I went for my PhD in my upper 40's. In my previous life, I was in senior positions, but I knew that these meant nothing in a PhD program. I had some professors who were younger than me, but I paid them due deference because of their positions. There were a few occasions where they put me in charge of class discussions because I had more experience in a specific topic, but otherwise I was there to learn from them. No matter what your previous experience, yes, you will be treated like a rookie in academia because that is what you are.
Right! There have been many cases of younger supervisors and older students in history and the older students looked up to their supervisors not because of age but because of what they could teach them.
I teach on a masters programme that has a lot of later career industry professionals on it - so as an early thirties academic I am regularly supervising people in their forties, fifties and even sixties and beyond. I have a potential PhD student next year who is 20 years older than me.
I have more experience with research, especially in my area of interest, than they do. So whilst they’ll have ideas, they’re usually going to take my advice on board. However often they have lots of experience in the industry that I don’t - so on related background I would be asking them questions I don’t know the answers to that they might.
It’s a back and forward where everybody respects each other, but recognising that ultimately their work is their work, and it will benefit from my support. So whilst I wouldn’t aim to patronise anyone, I am also teaching them and if they were to get on their high horses about me trying to support them to improve their work, ultimately I don’t need to give them my time and effort.
I’ve never had that happen. Because most people realise the hierarchy is there for a reason, even if it doesn’t have to be formal all the time.
Of course there’s a hierarchy. Lecturers and postdocs are not the professional equals of PhD students. You’re a student. The lecturers are above you in both field knowledge and the organizational schema of the university. That’s not inherently a problem.
I think there’s a recurring issue with mature students who come to a university setting and are discomfited by the fact that they’re now occupying a lower hierarchical position than they’re used to, and chafe at that.
I would say how mature students are looked at varies. I’m one myself. My supervisor sees me as a partner and more or less gives me full latitude with my project budget. I did come into the program with external industry funding, which helps as without me there would be no project.
I went to grad school just a year after graduating with my BA, so not a "mature" student but feel like my supervisor also treated me as a partner and I had very full latitude as well with the directions and decisions in my project. That's just how my supervisor rolled. It's maybe a difficult degree of freedom for some students but it worked well for me 🤷♀️
Uhm I am not sure this is not a problem. It depends much on the model of university you want to create, you have in mind. And also it also depends on how you define ‘professional equals’. What I’ve found is that for academics their identity as academics is very important and that's where the boundary professional identity/identity as a whole blurs
Here’s a tip, as far as most academics go, what counts - what proves your mettle - is publications, grants/research money, and citations by others of your work. Those are hard earned, reviewed, show some relevance to your ideas and impact on your field. That’s basically the playing field, for better or worse. Far distant to that is teaching effectively, admin stuff and taking responsibility like becoming a dean, beyond that maybe some consulting or other work especially if it brings notoriety or opportunities for the students.
Now you come in with “life experience.” Where is that on the way academics rank? Down there with consulting. If your experience is so valuable turn it into research ideas. Turn it into publications and grants, then you will have turned something vague into something useful.
Let’s put it this way: let’s say you’re in psych and you start spouting off about how you were in child care and your methods of child reward contingencies were SO effective. You expect some respect for that? Even if true and you were *awesome*, who cares? That’s anecdotal evidence from your perspective. Introspection went out as a methodology in the late 1800s with Wundt. There’s no discipline, no measurement, no theoretical grounding.
Now write your ideas up, create or integrate a theoretical framework and it’s a start. Is it new? Does it advance theory? Does it create an interesting test of 2 theories? Can you: develop an experiment or series around it? Gather actual data with rigorous definitions, controls, and measurements? Write it up to communicate all that effectively? Get through peer review? Get grants to test it? These are all things the professionals you’re dealing with have done and must do, and what you need to prove useful at to gain their respect.
You’re not totally off. Academics is a strange insular world. Go to conferences and people who are unknown in the broader world are suddenly like rock stars based on their publications. The nature of the profession attracts and tolerates some strange people, not always the most socially adroit. But that’s the pool you’re swimming in and as a student, you’ve proven nothing yet. You may not even be useful as an assistant yet. Your cherished life experience may actually be interfering with your getting the rigor of academics. Learn what they think is important, and how they develop and test ideas. Earn respect in their world, don’t expect it handed to you.
I don’t really want to create a university with no hierarchy and I doubt many others really do either. You are a student; you have teachers. You inherently occupy a lower hierarchical place than they do. That’s fine. I know it’s a shock to come back to a school setting after years outside of it and find yourself in that sort of position again, but that doesn’t mean we need to overhaul the concept of a university just because you found some people to be patronizing. I would work on adjusting to your new role first. Your life experience doesn’t really matter. You’re a student, no matter how mature you are or what you did before coming to grad school.
Wow. It looks like my question was really on a sensitive topic. So it looks like I have a semi answer. Maybe we should discuss what does it mean to have so strongly felt hierarchies in place in a democratic society. And again if university is an institution of said democratic society. That would be worth a reflection.
I am also pretty sure we should spell out more what it means ‘hierarchy’ - I didn't mean to not respect my duties as a PhD, I was talking about how we interact and think of ourselves, and that seems to me important.
Sensitive? I don’t think so. You’re just getting frank, blunt replies.
The rest of this is kind of silly. Nothing about a democratic society presupposes a lack of hierarchies, as you can tell from the various hierarchies in every democratic society. At any rate, a university is not a democracy. Few workplaces are.
I don’t really know what you mean about “Howe we interact or think of ourselves.” So far all you’ve said is that some people were patronizing to you and you feel like your life experiences don’t really matter. I think it’s a bit silly to generalize about systemic power issues in academia based on some people being slightly rude, and as I’ve said your life experiences really don’t matter.
It seems like you want to be treated as a professional equal. But you’re not. You’re not the equal of postdocs or lecturers in terms of your position at the university or your knowledge of the field. Eventually you might be.
Sorry, nothing I’ve said suggests PhDs don’t deserve “basic treatment.”
Unless a PhD student is getting their second PhD, they are not doing to have achieved the same degrees as a lecturer or a postdoc and it’s profoundly unlikely that they’ll have as many publications. Either way, it doesn’t matter. They’re not equals because one is a student and one is a lecturer. This is fairly straightforward.
Yes, I’m aware of what I posted earlier. That does not imply what you have suggested it implies.
We are talking about the UK, where lecturer means “associate professor.” They have PhDs.
Either way, it’s not a matter of seniority. One is a student. One is a teacher. If the student is the most accomplished academic in the world with nine PhDs and a Nobel or two, they are still a student. They are there to learn from the teacher. They thus occupy a lower hierarchical position. I can’t make this any simpler.
