Radhika Nagpal and the Awesomest 7 Year Postdoc

I came across an excellent article this morning by Radhika Nagpal, a (now tenured) Professor in Harvard's School of Engineering. Her post appeared yesterday in the Scientific American blog under the title, "The-Awesomest-7-Year-Postdoc or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tenure-track-faculty-life."

It's a list of advice, of which one of the points is "stop taking advice, especially in lists." That aside, it's a must read for anyone headed down an academic path. The key line:

"It seems to me that at all levels of academia, almost regardless of field and university, we are suffering from a similar myth: that this profession demands – even deserves – unmitigated dedication at the expense of self and family. This myth is more than about tenure-track, it is the very myth of being a “real” scholar."

Being an academic entails massive sacrifice. It is, or can be, an all-consuming life. But why? I see two perspectives. On one hand, it is the very job description of an academic to ask questions and find answers. We are paid to engage with the most brilliant minds and to guide the most brilliant students to explore the very edges of human knowledge. We had best take it seriously - and who wouldn't want to?

The other perspective is economic. If it's a good life, there will be an arms race to get in: you and I both want that position, so what are you willing to do to get it?

The truth, as always, must lie somewhere in the middle. It is a tragedy however that the author felt compelled to defend 56 hours a week (and raising a family) as not being too little, and that Scientific American thought this view worthy to publish. As someone at the brink of a plunge into the academic world, this really hits home.

Check out Radhika Nagpal's article here, and check out her amazing research on self assembling systems and ROBOTIC BEES here. 

What's an Education Worth?

This story from the WSJ has been making the rounds today: 

Struggling Thunderbird Business School Finds a For-Profit Lifeline

It's worth a read for anyone interested (or in) management education. The short story is that the Thunderbird School of Management has leased its main campus to a for-profit campus operator in order to stay afloat. While the recession has hit every walk of graduate education, Thunderbird lacks an affiliated university and is thus particularly vulnerable to the downturn. And while it may be an extreme case (applications are down 75% over 15 years), it's worrying when viewed as a canary in the coal mine.

Thunderbird's solution (a twenty years lease to a for-profit campus operator) is also worth a pause. In the short term, it keeps the school running and allows for valuable (and substantial) investments in campus infrastructure. Over the long term, it's worth asking whether shifting a formerly non-profit educational institution into a for profit enterprise fundamentally harms its educational mission - a question that's particularly apropos in the context of the current discussion on higher education in America.

Personally, I believe that full time, dedicated, and in-person educational experiences offer an unparalleled value in terms of networks, skills, and expanded horizons they allow students to develop. At the same time, the options for free, online, and interactive learning platforms are improving, which means that the benefits of the "in the flesh" experience need to be quantified and communicated to students; especially once a school can no longer claim "education" to be it's only goal.

A World Without Walls

"If the Ivy League was the breeding ground for the elites of the American Century, Stanford is the farm system for Silcon Valley."  -Ken Auletta

This quote appeared in a New Yorker story from last April. While "Get Rich U" doesn't exactly wax eulogic on Stanford's educational priorities, it is a fascinating exploration of what makes the university the innovative powerhouse that it is. Stanford has quite a track record, after all, claiming credit for some five thousand companies including Hewlett-Packard, Yahoo, Cisco, Sun Microsystems, Netflix, Electronic Arts, LinkedIn, Fairchild Semiconductor, and Google. What makes the article particularly noteworthy, though, is how thoroughly the author walks through the themes discussed on this blog. It reads as a recipe for creativity.

1. Community Builds Creativity. The campus itself was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead as an open environment with no walls, broad avenues, and vast gardens lined by palms and California live oaks. Central plazas allow large gatherings and encourage chance encounters.

2. Diverse People = Diverse Ideas. The school cultivates economic and social diversity: caucasian students are a minority, 17% of Stanford’s undergraduates are the first member of their family to attend college, and if an undergraduate's annual family income is below a hundred thousand dollars, tuition is free.

3. T-shaped People. There is an overwhelming emphasis on interdiscplinary education. From the article: "[interdisciplinarity] is the philosophy now promoted at the various schools at Stanford — engineering, business, medicine, science, design — which encourages students from diverse majors to come together to solve real or abstract problems. The goal is to have them become what are called “T-shaped” students, who have depth in a particular field of study but also breadth across multiple disciplines. Stanford hopes that the students can also develop the social skills to collaborate with people outside their areas of expertise."

4. Dream Big Dreams. Stanford has a "bias towards action", and students profess a "sometimes inflated belief that their work is changing the world for the better." The culture emphasizes learning-by-doing.

I'd highly recommend that anyone interested in creativity or education give the article a read. And there's an interesting hook for the Stanford community as well: the article discusses the possibility that Stanford's current emphasis on entrepreneurship and innovation threatens the fundamental mission of the university itself. From former university president Gerhard Casper, "Stanford is now justifying its existence mostly in terms of what it can do for humanity and improve the world." All well and good, but what about learning for the sake of knowledge?

Check out the full article at the Newyorker.com.