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A glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs

theguardian.com

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Re: A glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs

#81

Post by gozur88 »

alexasmyths wrote: post #31
pacala wrote: post #4

The PhD system is a Ponzi scheme. First and foremost, a PhD program trains one to become a professor. During a professor career, one is expected to graduate 5, 10, 20 PhD students. It is mathematically impossible for the majority of these students to find a professor job. The explosion of higher education, internally and globally, masks the problem to some extent, just like a good old fashioned Ponzi scheme appears s…

"The PhD system is a Ponzi scheme." "It is mathematically impossible for the majority of these students to find a professor job." Assuming that PhD's are 'smart' people, I would gather they understand all of this. And of course 'prof' is only one role for PhD's in the world.

Well... there's intellectual understanding and then there's emotional understanding. These are people who were the very top in their high school and the very top as undergrads. They've always made the cut when most everyone else didn't, so why should a tenure track position be any different?

Re: A glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs

#82

Post by euske »

Guess it's more or less a management problem. I think it's possible to rebrand a PhD program to be a more targeted education, not just "how to become an academic". Specifically, a doctoral program could teach people how to:

1. identify "known unknowns" and formulate the problem.

2. search and study existing literature and properly cite them.

3. cook up a clever way of evaluation and publish the results.

etc, etc. Unfortunately, in most universities, these techniques are kinda sorta taught, but they're far from being systematic. And many of them don't have the body of knowledge and staffers for this kind of things, probably because they're incentivized for wrong goals (e.g. the number of papers, media recognition, etc.)

Re: A glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs

#83

Post by arvinsim »

yeukhon wrote: post #44

I come from a city university, and in my experience many of the master students there (information system or computer science program) are not up to standard when they leave the program (i.e. they can't really program, let alone with theories). I think this is the problem with my school, but when I had this conversation with an old friend he felt that his master classes focused on theory, very little room for program…

I guess it is really hard to believe that a PhD graduate could not even figure out if a number is odd-even. It is usually taught at the first year in a CS bachelor. Maybe they are from a different bachelor?

Re: A glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs

#84

Post by ianai »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #74
ChuckMcM wrote: post #70

The only time I have missed not getting a PhD was when lawyers have me explain to someone who has a PhD what I mean so that they can bring my testimony into an IP case by a more identifiable 'expert'. That said, there is a particularly annoying type of PhD in the tech world, it is one who assumes that the person they are talking to who doesn't have a PhD, doesn't have that degree because they were incapable of gettin…

I don't thing those kind of PhDs really exist in significant numbers, especially in research. "Ya, that guy who just got that breakthrough in machine learning? He only has a master degree" is so common it's already normalized.

That’s funny because every “engineer” or “analyst” my job employs has that exact attitude. They don’t even have PhDs.

Re: A glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs

#85

Post by cucuuc »

krastanov wrote: post #12
pacala wrote: post #4

The PhD system is a Ponzi scheme. First and foremost, a PhD program trains one to become a professor. During a professor career, one is expected to graduate 5, 10, 20 PhD students. It is mathematically impossible for the majority of these students to find a professor job. The explosion of higher education, internally and globally, masks the problem to some extent, just like a good old fashioned Ponzi scheme appears s…

Quite certainly, becoming a professor is not "first and foremost" what PhD leads to (nor is it what many people do it for). It is certainly not my experience. I am a PhD student and since the very beginning my mentors (program directors, my PhD advisor, committee members) have been pretty clear about future prospects: "the opportunities in industry are such and such (compared to the opportunities for BS and MS)", "po…

A PhD is literally )as in that’s what the abbreviation stands for ) a license to teach. It’s origins are exactly in training people to pass the torch of knowledge.

Look at the Greats, or even professors until the 50s, they only had at most 6 grad students their entire career.

Many modern professors have as many students a year.

Re: A glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs

#86

Post by WhitneyLand »

yeukhon wrote: post #44

I come from a city university, and in my experience many of the master students there (information system or computer science program) are not up to standard when they leave the program (i.e. they can't really program, let alone with theories). I think this is the problem with my school, but when I had this conversation with an old friend he felt that his master classes focused on theory, very little room for program…

Your interview questions sound like bullshit. What are these interviews for, how did you arrive at those questions, and what leads you to believe they have a strong correlation with success?

Re: A glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs

#88

Post by lovich »

analog31 wrote: post #76
limbicsystem wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. I'm the Chair of a (neuroscience and psychology) departmental graduate school and I also sometimes sit in on departmental PhD 'scholarship' interviews. One of the questions we ask is 'Given that your chances of gaining a job in academia are only about 1 in 8, what do you think you will do when you finish graduate school?'. Then, when they arrive, we show them, a discuss, a version of this picture http://thegra…

When I was a grad student in the mid 80s, we got the same basic news on our first day. We were still there on day 2 too. I think the idea that we were duped into attending grad school by inflated expectations of academic employment is something we fabricate in our own minds much later. A lot of just enjoyed studying science.

Not to discount your story, but weren't the financial implications of a PhD in the mid 80s and the mid 10s drastically different? If the benefits, the joy of learning and chance of getting a job, are the same but the costs, the massive amounts of debt you need in modern times, are much higher, but the number of PhD students is the same doesn't that mean something had to have changed? Maybe learning is more enjoyable now, which is certainly plausible with the internet, but maybe students are being liked to a higher rate?

Re: A glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs

#89

Post by paultopia »

gozur88 wrote: post #81
alexasmyths wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The PhD system is a Ponzi scheme." "It is mathematically impossible for the majority of these students to find a professor job." Assuming that PhD's are 'smart' people, I would gather they understand all of this. And of course 'prof' is only one role for PhD's in the world.

Well... there's intellectual understanding and then there's emotional understanding. These are people who were the very top in their high school and the very top as undergrads. They've always made the cut when most everyone else didn't, so why should a tenure track position be any different?

This. Plus psychological investment in identity as a scholar. Makes it very hard for some people to hear “it’s not a good idea” and harder to see when it’s time to cut losses.

Re: A glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs

#90

Post by paultopia »

danieltillett wrote: post #77

I finished a Ph.D and became a tenured professor (top of the greasy pole) and I have no regrets despite not being part of academia anymore. The experience of doing a Ph.D changed me for the better and gave me the confidence to take the risk to start my company. We don't train too many Ph.Ds, we just undervalue them outside of academia. One thing I think would help is to not allowing someone to start a Ph.D until they…

This too. IME, the phd students who do well are those who had a life pre-academia, and hence didn’t get super-invested in aforesaid greasy pole, didn’t get weird parental issues with their advisors, etc.
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