'Why Academics Should Do More Consulting'
- Reference: 0180474755
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/12/29/173237/why-academics-should-do-more-consulting
- Source link:
Writing in Nature, the authors found that fewer than 10% of academic staff at nine UK universities engaged in consulting work, and the number of academic consulting contracts across the country fell 38% over the past decade -- from around 99,000 in 2014-15 to fewer than 62,000 in 2023-24.
Academic consulting in the UK is currently worth roughly $675-810 million annually, a figure that represents just 0.6% of the country's $124 billion management consulting market. The authors examined policies at 30 universities and surveyed 76 fellows from a UK Research and Innovation programme. Two-thirds of the surveyed institutions had publicly available consulting policies, and two outright prohibit private consulting. Permitted consulting time ranged from unlimited to 30 days or fewer per year, institutional charges varied from 10-40% of fees, and contract approval timelines stretched from 24 hours to several months.
Private consultancy firms are moving into this space, capturing opportunities that universities neglect. Small-scale projects under $6,750 are commonly sidelined by university contract offices because they represent too small an income for strained institutional resources. The authors propose standardized policies across institutions, shared consulting income with departments, and faster approval processes -- reforms similar to those already implemented for university spin-out companies.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-04104-2
So, researchers (academics) say.. (Score:3)
...academics should be hired as consultants more often. Who would have thought! I wonder who they asked, to come to this conclusion!
Academics are people with no real-world experience (Score:1)
Maybe that is what is preventing them from getting more consulting gigs.
Academics know what should work *in theory.* It takes real-world experience to know what works *in practice.*
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed, even a person with only 2 years of real-world experience, is less green than a person who has never left the academic setting. For those of us in the business world, it's very obvious that recent grads are the greenest of the green, regardless of what degree they graduated with.
Re: (Score:2)
And industry workers lack the theory of the cutting edge. It's almost like the whole point of this story is to bring these two groups together!
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, they seem to be missing the obvious answer to the question, "Why are they teaching instead of making more at a consulting firm?"
Re:If you cannot do, teach (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe people enjoy teaching?
Re: (Score:2)
Some academics certainly do love teaching! And I'm grateful for the amazing teachers in my life. But the assumption that teachers (or researchers) make good consultants assumes the skills sets are the same. They are not.
Re: (Score:2)
> Some academics certainly do love teaching! And I'm grateful for the amazing teachers in my life. But the assumption that teachers (or researchers) make good consultants assumes the skills sets are the same. They are not.
It's not the skillset that they are chasing, it's the knowledge base. University academics are usually involved in research, and typically sit on the cutting edge of their field. Consultancy is an obvious choice, even if you need a middle-man to act like "I talk to the customers so engineers don't have to.". No one here is saying the teaching skillset is the reason they should consult.
Yes Academics, need to get out of the bubble (Score:2)
get experience where they are burning real money. And Failure is a real life lesson.
what does education (Score:2)
have to do with the search for more revenue?
No, just no (Score:4, Interesting)
The universities should be doing research that private companies won't do. This is pretty obviously just private companies hoping that they can get subsidized University employees to do consulting work cheaply so they don't have to hire people at high cost.
The universities are where most basic research, which is to say research that does not immediately pay off, gets done. We need to put more money into that because it's a pipeline. The research that was done 50 sometimes even 100 years ago is paying off now. That's a pipeline where you need continuous research being done, most of which isn't even ever really going to pay off, so that you can get the stuff that does pay off to hit continuously and drive economic growth.
Right now we are breaking that pipeline so that we can hand out a few more tax cuts to billionaires and so that we can be distracted by culture War bullshit.
If you're over 50 you will probably die before the hit comes from that. Although you're still an asshole for screwing your kids over like that.
If you're under 50 then the tail end of your life is going to be severely negatively impacted by those cuts and by diverting resources to short-term gains like turning professors into cheap consultants.
I understand why people have taken on short-term thinking, automation devoured the middle class in the last 40 years by wrecking the factories and the union jobs that go with it with close to 70% of middle class jobs taken by automation... It's extremely hard to think long-term when you are just trying to make it through the next round of layoffs.
But that kind of short-term thinking isn't going to save anyone under 50.
With what time? (Score:3)
The academics you want most for consulting are the ones from research universities. However, those academics generally work 80 hours weeks already just to keep their jobs.
I know this first hand. I was a postdoc at a major research university, at the time intending to follow the academic career track. This was after doing my PhD at another - albeit much smaller and less prestigious - public research university. What I saw as a postdoc while rubbing elbows with junior faculty really opened my eyes.
