Seconded. I m a scientist, and my colleagues and I usually have to carefully triage the conferences

At the risk of being accused of exposing one of higher education s dirty little secrets, let s have a frank discussion about the market italy venice hotels racket? for academic conferences.  This post was inspired by an email invitation I received today to attend an academic conference in Costa Rica next March at the Marriott Los Suenos italy venice hotels Ocean Resort and Casino in Herradura, italy venice hotels Costa Rica (pictured above).  It seems like I get one of these unsolicited invitations every week for an academic conference somewhere in the U.S. or overseas.  Here s how this academic conference racket works:
1. Promotion from assistant professor to associate professor with tenure at most universities is primarily based on publications in academic journals and presentations of research at academic italy venice hotels conferences (which often then lead to publications).  Sure, teaching counts too, but marginal, below-average teaching can usually be offset by a strong publication record (but not vice-versa).
Therefore, there is a HUGE demand from thousands of tenure- and promotion-seeking professors across the country (and around the world) to attend academic conferences, present their research, and then hopefully have that research subsequently published in an academic italy venice hotels journal or in the conference proceedings, or sometimes both. Publications lead to tenure and promotion, and often large pay increases of $8,000 per year for promotion to associate professor, and $10,000 for promotion italy venice hotels to full professor (those italy venice hotels are the current increases at UM-Flint).  Another factor that increases the demand for academic conferences is that all travel expenses, conference fees, and meals are generally paid by the professor s academic institution.
That explains the demand side of the market, which as I said is HUGE.  Now what about the supply side?  Of course, it s grown to meet the high demand and it s no surprise that there is a large and growing academic conference industry, along with a large and growing industry for academic journals to publish academic research (which is typically ignored, except for a few other academics).
italy venice hotels The National Business and Economics Society (NBES) is sponsoring the conference in Costa Rica and is just one of hundreds of academic organizations on the supply side of the academic conference and publishing industry. italy venice hotels Previous NBES conferences have been held in Hawaii (every other year), the Lesser Antilles, the West Indies, Puerto Rico, Mexico, the Virgin Islands and Key West (and never in Duluth, MN, Sagniaw, MI, or Buffalo, NY).  See a noticeable pattern?  Hold an academic conference in early March in an exotic location like Costa Rica, and professors will flock to those events, with all expenses italy venice hotels paid for by their university students and/or taxpayers .  Let s be realistic, don t professors italy venice hotels deserve a Spring Break getaway around the time their students are heading down to Daytona Beach or Miami Beach?
Now, to attract the greatest number of scholars to an academic conference in an exotic location in March, should the organization make the academic focus of the conference broad or narrow? italy venice hotels Obviously, it should be as academically italy venice hotels diverse as possible, and the NBES isn t holding back, it invites italy venice hotels scholars from Finance, Accounting, Marketing, Management, Information Systems, Operations Research, Economics, Public Health and Administration, Psychology and related areas .  Wow, that s every department in the entire business school plus some almost unrelated departments in the College of Arts and Sciences!
While they re on their all-expenses-paid trip to the four-day conference in Costa Rica (often with a spouse, who pays airfare but usually not for the accommodations), the professors can take advantage of a host of activities in Costa Rica during their ample free time (their academic italy venice hotels obligation may only involve italy venice hotels one 30-minute research presentation, or maybe one other session where they serve as a discussant) that includes shopping, italy venice hotels dining, deep sea fishing, water sports, hiking, golf, tennis, and an on-site casino.
For the last four years, the NBES has published electronic conference proceedings (password protected) of the papers presented, which could count as an academic publication for some universities.  In that case, the professor gets credit for presenting academic italy venice hotels research at a conference in Costa Rica and possibly for an academic publication for his or her paper in the conference proceedings, and that research may eventually lead to an academic publication, which may eventually lead to promotion, tenure and a large increase in salary.
