It is probably the most well-known problem in Academia: Publish or Perish, the pressure to write as many articles as possible and getting them printed in top journals. It creates a system in which the quality of research is subordinate to the quality of journals, measured in impact factor, in which the research is published. Your quality and value as a scholar is determined not by what you do, but whether your articles add up to some arbitrary number that is supposed to represent quality. We all know it does not, but numbers like impact factor and h-index, which represents how often your work gets cited, provide a very simple picture and that is what committees want. But as bad as it sometimes seems, and can be, in Western universities, I had not realized how easy we have it compared to some Chinese universities, where if you want a career as an academic, you really cannot have a work-life balance. Work is life and life is work.
Work hard, play hard
Let's start by looking at my own academic career. As a social scientist, I'm obviously not representative of the pressure in the STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), but it provides a good point for comparison. I got four years to write my dissertation, but with a 0.9fte contract. This obviously did not mean I did not work full-time: I never measured it but I estimate that my average work week exceeded 40hrs. In some extremely busy periods I could spend close to 60 hours on my research. But that seems pretty acceptable; it's no different than in non-academic fields, and I finished my PhD within the alloted time; in fact I submitted the final manuscript four months before the deadline.
But I did my PhD at the University of Groningen, and while it is a top 100 university, the pressure is obviously going to be less than at an elite university. Fortunately, I got a job at Oxford, one of the best academic institutes in the world, particularly in the social sciences and humanities. And indeed, I do spend a lot more time on research now than I used to. But I don't teach anymore, so my work week is actually no different than during my PhD. I barely work more than 40 hours a week, and I don't often have to do research in the weekend. I'm juggling more projects, and as a post-doc I'm more efficient and effective in the way I spend my time, but all in all, I can easily manage a work-life balance.
But I did my PhD at the University of Groningen, and while it is a top 100 university, the pressure is obviously going to be less than at an elite university. Fortunately, I got a job at Oxford, one of the best academic institutes in the world, particularly in the social sciences and humanities. And indeed, I do spend a lot more time on research now than I used to. But I don't teach anymore, so my work week is actually no different than during my PhD. I barely work more than 40 hours a week, and I don't often have to do research in the weekend. I'm juggling more projects, and as a post-doc I'm more efficient and effective in the way I spend my time, but all in all, I can easily manage a work-life balance.
Work hard, no play
So how does that compare to a top Chinese instituet like Tsinghua. If you've never heard of it, that's no shame. It has a strong focus on the STEM fields, and let's be honest, most of us will think about Western universities like MIT, Stanford, or Princeton when we think about elite technological institutes. But in fact Tsinghua published more papers in the most cited papers in math and computing in the past few years than all these American institutes. Which is insane if you consider that only a decade ago the university did not rank among the top 50 in the world!
Of course, such a radical change requires a radical investment. Part of the foundation for its success is that Tsinghua has embraced the tenure track system, where you are basically on probation for the first six years, after which you either get a permanent position or let go. The basis for determining whether you get tenure is your publication record, which means to get a job you have to work very hard for six years straight. I've heard stories of how big the pressure can be for tenure at US institutes, but apparently at universities in China like Tsinghua it's not uncommon to work days, nights, weekends, and everything in between, in order to get into the top journals and guarantee tenure.
An additional benefit is financial compensation. Chinese universities pay bonuses for published articles. This can apparently go up to $165,000 for a single article if it's published in a journal like Nature. While plenty of research has shown that financial stimuli don't necessary lead to quality work, it does provide an environment in which it is attractive for great scholars to stick around. In Western society you can always go into industry, where you can make a lot more money than in academia. But if the pay is good, that's one fewer reason to switch.
Of course, such a radical change requires a radical investment. Part of the foundation for its success is that Tsinghua has embraced the tenure track system, where you are basically on probation for the first six years, after which you either get a permanent position or let go. The basis for determining whether you get tenure is your publication record, which means to get a job you have to work very hard for six years straight. I've heard stories of how big the pressure can be for tenure at US institutes, but apparently at universities in China like Tsinghua it's not uncommon to work days, nights, weekends, and everything in between, in order to get into the top journals and guarantee tenure.
An additional benefit is financial compensation. Chinese universities pay bonuses for published articles. This can apparently go up to $165,000 for a single article if it's published in a journal like Nature. While plenty of research has shown that financial stimuli don't necessary lead to quality work, it does provide an environment in which it is attractive for great scholars to stick around. In Western society you can always go into industry, where you can make a lot more money than in academia. But if the pay is good, that's one fewer reason to switch.
Football
While clearly these incentives work well for the reputation of Chinese universities like Tsinghua, there are obvious downsides. The people willing to sacrifice six years of their life are not necessarily the best academics. It also creates an environment where it becomes harder to compete for Western universities, particularly those outside the anglosaxon system in the UK and US. My alma mater got its first Nobel Prize in more than sixty years when Ben Feringa was awarded the prestigious award. Part of the reason the university, and its counterparts in Europe and beyond, gets so few awards is that it cannot compete financially. I don't blame universities like Harvard or Oxford for their financial success, but getting a brand new lab and a salary that's triple what you get is a good incentive to move on: the money also represents opportunity after all.
The result may be comparable to what we see in modern day football (the non-American kind). At the start of a season you can predict the sixteen clubs that will compete in the round of sixteen of the UEFA Champions Leauge, because they are nearly always the same. The leagues in countries like England, Spain and France have been ruined by the billions that oligarchs have brought with them. Talented players are acquired by clubs before they are out of puberty, and the murderous competition can ruin them. Their countries of origin don't benefit, they don't benefit, and the sport does not benefit.
We should take care that in order to remain competitive, we don't move to a system where young academics have publish papers before they can even start a PhD, and then have to spend all their time researching and writing. Quality research is not the result of stress and pressure; scholars should have some freedom to pursue their own interests at their own pace. Many groundbreaking discoveries were made accidentally. That's not to say there shouldn't be competition, in academia as in industry competition helps create excellence, but the focus should remain on doing good research. And if universities like Groningen cannot compete financially, maybe we should focus on making it an attractive environment to work in, in other respects: like getting rid of that bloody publish or perish drive for academic success.
The result may be comparable to what we see in modern day football (the non-American kind). At the start of a season you can predict the sixteen clubs that will compete in the round of sixteen of the UEFA Champions Leauge, because they are nearly always the same. The leagues in countries like England, Spain and France have been ruined by the billions that oligarchs have brought with them. Talented players are acquired by clubs before they are out of puberty, and the murderous competition can ruin them. Their countries of origin don't benefit, they don't benefit, and the sport does not benefit.
We should take care that in order to remain competitive, we don't move to a system where young academics have publish papers before they can even start a PhD, and then have to spend all their time researching and writing. Quality research is not the result of stress and pressure; scholars should have some freedom to pursue their own interests at their own pace. Many groundbreaking discoveries were made accidentally. That's not to say there shouldn't be competition, in academia as in industry competition helps create excellence, but the focus should remain on doing good research. And if universities like Groningen cannot compete financially, maybe we should focus on making it an attractive environment to work in, in other respects: like getting rid of that bloody publish or perish drive for academic success.
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