Junior faculty at major public research universities are working at least 80 hours a week. 40 hours go to grant writing, lab management, and departmental obligations. Another 20 goes to teaching. 10 goes to managing institutional requirements (including negotiations for how much they pay to their institution for space, utilities, etc - and consumption of those resources). Another 5 goes in to actual research. The last 5 goes to attending local seminars.
When a most junior (assistant professor) faculty member makes it to the next level they are still working 80 hours, but they're making slightly more money. Now they are putting more effort into making their pitch for tenure (if it exists at their institution), or looking at where they want to work next (if that's a better career path for them). If they ever make it from medium level (associate professor) to senior (professor) - and many never do - they still need work 80 hours a week but now they have a larger presence on campus.
At what time do we expect American faculty to have more time available for this?
Re: (Score:2)
It's also not hazard free. If you do take a consulting gig, or get whored out by your supervisor on one, you're probably going to have to sign some stuff that takes away some of that academic freedom. If you've got students and you put them to work on some company's contract it could well compromise their degree if there's a dispute.
academics that do lots of consulting (Score:2)
are rare, at least in my field (engineering).
I've done some consulting jobs, and I can straight-up state that they've never even come close to compensating sufficiently for time/hassle/energy expended. I still do them whenever I can, because I think that it's important for an engineering academic to keep one foot grounded in real life. However, I totally understand why my colleagues neglect it or straight-up avoid it like the plague.
When a company looks for a consultant, this is what they want. They
One more reason to make academia a fraud (Score:1, Flamebait)
I have had a front row seat for a while now. College, several rounds of grad school, friends and acquaintances who are actual university professors.
It's already hard to say with a straight face that the platonic ideal of the academic scientist presented to the world, a hard-nosed Feynman type who boldly interrogates Nature, is friend and mentor to many, and speaks truth to power in the service of his nation in his spare time, is anything other than realtime mythmaking for the overwhelming majority of academ
Re: (Score:1)
Something one gets from working in the real world, rather than academia
Re: (Score:2)
Why not both?
Re: One more reason to make academia a fraud (Score:1)
Because people are lazy and in academic environments it is much more possible to skate by without doing so.
Re: (Score:2)
I see an argument that the presence of an academic ideal does not mean that academics have achieved this ideal and are now free from petty personal motives. I don't see how your repetition of cliches is an argument against this.
Re: (Score:2)
Did you even read the parent post?
The parent poster said nothing about knowledge.
Re: (Score:1)
this has been a decades long plan by your side don't act like you care about fixing anything all you are capable of is destruction
[1]Why fascists hate universities [theguardian.com]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/sep/05/why-fascists-hate-universities-us-bangladesh-india
Re: One more reason to make academia a fraud (Score:1)
I'm told about a half-dozen of my grandparents' cousins didn't come back from fighting the Germans. That fact does not obligate me to call everyone I don't like a nazi.
Re: One more reason to make academia a fraud (Score:1)
Uh huh.
Pardon me while I don't get worked up about the sudden bout of enforcing actual immigration laws after decades of pretending they only apply to people trying to play by the rules.
I'll admit my memories of this are fuzzy since I was a kid, but I do remember every single member of my family busting their asses and submitting themselves to all kind of scrutiny in applying to enter the US from the former Soviet Union in the early 90s, and then continuing to bust their asses to learn English, secure gainf
Re: (Score:1)
no but you should call the actual nazis that
or do they just look like other republicans to you. wakka wakka wakka!
Re: (Score:1)
jesus christ what an intentional, bad faith, obtuse way to miss the entire fucking point. apparently a tenet of fascism is illiteracy and no reading comprehension
the fascists don't like the universities in a free society. fascists today are trying to turn them into their indoctrination centers like italy and germany and the ussr. look at trumps decrees to universities, what else is that.
you just agree with the fascists and what they are doing, you just dont want to be called the word. respect your pro
Re: One more reason to make academia a fraud (Score:1)
Many of the universities are bleeding money because people are waking up to the scam of modern academia. Knowledge is good and useful, but universities are no longer selling knowledge or anything like it, and they want to charge you an arm and a leg for the privilege of their fraud.
Re: (Score:2)
(I agree with most of your points, I'll just rephrase my way)
> and it'll be an even bigger magnet for fraud and bullshit than academia is now.
I'm just out of a compulsory training "Ethics in Research" (given by a professor of our school of Law) and though It wouldn't be calleda "magnet for fraud", it's a "conflict of interest" and therefore an issue to manage carefully. Say it's your competence to handle a project on a new gizmo, but you also giving consulting to The Gizmo Company Inc., you'll likely to be more biased in analysing scientific data. Your research results say the gizmo doe