Comment by coolness
7 days ago
This used to be the case: research was conducted mostly at academic institutions that did not provide degrees [1]. The "research university" is a relatively new thing
[1] https://asteriskmag.com/issues/10/the-origin-of-the-research...
Interesting read. I always wondered from where did the idea about "thesis" & other "extra-circular" activities come from, for both students and professors.
Nowadays, promotions of professors for different levels (Assistant, Associate, Professor) is solely dependent on number of papers they are publishing in Q1 journals. But the research maybe entirely bogus, same ideas repurposed hundreds of times by different professors.
The entire concept about "systematic knowledge" has gone downhill.
Even more important than the papers is whether you can raise the money required to fund your lab which produces your prestigious journal papers. And the further you go down the league table the less important the "prestigious" part gets.