Scouring online, I see quite a few columns and videos about the academia being toxic, inefficient and doomed to collapse. And every time there is a smile on my face when reading those horrible claims. Some of those are true: people overwork, get paid less than in other industries, and the state of scientific publishing is surely a mess. However, I do not believe that academia is doomed. There is hope in my heart for this weird world of knowledge and research that we, modern scholars, end up in. And I believe that the fundamental underside of academia remains untouched and stands strong even in our dire times.
This underside is the continuity of teaching and the passing of knowledge. Apart from textbooks, papers and endless conference reports that are easy see, there are countless invisible miracles performed in the walls of universities that even students rarely notice. Whenever a teacher reads a course on a subject they know very well, or when a scientific advisor takes a new student under their wing, they pass a small spark to them. It is different every time: might be the childlike curiosity, or a passion for novelty, or resilience and persistence. These sparks often go out, smothered by the mundane and routine, by exams and paperwork. But in some individuals they manage to live on, flaring up into a full-fledged firestorm over the years. These are the people who do the bulk of the work and keep learning and exploring after getting their degree, often to their very last days. And they keep handing these sparks to others as well, sharing the knowledge and the everlasting thirst for discovery.
There is a very important fact about these sparks of knowledge: they stick around within the walls of universities, and I strongly suspect that all of the scientists have their flames passed down to them from the renaissance days or even earlier. One of the best ways to know these predecessors is to study philosophy, that is still a mandatory course for STEM students. Sometimes it is possible to track this lineage directly: Röntgen was an advisor for Exner, who then taught Hasenöhrl, who in turn was an advisor for Schrödinger, whom we all know. These relationships seem to form schools of thought that persist through the years and span whole branches of science across the world. In these "families" of scientists teaching each other, the sparks of knowledge live on.
I remember coming to my first lab: an older student took me in and helped with starting the work. Our common supervisor, a PhD, helped with computational parts of the project and planning. I never excelled, but I learned to do the work well. And when a month ago my new advisor asked to take over two of the new students, I gladly agreed. It felt right, like returning the favor I once received, not from the people, but rather from the scientific community itself. Those are two first-year students, young and inexperienced but filled with curiosity and willing to put in the work, despite the tight schedule.
Soon I will finish my MSc degree. The decision to proceed with a PhD was an easy one, a step towards a clear path forward. More time for research, more resources and an endless source of complex problems to treat to my restless mind. Academia is not doomed, for its essence is not in institutions or publishers or corporations, but in countless scholars around the world, working together towards common goals.