Research has long been considered the most prestigious role for academics in many universities, so much so that a national academics' union has warned that the new teaching-only positions must be carefully managed to ensure that those who choose them were not considered "second rate" academics.
New show trials The Eurasian tug-of-war ReprintsFrance excels at producing top-rate academic economists.
But why copy second-rate academic works that linger in the unvisited galleries or basements of the world's museums?
You see me as the image of some colossal failure living on the road in a beaten-up car, an obscure poet, a third-rate academic.
In his first scenes, Mr. Duchovny, who was a Ph.D. candidate in literature before becoming an alien tracker for the Fox network, captures the easygoing cynicism of the second-rate academic with frightening accuracy.
One swallow may not make a summer, but the revelation that one scholar can make a world class university comes at a particularly embarrassing time for the rapidly burgeoning business of rating academic excellence.
Of course, it's possible for really brilliant scientists to succeed without social skills--we've all known first-rate academic scientists who succeeded via sheer brilliance, never mind the fact that no one could stand working with them.
