Reading this article makes me realize I certainly picked the road not taken. Last year I quit my job as the Director of IT at a small pharma, dropped out of a company-paid MBA program, drastically reduced my expenses, and started doing independent research. A lot of people around me thought I was crazy especially since I wasn't going the PhD or startup route either. In my mind though, it seems pretty logical - I want to do real computer science research without all the BS that goes on with academia or corporate research lab.
I'm more productive when working solo than in teams. And I already have a specific research project in mind. All I needed was to plan my life so I'd have 50-60hr/week free after my bills were paid. For the past two months, I've been working on my research project diligently and without any external delays. I know I won't get a degree out of this and I doubt I can get published but since that's not my end-goal, it doesn't matter. I am looking for a hardware hacker if anyone is interested - it is a very fun/rewarding project: http://ktype.net
I did the same thing about ten years ago: I quit a high-paying job in Zurich, moved to Prague on-the-cheap, and hired two Czech PhD students part-time. We spent five years doing CS research and it was always two-steps forward, one back. Every three or four months we would throw everything out and start again; and we had the freedom to do so. There was no installed base, no one tapping their fingers expectantly. Looking back, I wouldn’t have done it any other way. I think you made a great choice. Good luck!
Sure. The mission was to find a new way to approach how software is constructed. The result is called Kayia and it's here:
http://kayia.org/kayia.pdf
It hit 'singularity' (everything came down to a graph edge; the system is comprised of nothing else) in 2005. I've had some great advisors and the feedback is consistent, “That it’s unique is not interesting if it's not compelling. Show how it’s compelling.” So I’ve stumbled with my limited resources over the years to do that and I’ve come up with a database, of all things, but it’s actually the "programming language" masquerading as a database.
I'm thinking of offering it as a service and if you want to see where that's going, it's at http://www.kayadb.com (although it’s not meant to be looked at yet). I'll do a Tell HN when in a few weeks when it's closer to being ready to show.
It's not ready yet. It's NoSQL, scales to 4EB on the back-end but handles the relational model. Not open source for varying reasons. It will be a service at first. But it's not ready yet. I'll definitely let HN know when it is, and if anyone wants to be an early user, please contact me.
I feel for you... creating a better paradigm is a compelling problem but also can be a seductive trap.
It's hard to have new paradigm without compelling "front end" - either a powerful tool or some really simple example code.
Another thought; software development is plagued by a set of "typical problems". Another way to present a new paradigm would be to show a few problems with a discussion of how your approach would get around them.
The world is full of powerful languages. Their problem is that they give you a bigger cannon to shoot yourself in the foot with after a point.
If you want to create a truly "amazing new paradigm", show ways that you would either untangle an existing mess or ways you'd prevent that mess from happening.
Doing independent research like this is very cool. I admire your willingness to take such a risk and make this sacrifice. One comment I would add is that, while you might be more "productive" solo (less context switching/blocking I assume ;), working with others forces you to maintain a persuasive, crisp story about why what your doing is the right thing. While early, exploratory research can temporarily delay the need for this story, it can't be delayed long!
From the info on your website, it looks like you are developing keyboard layouts that would be useful for people with disabilities. However, I was unable to figure out what your elevator speech for this work might be. What is your hypothesis? What evidence do you have for it? What disability(ies) are you targeting? How will new mobile keyboard help?
Lastly, this looks like a useful project for others (you're not just proving random theorems in your basement :)! Why not re-frame this in your mind as a startup? Good luck!
I am definitely getting input from as many people as I can. Within a month, I'm going to start working with my potential users and their caretakers so that'll be real feedback.
I'm targeting http://ktype.net/wiki/research:disabilities which prevent people from talking or using a keyboard - Stephen Hawkings of the world as well as autistic children with major speech problems. There are many existing solutions out there to help people with disabilities but there are also very wide gaps in between. I'm trying to catalog everything I can find to help fill in the gaps and I will make my own bridges if necessary.
Additionally, I'm working on a vastly better auto-suggest feature: http://ktype.net/wiki/research:articles:progress_20110209 than a cellphone T9. Also, I want to make it work with a variety of hardware input devices. If you are a researcher making a brain-reading interface for paralyzed patients, don't hook it up to Windows! KType will learn from each user's patterns and will be customizable enough to support easy communication. I'm also going to integrate Twitter/email etc. soon enough - http://ktype.net/wiki/dev:roadmap
Don't get me started I can keep talking about this 24/7 :)
This is the exact same thing i am planning to do. i am currently in a lavish tech consultancy firm, but the whole idea of being a "resource" is really stagnating my brain, and also objectivizes humanity. I still can't stand being called a resource.
