The funding game is a miserable slog, but people are in academia because they want to do their research. If they wanted to use their expertise to obtain a paycheck, there are typically much better opportunities to do so.
> but people are in academia because they want to do their research
Which is perfectly fine as long as those people don't go asking the NSF or NIH for money to fund students.
I'll never understand why we give egomaniacs funding for phd students, and it's something I actively work to get the panel to select against when evaluating any proposal that includes lines for PhD students or post-docs (ie all of them).
CS profs: if you want employees for your ego trip, start a damn company. Your students are not employees, and if we're all honest, most of the benefit of the grant we're giving you will be the students it produces. So sayth this regular panel member.
