Even if you disregard mandmandam's reply, decide to give Patterson benefit of doubt in him not being well-versed regarding how much is the world fucked up right now, and decide to only consider his academic career, he still fails to acknowledge that:
1. Competition for funding in academia is extreme nowadays. Your institute is fucked unless it has political backing. Quality of work is irrelevant, only connections.
2. Aspiring to-be PhDs are exploited as a cheap, expendable labor to help produce meaningless papers for people in Patterson's age bracket who run the departments.
3. In some countries (US especially), public sector has ramped up costs of higher education for students several times more than what could be attributed to plain inflation, effectively pricing huge swaths of population out of it.
I have multiple friends in academia. One left completely due to sexism and systemic exploitation. One hopped countries due to sexism and finally settled for Germany with best ratio of can-do-science vs. can-have-kids. Found husband with a PhD in the US and brought him here to EU, by the way. Another one only finished their PhD only due to being supported by their partner and extended family.
I also have multiple colleagues studying college and the huge amount of work they need to put into meaningless, artificial, ultimately useless chores in order to demonstrate skill acquisition in areas that are already obsolete footnote is staggering. And if they get in? If they make it? Publish or perish. Constant scoring. Keeping results secret of others, constantly looking over their shoulders so that nobody "steals their research" to get ahead. Faking results, faking data, just to stay financially afloat. With limited options to go elsewhere, because private sector is also fucked up and want you to know a framework on average 2x as long as it exists while completely ignoring your general skills.
So much elitism, so much gatekeeping, just to keep the small amount of money flowing in away from newcomers... academia (even more than private sector) is shit.
1. Competition for funding in academia is extreme nowadays. Your institute is fucked unless it has political backing. Quality of work is irrelevant, only connections.
2. Aspiring to-be PhDs are exploited as a cheap, expendable labor to help produce meaningless papers for people in Patterson's age bracket who run the departments.
3. In some countries (US especially), public sector has ramped up costs of higher education for students several times more than what could be attributed to plain inflation, effectively pricing huge swaths of population out of it.
I have multiple friends in academia. One left completely due to sexism and systemic exploitation. One hopped countries due to sexism and finally settled for Germany with best ratio of can-do-science vs. can-have-kids. Found husband with a PhD in the US and brought him here to EU, by the way. Another one only finished their PhD only due to being supported by their partner and extended family.
I also have multiple colleagues studying college and the huge amount of work they need to put into meaningless, artificial, ultimately useless chores in order to demonstrate skill acquisition in areas that are already obsolete footnote is staggering. And if they get in? If they make it? Publish or perish. Constant scoring. Keeping results secret of others, constantly looking over their shoulders so that nobody "steals their research" to get ahead. Faking results, faking data, just to stay financially afloat. With limited options to go elsewhere, because private sector is also fucked up and want you to know a framework on average 2x as long as it exists while completely ignoring your general skills.
So much elitism, so much gatekeeping, just to keep the small amount of money flowing in away from newcomers... academia (even more than private sector) is shit.