I've been thinking about this to some extent lately as well. Part of the issue with figuring this out is that there are two main functions of academic science that are purposefully confused in a capitalist global system. The first is that which is attributed to the university, but is also largely manufactured consent when it comes to STEM in the 21st century: science as an academic pursuit of our interests. Time is allocated for pursuit of individual academic interests and tangents and the workers are able to investigate science outside of their own silo. The second and now much more common purpose is the corporatization of academia. The worker is relegated to the exploited position of a poorly paid skilled laborer. The faculty are chosen to be scientists who for the most part only want to narrowly pursue one or two interests. Graduate students, i.e. the vast majority of the workforce, are relegated to wage slavery. Academic pursuits are reduced to corporate skills like coding, debugging electronics, or sitting in clean rooms doing fabrication. The development of an assignable curiosity and a specific set of skills is emphasized over the freedom to pursue other academic interests.
So, to some extent, the socialist lab ought to take into account these dual functions. The most immediate change applies to both roles, which is to make payment for graduate workers in either teaching or researching positions much higher and guaranteed. Similarly, lab hiring, spending, and general goals can be much more democratic. The hierarchy is real, and faculty do have much greater institutional knowledge in many cases, but in actuality grad students are often knowledgeable enough to be a part of these discussions and decisions. They actually often are involved in discussing these decisions, there just isn't any openness or accountability from faculty. There also must be democratic ways to address the real issues of toxicity, hostility, and lack of intersectionality in STEM. Giving grad students actually voting powers would go a long way in holding faculty responsible.
As much as I dislike the corporate academia, it's probably necessary in a socialist state as a way to produce technological advances more equitably than private industries. In many fields, this is already a role being fulfilled. I think there just needs to be much more intellectual freedom for workers to develop knowledge about topics that interest them, without the massive wage pressure to choose a group with funding in order to not starve.
Agree particularly with your point about treatment of graduate students and the systematic devaluation and reduction of their skills.
Chiming in to add that not only do graduate students often have sufficient knowledge to participate in lab direction and administration, they often have different skills or knowledge that are still valuable to the lab which a professor or senior researchers may not have (e.g. digital outreach and science communication, which undergraduate research assistants are the most reliable, how to use certain equipment, etc)
That's a good point. I think the faculty role is often more one of continuity than maintained technical skills. My advisor does not really code anymore, nor does he work in the lab, nor does he remember all of the technical details. What he does know is why something is the way that it is because he was doing the work to develop it a decade ago. That's a valuable thing, but the extent to which that, along with grant writing and teaching skills, is highly overvalued relative to the worker's skills is rarely discussed.
I've been thinking about this to some extent lately as well. Part of the issue with figuring this out is that there are two main functions of academic science that are purposefully confused in a capitalist global system. The first is that which is attributed to the university, but is also largely manufactured consent when it comes to STEM in the 21st century: science as an academic pursuit of our interests. Time is allocated for pursuit of individual academic interests and tangents and the workers are able to investigate science outside of their own silo. The second and now much more common purpose is the corporatization of academia. The worker is relegated to the exploited position of a poorly paid skilled laborer. The faculty are chosen to be scientists who for the most part only want to narrowly pursue one or two interests. Graduate students, i.e. the vast majority of the workforce, are relegated to wage slavery. Academic pursuits are reduced to corporate skills like coding, debugging electronics, or sitting in clean rooms doing fabrication. The development of an assignable curiosity and a specific set of skills is emphasized over the freedom to pursue other academic interests.
So, to some extent, the socialist lab ought to take into account these dual functions. The most immediate change applies to both roles, which is to make payment for graduate workers in either teaching or researching positions much higher and guaranteed. Similarly, lab hiring, spending, and general goals can be much more democratic. The hierarchy is real, and faculty do have much greater institutional knowledge in many cases, but in actuality grad students are often knowledgeable enough to be a part of these discussions and decisions. They actually often are involved in discussing these decisions, there just isn't any openness or accountability from faculty. There also must be democratic ways to address the real issues of toxicity, hostility, and lack of intersectionality in STEM. Giving grad students actually voting powers would go a long way in holding faculty responsible.
As much as I dislike the corporate academia, it's probably necessary in a socialist state as a way to produce technological advances more equitably than private industries. In many fields, this is already a role being fulfilled. I think there just needs to be much more intellectual freedom for workers to develop knowledge about topics that interest them, without the massive wage pressure to choose a group with funding in order to not starve.
Agree particularly with your point about treatment of graduate students and the systematic devaluation and reduction of their skills.
Chiming in to add that not only do graduate students often have sufficient knowledge to participate in lab direction and administration, they often have different skills or knowledge that are still valuable to the lab which a professor or senior researchers may not have (e.g. digital outreach and science communication, which undergraduate research assistants are the most reliable, how to use certain equipment, etc)
That's a good point. I think the faculty role is often more one of continuity than maintained technical skills. My advisor does not really code anymore, nor does he work in the lab, nor does he remember all of the technical details. What he does know is why something is the way that it is because he was doing the work to develop it a decade ago. That's a valuable thing, but the extent to which that, along with grant writing and teaching skills, is highly overvalued relative to the worker's skills is rarely discussed.
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