I suspect we disagree on defining academia rather than cult, which was still imprecise of me. Let’s take a humanities grad program
The only acceptable success criteria is being at the top of the pyramid within academia. People who quit for the outside world are disparaged and viewed as having wasted years of their life and others’.
You move have to move to a new location every few years and can’t afford to socialize with anyone but other academics.
You are probably paying a lot for the privilege of being there, often via debt.
Even people who start with stipends often find those run out before they finish, leaving them with the choice of abandoning 5 years of work or taking on debt for the last years.
If you’re not already from the right class, going to the program will cause you to change in ways that pull you from your family.
Depression/anxiety rates for grad students are sky high, and improve when they quit.
Your advisor can ruin your life with no consequences.
Members believe themselves to be special and answering a higher calling.
I agree that academia is less of a cult than the military, which can literally imprison you, but it’s on the spectrum.
Ok so to compare to my experience in a STEM PhD in the UK, which may be different:
False. Loads of people leave and everyone things that’s normal and laudable, assuming they go on to do something else they value
Part a is true, part b is just not true, you can socialize with whomever you want.
Nope, you are in fact being paid
Its absolutely possible to write up before your money runs out, and many people do. Some don’t but that’s uhh frankly because they’re lazy.
Yeah maybe, sure
Yeah
Maybe? But not much more than any other job. You can quit if you don’t like it, and if your advisor gets a reputation for being mean, they’ll find it hard to hire new people.
Not really? Maybe? IDK. Maybe if you extend “special” to mean “good at biology” and “higher calling” to mean “important research”.
This seems importantly different from cultish specialness and higher callings in that they’re approximately true
7 is instructive, I think. It actually is important whether or not your group’s beliefs are true, or at least close-to-true, because if the beliefs are true then that’s a strong signal the process generating those beliefs is anchored in reality. This means there’s a limit on how far those beliefs can go, since they’ll (hopefully) stay tied to the set of all possible true belief systems.
For example, if your group “believes the world will end within your lifetime” then it’s pretty important whether that group believes this due to climate change or due to a biblical apocalypse. Lumping those groups together would be quite silly, for the most part, even though both are likely false.
Likewise, it makes sense to distinguish PhD students believing they are special (good at biology) and answering a higher calling (important research) from MAPLE members believing they are special (the only hope for humanity’s spiritual salvation) and answering a higher calling (contacting the techregore through samadi).
#2, #3, #4: Somewhat true IMO, but these are much more true of cults than they are of academia. It’s not that hard to have non-academic friends or family as an academic.
#1, #5: I don’t really associate these things with cults? They’re negatives, but in a way that’s not related to cultishness.
It seems to me like academia is more like a caste or a class, which share many adverse features with cults (high demand, loyalty oriented), but differ by having well defined stereotyped relations with other castes or classes within a society.
Pretty much anyone in academia will tell prospective students “don’t do a phd” or at least “you should only do a phd if narrow criteria are met.” This seems to be quite the opposite of a cult. My PhD is in the social sciences not the humanities (but I’m somewhat humanities adjacent), so my reactions to your points above are: 1. The vibe in my experience is always “doing a phd is pointless unless you want to go into academia; if that’s not your plan, you should do something else” and no one really disparages you for quitting. In fact, there’s generally a pro quitting vibe, and the average advisor will, if anything, push a student who is on the fence about quitting towards it rather than away from it. Advisors are perfectly happy when their students land roles in industry, and the emotion most adjacent to the one you’re describing comes from jealousy. I will admit (and I think most others will) to a jealousy towards the earnings of people I knew who weren’t remotely smart enough to hack it in academia, dropped out to do whatever the hell UX research is for tech companies, and now make 5 times what I do under better working conditions. 2. I’m sure I don’t socialize more with other academics than the average person socializes with people from their industry. In grad school, nearly all of my friends were fellow grad students, yes, but that was just proximity and ease of forming the connections rather than any discouragement. We all thought the people who managed to make outside friends were cooler than us. And, the moving around thing breaks up the cultishness if anything plus once you get a TT job, you don’t move any more. 3. You pay a lot in opportunity cost, but I don’t know anyone who took on substantial debt during their grad school years. 4. Compared to what? You probably moved away physically to do it, but it pulls you away from family less, I think, than going off and becoming a corporate lawyer in a far away city. 5. Is that true of cults? Yes, it’s very true of PhD programs and everyone is super aware of it. 6. More so than anyone else’s boss? And the massive power of the advisor is really found in the lab sciences much more than the humanities/social sciences. It also depends on the exact dynamic. Universities have stronger than average protections around things like sexual harassment. 7. Sure, true. But, in my experience, they’re also a cynicism/self-consciousness around that you don’t find among, say, MDs or cops.
