Saturday, August 15, 2009

Phd Taxi Driver

Fox at his Next Stop Wonderland blog highlighted an interesting blog by Cai Mingjie on his experiences becoming a taxi driver in Singapore after losing his job as a Principle Investigator at Singapore's Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB).

Mingjie's blog can be found at A Singapore Taxi Driver's Diary.

It is an interesting read and it kinda hits home for me because I am working towards earning my own Phd in Computer Science. It is reinforcing my current view of Singapore as a pretty unforgiving place with few good alternative opportunities the moment you lose your job. Unlike Dr. Cai, I cannot even drive (and do not dare to). If the same thing happens to me and I am somehow forced to stay in Singapore, my few remaining options are a teaching job or a job as a cleaner (if they do not consider me "over-qualified" - I remembered this being a problem, perhaps I'm wrong).

Well, it is back to writing the thesis for me, but this story will no doubt weigh heavily at the back of my mind for the next few months. I sure hope things work out well eventually for Mingjie.

18 comments:

AlchemX said...

Well, looks like Philip Greenspun has a nice answer to your concerns:

http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/

Kevin Jang said...

I think that this is largely the problem itself with Singaporean society, mainly because of materialism. However, it can be pretty bad in North American society in places like Canada too. Canadians are very upfront about wanting to employ people who speak like North Americans and are "sons of the earth" so to say, so there are lots of well-educated mainlander Chinese, Indians and so on, who might be well-educated with master's or PhD degrees but have to do something less than they could. The point is never to sell oneself short whatever.

Kevin Jang said...

Hi Chee Wai
About AlchemX's post from Philip Greenspun, I think it is a load of satirical nonsense taken to ridicule academics. It's funny, but also uninformed. The more well-educated a person is, the person has a better chance of breaking a cycle of poverty. In times of recession, or downsizing, people will not be nice to value education, but most of the time, education does make a person more able to think for himself or herself and to formulate his own ideas or personality apart from media or other influences. Humanities professors and social scientists too have their fair share to say about the link, and I myself have to seriously contend against it as someone who just obtained his PhD. I agree with you about the whole unforgiving atmosphere of Singapore towards failure because I lived through it once, having left a graduate program and then having lost some friends. Then again, I guess there is no gain without loss? At least I learnt whom my real friends were from that. --Best, Kevin

Chee Wai Lee said...

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for your comments.

I am not sure how materialism plays into this scenario. Could you please clarify how this conclusion was reached in the Singapore context?

I know there is a policy in US immigration to get employers to at least make a public and transparent search for citizens before they are allowed to hire foreigners in the same search. I myself ended up working for my lab in such a manner after graduation. The (loose) requirements were that my lab had an open and fair candidate search and that my employer was offering me a wage on the same scale as what was to be paid to any local.

I have so far not encountered any hindrance. Perhaps demand for PhDs in the US are greater than its local supply? I do not know. I would be interested to know how much of the problem in Canada is due to the lack of demand or over supply of non-local educated workers.

As for Philip Greenspun's article, I was not really very impressed when I first looked at it. However, he does have 4 serious links I've not paid attention to. Perhaps I'll have more to say after I take a look.

Meanwhile, have a great day!

Kevin Jang said...

Hi Chee Wai, my concern about materialism in Singapore probably has more to do with personal experiences than just Dr Cai's experiences per se, especially since I came back home last month in January and was not looking for a job yet (my thesis had to be revised for the final submission after the defence was over), but I have had my fair share of rather nasty remarks from "frenemies" (turns out that once you have been away for a while, people whom you lost touch with or rarely keep in contact with suddenly start showing their load of negative opinions such as dousing cold water on nearly every venture you have been planning for).