Im planning on quitting soon, and doing independent research while creating non-startup apps. Posts like this (and the link above) really motivate me. :)
Are you just doing research for researches sake? If so good for you. If not, why try and do it independently? Don't you think you deserve to be rewarded for your work? i.e. compensated either with prestige or money? At the very least would you like to be compensated for you contributions to the field?
I guess I'm doing it for the end-goal's sake. I really do want people with disabilities to be able to communicate better, including my own cousin. As long as my bills are being paid (regardless of the source of income), I don't need any rewards. I'm not a saint or anything - I just don't want to deal with the overhead of funding, grants, scholarships, sales, marketing, clients, customers. I want to make a usable, innovative product and keep improving it. A few years ago my preliminary version got #1 on HN ( http://chir.ag/projects/ktype/ ) and since that day I have been working hard to change my life so I could work on it full-time. Took over a year but I can finally do it now, so I'm very happy.
You might not want "customers" but nothing will help you innovate like users. Where I work we get mountains of feedback and use it to justify new features and to prioritize bug fixes.
What is the ultimate goal of your research? If you are simply doing research for the fun of it, then you can only continue it without funding for as long as you have runway capital. I ask this question because I've thought about doing the same thing, but I'm not sure I could productize the research I want to do, so it scares me to begin and basically throw away my savings for no tangible benefit. I'd appreciate your thoughts.
I was very careful to pick realistic, targetable goals for my research project, KType. World peace wouldn't cut it. KType has the goals of:
* Improving communication for people with disabilities
* Creating low-cost software / hardware tools, customizable for each individual
* Providing useful research material and articles for families & friends
* Sharing case studies of actual users
Money doesn't factor into this because over the past few years, I've worked hard to ensure my bills are paid without me having to work full-time. My research project goals have to do with the real project's usability and accessibility and not orthogonal accomplishments like publishing papers, getting grants etc. That's all I need to keeps me in focus. Every minute I work on KType, I am actually working on KType. It's a very slow process but at least I know I'm moving in the right direction.
"I know I won't get a degree out of this and I doubt I can get published"
Sorry to disagree! :-)!
For getting published, try some journal on human-computer interaction. Since you know much more about your field than I do, look for other journal 'varieties' as well.
For what you are doing, that is, a lot of independent, call it, R&D, if you get results anything like what you want, then it would be surprising if you didn't have something publishable. If this argument is not enough, then look at much of what does get published and conclude that much of it is not very high quality stuff!
Uh, one way to improve your paper a notch or two over what is common is just to write well, say, well organized, clear, including writing good English with good spelling, punctuation, and grammar.
Once you are published at least once, better, say, three times, sorry, but you should be able to get a Ph.D.! :-)! Maybe this is a big disappointment, but it's true!
How then to get a Ph.D? Four points:
(1) At at least some of the best US research universities, there is no coursework requirement for a Ph.D.
(2) The requirement for a dissertation is, say, "an original contribution to knowledge worthy of publication". Since you've already been there, done that, got the T-shirt, there's no question. Big, huge advantage.
(3) One more requirement would likely be the qualifying exams. These exams are to show that you are 'qualified' to move on to research and do research. But, uh, did I mention that you've already been there, done that, got the T-shirt? The difficulty of the qualifying exams varies widely, but generally the 'polish on your halo' can be important in deciding who passes.
So, it can be good to have some high quality halo polish; here are three: (A) Some of the best halo polish is published papers, the more papers, more highly regarded, the better the polish. (B) More halo polish is when it looks like you might be a successful entrepreneur who gets good publicity for the university and, maybe later on, is, uh, 'thankful and generous'! (C) More good polish is that you actually did this work, conceived it, took it on, got it done, independently, which means you are promising as a good researcher for the future bringing more good publicity to the university.
(4) There may be a requirement for 'residency' for a year. This can mean that maybe you show up on campus some day in September and again in the spring to defend your dissertation which you submit by taking a stack of your published papers and putting a big staple in the UL corner.
For more:
You should pick the university and department carefully. You might try, say, the bio-engineering program at Johns Hopkins. I would focus on such higher end engineering programs with 'biology' contact. Of course try MIT and Cal Tech. Don't settle for Southern Sawgrass U.