No - I haven't done a generalization. Please re read. I have told you my experience and asked you ‘is it like that or was I unlucky?’. I asked a question. You assume to know what happened, with this slightly rude thing for example. You also assume that I want to be a professional equal. Really lots of assumptions
Wondering if a few people being rude to you is emblematic of a large systemic issue that should be worked on is, in fact, a generalization. That you were asking for confirmation or rebuttal of this doesn’t change that. This is a bit tedious, don’t you think?
Everyone’s working with very limited information. All you’ve said is that some people were patronizing to you and you don’t think your life experience matters. No one knows what that last bit means because you haven’t explained. What it *sounds* like is a common issue with mature students feeling uncomfortable with being treated like students again. That, plus your repeated focus on hierarchies, and your suggestion that they’re unfit for a democratic society and that this is something we should “reflect” on, make it sound like you’re unhappy being treated as something less than an equal. That all of this is ultimately based on some people talking down to you makes it sound very petty.
I am sorry if people were rude to you at your university, but you are being downvoted here because this is how you’re coming across.
Well I suppose that the next time I will have an issue instead of wanting to discuss it with a larger community and wanting to know - cause I don't know academia and that’s why I’m here - I’ll just keep my mouth shut and just assume that my experience does not matter at all. How does that sound?
I haven't explained more cause I am not an idiot - I know that people who don't want to listen will not listen. And there's not a climate for me to say more. If I also didn't create a climate for you to answer me in a more considerate way, I am sorry. I def came across wrongly and didn't mean to offend anybody.
Concerning hierarchies and democracy it’s sad that you're reducing it to my assumed desire for professional equality when my intention was to start a broader discourse on that
But there are hierarchies in a democratic society, and we're better for it. You can't have a democratic army for instance, and both elements of the union army in the American civil war and the very early red army in the Russian civil war tried. They stopped because nobody could get anything done!
There is a hierarchy between having the skills you are here to learn, and not having them yet.
Lmao you could easily have lecturers who have no fucking clue what they are talking about, but dumped shit tons of money into a Uni, not that complicated, but I guess that does translate to "being above someone else in field knowledge/organizational schema"
Yes, especially because post-docs and lecturers sometimes know way less than some experienced PhD students, that is a fact. I am talking about knowledge. Some even have more or better publications, if we decide to use that as a measure of "who knows more" (soooo phallyc, psychoanalytically speaking). That's really a problem for them. Combine immense egos with a pile of insecurities and personas forged in a hierarchy that has no substance and that's what you get... the mess we currently see in academia. It's almost like the music industry nowadays - successful people are the ones with an immense talent in selling their lack of talent. A small number of decent people are true researchers and those don't need to be arrogant. They know who they are.
Some PhD students, believe this to be true. They are rarely correct, and rarely meet with career success. Regardless, the PhD student is at the bottom of the hierarchy because they are a student and not the teacher. It’s wild that this fact rankles so many people, particularly mature students. If you lack the humility required to accept your role as a student and not a professional equal of your teachers, grad school may not be the right place for you.
hahaha, the one who knows everything. You grab the grids of the crumbling structure with despair. I couldn't care less. What you're saying is not even statistically possible, so please don't strengthen my arguments. Another academic that missed maths and statistics...
There’s a hierarchy. The rest of your life experience doesn’t matter and you are the bottom of the totem pole as a PhD student. You are not the equal of a post doc, lecturer, or faculty. It’s ingrained, sometimes necessary, and unchangeable.
Make a commitment to be respectful and kind when you finally get some power and learn to live with the fact that you don’t get special leverage because you’ve lived a life before grad school.
I don’t dispute what you’re saying, I’m just wondering Why we uphold these hierarchies. I don’t think humanity shows signs of being a civilized intelligent evolved species by upholding monkey standards, I’m super curious what proponents argue for here
I think there’s a balance. To a degree, the hierarchy is necessary. The expertise level is far different and the inexperienced opinion does not outweigh or count as equal to the experienced practitioner. This is especially key in trade fields like law and medicine, but still matters for academia.
To me, the real rub is the lack of professionalism and kindness. We can and should have a hierarchy that supports expertise, appropriate mentorship, and oversight. What we don’t need is the way it has been warped. People get power and just fuck it all up. A hierarchy is fine, if people are treated like people.
Hmm maybe, I feel like we’re talking of many things here. But for instance, of Course an inexperienced opinion can outweigh the experienced practitioners even if the experienced ones have more anecdotal and thus evaluational superiority. New ideas that are great should be promoted regardless of who brings them to the table and should be recognized as top in the hierarchy themselves. Hierarchies that are built on persons and are personal in essence don’t really bring anything to academia in themselves.
It's like that. If you produce exceptionally, you can transcend it a bit.
Your life experiences don't mean nothing. You probably have entertaining anecdotes that you can share at parties. These experiences have no impact on your position within the academic hierarchy.
I was an non-traditional undergrad and then did two long ass post-docs. Didn't get TT job until 46. Had a lot to learn from 35 year old full professors. Never felt butt-hurt about it. My youth was awesome and my anecdotes are much more entertaining than theirs lol.
The flip side is many who leave academia finds that all the academic stuff doesn’t matter to people outside of that world, especially in the Anglo-American world.
This is very true.
Academia is a fantasy land.
In this fantasy land there are Lord of the Flies like hierarchies (or is it Deliverance? Or Heart of Darkness?) and it's okay to be an abusive prick so long as you win grants. You win grants by abusing those lower in the hierarchy for their time, ideas and energy.
Meanwhile, in the real world, most people would love to have a chance to obtain an undergraduate degree. They think higher education is about learning and teaching. Ha 😂. It's a bunch of Peter Pans floating around.
Unless an academic is solving a real world problem through applied science, it's just long term journalism.
My field is similar to yours where most people are close to 30 before getting their PhD (master’s degree is required before getting into the PhD program and it’s still another 3-6 years to get the PhD, usually 4-5). Full professor usually not until 45-50.
I have recently gone from PhD student to postdoc and I can totally empathize with OP on this. In my experience, the problem is not the existence of a hierarchy but what it entails.
It’s one thing for a hierarchical structure to have implications for roles and duties in the workplace. It’s another thing for it to affect whether people sound deferential or patronizing in everyday interactions. The same question asked in a seminar by a PhD student or a professor could get wildly different responses.
And this is not exclusive to intellectual debates. Even in small talk you can see how the treatment differs based on rank. The tone, the wording, the body language, everything changes based on rank. In my experience, university staff get the worst treatment.
I agree with OP that too many academics are too deeply invested in their positions in this hierarchy, to the point where it becomes central to their self-worth. It’s not surprising that this is a touchy subject.
The *internalizing* of hierarchical structures is a problem because it often makes the work environment particularly toxic.
It feels incredibly weird that so many people here just consider it normal for you to be treated as a lesser being by people with a higher academic title.
Of course there are functional differences in your rights and duties depending on your academic position, but those differences don't make it so you are more or less of an individual than anyone else.
