Academic independence

What is academic independence?

In the mind of many a post-doc it is quite simple, it is the freedom that you gain when you step up from being a post-doc to becoming a faculty member. As a post-doc, your principle investigator has the final say over your research program, while as a faculty member you are the principle investigator.

It seems straight-forward, but in practice the distinction can be quite blurred. As a senior PhD student in the Goodnow laboratory I effectively had academic independence. My principle investigator had funding and placed trust in me so that I could run my research more or less independently. Hopefully the PhD students in our laboratory feel the same way. Could I have done any hair-brained project I wanted to? Certainly not, it had to be within reason, but the research interests I had were aligned with that of my mentor, so in effect I had the independence to pursue the research that I wanted to pursue.

This is not qualitatively different from the academic independence I have now as a faculty member. Yes, I can chose the research program that I want to pursue, but again the within reason proviso applies. I no longer have a faculty member above me, acting as the final arbiter, but there are still limitations. The most obvious limitation is the grant review process. If I want to do an experiment I require funding, which necessitates my research aims being in line with the granting body and being approved by a panel of experts. Then of course, as junior faculty, I will have a jury over-looking my renewal. These juries invariably have something to say about the direction of your science - your research interests are too broad/too narrow, you are spending too much/ too little time on collaborative ventures, etc. In the modern "big science" era, your colleagues and collaborators form another restraint - you may need to negotiate for time on certain equipment or access to particular samples.

Some of these restraints may be reduced over time, but unless you are a Nobel Prize winner with guaranteed block funding for life there will always be some limitations to academic independence. Perhaps the biggest difference in the academic freedom between a post-doc and faculty member is the diffusion and immediacy of responsibility. As a post-doctoral fellow, the limitations on your research are concentrated in a single person who can have immediate impact - a particular line of research can be shut down today with a single decision. As a faculty member, by contrast, the limitations on your research are delayed and the decision-making capacity is diluted out into a plethora of juries. If one grant foundation chooses not to support your work, another (with a distinct jury) may, and often there are avenues for pursuing research for some months or even years without direct funding.

So rather than the qualitative leap in academic independence that a faculty position represents to some, perhaps it is more accurate to think of a gradual shift in responsibility. Someone moving from a post-doctoral position in a restrictive laboratory to a well-funded start-up faculty position will feel an enormous leap in academic freedom. But for others, being a senior post-doc in a rich laboratory supervised by a figure of benign neglect, the entry into a world of constant grant review may even result in a loss of freedom to pursue your research interest.

Comments

[Joel Mahony]

Thank you very much for this post!
I should mention, it is really interesting to follow your works and its development.
Wish you luck with it, Adrian! You are sure to do much for science!