You may be able to get a research grant, before, during, or after your Ph.D. program: At your university, ask the people who know about grant sources. Maybe the US DoD VA would give you a grant. A research grant is the 'magic bullet' to rapid progress in academics because you are bringing money to the university! You will understand better when you see what fraction of the money the university keeps for 'overhead'! Did I hear someone say, "Money talks."?
Uh, one way to pick a department and prof: Pick your journal carefully! That is, if you want to get into program A with full prof P editor of relevant journal X, then submit your paper to journal X and, if it is accepted, then, uh, take 'advantage' of this contact you made with prof P to get your Ph.D. Note: It can be possible for prof P to 'direct' your dissertation at a school not his.
Uh, once your paper is accepted, prof P may invite you to present your paper at his conference on Computer-Human Interaction or some such. Likely accept! Then that's two bullets on your CV.
Note: When you submit your paper, likely you do not have to give any significant biographical information at all. So, you don't need a high school transcript! In particular, it doesn't have to be clear if you have a Ph.D. or not. So, before your Ph.D., you are fully 'qualified' to submit a paper.
Note: Commonly a journal plays pocket pool with your paper for a year before sending you results of reviews. So, two rejections and one acceptance would take three years. Bummer.
So, to speed up the process, go online, find maybe 50 appropriate journals, to the editor in chief of each, via e-mail or on paper, write a nice, one page letter outlining your paper and asking "might your journal be interested?", enclose a copy of your paper, and, then, only from the responses make a 'formal submission'.
Uh, the research universities make a big, huge deal out of 'research' both for the faculty and for at least the Ph.D. students. Else they'd have to know something about the real world and teach it, right? Horrors!
Uh, the research universities long since concluded that by a wide margin the most difficult part of a Ph.D. and the usual point of failure is just the research for the dissertation. For some students, that work is hard enough to threaten their life (literally). For others, it's put their feet up for an afternoon, think up some good stuff, write it up, send it in, get it accepted for publication, and shout "Done!".
In my opinion, you've already passed the main obstacle: You've decided to do some independent work.
For more, you've picked a problem, have some productive lines of attack, and are making progress.
For more, if you get the research results you have in mind, then you will have something "new, correct, and significant": "New"? No doubt what you are working on does not yet exist. "Correct"? It works! "Significant"? Ask Hawking or many people and/or groups working with the handicapped. E.g., ask the US DoD VA.
You can do something cute here: You satisfy "significant" because you solve a practical problem and not because you have a theorem or counterexample that settles some old conjecture about differential cohomology that only six people in the world know about. Readers listen up: This example makes a useful, general point!
Presto: "New, correct, and significant" are the usual criteria for publication!
That is, you've already given up on taking a problem from a prof, pleasing a prof, caring mostly about what will please a prof, looking for praise, approval, status, prestige, guidance, 'mentoring' from a prof, etc.
But, but, but, your work would never get venture funding, right? Wrong! One of the 'themes' Brad Feld likes to pursue is human-computer interaction, especially without a traditional keyboard! Uh, if you had Hawking, the DoD VA, and some organization for the handicapped on your side, had some beta testers, ..., then you might get a venture capital check -- it's not hopeless.
Sorry to disagree with your:
"I know I won't get a degree out of this and I doubt I can get published". :-)!
There's an old quote: "Be wise; generalize.".
Okay: How I got a Ph.D.: I started with a practical problem I'd identified and worked on before grad school. I saw a solution intuitively. In my first year in grad school, I took some advanced math that let me turn my intuitive stuff into some solid theorems and proofs for a solution, and in my first summer independently I did that. That work was all but the software and typing for my dissertation.
For some interim 'halo polish', I saw a problem, thought for a few evenings, roughly saw a solution, and then signed up for a 'reading course' on that problem. I worked for a few more days and saw a much nicer solution, wrote it up, turned it in, and was done with the reading course in two weeks. The work looked publishable and was -- I published it later. So, in two weeks I'd created "an original contribution to knowledge worthy of publication", that is, satisfied the requirement for a dissertation. Good halo polish.
A student who does such independent work is "difficult", but on this point read the recent Fred Wilson blog at his AVC.COM.
You will not be the first to do some independent work and later get a Ph.D. for it. Uh, one of the biggest topics now in computer science is a 'good' algorithm as in the set of algorithms P as in the question P versus NP. Well, likely and apparently the formulator of a 'good' algorithm was Jack Edmonds. Can get a start on him at
Yes, he also won a von Neumann prize, etc. Little things like that!