Also, from a practical point of view a social hierarchy in academia just serves to slow down scientific progress, because at a minimum it stifles the ideas of people "lower" in the hierarchy, and that slows down their learning progress and also prevents good and new ideas from flourishing.
Frankly, I have the feeling that I agree with this. Hierarchy for the sake of operation is fine and expected (this papers goes through this person, this person is your dissertation committee and can fail you, etc...). What is not OK is how you are treated. Like, what question you can ask, what tone you must adopt, what behavior is tolerated (ordering your student to bring coffee for you) and what is not based on your hierarchy and not just basic human courtesy.
I have been in both settings, industry and students. I have been involved with professors inside academic settings and industrial/outside-world-work setting. Some professors were lovely human being. Some brought their academic manners outside and they fared horribly.
So, please tell us, did you never have a boss or a subordinate during your "whole life experience" before becoming a PhD?
Of course there is a hierarchy, what did you expect? Same as anywhere else where there are people in senior positions with more knowledge, experience and responsibility than people in lower positions. Having a hierarchy doesn't mean that you are not respected or treated as an equal on a personal level. But you do have to answer to your PI, who has to answer to the head of the department, who has to answer to..idk, the dean or something?
As I said before I never contested my duties. You are assuming I am treated as an equal on a personal level - nobody cares to ask whether something happened there or not.
I did nothing to deserve the downvotes - I asked a question about other people experiences
There 100% is a hierarchy. That's not in and of itself problematic. Every workplace has it. And usually those further along have more experience, know more about that given topic/field/industry, etc.
The problem with academic hierarchies is that too many people treat it as if it signifies a person's worth or lack of equality. Like a professor is somehow more important, smarter, and better than a post-doc, who is more important, smarter, and better than a doctoral student, etc. And within that framework, someone from a more prestigious university is above someone from a less prestigious university.
It's a fallacy, and frankly, a pathetic way to see the world.
Personally I agree the hierarchy sometimes reflects on respect and personal relationships too much in academia, I'm surprised no one is admitting to this. It's a very traditional system and attitudes can be kind of classist. PhD students only hang out with PhD students, they are expected to do the menial jobs of professors or even do favors for them, depending on the entitlement of the professor. And they are usually adults, sometimes even older adults as in your case. It can be a little gross.
I think this kind of issue is especially keenly felt in the Philosophy Department. As a woman I couldn’t continue with philosophy because it was so awful! The egos made it difficult to even get into the lecture theatre. Everyone seemed to be vying to be the Most Special and Most Intelligent and Most Influential and I certainly felt like people wanted to remind me and others we were ‘below’ them. I never felt that way in neuroscience or physics or psychology, obviously there was a hierarchy depending on experience but I was treated with respect and my contributions were appreciated rather than seen as a threat.
Be the change… when you encounter the lame and unpleasant sides don’t continue the trend.
“I had to go through it so you do too” is an awful ethic and explains a lot of people’s behavior in this field.
I mean 100% there is hierarchy in academia, it's not protected from the broader social stigmas. Within it, there are people who work against these hierarchies but self-awareness varies by department I've found (as a visibly disabled PhD student from a working class background).
When I was a PhD student, I (and others In my cohort) were treated the worst by Assistant Professors and Post-Docs. It was like they had to mark their territory by treating grad students poorly. I would suggest the remedy I employed when I got a job, remember what that felt like and don't treat others that way.
As a student who came from industry there were parts I found inherently infantilizing due to the patronizing and some structural set ups. I remember thinking that at the time, but I can’t think of examples now. But at times I know I felt I had no choice or control and it was frustrating to not feel like an adult working for myself, which I essentially was.
I've found some people in my program tend to be patronizing or dismissive towards students and their concerns regardless of age. As an older student with professional experience who is pretty good at writing a polite professional response email, I've also found they're not used to students pushing back. I would suggest thinking about using your professional skills to advocate for the other students in your program - one of the main benefits of having industry experience (I think) is understanding how to navigate office politics and that work isn't that serious.
So are there patronizing jerks in academia? Sure. Tell me you haven't been managed by a patronizing jerk in the past - maybe a worse one! Maybe you hoped it would be better and it sucks that it's not but you have the skills to manage it. Not everyone has had the chance to develop them.
Whip out your best 'as per your last email' next time you get the chance.
This is a weird question. Of course there is a hierarchy. Much like most jobs there are people who have more power (like PIs). It tends to be a relatively informal and relatively egalitarian in the sense of professors treating students as peers (at least in STEM).
Academia has plenty of issues, but you’ve either failed to find them or worded it incredibly oddly.
My industry experience counts a lot for my PhD and I am treated as an equal by two supervisors that like to work in a more horizontal structure. So, yes, it is possible to be lucky and have your working experience recognised. I find the comments in this thread very, but very strange.
As others have said, there is definitely a hierarchy, and it’s helpful to the extent that it ensures you can learn from people more knowledgeable than yourself in a given subject area.
For philosophy in particular, part of the issue is that the field is not a very collaborative one. The norm in philosophy is single author publications based on individual study and some peer feedback. There isn’t the same dynamic of collaborating in a larger scale research lab that you might have in other disciplines. The consequence is that success in philosophy depends on your ability to promote *yourself*, not your lab, department, or research team.
Focus on finding a few close friends among the other PhD students in your department and reviewing each other’s work. If possible, find a faculty mentor or two that can give you feedback as well. Your goal is just to learn from those people and produce exceptional work.
So a PhD— as in being an academic is a job. You worked plenty of jobs. Let’s say, you made a lot of money and had wonderful experiences. That’s wonderful and you should be proud.
But you’ve never had experience in THIS job. That’s what you’re feeling infantalized. That’s ok. You’re new. You literally have no idea what you don’t know. But you will. Give it time.
You also keep referring to yourself as a PhD. But you’re not. You’re a student. Let’s say you’re saying PhD as a shorthand for PhD student. Fine. But see my point? You’re imprecise. Being a PhD— a post doc or a TT position— means you’re trained to be precise in your language. Frankly it took me a very long time to learn precision in my language usage. I’ve been a PhD for 10 years and teaching with a masters for 5 years prior to that. So believe me when I say precision matters and we’re always refining our precision.
What you’ve only really told us is that you feel your life experience or professional experience is count for respect. Of course you deserve respect, as we all should. But your experience earns you no deference. Because, again, this is a different field. If you were a CEO of a fortune 100 company for 20 years, the moment you decide to enter medical school your experience matters little. A PhD program is a research oriented training program. Your past experience while valid will be far different from this experience because it is simply different.
Besides, I’ve read through the threads and I don’t believe you told us your experience or training prior. Some PhD programs require a master’s degree. Others only require a bachelor’s degree. Neither of those training programs equate to what you will learn, think, and do in your PhD program.
