<p>So I am not sure whether I want to work in academia or the industry after I graduate (mostly because I know very little about how either situation would be like). So what do you guys think? What are the pros and cons of working in the two fields?</p>
<p>From the looks of things, especially in the sciences and engineering, obtaining an academic job is generally more difficult than an industry job. Especially if we consider one may obtain an industry job with just a bachelor’s while the vast majority of academic jobs will require a Ph.D.</p>
<p>If you are referring to the higher education - you will continue schooling beyond your undergraduate degree.
If you want to become a professor today - you need PhD. If you want to become an adjunct - a graduate degree is always needed. But consider there are not that many positions available these days - my previous physics professor held 3 adjunct physics positions. He loves teaching, and he has his PhD. He’s a senior professor, certainly. Beside that, many of the low-level classes are taught by graduate students. So you will have to pursue it anyway. </p>
<p>If you stay in academia, even lab assistant will require a graduate degree.</p>
<p>I don’t like performing research - and I hate college polices. I love teaching though. I would only consider academia until I have enough background and experience to teach. I can be one of those freshman engineering instructors - a few of them are retired engineers.</p>
<p>Academia is a lot of politics (both the regular kind and the office kind). Industry, i.e. the private sector, expects results. In academia you can contribute literally nothing, and never produce anything of worth your whole life, and still have a six-figure income with tenure. In industry, you actually have to be productive.</p>
<p>Well, let’s not forget that in order to obtain a tenured position in academia, especially at the most prestigious institutions, one must possess an outstanding record of both research and teaching.</p>
<p>Right, you won’t get tenured if you have produced nothing of value. The key point here is that things done in industry are more overtly valuable. Their purpose tends to be much less opaque and the results much more empirical. In academia, your results could be incredibly valuable but fewer people will understand thir value.</p>
<p>I think they serve the same purpose. Either side contribute. Without researchers there is no education. Without industry there is no application available.</p>
<p>In some cases, the academia made the break-through, and other cases the industry made the break-through…</p>
<p>The industry will “package” their results and the academia’s don’t.</p>
<p>But your argument makes a good point. Some people don’t want to be bother with the greedy. But it turns out that college is also a business - a larger industry.</p>
<p>I guess the famous scientists never cared about what the society demands, because all they want is to fulfill their own desires.</p>
<p>So the tenured gender studies professor who does two hours of actual work per week and spends a lot of time writing papers on how sex is rape is producing something of value?</p>
<p>If an academic is actually producing something of value, somebody somewhere will use their own money to pay them to do it. Productive academic economists are often hired as consultants for big bucks by private industry. Ditto academic scientists, as well as others. Good writing has a paying audience, somewhere. But plenty of people in academia produce nothing of value and are only being paid by administrators who are not spending their own money, but often endowment money from people who died years ago and thus cannot decide how their bucks are spent, or money from the tax-payers, who also cannot decide how their money is spent.</p>
<p>Even scientists and such who aren’t producing anything which could be sold to consumers, nevertheless will often find private benefactors funding their research, because philanthropists see value in their work even if it isn’t “marketable” (in the consumer goods sense of the term).</p>
<p>It all depends on what you want to do, and how hard you are willing to work for it.</p>
<p>Academia requires a PhD, and generally from a good school. There are comparatively few positions, they are VERY competitive, and it takes typically 6 years to get tenure - that means a “typical” professor is at least 32 before they get tenure. Once you have tenure, you are pretty well set - paid well, generally respected, and can’t be fired for anything less than gross academic misconduct or extended criminal incarceration. But very few actually get this, and the consolation prize is wasting 6 years on tenure track (or more) to get only an instructor position with poor pay and no security at all.</p>
<p>As an academic, your primary responsibility is foundational research - core principles kind of stuff, on the cutting edge. Teaching is, to be honest, an afterthought often farmed out to grad students, junior faculty, retirement-track faculty, and those without sufficient research to keep them busy. Your research will be cutting edge, but often inapplicable without a decade or more of research - don’t expect your breakthrough design to be on shelves next year. On the bright side, you get a bunch of grad students to help you with the dull stuff, but on the down side you have a bunch of grad students sucking the life out of you and generally messing everything up. Plus you will spend a lot of time begging for research grants. Fun.</p>
<p>Industry demands less but can still be very lucrative - more so, in some cases. The job responsibilities can vary widely, as can the pay, and it is a heck of a lot easier to get a job. You can still do research in industry, but it will generally be either less groundbreaking or else larger scale - if it was groundbreaking and affordable, professors would do it. Industry is otherwise too diverse to really encapsulate quickly.</p>
<p>TomServo, what on earth at you talking about? You remember we are on the engineering forum, right? What does gender studies have to do with it? We are talking about academia in engineering.</p>
<p>Besides, sitting down an writing a paper is working. I don’t reall know where you get the idea that it isn’t.</p>
<p>Trust me, politics is very much a part of the private sector also.</p>
<p>One will find “Politics” anywhere two or more humans are organized and/or working towards some goal.</p>
<p>Academia would be excellent for those who are capable of committing themselves to long-term projects that may or may not result in an answer. Industry would be a better fit for those who prefer projects that have some finite answer or result somewhere. Of course, this is perhaps an oversimplification of how things work in either area.</p>
