Losing faith

On more than one occasion, John Frame has remarked to me that "funny things" happen to some seminary graduates who get into doctoral programs. By that he means students who were conservative right out of seminary, but began moving to the left by the time they completed their doctorate. They seem to be very promising when they graduate from seminary, but go off the rails when they return to college to get a doctorate. Here's one explanation:

Note from KBJ: Graduate students and their professors are in a relationship of mutual exploitation. Each needs the other to be successful. Graduate students use their professors to get fellowships, grants, scholarships, jobs, and, eventually, tenure. Professors use their graduate students for research assistance, teaching assistance, and discipleship. What I mean by this last item is that professors expect their graduate students to disseminate their ideas, both during graduate school and throughout their careers. Just look at the citations of young professors. They cite their own professors more often than not. In my experience, graduate students are sycophantic. They know that their careers can be made or broken by their professors, so they slavishly adhere to the beliefs, values, methods, and even mannerisms of their professors. It's a sick relationship in many ways. It's not at all surprising to me that unscrupulous professors such as Colin McGinn (there are many others) would sexually exploit attractive graduate students. They get everything else they want from them; why not sex? And by the way, it's not impossible for a cunning graduate student to use sex for career advancement. It happens in other professions; why not in academia? 

http://keithburgess-jackson.typepad.com/blog/2013/08/from-todays-new-york-times-4.html