Here’s an anecdote: I’ve had students who’ve been practicing public opinion researchers or economists at firms. But literally their training is at the undergraduate level plus on the job training. I can tell you their epistemological approach is basically the normative assumptions of their former employers or “common sense” analysis from very elementary heuristics. A PhD learns to participate in those epistemic discussions or uncover knowledge that in turn help form those heuristics. It took them a while to understand they knew how to use tools. But a PhD is learning how to make those tools in the first place.
So yes there’s a hierarchy. That’s how it should be because you’re not a doctor yet. You’re just learning. That’s not disrespectful to you. But please make sure there is no hubris clouding your willingness to learn.
Don’t confuse organizational hierarchy with the way people treat each other.
Of course the academic world has hierarchies. Whether that implies people higher up in the hierarchy look down on others is a different matter, and might be more an effect of local culture.
Even within my own university there’s a difference between fields. In some fields, professors are still seen as demi-gods. In others, you’re simply the person with the most experience and some more responsibility, but nothing more than that.
If there is a caste system in academia, it’s more about the division between academic and non-academic staff.
When you’re a student you don’t have the expertise in the subject you’re studying yet. Even as a PhD student. Life experience in the School of Hard Knocks is always useful but it is not a shortcut to academic expertise. You can’t absorb a body of scholarly knowledge via work experience. Some people are simply farther along that journey than you.
There are hierarchies everywhere. It is a facet of human enterprises.
I was a lecturer who out published all the people on the search committee that hired me. And because they were tenure-track, they were not let go when enrollment fell, whereas I was.
Now I work for a newspaper, and even though I am older than most of the people except for the editors, I have a doctorate and several books, I am still at the bottom of the hierarchy.
There was a definite hierarchy when I worked in the corporate world between team, team leader, floor manager, VP, CEO etc.
So, even though you may be as old as the professors, you will need to adjust to the culture.
That said, different programs have different personalities. Even though I was an older PhD student I had a pretty great time in grad school, both with the younger grad students and the professors. You may be in a toxic environment.
Do your work as best you can and don't stress over any perceived lack of respect (or whatever is bothering you).
Yes there is a hierarchy, as in any other type of job. You are a PhD student, and it sounds like you are upset about getting treated like other PhD students.
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What’s funny to me is that this entire conversation seems like the inverse of “those who can’t do, teach.” Here, someone who “did” finds themselves not valued by those who “teach.” As others have pointed out, what is valued in academia is not the same thing as what the private sector finds valuable. And why should it be valued the same? Why would academics value 10 years of experience as a retail executive with demonstrable increases in sales when the outputs of significance in academia (publications and grants) are totally foreign to private sector work?
Not sure if it's relevant, but I was chair of my department for 14 years. (I joke that convicted felons don't have to do that much time!) I believe there is an established hierarchy of:
Tenured and tenure-track faculty
Adjuncts and non tenure-track faculty
Graduate assistants
(I consider adjuncts and non TT faculty together, since it has been my experience that it's budgetary constraints and not qualifications making the distinction.)
Something I ran into was a perception of an implied hierarchy WITHIN those classifications. Some faculty considered themselves "A" faculty, and the others were "B", "C", or even "D". They even considered some of the graduate assistants to be "A", "B", "C", etc.
This was NOT about seniority or qualifications. (Some graduate students, for example, come in with significant teaching experience, and others have little to none.) It's an unfortunate cultural issue, and one that leadership should try to quell whenever it comes up. (Of course, sometimes leadership FOSTERS this attitude, but that's another story, I suppose.)
Internalized? I've found rank to be pretty explicit. I know who reports to me (I pay them out of my grant funds) and I know who I report to.
I don't see anything wrong with that. Work your way up the ranks. If you have that much life experience, it should happen more quickly than for those that don't, but you don't get to enlist at General just because you have life experience.
I guess you can't answer anymore but I'm curious about your question.
There are two parts I would have liked to hear more about: what does the patronizing behavior looking like? What kind of life experience is being disregarded?
So, there is of course an academic hierarchy. I don't think it's internalized, it's quite explicit. Depending on the culture it's steeper or not so much. I did my PhD in Japan and the social hierarchies there are quite intense. It's also the case in the academic circles (imagine my Japanese teacher once slapped my shoulder quite hard!! I was soooo shocked.)
I came as a PhD student after having worked and I felt I was treated by everyone as an elementary school student. Yes, it was a shock. When I was a senior PhD student the younger students (e.g. bachelor, masters, younger doctoral students) would treat me like a king 🙄
Now I am a senior in the German academic system. I have seen "experienced" students. Their experience domain is not academic. The skill set is very different takes a while to get used to. That said, I am polite and respectful with all my students. But I wonder if which cases I may come across as dismissive or patronizing 🤷
Good luck and try to focus in your learning. There are a bunch of idiots around sometimes, but really, I believe this happens in every domain.
Cheers
exactly the kind of shit I would expect from a PhD in philosophy. Lol . STEM and other serious fields have no time for this.
There is a reason non STEM fields are a joke.
Anyway reality check. Your experiences outside don't matter. In the university you are a student, you could fail and be out in the next semester for all we know. U are there to prove that you can pass whatever the low bar for Phil. PhD is. After that you might command some respect. For now, go back to rediscovering and reinterpreting whatever crap someone wrote or said or thought or farted. humanity needs more of that /s . Lol
I hope so. Because making a thesis out of a reddit comment is all a humanities PhD prepares/qualifies you to do.
Hope they see the irony, metaphor, simile, hyperbole, metonymy, onomatopoeia, paradox, and personification in it.
Love that we can agree on this point.
Edit: Lol , loving the downvotes. I will take them with pride. Truth hurts. Humanities PhD contributes next to nothing to advance knowledge and that is the reason they get paid less than 50k even after having that terminal degree. Peace out ✌️.
Haha he added these rhetorical terms later after a nice delayed google search. At least he learned something! Good work, bud! First passing grade in language arts!
True that. Took me 30 secs. "LAngUaGe aRtS" needed 100% brain utilization. So tough ! Sigh ! I let you people in your "humanities so great and nuanced" echo chamber, even though the job market has shown you the reality. Humanities is just an MLM scheme at this point.
I went for my PhD in my upper 40's. In my previous life, I was in senior positions, but I knew that these meant nothing in a PhD program. I had some professors who were younger than me, but I paid them due deference because of their positions. There were a few occasions where they put me in charge of class discussions because I had more experience in a specific topic, but otherwise I was there to learn from them. No matter what your previous experience, yes, you will be treated like a rookie in academia because that is what you are.
Right! There have been many cases of younger supervisors and older students in history and the older students looked up to their supervisors not because of age but because of what they could teach them.
