21–30 of 97 posts
I've always thought that PhD students should band together and refuse to run experiments for one week. The shock that might have on the current academic system, when administrators, managers, supervisors and project leaders start to realise that their careers depend on a constant supply of dependent serfs might shake things up.
it should be written as "Cheap Labor". I can vouch this as I went to graduate school where I worked for 5 years at 8-10 hours/day including Saturday and Sunday for $12,000/year to get a PhD in Biological Science. And it was in one of the most expensive state in US. So could not afford to start a family because of perpetual state of sharing apartment and not enough money and time to go out and find a partner. And at t…
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I agree, although I think that's always been true to some extent, so I don't know if I'd add "these days". There are stories going back centuries of famous professors who were also famously jerks and horrible mentors. Some people are great at advancing math or chemistry (or [insert subject]) but really bad at mentoring new students. Other people are great at teaching the current knowledge and mentoring but not partic…
Totally agreed. I have long been trying to figure out how an incoming graduate student may assess the quality of a professor beyond his academic publications and asking people who work with him. I have come to the conclusion that the best predictor is reputation amongst peers. I may be wrong here, but from what I have seen it usually is the most accurate. The issue is that there is no review site for professors outsi…
Another thing to watch out for is to make a cold and cynical calculation about whether or not the PI will still be there when you are done with your thesis. My brother-in-law had his PI and another member of his committee leave 1 year short of his thesis being done. Fortunately, they both made arrangements to continue on his committee so that he could actually graduate, and he did, and has maintained good relationships with them.
On the other side... I know a guy who was not nearly as far along. His PI left, triggering others, and that sub-group in the department more-or-less collapsed. He was on the opposite coast doing a summer internship while that all went down. So.... "Heyyyyy, my internship is up in a couple of weeks, do you think I could go full time?"
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> Some friends in humanities were swamped though. Most because they cared a lot and spent a ton of time grading carefully. huh, strange. for undergrad i went to a "good" UC and this is the opposite of what i saw in my humanities TAs. they either didn't give a shit and handed out A's like candy or graded on a rubric (i.e. did student posit counter-argument in paragraph N and support with primary sources in p. N+1) whi…
At least these days, most grad students and adjuncts depend heavily on student feedback for their continued jobs. It creates a perverse incentive for sure.
it should be written as "Cheap Labor". I can vouch this as I went to graduate school where I worked for 5 years at 8-10 hours/day including Saturday and Sunday for $12,000/year to get a PhD in Biological Science. And it was in one of the most expensive state in US. So could not afford to start a family because of perpetual state of sharing apartment and not enough money and time to go out and find a partner. And at t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Some friends in humanities were swamped though. Most because they cared a lot and spent a ton of time grading carefully. huh, strange. for undergrad i went to a "good" UC and this is the opposite of what i saw in my humanities TAs. they either didn't give a shit and handed out A's like candy or graded on a rubric (i.e. did student posit counter-argument in paragraph N and support with primary sources in p. N+1) whi…
At least these days, most grad students and adjuncts depend heavily on student feedback for their continued jobs. It creates a perverse incentive for sure.
it should be written as "Cheap Labor". I can vouch this as I went to graduate school where I worked for 5 years at 8-10 hours/day including Saturday and Sunday for $12,000/year to get a PhD in Biological Science. And it was in one of the most expensive state in US. So could not afford to start a family because of perpetual state of sharing apartment and not enough money and time to go out and find a partner. And at t…
The fundamental principle about doing science has changed. It has come from becoming a true scientist(born with natural curiosity towards natures, physics, understanding and exploring fundamentals principles of physics, life and matter) to bread butter scientist where you are pigeon holed into a cubicle writing grants all day and tinkering a very narrow part of a huge field to collect as much data possible so that yo…
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That's not exactly how it works. Professors can use grant money to buy out of teaching; they are not forfeiting their base salary. That money will be (indirectly) used to fund other instructors, which may be grad students. It's not like the department head forces an unsuspecting grad student to teach; if they choose to teach, they will be paid for their teaching (tuition + stipend) so that they do not need to be fund…
So, the student gets the class at a discount?
One, the amount of money universities can shovel at athletics is insane. It cannot be justified, I don’t care how many reasons you come up with. They pay millions to build stadiums, pay coaches, etc. while throwing chump change at people doing academic work. I have also seen hundreds of thousands of dollars thrown at things like ugly artwork and statues.
Two, the “chump change” I spoke of doesn’t even come close to scaling with cost of living. I don’t even know how there can be students in cities where housing costs are out of control, unless they are the children of millionaires.