Why I am Not a Professor

The Decline and Fall of the British University

Although this article describes the decline of the British academic institution, much of the same can be said of the American system. When I was a student, I was always amazed at the number of journal publications that my professors had accumulated. I never took a deeper look, though. Now that I interact with academics on an equal level, I see what the game really is. To get promoted they need publications. Quality doesn't really matter as much as quantity. Well, what is any rational person to do when they know very well what the metric is by which they will be measured. As Mark Tarver points out, if you read the titles of these publications, you will find many variations on a theme. It is very easy to accumulate 100 publications when half of them are on the same topic and most are written by your graduate student serfs.