The Canadian market for academia, regardless of whether they employ native-born Canadians or foreigners, is generally tending towards sessional employment nowadays, and a large part of it has to do with the shrinking of the budget in the universities. As a result, what happens is an increased reliance on MA and PhD students to do the teaching at undergraduate level, while for sessional instructors enlisted with the universities, they take forever to get tenured. Inside the humanities and social sciences where it's mostly "publish or perish", this probably gets more pronounced, since sessionals, in order to make ends meet with the high living costs, take on more than 2 courses in instruction per term, and this affects their publication and research progress. A professor inside my department whom I know was working as a sessional instructor for over 15 years, in between a divorce because her marriage did not work out during her term of work, and she told me that she has finally been promoted to tenured professor/instructor now after a long long wait. I am not sure how it is in the USA, although I did part of my studies there, but there is an imaginable lot of bureaucracy and redtape where I used to study (in the Midwest in a big state university), so I imagine that within the humanities, the structural problem of reliance on part-timers, adjuncts and sessionals within academia is also an increasingly nagging problem.

Kevin Jang said...

Talking about employment policy between Canada and the USA, I am not sure how the skills translate within these countries. Within Canada, a lot of degrees earned within Asian countries do not count as recognized for some reason, and people who do want to study or work there long term appear to need a large degree of re-training, not necessarily due to language alone, but simply that the skills earned in that degree are not recognized. For example, people who get their medical degrees from countries like the Phillipines cannot practise medicine in Canada, and have to settle for para-medical or allied professions. It might account for part of the disenfranchisement which I noticed in some of the new immigrant population from South Asia, where even if they might be well-educated in their own countries (with Master's or PhDs), or educated in Canada, the fact that their country of origins is not Canada and that they speak differently is not to their advantage in job hunts, and they end up getting placed in menial jobs and have to work from the bottom upwards. I honestly have not tried that often except a few times, and it does appear that having a permanent residency there in Canada is more advantageous for finding work in a city, especially if the city is more secluded or 'provincial' in mindset in wanting Canadians instead of immigrants.

I am not sure how Singaporeans view such cases like Dr Cai's, but from a personal point of view, perhaps, as interesting as it is and somewhat sad, there seems to be a rather prevalent "taken-for-granted" mindset which I observe amongst academics who state that in order to get to a state of stability (financial and tenure position), many have to learn to accept the fact of moving out of one's country or town of origins. That Dr Cai settled for staying in Singapore is not to his detriment, but does say something to the effect that "a prophet is never recognized in his own hometown" (to echo the saying in the Bible).

Chee Wai Lee said...

Hi Kevin,

I hear ya. I'm not sure, however, if what you've experienced in Singapore on your return is materialism per se or (what I termed) the "Singapore mindset" where societal acceptance of "failure" is often lacking.

So, my personal impressions are that: While in North America, the typical first response is "That sounds cool! Let's talk about how we might go about doing this!"; the Singapore reaction tends to be "What if ... xxx yyy zzz?"

What you have described of the academic environment in Canada holds mostly true in the US. I'm not in a faculty position, but as scientific engineers I think the community as a whole understands (not necessarily accept) that funding can be intermittent and work on a contractual basis year by year. I graduated from UIUC and yes, it is a publish or perish environment for fresh faculty in the Computer Science department.

As far as I know, there is a system of accreditation for higher learning here in the US. I am not sure how it is applied to foreign institutions nor what happens to people who's institutions are not considered accredited. Actually, I am not even sure how it is applied to domestic institutions given the prevalence of for-profit online places like The University of Phoenix widely considered as a dud by mainstream academia.

Well, I hope your own career plans take off back home. I'd worry less about your "frenemies" and more about any intended/required interactions with the bureaucracy and how those might interfere with the execution of those plans.

As for Dr. Cai, it would seem to me that he had decided to consider Singapore home come what may. Personally, I am starting to like that approach with respect to the US - all my early life in Singapore had pretty much been "scripted". I made choices in the education system that pretty much casts me (psychologically, at least) into some intended role within society. In the US, I find that I am to make of my life what I will. I find that refreshing. So, even while I do not have a "permanent" job, I find comfort in the idea that I have a wide variety of things I can or cannot do; could try or do not feel comfortable trying; etc ... the future feels unclear to me and for the first time in the 30-odd years of my life, after I graduated, I was no longer terrified (nervous and worried, yes) by that prospect.