I teach on a masters programme that has a lot of later career industry professionals on it - so as an early thirties academic I am regularly supervising people in their forties, fifties and even sixties and beyond. I have a potential PhD student next year who is 20 years older than me. I have more experience with research, especially in my area of interest, than they do. So whilst they’ll have ideas, they’re usually going to take my advice on board. However often they have lots of experience in the industry that I don’t - so on related background I would be asking them questions I don’t know the answers to that they might. It’s a back and forward where everybody respects each other, but recognising that ultimately their work is their work, and it will benefit from my support. So whilst I wouldn’t aim to patronise anyone, I am also teaching them and if they were to get on their high horses about me trying to support them to improve their work, ultimately I don’t need to give them my time and effort. I’ve never had that happen. Because most people realise the hierarchy is there for a reason, even if it doesn’t have to be formal all the time.
Of course there’s a hierarchy. Lecturers and postdocs are not the professional equals of PhD students. You’re a student. The lecturers are above you in both field knowledge and the organizational schema of the university. That’s not inherently a problem. I think there’s a recurring issue with mature students who come to a university setting and are discomfited by the fact that they’re now occupying a lower hierarchical position than they’re used to, and chafe at that.
I would say how mature students are looked at varies. I’m one myself. My supervisor sees me as a partner and more or less gives me full latitude with my project budget. I did come into the program with external industry funding, which helps as without me there would be no project.
I went to grad school just a year after graduating with my BA, so not a "mature" student but feel like my supervisor also treated me as a partner and I had very full latitude as well with the directions and decisions in my project. That's just how my supervisor rolled. It's maybe a difficult degree of freedom for some students but it worked well for me 🤷♀️
Uhm I am not sure this is not a problem. It depends much on the model of university you want to create, you have in mind. And also it also depends on how you define ‘professional equals’. What I’ve found is that for academics their identity as academics is very important and that's where the boundary professional identity/identity as a whole blurs
Here’s a tip, as far as most academics go, what counts - what proves your mettle - is publications, grants/research money, and citations by others of your work. Those are hard earned, reviewed, show some relevance to your ideas and impact on your field. That’s basically the playing field, for better or worse. Far distant to that is teaching effectively, admin stuff and taking responsibility like becoming a dean, beyond that maybe some consulting or other work especially if it brings notoriety or opportunities for the students. Now you come in with “life experience.” Where is that on the way academics rank? Down there with consulting. If your experience is so valuable turn it into research ideas. Turn it into publications and grants, then you will have turned something vague into something useful. Let’s put it this way: let’s say you’re in psych and you start spouting off about how you were in child care and your methods of child reward contingencies were SO effective. You expect some respect for that? Even if true and you were *awesome*, who cares? That’s anecdotal evidence from your perspective. Introspection went out as a methodology in the late 1800s with Wundt. There’s no discipline, no measurement, no theoretical grounding. Now write your ideas up, create or integrate a theoretical framework and it’s a start. Is it new? Does it advance theory? Does it create an interesting test of 2 theories? Can you: develop an experiment or series around it? Gather actual data with rigorous definitions, controls, and measurements? Write it up to communicate all that effectively? Get through peer review? Get grants to test it? These are all things the professionals you’re dealing with have done and must do, and what you need to prove useful at to gain their respect. You’re not totally off. Academics is a strange insular world. Go to conferences and people who are unknown in the broader world are suddenly like rock stars based on their publications. The nature of the profession attracts and tolerates some strange people, not always the most socially adroit. But that’s the pool you’re swimming in and as a student, you’ve proven nothing yet. You may not even be useful as an assistant yet. Your cherished life experience may actually be interfering with your getting the rigor of academics. Learn what they think is important, and how they develop and test ideas. Earn respect in their world, don’t expect it handed to you.
I don’t really want to create a university with no hierarchy and I doubt many others really do either. You are a student; you have teachers. You inherently occupy a lower hierarchical place than they do. That’s fine. I know it’s a shock to come back to a school setting after years outside of it and find yourself in that sort of position again, but that doesn’t mean we need to overhaul the concept of a university just because you found some people to be patronizing. I would work on adjusting to your new role first. Your life experience doesn’t really matter. You’re a student, no matter how mature you are or what you did before coming to grad school.
Wow. It looks like my question was really on a sensitive topic. So it looks like I have a semi answer. Maybe we should discuss what does it mean to have so strongly felt hierarchies in place in a democratic society. And again if university is an institution of said democratic society. That would be worth a reflection. I am also pretty sure we should spell out more what it means ‘hierarchy’ - I didn't mean to not respect my duties as a PhD, I was talking about how we interact and think of ourselves, and that seems to me important.
Sensitive? I don’t think so. You’re just getting frank, blunt replies. The rest of this is kind of silly. Nothing about a democratic society presupposes a lack of hierarchies, as you can tell from the various hierarchies in every democratic society. At any rate, a university is not a democracy. Few workplaces are. I don’t really know what you mean about “Howe we interact or think of ourselves.” So far all you’ve said is that some people were patronizing to you and you feel like your life experiences don’t really matter. I think it’s a bit silly to generalize about systemic power issues in academia based on some people being slightly rude, and as I’ve said your life experiences really don’t matter. It seems like you want to be treated as a professional equal. But you’re not. You’re not the equal of postdocs or lecturers in terms of your position at the university or your knowledge of the field. Eventually you might be.
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Sorry, nothing I’ve said suggests PhDs don’t deserve “basic treatment.” Unless a PhD student is getting their second PhD, they are not doing to have achieved the same degrees as a lecturer or a postdoc and it’s profoundly unlikely that they’ll have as many publications. Either way, it doesn’t matter. They’re not equals because one is a student and one is a lecturer. This is fairly straightforward.
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Yes, I’m aware of what I posted earlier. That does not imply what you have suggested it implies. We are talking about the UK, where lecturer means “associate professor.” They have PhDs. Either way, it’s not a matter of seniority. One is a student. One is a teacher. If the student is the most accomplished academic in the world with nine PhDs and a Nobel or two, they are still a student. They are there to learn from the teacher. They thus occupy a lower hierarchical position. I can’t make this any simpler.
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No - I haven't done a generalization. Please re read. I have told you my experience and asked you ‘is it like that or was I unlucky?’. I asked a question. You assume to know what happened, with this slightly rude thing for example. You also assume that I want to be a professional equal. Really lots of assumptions
Wondering if a few people being rude to you is emblematic of a large systemic issue that should be worked on is, in fact, a generalization. That you were asking for confirmation or rebuttal of this doesn’t change that. This is a bit tedious, don’t you think? Everyone’s working with very limited information. All you’ve said is that some people were patronizing to you and you don’t think your life experience matters. No one knows what that last bit means because you haven’t explained. What it *sounds* like is a common issue with mature students feeling uncomfortable with being treated like students again. That, plus your repeated focus on hierarchies, and your suggestion that they’re unfit for a democratic society and that this is something we should “reflect” on, make it sound like you’re unhappy being treated as something less than an equal. That all of this is ultimately based on some people talking down to you makes it sound very petty. I am sorry if people were rude to you at your university, but you are being downvoted here because this is how you’re coming across.