<p>I am certain about one thing: as oddly as it may sound, I think one has less intellectual freedom in Academia than in Industry.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The operative word here is “think”, as you certainly don’t know this. In fact, it is the opposite. As long as you can bring in money doing it, you can pretty much do whatever research you would like in academia.</p>
<p>Certainly, one may research whatever topic one desires as long as one is able to convince the moneypeople one’s research is meaningful and will provide useful and valuable results. Failure to accomplish this (obtaining funding) means one may not research the desired topic. Therefore, your intellectual freedom is limited by one’s ability to convince others one’s research is valuable/useful.</p>
<p>Another thing to remember is that most basic and applied scientific research (in the US) is funded by the government. And generally, the government likes to fund projects in weapons, energy, and life science research. So, again, we see that the wealthiest “moneyperson” already has a clear set of fields it likes to fund (mostly applied) and this means researchers must satisfy the government’s demands before they are able to research what they would like to research.</p>
<p>Finally, what I meant as intellectual freedom is the ability to find answers to those questions, no matter how esoteric, that one may have without fear of being “crucified” for challenging the status quo. Take the scientific field for example, when Agostino Bassi, Albert Einstein, or Ernest Rutherford proposed their respective scientific theories, they were heavily criticized and/or ridiculed for doing so, even though their ideas were experimentally proven and then accepted.</p>
<p>Academia is the one place where “fresh”, “new” ideas are assimilated once the old guard passes away. It is certainly not a place where the Albert Einsteins of the world will thrive; they are better off getting a job at the patent office.</p>
<p>I must insist you don’t have a clue what you are talking about. Are you in academia? Have you ever been? Didn’t think so. Honestly, there is plenty of intellectual freedom even by your standards.</p>
<p>Also, most of the “Albert Einstein’s” in history either worked for universities or government labs.</p>
<p>There is no need to feel personally offended, Boneh3ad. If I remember correctly you are still a graduate student and not yet part of academia proper. Instead of simply accusing me of not having a clue, please provide a reasonable explanation as to why I do not have a clue (that should be more effective in destroying my position and should be relatively easier for you since you are a graduate student while I’m still an undergraduate student).</p>
<p>Where does my opinion on academia come from? From my professors, who have been part of academia for decades. From their comments, I have been able to form the opinion that academia is a great place to research very interesting areas but a horrible place if one is interested in seeking answers to questions that may challenge the established status quo.</p>
<p>Additional reading:</p>
<p>[National</a> Science Foundation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Science_Foundation]National”>National Science Foundation - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Challenging the established status quo is, by definition, damned near impossible. The only way to do it free of ANY sort of restrictions or risks is to finance it all yourself ala Elon Musk and SpaceX.</p>
<p>Academia is certainly not perfect, but in industry, most of the time you are not free to think outside the box unless you are part of a small group of lucky people. More often than not, companies want the cheapest solution, not the best, most interesting or most innovative. You are almost always much more intellectually boxed-in if ou are in industry. The only real exception is if you are part of a company’s advanced development wing, which is usually small and even then only approximates academia.</p>
<p>Furthermore, in industry and government labs, you are often forbidden from publishing your work because of national security and/or trade secret. That is hardl freedom.</p>
<p>Based on my experience as a Ph.D. student and the collective experience of the professors with whom I work VERY closely, academia offers absolutelyas much intellectual freedom as you can get without financing your own work. That includes the experience of my advisor who has, since the mid-1960’s, worked in industry, at Sandia, and in academia.</p>
<p>Name a famous scientist and they probably worked at a university. Name a famous inventor and they probably financed their own work (at least to start).</p>
<p>A few working scientists seem to disagree with some of your opinions: [Mythbusting</a> for Academics: Considering a Job in Biotech/Pharma - Science Careers - Biotech, Pharmaceutical, Faculty, Postdoc jobs on Science Careers](<a href=“http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2010_04_23/science.opms.r1000088]Mythbusting”>http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2010_04_23/science.opms.r1000088)</p>
<p>My intention was not to disparage academia. Still, it seems academia is less the place where one may discover new insights about our reality and more the place where one goes to support the established status quo, especially if the fact that industry is providing more funding to academia is considered. And these days, academia is behaving more like industry.</p>
<p>Those of us who place a high value on intellectual independence (masochism) would probably be better off avoiding both, but then we would probably starve.</p>
<p>Wait was the masochism thing a joke?</p>
<p>Anyway, where does that article contradict what I said? It’s not like I spoke in absolutes. It supports my claim that it is more difficult and much less common to publish. It supports my claim that your goals are set for you in industry and that you are more boxes in in your methods.</p>
<p>I’m not putting industry down. I am seriously considering industry as opposed to trying for academia. However, industry just is not as intellectually free for the vast majority of people. Maybe in biotech/pharma the gap is much smaller but in areas I have seen (ME, AE, Civil) the gap is more like I am reporting.</p>
<p>No, the intellectual masochism was not a joke. Intellectual masochists are individuals who seek answers to probable unanswerable and/or extremely hard-to-answer questions. Neither academia nor industry looks kindly upon the intellectual masochist, in my view.</p>
<p>But returning to the thread’s premise, obviously industry and academia have their advantages and disadvantages. One of the good things about industry, is that as long as one brings in the profits, very few people care what one’s opinions, ideas, or politics are; unfortunately, the former is offset by the ruthlessness of industry: no one is going to keep you around if your best years are behind you. In academia, one’s best years may be decades in the past but at least one may continue receiving respect, and most importantly, some form of job.</p>