In the end, students (or their parents or taxpayers) ultimately pay for their professors to attend academic conferences in places like Costa Rica in March, which contributes to rising tuition and the higher education bubble.   And it s not clear that students reap any benefits from these academic conferences relative to the costs, especially if the trade-off is lower tuition italy venice hotels and fewer academic conferences, or higher tuition and more academic conferences. italy venice hotels The fact that community colleges typically charge tuition that is about 50% of a four-year university might partially be explained italy venice hotels by the fact that professors at community colleges aren t under pressure to publish, and don t attend expensive, four-day academic conferences in Costa Rica, Hawaii and the Virgin Islands with the same frequency as their counterparts at 4-year colleges.
I suspect the author of this article has never been an academic or, at least, not at a less-then-Ivy-League institution. Large pay increases for promotion? italy venice hotels Fully paid conference fees? Please. Raises are scarce in academia these days, and the salaries are incredibly low, particularly in relationship to the number of years that most of us spend in grad school. The majority of us have to choose carefully just one conference a year, which is largely paid for on our own dime, and only occasionally supplemented by a few hundred dollars from our institutions, just to share our research and get feedback from colleagues before trying to publish in a tight publishing market. And yes, it s all absolutely required for promotion and tenure, but with minimal financial support. Yes, Mark, you are both unfair and inaccurate.
If your research is funded by a grant, dissemination of that research is almost always a condition of the funding, and your grant may pay the expenses of your travel. Universities typically might pay a few hundred dollars s worth of travel expenses for people who don t have outside funding.
So, yes, this is unfair and inaccurate. italy venice hotels Very few conferences are held in Costa Rica or Hawaii. The American Physical Society italy venice hotels conferences that I have attended, for example, were held in exotic Nashville, Tuscon, New Orleans, and Boulder you can find a list of this year s conferences on their website. There were thousands of attendees at each one. And I have known very few people who skip much of the conference, though of course there are certainly some who do.
Jeana is partially correct. It all depends on the field in which you are working and the prospects for external funding. Once upon a time, I was an engineering faculty member at a large land grant. I did go to a lot of conferences but it was a line item in my research contracts and my gov t sponsors expected me to publish so they got public acknowledgement of the funding. I did get a significant raise when I earned tenure and was promoted from Assistant to Associate. A few years later I got a really significant raise when I left academia for the private sector .
Seconded. I m a scientist, and my colleagues and I usually have to carefully triage the conferences we go to funding is very tight, and attending any conference usually means ponying up out of your own pocket. I have had to pass up excellent conferences in unglamorous places because I just couldn t justify the expense. italy venice hotels (Also, in the sciences, conference attendance is not a factor for promotion: invited talks are, but mere attendance is not.)
What these broad-brush, exotic-locale conferences are is a scam. They re trying to get people to pony up registration and lodging fees for the privilege of sitting in some random conference center with a bunch of other suckers. I get invitations to speak at them every week, on topics that have little or nothing to do with my research. The meetings I *attend*, on the other hand, are arranged by my professional societies and have nothing to do with these ridiculous pseudoconferences.
Yes, there is a lot of dreck out there but professors are keenly status conscious, and tenure committees at most places will see right through vanity italy venice hotels publications or BS conference attendance. Conferences (and journals) are nothing new, and it often takes A LOT of work to be accepted at a good one. And the cost to one s institution is a bagatelle compared to the ballooning of the campus administration.
Oh jeez you have exposed us all! In fairness, some of the lesser of us had to make do with conferences in NYC or PHX, or San Francisco. italy venice hotels It was ugly work but some us lesser lights had to show up there.
It s absolutely true that some conferences are a scam in just the ways that the author suggests. It sounds like the one he describes is one of them. I m invited to several by mass email every year, usually in Hawaii. Theoretically I could go to a stupid italy venice hotels conference in Hawaii, attend only long enough to give my talk, and charge italy venice hotels it to my research fund. That much is true.
But I don t do that. The conferences I go to are often in nice places, but they re very work intensive. I typically spend all day working and it s not at all a vacation. I attend all (or almost) of the sessions, and the socializing I do is with colleagues and often involves informal talk about work. If it s a holiday, it s very much a busman s holiday. I m not unusual in these respects, either.
There s also some exaggeration here. As the first commenter states, it s not as if many academics italy venice hotels have huge research budgets or unlimited travel f