Well I suppose that the next time I will have an issue instead of wanting to discuss it with a larger community and wanting to know - cause I don't know academia and that’s why I’m here - I’ll just keep my mouth shut and just assume that my experience does not matter at all. How does that sound? I haven't explained more cause I am not an idiot - I know that people who don't want to listen will not listen. And there's not a climate for me to say more. If I also didn't create a climate for you to answer me in a more considerate way, I am sorry. I def came across wrongly and didn't mean to offend anybody. Concerning hierarchies and democracy it’s sad that you're reducing it to my assumed desire for professional equality when my intention was to start a broader discourse on that
No one is interested in the broader discourse because it’s silly. As for the rest of it, good luck!
It’s silly for you
Go be an apprentice tool and die maker. Tell your boss all about your life experience. See how far that gets you.
Die maker 😂
Houses of the Holy.
But there are hierarchies in a democratic society, and we're better for it. You can't have a democratic army for instance, and both elements of the union army in the American civil war and the very early red army in the Russian civil war tried. They stopped because nobody could get anything done! There is a hierarchy between having the skills you are here to learn, and not having them yet.
Lmao you could easily have lecturers who have no fucking clue what they are talking about, but dumped shit tons of money into a Uni, not that complicated, but I guess that does translate to "being above someone else in field knowledge/organizational schema"
Lol. Very naive and childish post.
Yes, especially because post-docs and lecturers sometimes know way less than some experienced PhD students, that is a fact. I am talking about knowledge. Some even have more or better publications, if we decide to use that as a measure of "who knows more" (soooo phallyc, psychoanalytically speaking). That's really a problem for them. Combine immense egos with a pile of insecurities and personas forged in a hierarchy that has no substance and that's what you get... the mess we currently see in academia. It's almost like the music industry nowadays - successful people are the ones with an immense talent in selling their lack of talent. A small number of decent people are true researchers and those don't need to be arrogant. They know who they are.
Some PhD students, believe this to be true. They are rarely correct, and rarely meet with career success. Regardless, the PhD student is at the bottom of the hierarchy because they are a student and not the teacher. It’s wild that this fact rankles so many people, particularly mature students. If you lack the humility required to accept your role as a student and not a professional equal of your teachers, grad school may not be the right place for you.
hahaha, the one who knows everything. You grab the grids of the crumbling structure with despair. I couldn't care less. What you're saying is not even statistically possible, so please don't strengthen my arguments. Another academic that missed maths and statistics...
Ok. Thank you for the lovely bit of purple prose, and good luck in your PhD program!
There’s a hierarchy. The rest of your life experience doesn’t matter and you are the bottom of the totem pole as a PhD student. You are not the equal of a post doc, lecturer, or faculty. It’s ingrained, sometimes necessary, and unchangeable. Make a commitment to be respectful and kind when you finally get some power and learn to live with the fact that you don’t get special leverage because you’ve lived a life before grad school.
I don’t dispute what you’re saying, I’m just wondering Why we uphold these hierarchies. I don’t think humanity shows signs of being a civilized intelligent evolved species by upholding monkey standards, I’m super curious what proponents argue for here
I think there’s a balance. To a degree, the hierarchy is necessary. The expertise level is far different and the inexperienced opinion does not outweigh or count as equal to the experienced practitioner. This is especially key in trade fields like law and medicine, but still matters for academia. To me, the real rub is the lack of professionalism and kindness. We can and should have a hierarchy that supports expertise, appropriate mentorship, and oversight. What we don’t need is the way it has been warped. People get power and just fuck it all up. A hierarchy is fine, if people are treated like people.
Hmm maybe, I feel like we’re talking of many things here. But for instance, of Course an inexperienced opinion can outweigh the experienced practitioners even if the experienced ones have more anecdotal and thus evaluational superiority. New ideas that are great should be promoted regardless of who brings them to the table and should be recognized as top in the hierarchy themselves. Hierarchies that are built on persons and are personal in essence don’t really bring anything to academia in themselves.
I’m curious what you mean by your life experience not mattering. Do you have an example?
It's like that. If you produce exceptionally, you can transcend it a bit. Your life experiences don't mean nothing. You probably have entertaining anecdotes that you can share at parties. These experiences have no impact on your position within the academic hierarchy. I was an non-traditional undergrad and then did two long ass post-docs. Didn't get TT job until 46. Had a lot to learn from 35 year old full professors. Never felt butt-hurt about it. My youth was awesome and my anecdotes are much more entertaining than theirs lol.
Thank you for this. I suppose I am trying to make sense of what I am experiencing and this helps!
The flip side is many who leave academia finds that all the academic stuff doesn’t matter to people outside of that world, especially in the Anglo-American world.
This is very true. Academia is a fantasy land. In this fantasy land there are Lord of the Flies like hierarchies (or is it Deliverance? Or Heart of Darkness?) and it's okay to be an abusive prick so long as you win grants. You win grants by abusing those lower in the hierarchy for their time, ideas and energy. Meanwhile, in the real world, most people would love to have a chance to obtain an undergraduate degree. They think higher education is about learning and teaching. Ha 😂. It's a bunch of Peter Pans floating around. Unless an academic is solving a real world problem through applied science, it's just long term journalism.
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My field is similar to yours where most people are close to 30 before getting their PhD (master’s degree is required before getting into the PhD program and it’s still another 3-6 years to get the PhD, usually 4-5). Full professor usually not until 45-50.
Same. Average starting history prof is early 30s. 6 to tenure, another 5 to Full. So that's early 40s at earliest for most.
I have recently gone from PhD student to postdoc and I can totally empathize with OP on this. In my experience, the problem is not the existence of a hierarchy but what it entails. It’s one thing for a hierarchical structure to have implications for roles and duties in the workplace. It’s another thing for it to affect whether people sound deferential or patronizing in everyday interactions. The same question asked in a seminar by a PhD student or a professor could get wildly different responses. And this is not exclusive to intellectual debates. Even in small talk you can see how the treatment differs based on rank. The tone, the wording, the body language, everything changes based on rank. In my experience, university staff get the worst treatment. I agree with OP that too many academics are too deeply invested in their positions in this hierarchy, to the point where it becomes central to their self-worth. It’s not surprising that this is a touchy subject. The *internalizing* of hierarchical structures is a problem because it often makes the work environment particularly toxic.
This is a good summery that also explains much of the opposition that the OP gets here.
It feels incredibly weird that so many people here just consider it normal for you to be treated as a lesser being by people with a higher academic title. Of course there are functional differences in your rights and duties depending on your academic position, but those differences don't make it so you are more or less of an individual than anyone else. Also, from a practical point of view a social hierarchy in academia just serves to slow down scientific progress, because at a minimum it stifles the ideas of people "lower" in the hierarchy, and that slows down their learning progress and also prevents good and new ideas from flourishing.
