Quote:
Originally Posted by adbie
If your definition of success is winning the Nobel prize, then lots of professors are total failures.
It's not easy to become a prof and it's even harder to become a tenured one in a good school. That itself is good enough for me to call a prof successful, not to mention that tenured profs in private institutions (especially those in America) earn a comfortable living doing research, teaching and consulting.
They do what they like and they earn good salaries. Isn't this "successful" enough?
At the extreme end, there are those millionaire-entrepreneurs who "retire" into professorships in Stanford, MIT and the like.
Not sure if such examples exist in NUS, NTU and SMU, but I do have respect for some profs here who are leading experts in their fields. |
Discovering and contributing to the wealth of human knowledge is the goal and dream of all researchers. I am pretty sure many researchers will not consider themselves as successful simply because of the pay they are drawing. Of course I wouldn't go as far as to call all professors as failures, however I doubt they will consider themselves as highly successful in their chosen field if they had not been able to make a significant contribution or discovery. Unless they are like you mentioned, top in their field. But how many phd holders are at the top?
In the field of business, we have Doctor of Business Administration or Phd whatsoever. Look at this list of people
- Expressions International founder "Dr" Theresa Chew.
- Bread Talk founder "Dr" George Quek.
- "Dr" T. Chandroo who runs 60 Montessori kindergartens.
- "Dr" Clemen Chiang who runs options trading seminars.
Did they not managed to start or found a thriving business? Have they not achieved what many Doctors of Business not managed to do?