Rant resolved: Recommendations

OK, so I've shot my mouth off about how everyone but me is wrong. What do I think should be done about it? Here's what I'm thinking - let me know your thoughts too.

1. Principal investigators.
A. Mandatory management training for at least 3 full days, required before the semester starts. It'd be great to formulate this as a group learning thing, where all new faculty members come together to identify areas of difficulty and produce discrete outcomes. While I think it'd be great to talk about the way people feel coming into this new situation, I think the emphasis here should be goal-oriented. Do this and this and this. Don't do this and this and this. How to identify potential problems and resolve them concretely. That sort of thing. There are management consulting companies that specialize in precisely this sort of training; why not utilize their expertise as a valuable resource?
B. Mentoring accountability during tenure review. The Academy should overtly place explicit value on the success of a PI's team members as an integral part of evaluating the promise and success of a tenure candidate. The PI should be required to provide concrete evidence of offering specific career advancement to every team member. Furthermore, every post-doc and grad student should be asked - in interviews, maybe, or anonymously - to review their advisor's performance in this area. There might be a worry here that postdocs/grad students won't be honest, because if the faculty member gets denied tenure, the whole team is up the creek. But I think if it's viewed as an ongoing process of reviewing strengths and weaknesses, where everyone's input is valued, people would be honest. Plus, buy a grad student a beer and he'll tell you his life's story.
C. Mentoring accountability post-tenure. I think mentoring abilities should be continuously reviewed after tenure as well. Maybe every 3 years, every PI should be required to provide, for every team member, an accounting of career advancement. For example, fellowships applied for, fellowships granted, papers in publication, talks/posters at meetings, and meeting attendance for every team member. The team members too should be supplying independent reports of the same thing. This way the advisor and the student are held responsible, as a team, for the student developing the skills needed to advance. These reports could lead to the highlighting of strengths and weaknesses, and generate recommendations for improvement.

2. Postdocs. I know a lot of postdocs who are panicked about their ability to get a job, hold it, get tenure, and succeed.
A. Discrete job application training and support. This could include application packages but also interview skills, job talk practice, and networking.
B. Grant writing training. Yes, by the time you're a postdoc you should have this figured out. But let's just say you didn't get the training you deserved as a grad student. You should have a chance to be supported in remedying the deficiencies.
C. The mentoring reviews mentioned under section 1.

3. Grad students. Grad students ARE NOT technicians, and the Academy should be held responsible for seeing that they are not treated that way.
A. Fellowship writing. This should be provided in the first year. My first year, I received an "invitation" from my department to start applying for fellowships. But no invitations to actually train to be successful. Yes, I got a fellowship in my 3rd year, but I'm still not sure why. I sure as hell didn't know what I was doing.
B. Networking. Every grad student should go to a meeting, and preferably present, at least once a year. Either the PI or the department should provide funding for the registration and transport, as well as coach students in how to give oral and poster presentations - as well as training on the etiquette of telling others about your work without getting ripped off. Once students receive a fellowship, they can pay for themselves, but they should still have access to the full support and training network.
C. The mentoring reviews mentioned under section 1.
D. Training in the peer-review process. There's a huge body of knowledge that people just "know", like how papers get published. This doesn't help people who don't know, because they feel stupid asking. This mentality has got to stop. Why should I know how papers get published if I've never published one?

I was asked at that party if I supported the "corporatizing" of the Academy. In some senses, no. But I absolutely think PIs - and grad students and postdocs - should be held personally accountable for the success of every member of the team. A PI earns his tenure off the efforts of his team members. They deserve something in return. Besides debt and regret.