Frankly, I have the feeling that I agree with this. Hierarchy for the sake of operation is fine and expected (this papers goes through this person, this person is your dissertation committee and can fail you, etc...). What is not OK is how you are treated. Like, what question you can ask, what tone you must adopt, what behavior is tolerated (ordering your student to bring coffee for you) and what is not based on your hierarchy and not just basic human courtesy. I have been in both settings, industry and students. I have been involved with professors inside academic settings and industrial/outside-world-work setting. Some professors were lovely human being. Some brought their academic manners outside and they fared horribly.
So, please tell us, did you never have a boss or a subordinate during your "whole life experience" before becoming a PhD? Of course there is a hierarchy, what did you expect? Same as anywhere else where there are people in senior positions with more knowledge, experience and responsibility than people in lower positions. Having a hierarchy doesn't mean that you are not respected or treated as an equal on a personal level. But you do have to answer to your PI, who has to answer to the head of the department, who has to answer to..idk, the dean or something?
As I said before I never contested my duties. You are assuming I am treated as an equal on a personal level - nobody cares to ask whether something happened there or not. I did nothing to deserve the downvotes - I asked a question about other people experiences
There 100% is a hierarchy. That's not in and of itself problematic. Every workplace has it. And usually those further along have more experience, know more about that given topic/field/industry, etc. The problem with academic hierarchies is that too many people treat it as if it signifies a person's worth or lack of equality. Like a professor is somehow more important, smarter, and better than a post-doc, who is more important, smarter, and better than a doctoral student, etc. And within that framework, someone from a more prestigious university is above someone from a less prestigious university. It's a fallacy, and frankly, a pathetic way to see the world.
Philosophy is particularly catty. But yes, in general: it is the tyranny of small distinctions.
Judging by OP’s replies to other commenters, I wonder if they are, in fact, the problem 🤔
What am i missing here?!
Hit the nail on the head there.
Personally I agree the hierarchy sometimes reflects on respect and personal relationships too much in academia, I'm surprised no one is admitting to this. It's a very traditional system and attitudes can be kind of classist. PhD students only hang out with PhD students, they are expected to do the menial jobs of professors or even do favors for them, depending on the entitlement of the professor. And they are usually adults, sometimes even older adults as in your case. It can be a little gross.
I think this kind of issue is especially keenly felt in the Philosophy Department. As a woman I couldn’t continue with philosophy because it was so awful! The egos made it difficult to even get into the lecture theatre. Everyone seemed to be vying to be the Most Special and Most Intelligent and Most Influential and I certainly felt like people wanted to remind me and others we were ‘below’ them. I never felt that way in neuroscience or physics or psychology, obviously there was a hierarchy depending on experience but I was treated with respect and my contributions were appreciated rather than seen as a threat.
Be the change… when you encounter the lame and unpleasant sides don’t continue the trend. “I had to go through it so you do too” is an awful ethic and explains a lot of people’s behavior in this field.
Oh yes! And it makes sense what you are saying, that it is a reaction
I mean 100% there is hierarchy in academia, it's not protected from the broader social stigmas. Within it, there are people who work against these hierarchies but self-awareness varies by department I've found (as a visibly disabled PhD student from a working class background).
What is your experience of these hierarchies?
When I was a PhD student, I (and others In my cohort) were treated the worst by Assistant Professors and Post-Docs. It was like they had to mark their territory by treating grad students poorly. I would suggest the remedy I employed when I got a job, remember what that felt like and don't treat others that way.
As a student who came from industry there were parts I found inherently infantilizing due to the patronizing and some structural set ups. I remember thinking that at the time, but I can’t think of examples now. But at times I know I felt I had no choice or control and it was frustrating to not feel like an adult working for myself, which I essentially was.
I've found some people in my program tend to be patronizing or dismissive towards students and their concerns regardless of age. As an older student with professional experience who is pretty good at writing a polite professional response email, I've also found they're not used to students pushing back. I would suggest thinking about using your professional skills to advocate for the other students in your program - one of the main benefits of having industry experience (I think) is understanding how to navigate office politics and that work isn't that serious. So are there patronizing jerks in academia? Sure. Tell me you haven't been managed by a patronizing jerk in the past - maybe a worse one! Maybe you hoped it would be better and it sucks that it's not but you have the skills to manage it. Not everyone has had the chance to develop them. Whip out your best 'as per your last email' next time you get the chance.
There are both internalized and externalized hierarchies, and significantly so in our shared discipline of philosophy.
This is a weird question. Of course there is a hierarchy. Much like most jobs there are people who have more power (like PIs). It tends to be a relatively informal and relatively egalitarian in the sense of professors treating students as peers (at least in STEM). Academia has plenty of issues, but you’ve either failed to find them or worded it incredibly oddly.
My industry experience counts a lot for my PhD and I am treated as an equal by two supervisors that like to work in a more horizontal structure. So, yes, it is possible to be lucky and have your working experience recognised. I find the comments in this thread very, but very strange.
As others have said, there is definitely a hierarchy, and it’s helpful to the extent that it ensures you can learn from people more knowledgeable than yourself in a given subject area. For philosophy in particular, part of the issue is that the field is not a very collaborative one. The norm in philosophy is single author publications based on individual study and some peer feedback. There isn’t the same dynamic of collaborating in a larger scale research lab that you might have in other disciplines. The consequence is that success in philosophy depends on your ability to promote *yourself*, not your lab, department, or research team. Focus on finding a few close friends among the other PhD students in your department and reviewing each other’s work. If possible, find a faculty mentor or two that can give you feedback as well. Your goal is just to learn from those people and produce exceptional work.
So a PhD— as in being an academic is a job. You worked plenty of jobs. Let’s say, you made a lot of money and had wonderful experiences. That’s wonderful and you should be proud. But you’ve never had experience in THIS job. That’s what you’re feeling infantalized. That’s ok. You’re new. You literally have no idea what you don’t know. But you will. Give it time. You also keep referring to yourself as a PhD. But you’re not. You’re a student. Let’s say you’re saying PhD as a shorthand for PhD student. Fine. But see my point? You’re imprecise. Being a PhD— a post doc or a TT position— means you’re trained to be precise in your language. Frankly it took me a very long time to learn precision in my language usage. I’ve been a PhD for 10 years and teaching with a masters for 5 years prior to that. So believe me when I say precision matters and we’re always refining our precision. What you’ve only really told us is that you feel your life experience or professional experience is count for respect. Of course you deserve respect, as we all should. But your experience earns you no deference. Because, again, this is a different field. If you were a CEO of a fortune 100 company for 20 years, the moment you decide to enter medical school your experience matters little. A PhD program is a research oriented training program. Your past experience while valid will be far different from this experience because it is simply different. Besides, I’ve read through the threads and I don’t believe you told us your experience or training prior. Some PhD programs require a master’s degree. Others only require a bachelor’s degree. Neither of those training programs equate to what you will learn, think, and do in your PhD program. Here’s an anecdote: I’ve had students who’ve been practicing public opinion researchers or economists at firms. But literally their training is at the undergraduate level plus on the job training. I can tell you their epistemological approach is basically the normative assumptions of their former employers or “common sense” analysis from very elementary heuristics. A PhD learns to participate in those epistemic discussions or uncover knowledge that in turn help form those heuristics. It took them a while to understand they knew how to use tools. But a PhD is learning how to make those tools in the first place. So yes there’s a hierarchy. That’s how it should be because you’re not a doctor yet. You’re just learning. That’s not disrespectful to you. But please make sure there is no hubris clouding your willingness to learn.
