Speaker 1: Academia is a cult and that's what some people say but I've always been right hesitant to admit that there are cultish aspects to academia because it really doesn't help the purpose of research but I was looking into it and I was surprised at the cultish aspects of academia. The first cultish aspect of academia is the fact that students often become very socially isolated. Cults like to keep people in their bubble and academia does that surprisingly well and I found this paper which is coping with loneliness a netographic study of doctoral students and essentially it's saying that loneliness and isolation is kind of like one of the main issues with doing a PhD so it wants to sort of like hold the students close. There's no doubt that like the social isolation is self-imposed a lot of the time by the student now that is partly because it's expected it could be a group culture thing but ultimately academia seems to reward people who put aside everything else and work solely in academia on their project. Another cultish aspect of academia is the fact that if you leave it is seen as a betrayal. A betrayal to your career and all of the effort you've put in to get where you are. There's no doubt that there's a huge amount of stigma associated with leaving academia. It's seen as a failure, it's seen as someone that is not capable of succeeding in the academic world when in a lot of times it is luck, it is a circumstance, it is a huge dose of who you know. Those are the deciding factors of whether or not someone is successful in academia but if you leave it is very very bad and you are a failure. That's quite cultish isn't it? People who take this line of thought very seriously often say that you cannot go against academia in terms of its current standing if you try to sort of like inject new ideas that they're very sort of like standoffish and they will not accept your ideas but ultimately this is just a feature of academia. It is not cultish in my opinion. Essentially if you have this whole body of information that sort of agrees about a certain thing if you come up with a new idea and you want to inject it into this bubble of knowledge you need extraordinary evidence. There is a science communicator, a famous one called Carl Sagan who says extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that's the little acronym there. Essentially if you come up with something new you need to convince people that this is real. That's just sort of like part of the academic game. Now if you provide enough evidence and it's compelling enough people will change their minds. I've seen it myself. My whole field in solar cells went from OPVs to perovskites overnight because there was overwhelming evidence that this was better but that's not to say it's easy. You do need a little bit of a maverick mentality if you are going against the institution and that can seem very very difficult. Also academia is incredibly slow moving so it does take a while for new ideas to sort of like get into academia and become mainstream normally. Academics will change their mind given enough evidence so it is not cultish in terms of pushing away new ideas. You just need to provide extraordinary evidence. Quite often in academia there is a charismatic leader of a group. Charismatic people tend to get more students, they get more researchers under their umbrella to do research for them. They need to be charismatic and outgoing and friendly because that's how you attract people to your research group. However quite often, and I've seen this, the most charismatic researchers tend to be ones that exploit their students the most. They use kind of shame and guilt and competitiveness to keep you working hard just like a cult leader. So in that sense if you've got an incredibly charismatic leader that's reaching out to you just be a little bit suspicious. One thing that I've heard from ex-cult members is that no one joins a cult. There is always something underneath it, something bigger than themselves that they want to contribute to or they're passionate about. In that same way academia relies on people's passion and it exploits that passion to keep them in their research groups. For example if you're passionate about a particular research field you can find a supervisor who will happily take you in and exploit that passion for very little pay, for a lot of a stressing anxiety over many years, but no one joins that part of it. They join it to explore their passion. So there's no doubt that there's a little bit of a similarity between cults and academia when it comes to exploiting people's passions. Another thing that's quite cultish about academia is that you will be allowed to believe that you are the exception to the rule. The exception that you will be the one to be able to achieve academic supremacy and become a permanent tenured professor. But that is not the case. I have seen the numbers, they are not very good and in my experience very few people actually go on to become tenured professors. You are led to believe that you are the exception to that rule. No one will tell you different because they love bomb you. Of course you're the one that's capable of getting the permanent position. They need you to believe that so you dedicate a lot of your time, effort, life and even finances in getting there. And one of the last ones is financial exploitation. When you go into a PhD and academia no one actually says actually you know what you could earn a lot more money with your skills in industry or somewhere else. A lot of the time they are low paying positions even after you get your PhD as a postdoc. Particularly in the states they are very very uncompetitive wages and also a lot of the funding that occurs during a PhD does not meet the living costs required to do a PhD full-time. So a lot of people end up having to get jobs or at the worst end up paying for their PhD which is something that no one should ever do ever. In my opinion you should never ever pay for a PhD unless it's something that you are so incredibly passionate about that you're willing to forego many many years of financial security in the future. This happens at a stage in life where people are sort of like setting the foundations for their life and it can be really hard to sort of like gain that back after you've been pushed back for so many years at that kind of like formative adult life stage. Bonus quick round here we go. So I found on cult recovery 101 the checklist of cult characteristics. So the group is focused on a living leader who members display excessive selling us unquestioning commitment. Yeah obviously a supervisor. The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members. Yeah obviously without people doing research underneath the professor the whole thing collapses. The group is preoccupied with making money. Yeah obviously in academia no money no research no job. So yeah you're gonna part of the cult I guess. Questioning doubt and dissent are discouraged or even punished. There's no doubt that if you try to go against your supervisor you will face resistance. But if you've got extraordinary evidence they will listen to you. Mind-numbing techniques are used to suppress doubts about the group and its leaders. Yeah obviously have you ever been to an academic seminar? That is mind-numbing. The leadership dictates sometimes in great detail about how members should think act and feel. I think that there's certain sort of like very bad characteristics narcissistic traits of certain supervisors who will make this a reality for their group. The group's leader is not accountable to any authorities. I think this one is true. The fact that academics are not held accountable for their actions often because they are bringing in loads of money for the university means they're not accountable really to anyone. If they continue to bring in money continue bringing prestige papers and students to the university they can get away with almost anything. The leadership induces guilt feelings in members in order to control them. Yes that is part of academia. There's no doubt that you feel guilty if you're not continuously publishing papers or getting grant money. So I certainly feel like there's a lot of guilt that exists in academia and early stages of an academic career because you have to perform and if you're not performing it's your fault. Members subservience to the group causes them to cut ties with family and friends and to give up personal goals and activities that were of interest before joining the group. I think that is just something that people self-impose because of the nature of doing a PhD. I think it's natural to withdraw. I think it's natural to give up things that you once loved but it's something you should not do right. You should continue to do the things you like outside of academia and I know sometimes the group culture of academia and the research group that you're in means that you're in there on weekends because that's what the supervisor expects but do not give into that as much as you can. Continue to do the things you loved before your PhD in academia. Continue to do the things that connect you to your friends and family and I think that will make for a much better career overall. Members are encouraged or required to live and or socialize with other group members. Live? No. But socialize? Yes. How many awkward tea room conversations have you been forced to have because it's someone's success that you need to celebrate, come together, socialize and also those awkward sort of like Christmas activities that supervisors feel obligated to put on but in fact it would be better for everyone if they didn't happen because they're often quite weird. So if you like this video remember to check out this one where I talk about all of the reasons academia is toxic. It's a good watch. So there we have it. There's everything you need to know about the cultish aspects of academia. Let me know in the comments which ones you agree with, disagree with or would add and also remember that there are more ways that you can engage with me. The first way is to sign up to my newsletter. Head over to andrewstapeton.com.au The link is in the description and when you sign up you'll get five emails over about two weeks. Everything from the tools I've used, the podcast I've been on, how to write the perfect abstract and more. It's exclusive content available for free so go sign up now and also go check out academiainsider.com. That's my project where I've got my ebooks, resource packs, blog and forum and everything's over there to make sure academia works for you. Alright then I'll see you in the next video.