I suspect we disagree on defining academia rather than cult, which was still imprecise of me. Let’s take a humanities grad program
The only acceptable success criteria is being at the top of the pyramid within academia. People who quit for the outside world are disparaged and viewed as having wasted years of their life and others’.
You move have to move to a new location every few years and can’t afford to socialize with anyone but other academics.
You are probably paying a lot for the privilege of being there, often via debt.
Even people who start with stipends often find those run out before they finish, leaving them with the choice of abandoning 5 years of work or taking on debt for the last years.
If you’re not already from the right class, going to the program will cause you to change in ways that pull you from your family.
Depression/anxiety rates for grad students are sky high, and improve when they quit.
Your advisor can ruin your life with no consequences.
Members believe themselves to be special and answering a higher calling.
I agree that academia is less of a cult than the military, which can literally imprison you, but it’s on the spectrum.
Ok so to compare to my experience in a STEM PhD in the UK, which may be different:
False. Loads of people leave and everyone things that’s normal and laudable, assuming they go on to do something else they value
Part a is true, part b is just not true, you can socialize with whomever you want.
Nope, you are in fact being paid
Its absolutely possible to write up before your money runs out, and many people do. Some don’t but that’s uhh frankly because they’re lazy.
Yeah maybe, sure
Yeah
Maybe? But not much more than any other job. You can quit if you don’t like it, and if your advisor gets a reputation for being mean, they’ll find it hard to hire new people.
Not really? Maybe? IDK. Maybe if you extend “special” to mean “good at biology” and “higher calling” to mean “important research”.
This seems importantly different from cultish specialness and higher callings in that they’re approximately true
7 is instructive, I think. It actually is important whether or not your group’s beliefs are true, or at least close-to-true, because if the beliefs are true then that’s a strong signal the process generating those beliefs is anchored in reality. This means there’s a limit on how far those beliefs can go, since they’ll (hopefully) stay tied to the set of all possible true belief systems.
For example, if your group “believes the world will end within your lifetime” then it’s pretty important whether that group believes this due to climate change or due to a biblical apocalypse. Lumping those groups together would be quite silly, for the most part, even though both are likely false.
Likewise, it makes sense to distinguish PhD students believing they are special (good at biology) and answering a higher calling (important research) from MAPLE members believing they are special (the only hope for humanity’s spiritual salvation) and answering a higher calling (contacting the techregore through samadi).
#6, #7: Sure
#2, #3, #4: Somewhat true IMO, but these are much more true of cults than they are of academia. It’s not that hard to have non-academic friends or family as an academic.
#1, #5: I don’t really associate these things with cults? They’re negatives, but in a way that’s not related to cultishness.
It seems to me like academia is more like a caste or a class, which share many adverse features with cults (high demand, loyalty oriented), but differ by having well defined stereotyped relations with other castes or classes within a society.
Pretty much anyone in academia will tell prospective students “don’t do a phd” or at least “you should only do a phd if narrow criteria are met.” This seems to be quite the opposite of a cult. My PhD is in the social sciences not the humanities (but I’m somewhat humanities adjacent), so my reactions to your points above are:
1. The vibe in my experience is always “doing a phd is pointless unless you want to go into academia; if that’s not your plan, you should do something else” and no one really disparages you for quitting. In fact, there’s generally a pro quitting vibe, and the average advisor will, if anything, push a student who is on the fence about quitting towards it rather than away from it. Advisors are perfectly happy when their students land roles in industry, and the emotion most adjacent to the one you’re describing comes from jealousy. I will admit (and I think most others will) to a jealousy towards the earnings of people I knew who weren’t remotely smart enough to hack it in academia, dropped out to do whatever the hell UX research is for tech companies, and now make 5 times what I do under better working conditions.
2. I’m sure I don’t socialize more with other academics than the average person socializes with people from their industry. In grad school, nearly all of my friends were fellow grad students, yes, but that was just proximity and ease of forming the connections rather than any discouragement. We all thought the people who managed to make outside friends were cooler than us. And, the moving around thing breaks up the cultishness if anything plus once you get a TT job, you don’t move any more.
3. You pay a lot in opportunity cost, but I don’t know anyone who took on substantial debt during their grad school years.
4. Compared to what? You probably moved away physically to do it, but it pulls you away from family less, I think, than going off and becoming a corporate lawyer in a far away city.
5. Is that true of cults? Yes, it’s very true of PhD programs and everyone is super aware of it.
6. More so than anyone else’s boss? And the massive power of the advisor is really found in the lab sciences much more than the humanities/social sciences. It also depends on the exact dynamic. Universities have stronger than average protections around things like sexual harassment.
7. Sure, true. But, in my experience, they’re also a cynicism/self-consciousness around that you don’t find among, say, MDs or cops.
My undergrad professors heavily encouraged me to reapply to grad school (in biology) because I was so special and good.