You should read Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire. You might really like what you find in there (student-teacher equality among other stuff)
Don’t confuse organizational hierarchy with the way people treat each other. Of course the academic world has hierarchies. Whether that implies people higher up in the hierarchy look down on others is a different matter, and might be more an effect of local culture. Even within my own university there’s a difference between fields. In some fields, professors are still seen as demi-gods. In others, you’re simply the person with the most experience and some more responsibility, but nothing more than that. If there is a caste system in academia, it’s more about the division between academic and non-academic staff.
When you’re a student you don’t have the expertise in the subject you’re studying yet. Even as a PhD student. Life experience in the School of Hard Knocks is always useful but it is not a shortcut to academic expertise. You can’t absorb a body of scholarly knowledge via work experience. Some people are simply farther along that journey than you.
There are hierarchies everywhere. It is a facet of human enterprises. I was a lecturer who out published all the people on the search committee that hired me. And because they were tenure-track, they were not let go when enrollment fell, whereas I was. Now I work for a newspaper, and even though I am older than most of the people except for the editors, I have a doctorate and several books, I am still at the bottom of the hierarchy. There was a definite hierarchy when I worked in the corporate world between team, team leader, floor manager, VP, CEO etc. So, even though you may be as old as the professors, you will need to adjust to the culture. That said, different programs have different personalities. Even though I was an older PhD student I had a pretty great time in grad school, both with the younger grad students and the professors. You may be in a toxic environment. Do your work as best you can and don't stress over any perceived lack of respect (or whatever is bothering you).
Yes there is a hierarchy, as in any other type of job. You are a PhD student, and it sounds like you are upset about getting treated like other PhD students.
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Yes
And you haven't met any that are supportive and nice?
What’s funny to me is that this entire conversation seems like the inverse of “those who can’t do, teach.” Here, someone who “did” finds themselves not valued by those who “teach.” As others have pointed out, what is valued in academia is not the same thing as what the private sector finds valuable. And why should it be valued the same? Why would academics value 10 years of experience as a retail executive with demonstrable increases in sales when the outputs of significance in academia (publications and grants) are totally foreign to private sector work?
Not sure if it's relevant, but I was chair of my department for 14 years. (I joke that convicted felons don't have to do that much time!) I believe there is an established hierarchy of: Tenured and tenure-track faculty Adjuncts and non tenure-track faculty Graduate assistants (I consider adjuncts and non TT faculty together, since it has been my experience that it's budgetary constraints and not qualifications making the distinction.) Something I ran into was a perception of an implied hierarchy WITHIN those classifications. Some faculty considered themselves "A" faculty, and the others were "B", "C", or even "D". They even considered some of the graduate assistants to be "A", "B", "C", etc. This was NOT about seniority or qualifications. (Some graduate students, for example, come in with significant teaching experience, and others have little to none.) It's an unfortunate cultural issue, and one that leadership should try to quell whenever it comes up. (Of course, sometimes leadership FOSTERS this attitude, but that's another story, I suppose.)
Internalized? I've found rank to be pretty explicit. I know who reports to me (I pay them out of my grant funds) and I know who I report to. I don't see anything wrong with that. Work your way up the ranks. If you have that much life experience, it should happen more quickly than for those that don't, but you don't get to enlist at General just because you have life experience.
I guess you can't answer anymore but I'm curious about your question. There are two parts I would have liked to hear more about: what does the patronizing behavior looking like? What kind of life experience is being disregarded? So, there is of course an academic hierarchy. I don't think it's internalized, it's quite explicit. Depending on the culture it's steeper or not so much. I did my PhD in Japan and the social hierarchies there are quite intense. It's also the case in the academic circles (imagine my Japanese teacher once slapped my shoulder quite hard!! I was soooo shocked.) I came as a PhD student after having worked and I felt I was treated by everyone as an elementary school student. Yes, it was a shock. When I was a senior PhD student the younger students (e.g. bachelor, masters, younger doctoral students) would treat me like a king 🙄 Now I am a senior in the German academic system. I have seen "experienced" students. Their experience domain is not academic. The skill set is very different takes a while to get used to. That said, I am polite and respectful with all my students. But I wonder if which cases I may come across as dismissive or patronizing 🤷 Good luck and try to focus in your learning. There are a bunch of idiots around sometimes, but really, I believe this happens in every domain. Cheers
exactly the kind of shit I would expect from a PhD in philosophy. Lol . STEM and other serious fields have no time for this. There is a reason non STEM fields are a joke. Anyway reality check. Your experiences outside don't matter. In the university you are a student, you could fail and be out in the next semester for all we know. U are there to prove that you can pass whatever the low bar for Phil. PhD is. After that you might command some respect. For now, go back to rediscovering and reinterpreting whatever crap someone wrote or said or thought or farted. humanity needs more of that /s . Lol
I love the badly-written “STEM Rulez!” comment. Maybe only folks in the humanities can grasp the notion of irony.
I hope so. Because making a thesis out of a reddit comment is all a humanities PhD prepares/qualifies you to do. Hope they see the irony, metaphor, simile, hyperbole, metonymy, onomatopoeia, paradox, and personification in it. Love that we can agree on this point. Edit: Lol , loving the downvotes. I will take them with pride. Truth hurts. Humanities PhD contributes next to nothing to advance knowledge and that is the reason they get paid less than 50k even after having that terminal degree. Peace out ✌️.
Haha he added these rhetorical terms later after a nice delayed google search. At least he learned something! Good work, bud! First passing grade in language arts!
True that. Took me 30 secs. "LAngUaGe aRtS" needed 100% brain utilization. So tough ! Sigh ! I let you people in your "humanities so great and nuanced" echo chamber, even though the job market has shown you the reality. Humanities is just an MLM scheme at this point.
Great! Maybe we can pool our pennies together and rent the inside of your skull. Sounds like there’s lots of empty space for a good echo chamber.
AD HoMiNeM - last resort of those who cannot muster an effective refutation.