51st State = Academic BS

While the main reason I left academia was to spend more time with my family, certainly one of the other contributing factors was that abundance of academics who took themselves and their "research" too seriously and presented it as fact instead of research. Academics in larger or older institutions (I'm not talk about community colleges or very small colleges) often begin to believe that the world needs their research. I'm also not talking about the medical profession where diseases are being cured every day because of the high-level research that may or may not be affiliated with an academic setting. Rather, academics of all shapes and sizes in the sciences (hard and soft), arts, humanities, sometimes start to believe the world cannot survive without their research. They begin to take on a god complex (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_complex) and really can't see that most of the world could not care less about their "amazing" research.  

Yes, we all need research to the world moving forward, but let's get this straight: everyone eventually dies and life moves on without you. The best thing you can do is to make the world a better place for the most people you can during your brief time here. Sometimes that involves "research" but more often than not, it means real contribution—doing rather than writing or reading about doing. No matter what anyone says about how hard his/her academic research is (the long hours, the low pay, the long meetings), life in an academic institution provides an amazingly cushy job especially when tenure comes into play. 

While a few in the sciences (medicine in the particular) are working 72-80 hour weeks, most academics teach fewer hours a day than a high school teacher, get paid 2-3x the salary. Let's not forget it's a 9-month position with weekends and holiday vacations built in. Again, a few profs will work over that time, but most are enjoying time with their families and friends during that time off. And once tenure is earned a prof can pretty much do and say anything they want to. It's harder than heck to lose a tenured position unless you you've threatened someone with bodily harm or stop showing up to school all together. Even alcoholics and drug addicts hold academic posts quite easily, as long as their binges are planned out properly. When a prof with "issues" is finally found out (and they almost always are), the administration will likely put him/her on a leave of absence to try to rehabilitate them before they would be terminated. 

But, I'm getting off topic here. 

When several of my friends posted recent articles from the Sun Sentinel and the Miami New Times talking about the Mayor of South Miami wanting to secede from the rest of Florida and become a new state called South Florida, I just want to this opportunity to point out that the mayor of South Miami is an academic with both feet firmly planted in an ivory tower. 

The absurd thought of a new state got picked up in the news came from academic meanderings that mean nothing to the actual people involved. Let's think this through—why not just use the voting process to have the southern counties in Florida represented by stronger politicians. Oh wait...in Florida pets and dead people have been known to vote in presidential elections? So maybe creating a new state is a better way to create a better government. Really?! Let's get even more out of touch with reality and just ship everyone (read that wealthy, educated people) off to a space colony where they can be even more out of touch with reality. Oh wait...Hollywood already did that in Elysium. And that movie bombed. 

This is why so many people think academics (and politicians) are out of touch...which they are. 

By the way, if you are interested in reading from the horse's mouth, here are the original two articles I reference: 

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/features/gone-viral/os-south-miami-to-investigate-possibility-of-splitting-florida-in-two-20150323-post.html 

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/51st-state-of-south-florida-south-miami-passes-another-resolution-urging-secession-7548539 

 Spread Your Wings!