Academia can be a terrible place to work. A recent survey found that over 40% of researchers experienced bullying or harassment, over 20% felt pressure from supervisors to get specific results and that there is a mental health crisis in academia, particularly among graduate students and junior researchers. Capitalism is frequently blamed for this mess. Although academia is non-profit and researchers typically do not sell anything, capitalist dictates, such as “competition, accumulation, profit-maximising and increasing labour-productivity” are features of the academic workplace and so capitalism is blamed for ruining science and for the exploitation or “superexploitation” of academic workers.
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