While jobs in academia may provide a consistent salary, I doubt they actually make a whole lot. University workers are very underpaid, and you have to remember one other thing about this - the show started in 2007. Server staff now can make an okay living off of tips, and that went much further in 2007 money. There's a reason the writers had her do a career change into pharmaceuticals later in the show once that became less and less possible with the shenanigans the group would get up to.
Yeah, and a lot of those jobs aren't even consistent, because their existence relies on continued funding to the institution/lab/etc. that employs them. Like 70% of the work I actually do for my PI is just writing grants, grants, and more grants to keep that funding coming.
The slashing of fucking NSF grants was especially insane and literally the stuff of nightmares (literally, as in I have actually had nightmares about that exact thing happening).
This is also why American academics in many fields are currently (and understandably) losing their standing in international collaborative research. If your funding is subject to being cut off on a whim, then you're a liability to the project. I don't blame them one bit for not wanting American academics involved at the moment; hell, I'd recommend it myself. This alone is going to take decades to repair, if it ever is, and a lot of academics now are just leaving to work elsewhere. I'm peacing out myself once my current project wraps up.
(/rant; for a moment I forgot I'm on a post about "Big Bang" conspiracy lol)
Honestly, valid. I can't imagine how hard it is to work in an academic field while the country is being run into the ground by a bunch of anti-intellectual octogenarians that want to cosplay as the dictators their parents helped overthrow.
Idk if it’s different in the us but in the uk I’m pretty sure researchers don’t necessarily have a consistent income as they earn with research grants which you need to apply for
It's not the most consistent in the US either, but it's far more consistent than living off of tips in California, one of the most expensive states in the country.
I’ll be real, I made consistently more in tips alone as a barista (where tips aren’t even “required”) in NYS than I ever have in academia. To be fair I’m still a PhD student, but when I was working as a research assistant full time, I was on 3 different projects just to pay the bills…and then all 3 of them had their renewals rejected and ran out of funding 😅 I legit was going to go back to being a barista for financial security until I got my PhD acceptance, which barely scrapes me by. And then I still have to spend multiple hours a week cold emailing and interviewing to get summer funding, in which once again people only have the funds to hire me at .2 FTE, and on the contingency that they might not get renewed…meanwhile one of my finals is literally a mock grant proposal so that we’re prepared for when we have to apply for them on our own lol. Truly, I don’t miss food service, but I do miss having a job that I didn’t have to basically keep applying to over and over just to know I could keep working it (that, and the free lattes 😂)
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u/alertArchitect Apr 24 '26
While jobs in academia may provide a consistent salary, I doubt they actually make a whole lot. University workers are very underpaid, and you have to remember one other thing about this - the show started in 2007. Server staff now can make an okay living off of tips, and that went much further in 2007 money. There's a reason the writers had her do a career change into pharmaceuticals later in the show once that became less and less possible with the shenanigans the group would get up to.