As at Wikipedia, he was at University of Maryland (UM). Uh, as I heard the story, he was not a happy Ph.D. student at UM so left to the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) about 40 miles away. Then he published some good work in graph theory. Finally some of the math faculty at UM, feeling a little guilty, drove to NBS, smoked a peace pipe, and said essentially "Put a staple in the UL corner of your papers and we'll be pleased to call it a Ph.D. dissertation in our department.".
Final point: Of course, D. Knuth knows about academics. Well buried in 'The TeXBook' is:
"The traditional way is to put off all creative aspects until the last part of graduate school. For seventeen or more years, a student is taught 'examsmanship', then suddenly after passing enough exams in graduate school he's told to do something original."
Yes, there very much is a conflict here: The approach to getting into grad school can strongly conflict with the approach to writing a dissertation.
This is a very interesting comment. It reads a bit like "phd hacking". Did you try this? The work done by the OP is indeed has potential to be published. The above comment, while written in an encouraging tone, has some caveats that might be worth pointing out.
"(1) At at least some of the best US research universities, there is no coursework requirement for a Ph.D."
* I find that to be untrue. In my case, I had a M.S. before applying, and still had to take nearly 2 years of required coursework. It depends on the program, but I have not heard of any U.S. program that will accept a B.S. and not have required classes.
"(2) The requirement for a dissertation is, say, "an original contribution to knowledge worthy of publication". Since you've already been there, done that, got the T-shirt, there's no question. Big, huge advantage."
* Most students accepted to the best PhD programs (computer science) will already have top-tier publications before entering. It is definitely a good thing to have a publication, but rather than being finished, you will have just begun.
"(3) One more requirement would likely be the qualifying exams. These exams are to show that you are 'qualified' to move on to research and do research. But, uh, did I mention that you've already been there, done that, got the T-shirt?"
* Quals will still require reading deeply from the literature. You will be expected to know all the fundamentals in your computer science area to pass. Having published is irrelevant here.
"Maybe the US DoD VA would give you a grant."
* Often only professors can apply for the big grants, and writing a grant is actually non-trivial. They need to see a fantastic track record, a solid proven team, and often nods to diversity and educating the public. Some students will help their advisors write the grant, but in the end it's the advisor who doles out the money and is the PI.
I feel the attitude of professors/academia being so easy to fool to be somewhat overstated here. I won't go into the "ease of publishing" comments, but my first top-tier publication took 3 years with many rejections, when I was an a non-student doing research. I also did a lot of research that was rejected and went into the "paper graveyard". After doing it a few times, publishing is significantly easier since you will better know the methodology, literature, and how to write academically. I'm not trying to be discouraging, but I find the above comment to be optimistic but a bit exaggerated.
I find that to be untrue. In my case, I had a M.S. before applying, and still had to take nearly 2 years of required coursework. It depends on the program, but I have not heard of any U.S. program that will accept a B.S. and not have required classes.*
Then go to the U.K. or the majority of the commonwealth. Required coursework is not a necessary part of doctoral research in many, many departments of these universities.
Sorry you had problems. Many people have had problems, even very serious ones. I've seen it happen too often that a Ph.D. program causes stress, for years, and that is well known to cause depression, clinical depression, and even suicide. I've seen really good, talented, dedicated, fantastic students have their lives and themselves be ruined.
For all my points you question, my claims are rock solid.
You wrote:
"Did you try this?".
Yes, as I indicated, I did "try this", and it did work. I hold a Ph.D. in Engineering from one of the best research universities in the world. The work I did was really some applied math with theorems and proofs. I did the work as 'operations research', but it could as well be called 'computer science' or even 'electrical engineering'. The work might also fit some 'interdisciplinary' applied math programs. The Chairman of the committee that approved the work was from outside my department and a Member, US National Academy of Engineering and Editor in Chief of one of the world's best relevant journals. One of the world's best profs in operations research chided me for not publishing: I didn't want to publish it and, instead, wanted to sell it. I certainly didn't just want to give it away. I do not now nor have I ever had any academic career aspirations at all. So, I have had no desire to build a record of academic publications.
"It reads a bit like 'phd hacking'."