Kevin Jang said...

Hi Chee Wai, I guess that I am technically back here in Singapore not so much to stay here for the rest of my life, but more because I did not choose to stay on in Canada. That said, I plan to move somewhere else out of Singapore within this year or the beginning of next year, and probably Korea or Japan or somewhere in that area, and am preparing myself for that move in various aspects. Dr Cai chose to stay in Singapore for the most part, and what he ends up in is probably something which might be interesting to know.

I am less concerned about the "frenemies", as it would probably be more profitable to think about bettering myself as an academic. So you did graduate eventually from UIUC with your PhD already? I am not sure how the thing about accreditation goes in Canada too, since there is a fairly large hodge-podge of colleges and universities other than the well-known G12 research institutions where students are accepted rather easily regardless of their grades. From my perspective, it is largely very low in terms of the standard of writing for English and the humanities in the regional universities and colleges near to where I studied in Canada. It's probably less of a concern if I am not teaching there, and in most cases, I think I would have to worry about similar problems too even with non-native speakers of English in places like Japan and Korea. And yes, "publish or perish" and hence, "publish to death" (even if you have no tenure yet) are utmost to an academic especially in the humanities.

Being "scripted" is not necessarily bad, as much as it is not necessarily good either. It depends on the person. I lived a life in Singapore which was still largely against the grain in choosing to do a PhD in a field which few to almost no Singaporean has ever considered doing (I will not say much here wjat it is in a blog comment), but I enjoyed it and still believe I can use it outside of Singapore even despite the terming of that field as "recondite". The monetary costs and the recuperation of these costs via whatever avenues (work etc.) are issues I have to juggle with although I am not in any debt because I would need money for any move to anywhere for career purposes. Then again, it is one of the last concerns I would be worried about now at least for this moment, because I view emotional satisfaction and fulfilment as more important to what I do now. Again, it does not sit in well with that many people who would comment, "Isn't all that education of yours wasted/wasteful?", "I would rather choose to work to get money than to throw all that money into a degree like that without knowing the outcome" (the worse is, "you are not working hard enough to get a job" etc.). I think even things like tenure does take time and in the meantime, I am already paying my dues in a way by actually having to do other stuff while seeking avenues to publish and write in my field. But as my former advisor even said, no one gets tenure immediately within one year or so, and even she took quite a while to get it. One professor in my department also got tenured appointment after 5 years of working as a supermarket supervisor upon graduating from his Phd. So Dr Cai Mingjie's situation might not be that strange, although I cannot drive if I have to save myself and doubt I would even want to do that!

Chee Wai Lee said...

Kevin - yes, I graduated with the PhD from UIUC in December 2009. In a milder way (I am assuming your major is way off the beaten tracks in the Singapore context), my career in supercomputing research is also on a path somewhat outside of mainstream Singapore engineering/computer science academics (such that I can count with a hand, the number of organizations in Singapore which would hire me for my skill-set).

I wish you all the best with your plan to settle out in Japan/Korea.

Kevin Jang said...

Hi Chee Wai,
My major is actually English(not that unpopular), but my research area was medieval studies/performance studies. And yes, academics like me are not so welcome technically in Singapore, and the good case of what happened between a particular female academic in my field and the department head somewhere here is a good case,although I won't name names to be fair about the issue. There is a lot more of rivalry going on especially if there is any gender issue going on too as far as I am concerned with female academics and the question of equity is probably brought up more in North America. A good part of my degree, even despite the seemingly 'far-out' nature of the field, is that I used the time to learn the languages which I could during my graduate school, including French and Korean, and so I see those as things to add than liabilities. There probably is and should be no shame in that academic choice, although as I noticed from blogs online by grad and former grad students in my bid to re-adjust myself to life post-PhD, there has been a fair bit of disenfranchisement among these people which seems at times to conform to the satirical mould of the PhD comic guy or lady who ends up wondering if they will ever get tenured and spin cobwebs in despair. As far as it concerns me, there are no right or wrong choices in this area of academia, and only whether one is responsible for them, so in a way, these comics are also indirectly fostering a form of irresponsibility by teaching us to shift the blame to the structural flaws of the academic market. That's just my take on it because well, I am among the few of medievalists/drama historian who actually even finished his PhD on time and who believes that everything has a purpose and rhyme in this earth.

