Saturday, June 30, 2007

Research labs vs. academia

A discussion over at Muthu's blog led to the following great question:
You have a talented graduate who has a faculty job offer and a research lab job offer. Modulo the specifics of the univ and the lab, where should they go?
I think it's a great question, in part because it points out fantastic biases in the system. Of course almost all professors will almost always favor the university position; after all, they chose academia, so there's an inherent bias toward that direction. In my experience, students also are biased toward academia. Almost all students who work for a Ph.D. go in from the beginning with the mindset that they're going to be a professor, and that can be hard to let go of.

But very few people in computer science (both in general, and theory in particular) go on to become professors. There just aren't that many professor jobs. Perhaps one of the first conversations advisors ought to have with students would start, "I'm sure you want to be a professor when you're done here. But just so we're clear, what would be your backup plan?"

Of course, research labs shouldn't be just a backup plan. They're different from academic positions in ways that can be very appealing to many people : no need to continually find funding, no teaching, no tenure pressure, and generally more emphasis on accomplishing things as a group rather than individually. There's no single right answer to the question of whether to go to the lab or the university; it should depend on the personality, life goals, and needs of the student.

And a final thought -- life goals can change, and one can change one's mind later. Many people switch from labs to academia or academia to labs. Some people -- as Muthu himself knows -- can make multiple such switches throughout their career.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

no need to continually find funding

I'm an IBM researcher. This is not necessarily true (unfortunately).

Anonymous said...

For what it's worth, I know a lot of profs who are honest about the drawbacks of being in academia. (I am a prof myself, and can fully understand why someone would take a job outside of academia, even not at a research lab.) It's (mostly) not professors who are biased in favor of academia, it's the deans and administrators who don't "count" student placement unless it is in a university.

Everyone (Michael, as well as any students reading this) should also realize that being a professor at Harvard (or any top school) will be qualitatively different from being a professor at a lower-ranked school. While anyone who is reasonably talented and dedicated can probably find an academic job somewhere, it is very hard to get a job at a top-10 school.

Anonymous said...

i would like to add a couple of thoughts.

another possible career track for students who love to teach, is to try and become a prof at some selective 4-year college. who knows, you may inspire the next Chris Umans or Neil Gershenfeld! unfortunately, the number of such jobs is quite few (in North America).

this brings me to my next point, which is that students should consider many parts of the world for jobs, if possible. for reasons of globalization, and also since CS research and education are considered strategically important by many countries, i think it is important that students get a global experience -- i personally encourage our students (and esp. our American students) to do so. getting an internship at Andy Yao's group at Tsinghua, for instance, would be great. also, one of our American students is doing an internship at Bell Labs Bangalore this summer. (i specifically mention our American students since i work in America and of course, our non-American students have already taken the international leap.)

aravind srinivasan

Anonymous said...

research labs ... different from academic positions in ways that can be very appealing to many people : no need to continually find funding, no teaching, no tenure pressure, and generally more emphasis on accomplishing things as a group rather than individually.

and much better salaries, though less vacation and little to no chance to launch your own startup while still employed in your day job.

metoo said...

As Michael says, I have been on both sides, and frequently find myself wearing both hats. Besides the pros and cons listed here, I hoped someone will do a fervent defense of academia and argue that foundational results emerge in academia and not as much from corporate labs!

And that applies to theory and systems research. Often people relate theory/systems divide to theory/practice which is simply false. Academic research, theory or systems, is conceptual and applied research, theory or systems, may be practical.