I don't call it 'hacking'. But, it is a play on several points. I mention two:
(1) Universities want the big deal to be research. Okay, take advantage of that or at least go along with it. Then one way to know if have some 'research' is just to publish it. In the end, once out of school, the first criterion for 'research' is that it's published.
Commonly publication is also the last criterion since, say, short of lots of citations or an actual prestigious prize, it's tough to do more evaluation. It's tough enough for the field just to review the paper; asking for department chairs, school deans, and promotion committees to do much more with the paper is a bit much.
In school, some profs try to ask for more than just 'publishable' in ways that are often cruel, irrelevant, exploitative, destructive, domineering, demeaning, insulting, sadistic, etc. So, a way, in part or in total, around such nonsense is just to publish.
(2) Another point is in engineering, if work solves an important practical problem, then that fact can be used to meet the requirement for "significant". Otherwise "significant" can be in the eye of the beholder and tough to be objective about.
With this 'hack', can work around the usual, 'expected' slog through courses, qualifying exams as a 'filter', advanced courses as more 'filters', demonstrations of 'academic devotion', sacrifice, and shedding of blood, sweat, and tears, slave labor for profs on their research projects, begging a prof for a 'dissertation topic', hoping, praying that the prof likes the work, pleasing all profs on a committee of five, etc. Good way to ruin a life. "Have to be smart to get a Ph.D.", and one way to use such smarts is to avoid slogging through that long, muddy swamp. I outlined a way.
You quoted my:
"(1) At at least some of the best US research universities, there is no coursework requirement for a Ph.D."
and wrote
"I find that to be untrue."
You can't find my statement to be "untrue"! Maybe it wasn't true at the school you went to, but that is not relevant to my claim: I didn't say that no coursework holds at every school.
To make my claim true, I need find only two schools where my coursework remark holds. Well, at one time, I knew of three top research universities in the US NE, two in the Ivy League, where official statements of the universities and/or selected departments flatly stated that there was no coursework requirement for a Ph.D. Neither was there a Master's requirement.
The part about "the best US research universities" is important: At Siawash State U., the faculty is so insecure that they will drag students through no end of hell. They can ask for over 100 credit hours of courses. It can appear they want the student two show up at the qualifying exams carrying all of the QA section of the library between their ears. The faculty research sucks, and they believe that a Ph.D. is about 'acquiring knowledge'. BS: At the top schools, a Ph.D. is about the research. Trying to carry the library around between two ears is for fools.
At the top schools, the 'coursework' a student should know is to cover basic material in the field, say, enough to teach ugrad courses. The rest of 'coursework' is to get ready for doing research. If the student has already done the research and published it, then they have proven that they are ready to do research.
Indeed, one Ivy League research university, in a department likely the best in its field in the world, has flatly stated that graduate students are expected to learn the basic material on their own, that no courses are offered for such material, and that the graduate courses are introductions to research in fields by experts in those fields. They also stated that grad students are expected to have some research underway in their first year. And they also want grad students out in three years.
A secret: At such universities, commonly graduate courses are not really 'graded'. Again, the purpose is the 'research', not the courses, credits, grades, or learning.
Did I mention that the main point was just the research?
Then how the heck to evaluate the research? There is a way, in academics essentially only one very good way: Publish it. Better? Okay, publish in a 'high quality' journal. For more? Win a prize. Maybe get asked by the NSF to be a grant reviewer. Maybe become a journal reviewer, editor, or editor in chief. Usually conference proceedings are less highly regarded. But basically, especially for grad students, just publish, and asking for additional criteria is a fool's errand for all concerned. Schools that don't realize such things should be avoided.
To be more clear, for the 'standards' of what is good research, do not look to the fantasy dreams of some dissertation committees and, instead, look at what's in the better journals.
There is more: Going back decades there are far too many horror stories about sadistic abuse of grad students. So some good universities just set up some good criteria that strongly cut out the sadistic abuse: E.g., the requirement for a dissertation can be, as I said, "an original contribution to knowledge worthy of publication". Implicit but very clear is, if the student and his advisors cannot agree, then the student can just PUBLISH the stuff. Then the faculty committee members essentially have to back down and sign off on his dissertation.
There's more: The student may have whatever 'relations' with his dissertation advisors and department. So, make the process so that the dissertation is to be approved by a committee with majority from outside the student's department and Chairman from outside the student's department. So, the student gets a fresh, maybe more objective, collection of 'reviewers'.
And, if you were a dean, what other standards and processes would you set up that could be executed effectively?