Chee Wai Lee said...

Kevin - cool. Medieval history (I assume you are tracking the development of language and culture?) is fairly interesting to me. I'm not so much into performances, however.

I assume you had tried seeking an academic position at NUS?

Kevin Jang said...

Hi Chee wai, prior to finishing my PhD, a professor in NUS had told me that the department where I am most likely to seek employment is not employing, so it is not very likely. Anything like a post-doc is probably only for the short term over there. The contraction of the academic market seems to be the main feature of academia though. I don't think the issue should be me wanting to 'sell myself short' though.

Chee Wai Lee said...

That turned out to be pretty much the situation in the CS department at NUS recently. Not hiring. Thankfully, I had already decided by then I was not interested.

Kevin Jang said...

Yes, I kind of lost interest in wanting to work in NUS or Singapore for the most part sometime before, and thought about the other options open. Given that I might have to actually "sell myself short" and do something totally outside of academia if I stay on in Singapore, I refused to and still refuse to. Of course, that is not without a fair share of comments--sometimes rather mean, sometimes just "you cannot eat based on pride or dignity" type of remarks--coming from Singaporeans who witness me doing something different as a choice, but well, for better or worse, I believe this is my choice, so I am still preparing myself for a move.

Chee Wai Lee said...

Yah, my worst-case alternatives included becoming a teacher *brrr*. Frankly, I'd rather take my chances being a hobo in the US :P

Kevin Jang said...

Actually that was a joke uttered by a former peer in the PhD who is American and could not find a job as a creative writer with a PhD focusing on creative writing in the USA. She used to joke once about being a beach bum with a PhD who is jobless, because she did not want to relinquish her citizenship and American residency to stay elsewhere. Then again, in these days, one has to be prepared for contingencies. Yes, I know what you mean about the brrr*** concerning being a teacher. In Singapore, it is very scripted unlike elsewhere where you are given some leeway. I guess it really boils down to what one wants to live with. I am myself also working towards getting another passport somewhere else, and am envisaging a few more years to do that. To many, Singaporeans, I am not about to have a lot of good remarks coming especially with the "quitter" thing being the most prevalent, but I am beyond that. It's where the job calls me, and I have to heed that first instead of just staying as a nameless hobo in a flat in Singapore who needs to live under his parents' roof. Their roof won't be forever too.

Kevin Jang said...

I think that Singaporeans are also trained to think 'safe', in terms of opting for the failure-proof options. But there are cases of so-called failure-proof options failing, like MOE teacher-trainees failing their selection rounds and then forced to pay back the terms that they have not served (more than 4 years not served is seriously very ridiculous as an amount to pay off, if it is a case of you not even being suited to something in the end), or breaking contract early on(this was what a friend of mine and she ended up drifting from job to job, till the current one). In any case, we only have one life. It's either do what you believe in, stay true to yourself, or die trying!

Chee Wai Lee said...

Kevin - apologies for having hung on to your posts for so long.

I still suffer from some of those "kiasi" effects growing up as a Singaporean. I've recently encountered some rather interesting views about how humans generally tend to avoid Errors of Commission while overlooking Errors of Omission. This *could* explain some of what I feel ... and I believe Singapore in general suffers from an extreme form of phobia when it comes to Errors of Commission. This could explain why we do not have as many good entrepreneurs as we should ... risk taking is the attempt to avoid an Error of Omission while risking an Error of Commission.