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Message: [QUOTE="boba, post: 4672671, member: 1556"] (Tongue firmly in cheek) Unions. (Crikey even Stanford has a grad student union now!) Reality: The only thing missing from academic leadership are leaders. Oh there are plently of ships, and they're all going here, there, everywhere. Seriously, there is a tremendous amount of effort going to increasing the endowment and an equally diminishing amount of interest in education in more than a few of our best public and private institutions. Previous students and postdocs in our lab were at least curious about going into academia, now it's hard to get graduate students even interested in a postdoc - it's biotech or consulting. Also few graduate students are interested in basic sciences while many gravitate to whatever is hot at the moment (was stem cells now CRISPR/CAS), so we get a tail wags the dog effect so to speak. Academia and secondary education will not melt away, but there needs to be a serious evaluation about adapting the changing landscape. Tongue in cheek aside, I jokingly compared postdocs to galley slaves, but they were the backbone of biomedical research from the 1970's on. As a former NCO, I understand what institutional knowledge and models of dedication bring to the workplace, makes everything hum. While my example is specific to biomedical sciences, all departments and schools will face this challenge. [/QUOTE]