different from how much society is willing to pay for [research beyond the sciences]. There is an inequality that is present throughout our society across all different sectors of the economy that has been making its way into academia for a long time, and the humanities felt it first, but it’s now getting to the sciences, and that is pushing a trend that is frankly very worrying.

Any advice for prospective grad students interested in pursuing a career in teaching/research?

I always encourage people, especially between the undergraduate level and the subsequent master’s or PhD, to take a break in between and really consider what you want to do, why you’re doing it, who you want to do it with, where you want to do it, all these basic questions. Get some experience, because you need to take a breath.

What were your thoughts/takeaways from the union strike last quarter?

I felt very sad for the faculty to have students that were feeling that way, that they were feeling like they couldn’t have an honest conversation with people. At the same time,

I feel like the entire system (and I think we all feel this way now) is just not equipped to respond to that financial challenge. I think that was a quick short-term solution that sets a precedent, which it’s not clear how sustainable that’s ever going to be in the long-term, because inflation will keep happening and prices will keep going up.

As a relatively new faculty member on campus, what are your outlooks on the post-pandemic career prospects of academia?

I think that in-person interactions are just so important to being engaged with what you’re trying to learn and getting excited about it, and that experience is just not the same, even if you can conquer technology. Maybe there should be positions that center around remote learning, and those individuals should be trained and equipped to teach remotely as opposed to us that teach in-person trying to do both.

What advice would you give someone who is uncertain about entering academia?

If people are constantly telling you that’s impossible, you’re gonna get bogged down and dragged down by that. But if you set out to do something and didn’t know how hard it was, and then you end up doing it, well then great, right?

Dr. Matt Flagg with Lina Lew

Postdoctoral Lecturer Department of Cell and Developmental Biology

Given your previous graduate school and current teaching experience, what is your take on the strike and graduate student situation?

I saw a lot of change in San Diego while I was [in graduate school]. When I got here, [graduate housing] was a pretty affordable option, given our stipend. Then the price of graduate housing changed, and the housing market changed, my costs of living went up, and now my rent gets raised as much as it possibly can every year according to the law. I don’t think you can support equity in a situation where people cannot meet their costs of living. I don’t think there’s anything that, in good faith, argues against the idea that for someone to be successful, they need housing security and the ability to support themselves. By virtue of the way that academic research is funded, slow movement is built into that system. More dollars must go through an entire governmental process for more dollars that arrive at the institutions that pay students. It’s transparent to me that graduate students need to make an income that, at the very least, covers their basic costs, and the situation isn’t tenable when that’s not the case. It seems to me that the strike was basically necessary when it happened. There is a lot of change within academia right now regarding what it means to be a graduate student and a postdoc, which is being renegotiated in important ways. Ultimately, and perhaps unfortunately, it will come down to the kind of funding we can secure from the government.

Do you have an idea of how the strike might have current and future impacts on the student body’s perspective and learning experience?

The costs of IAships to the university has increased quite considerably. The current, and perhaps changing situation is that UCs are not going to increase funding to make up for what will now be a loss of IAs in classes. We could be looking at a very significant decrease in the number of IAs in our classrooms, which strikes me as a bad thing. I think there is a general problem right now regarding what institutions like UCSD want to do with and for their students and how much funding there is, or should be, to do those things. Helping students learn to work with their peers, problem-solve, and tackle authentic questions is, to me, integral to a decent education. I understand the need for 400-person classes, but I think that the saving grace of those large classes was the possibility of small group work in sections. At this point in time, I feel like we’re all the way from undergraduates to postdocs where there’s just not enough funding to do the things that institutions are supposed to do, and that’s a detriment to everyone, especially folks who are already disincentivized from being in the sciences or who don’t feel welcome in them. I think there needs to be an agreement amongst all of us that we’re here to achieve a certain thing together, and we’re not going to accept austerity and a lack of funding and accept a degraded version of education and teaching and research because it doesn’t suit a governmental bottom line.

What would you change or would like to see in the coming years for academia?

One thing that I think is gaining some traction is an additional emphasis on mentorship and an openness to different outcomes. If you go back to the 20th century, 50-60% of people who go to grad schools are starting labs. The pipeline of academia into academia was very strong, but now that’s quite different. Now, it’s like 15-20% of people are making it from academia into academic research professor positions.

The question now is, is everyone going to accept a system where agreeing to take that step [into academia] means that young people have to live through 5-10 years of precarity? Or, is everyone going to agree that what’s happening here is valuable and put more money into the research that people love to talk about, like the cure to cancer? Somewhere along the path, people have to develop the hard-earned skills necessary to ask those research questions, know what the cutting edge of a field is like, and network with people who can develop the right ideas. That network, a lot of it, is happening at universities.

What are the pros and cons for biotech vs. academia for someone on the fence?

I think the honest truth is, you can do either and be fine. One thing I try to recommend is to take a couple of gap years. Not only are you going to have a couple of years of making money and getting off the treadmill and cycle of continuous midterms, but you’re going to give yourself some time to make an informed decision and be a better applicant. I would say it’s less of a question of

The question now is, is everyone going to accept a system where agreeing to take that step [into academia] means that young people have to live through 5-10 years of precarity? Or, is everyone going to agree that what’s happening here is valuable and put more money into the research that people love to talk about?

Dr. Matt Flagg

biotech vs. academia than it is about, “Do you want to take a gap year or not?”

It can also be good to be in a few lab contexts. Arriving at graduate school is 2-6 rotations where you’re going to try to make a big decision about the lab. It’s going to have a pretty serious effect for the next 5-10 years of your life, and having good antennae for what a happy lab looks like is a hugely beneficial thing to have in your pocket.

Any last motivational words for anyone planning to pursue research?

Be reasonably self-defensive. If a situation seems bad, do your best not to imagine that you’re going to be the exception to the rule. If someone, an advisor, seems bad to their people, assume they’ll be bad to you and get out of there. Be kind to yourself, and pursue a good advisor over prestigious research. We’re seemingly at a point where, regardless of the university you go to, if you can make it through a Ph.D. program, you’re a very desirable hire for biotech. When you orient yourself within the academic landscape, choose the place that seems most capable of being supportive of you and what you need. Try to resist the urge to go to the prestige university and find the prestige lab that publishes in the prestige journals. That tends to be like getting a job at a Michelin-star restaurant, these places where your badge of honor for being at a prestigious lab is supposed to make up for your horrible quality of life. It’s not worth it. There are good, fulfilling lives and careers that can come from an advisor who is like, “I care about my grad students, we publish where we publish, and you’re here to learn how to do research in a way that’s about your growth.” That’s possible if you prioritize it.