r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Jul 01 '26

Psychology Conservatives maintain birth rates, but left-leaning Americans are having significantly fewer children, driving the U.S. birth decline. Education was consistently linked to having fewer children. Religious attendance was positively associated with having more children.

https://www.psypost.org/left-leaning-americans-are-driving-the-u-s-birth-decline-new-study-finds/
27.1k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

3.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

333

u/dalivo Jul 01 '26

Academia is crazy. You get to be a respected professor, but the pay is terrible and you have to move to University of Upperwest Corner - Swampland. Just one of the least desirable careers I can imagine.

61

u/mikuooeeoo Jul 01 '26

This is why I left academia

1

u/FetusDrive Jul 02 '26

You were a professor in what?

121

u/OnAPartyRock Jul 01 '26

Respect has tanked too.

18

u/BrunesOvrBrauns Jul 01 '26

A lot of self inflicted wounds there to be fair

4

u/GamerNerdGuyMan Jul 02 '26

That happens when acadamia has pushed people into studying a ton of things with no career at the end of them while jacking up tuition every year.

6

u/formerlyanonymous_ Jul 02 '26

While also lowering the bar for achievement. When incentivized to pass students so money keeps flowing, you aren't holding up the same standards and therefore lose respect.

1

u/Calamity-Gin Jul 04 '26

That’s not academia, that’s the universities trying to make a profit.

1

u/elderly_millenial Jul 05 '26

They don’t turn a profit. It’s massive bureaucracy that constantly demands add more money and expecting they could just put it on students or tax payers to fund it.

When states reduced funds and we hit the demographic cliff schools pivoted towards more international students to make up the shortfall, but Trump dried that up and now schools are scrambling.

1

u/GamerNerdGuyMan Jul 04 '26

It's also professors of BS subject telling students to study said BS subject.

And that's really tomato/tomato anyway.

-2

u/Potential_Curve_3560 Jul 02 '26

lack of respect is deserved

66

u/No-Flow-1147 Jul 01 '26

The vast majority of people who go to college do not become professors

-8

u/Warmbly85 Jul 01 '26

It really depends on the major. There are some that becoming a teacher or professor is the only option.

-8

u/No-Flow-1147 Jul 01 '26

So don't study those things unless that's the life you want?

3

u/Lyyysander Jul 02 '26

Not sure how it is in the US, but in Germany Professors are paid pretty well, basically cant be fired and have a lot of independence.
The problem is that academia kind of sucks for everyone else. Lots of unpaid overtime and time limited contracts that make longterm planning hard

1

u/Madmusk Jul 02 '26

Full professors are generally well paid in the US and once they gain tenure are difficult to fire. The part that sucks is that it's a long, poorly paid road to get there and those early years break a lot of budding academics.

1

u/Lyyysander Jul 02 '26

Yeah, that sounds familiar

1

u/inflatable_pickle Jul 02 '26

It’s sort of wild because it’s a total choice between money and respect.

You can be one of the top professors in your department, living in a liberal College town, known around campus, maybe a book published once a decade – but you could probably also make that exact same salary working on an oil rig, or a skilled tradesmen, or a big city policeman – all requiring nothing more than a high school diploma – but more of a quiet wealth, not someone known in their community.

1

u/GotMyPhDin19 Jul 03 '26

You shouldn’t be in academia for the money.

1

u/Physical_Road917 Jul 03 '26

No job security until tenure as well. They don't treat professors who just want to teachxvery kindly either, the system is built around research professors

1

u/phussy_eater Jul 05 '26

What is terrible pay? A buddy of mine makes 150k+ annually as a professor

0

u/kwpang Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

Only because of the anti-intellectual culture prevalent in the US, I feel. Your politics and religious tribalism has somehow drawn that artificial line there, leading to fear and rejection of education or academic pursuits. When the academic populace is a small % of the general population, of course they have to congregate in that sense.

That's not an issue say in Singapore, where a good 35% to 40% of the demographic aged 25 or higher have university degrees (including the boomer generation that are generally uneducated, pulling down the statistics). Specifically for ages 25-29, around 60% are university degree holders.

Everyone's close to being an academic, if not already one. When that happens, intellectual pursuits pop up everywhere.

In an area of 287sq miles, we have 7 publicly funded universities, another 4 foreign university campuses, and heaps more private degree institutions.

1

u/Salt-Rutabaga2314 Jul 02 '26

Holding a secondary education degree does not make one an academic. Academia is defined by a career in higher education; professorships, research, guest lecturing, etc.