You wrote:
"Most students accepted to the best PhD programs (computer science) will already have top-tier publications before entering. It is definitely a good thing to have a publication, but rather than being finished, you will have just begun."
Maybe some such holds, but this process can't work well. It's doomed to failure. As I outlined, there just is not any chance of reasonable criteria for research quality for students other than publication in a decently good journal.
So, for a program such as you outlined, the whole thing is a fool's errand for both a student and the faculty: Bluntly, a student with "top-tier publications" has proven that they have gotten nearly everything important from a Ph.D. degree program that they could hope to get. The faculty has no more to give them. Indeed, "top-tied publications" are in practice mostly the only thing the faculty members can hope for for themselves in their own careers. Thus the student's formal education is over, done with, completed. If the school doesn't know that, then the student should go to a different school.
"Quals will still require reading deeply from the literature. You will be expected to know all the fundamentals in your computer science area to pass."
First, I saw very little that was "deep" anywhere in computer science, yes, from a career in computing and for some years as a researcher at Yorktown Heights. Yes, a proof of P versus NP would likely be be deep, but that's not in the literature.
Second, I've seen a lot in graduate academics and/or research in math, physics, engineering, and computer science, and I've never seen a graduate program where preparing for the qualifying exams really required reading the "literature", i.e., the journals, deeply or not. Instead there's plenty in the better texts.
For reading the "literature" in a field of specialization: Did I mention that the goal was research and, there, publication? The journal flatly doesn't ask that you have read all the literature in the field beyond what is crucial for your paper.
Indeed, in math, physical science, and more mature parts of engineering, what's in the texts is plenty deep. I can give you a list of texts, say, heavily from Springer, in stochastic processes and stochastic optimal control so that you could count without taking your shoes off everyone in the US who could pass a test on that content. E.g., can filter just a huge fraction of math profs and/or math grad students, likely over 99%, with just the statement, not even the proof, of the Lindeberg-Feller central limit theorem. Can filter a huge fraction of statistics profs with just the Radon-Nikodym approach to sufficient statistics as in the Halmos-Savage paper in the late 1940s. Could throw out nearly all the rest with just the Hahn decomposition approach to the Neyman-Pearson lemma. Just showing that every arrival process with stationary and independent increments is a Poisson process would stop nearly everyone. I know only one proof in print; I improved on that but couldn't pass a test on it; heck, I never committed the whole proof to memory, even when I improved it. Lesson: No one can carry the QA section of the library, even just the texts, between their ears. Can't be done.
I wrote:
"Maybe the US DoD VA would give you a grant."
and you responded:
"Often only professors can apply for the big grants, and writing a grant is actually non-trivial. They need to see a fantastic track record, a solid proven team, and often nods to diversity and educating the public. Some students will help their advisors write the grant, but in the end it's the advisor who doles out the money and is the PI."
We are both correct: Still, for some nice R&D work in human-computer interface for the handicapped, there could be a grant. Many grant sources can just give the grant and not follow the paradigm you outlined. E.g., the US DoD VA has a big hospital across the street from the big NIH campus in Bethesda, and both sides of the street would like to be seen as helping the handicapped, especially US soldiers wounded in battle. There's nothing to keep them from giving a grant.
You should understand the 'hidden agenda' behind the grant situation you described: At the beginning WWII, the US DoD ('War Department') laughed at science. By 1945 the laughing was over, and D. Eisenhower said, "Never again will US science be permitted to operate independently of the US military." Then several faucets for funding were set up: ONR, elsewhere in DoD, AEC (DoE), etc. J. Conant's intention was to have so many faucets that there would be no one place to cut them all off. Then the top US universities got "an offer they couldn't refuse": Take the grant money or cease to be a top US university.
So to the present about 60% of the budgets at the usual suspects are from grants such as you outlined. The overhead per grant is also about 60% and supports the English, history, and art history departments, the Lacrosse team, the art museum, the weekly string quartet concerts, etc.
The hidden agenda is just Eisenhower's, and in particular to have US Federal funding of the top US research universities.
The actual PIs are heavily pawns in this game: As you outlined, the research is very competitive. But as is too easy to see, the research is commonly a bit far from anyone's concerns, of Eisenhower, the DoD, the US economy, etc. So, the NSF keeps trying to make the research more 'relevant', e.g., with 'cross-cutting' programs, etc. Still, one way or another, about 60% of the budgets of the top few dozen US research universities are funded by the US Federal Government, and Congress is not about to change this.
That big old system aside, again, there is nothing to keep someone doing good work in human-computer interface for the handicapped from getting a good grant; all that's needed is just to please some one grant administrator. Just one.
"I feel the attitude of professors/academia being so easy to fool to be somewhat overstated here."
No one's being "fooled" in what I wrote. Again, in really simple terms, to define 'research', look at what's in the journals. That's nearly all the definition. For criteria for a Ph.D. dissertation, don't look for more.
"I won't go into the 'ease of publishing' comments, but my first top-tier publication took 3 years with many rejections, when I was an a non-student doing research. I also did a lot of research that was rejected and went into the 'paper graveyard'."
I have no academic aspirations, but for various strange reasons I've published a stack of papers in applied math, mathematical statistics, and computer science. Statistics and computer science? I almost took one elementary course in each, but not really! In addition my dissertation was clearly publishable. All my papers have been accepted with little or no revisions to the first journal where a submission was made except one case: As a compliment, they wanted me to rename one of my new results from a lemma to a theorem. I waited some years; the journal got a new editor; and he said that the paper was beyond what he could review. So I submitted to another journal. I stated an old theorem with a not very well known stronger version, and the reviewers wanted the original, weaker statement. Okay. Done.
How'd I do that? There is a theme that is implicit already in this thread: Independence.
Or, here's a not so good way: Diligently follow some profs around for a few years and then write something that will impress them. Generally here are close to asking for the impossible.
If crank down the 'diligence' level, this can be made to work, and here's one way: Maybe a prof, say, at Stanford or Berkeley, gets some cash from, say, Microsoft and Google, to do some things in computer and network system management. So, the prof has a dozen or so grad students and lets them go for it. The prof doesn't actually do much or any of the technical work, and the grad students are free to spread out like a dozen scared rabbits.
We should insert: In nearly every field, especially in science and engineering, what is considered the best work 'mathematizes' the field. If you are not so mathematizing, then you are at a disadvantage. But to mathematize, really need an ugrad major in pure math plus some additional topics. Since so few people in engineering and computer science have these prerequisites, for someone with the prerequisites mathematizing the field is relatively easy.
For what I did, it was heavy on independence. So, I started in pure math, and at the ugrad level that's a good thing to do. The stuff in grad pure math looked to me as hopeless; I was wrong; it's only 99 44/100% hopeless! Actually, there is some hope in there, but nearly no one can see it!
So, with independence, I followed various other directions on applied math, while getting paid for it. Did a lot with independence.
Back in grad school, I emphasized selected, advanced, high quality topics in stochastic processes and optimization. The statistics, computing, etc. around was low quality stuff I avoided.
For specific research topics, the high quality background, the selected topics, the independent approach, and usually starting with an applied problem were all crucial.
In particular, in computer science and statistics, I did 'field crossing', that is, brought some of what I knew from outside, built on it, and got results.
Flatly on the research, I never got the problem or any significant guidance from anyone else.
So, when my stuff was reviewed, it was "new, correct (usually theorems and proofs), and significant (solved a practical problem)".
To computer science students I'd say: F'get about computer science. Study math, ugrad pure math, optimization, stochastic processes, mathematical statistics, abstract algebra grad math, get some practical problems roughly in 'computing', do research, publish papers, and pick up a Ph.D. in computer science.
If all the grad students in computer science have "top-tier publications" and still no Ph.D. degrees, then change fields to something in applied math in an interdisciplinary applied math program or something in engineering.
For more, if you really want an academic career, then think carefully a little on where you can make a 'big splash' and how you can do that. But, again, I'd recommend that your work be an example of the 'mathematization' of the field.
Writing politically incorrect comments can cause a lot of high emotions that can ruin the content. Somehow some signal is needed to 'qualify' the content as, say, "not in the usual academic style"! Looks like I need a better signal.
I'd like to get in touch with you sometime. Can you please share your contact info? If you don't want to put it in your profile, you can email it to me kirubakaran@gmail.com
I'm more productive when working solo than in teams. And I already have a specific research project in mind. All I needed was to plan my life so I'd have 50-60hr/week free after my bills were paid. For the past two months, I've been working on my research project diligently and without any external delays. I know I won't get a degree out of this and I doubt I can get published but since that's not my end-goal, it doesn't matter. I am looking for a hardware hacker if anyone is interested - it is a very fun/rewarding project: http://ktype.net