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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

#91

Post by krastanov »

lovich wrote: post #88
analog31 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

At least in STEM, tuition is practically free and PhD students are paid for their research work and teaching. There are even PhD student labor unions in most public and some private universities. (Whether the pay is good and whether unionizing makes sense are separate topics).

You will not get paid well as a PhD student, but there is no massive amount of debt involved either (and again, whether there are opportunity costs is a separate topic).

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

#92

Post by troupe »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #86
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?

The interview questions don't sound particularly rigorous, but asking someone to pick a programming language and do something simple with it sounds like a good way to make sure that they at least have actually done programmed before. If the job involved any type of programming, this would seem to strongly correlate with success. What do you think would be better?

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

#93

Post by cinquemb »

krastanov wrote: post #91
lovich wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

At least in STEM, tuition is practically free and PhD students are paid for their research work and teaching. There are even PhD student labor unions in most public and some private universities. (Whether the pay is good and whether unionizing makes sense are separate topics). You will not get paid well as a PhD student, but there is no massive amount of debt involved either (and again, whether there are opportunity…

Too bad you can't (edit: very difficult to) get a PhD, in the US today, without going at least into an order of magnitude more debt (or in debt at all) while in undergrad when comparing to the early 1980's.

I did hear of a German uni that accepts people for PhD programs without an undergraduate degree, but iirc you need like 4 or more publications. But that seems like an exception to everywhere else.

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

#94

Post by dredmorbius »

cucuuc wrote: post #85
krastanov wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sources for any of this?

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

#95

Post by AlphaSite »

yeukhon wrote: post #78
pm90 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A PhD does not guarantee good programming skills. I think you are mistaken in assuming that and hence get downvoted. I have personally found most people who finish/almost finish their PhD's to be very good in describing problems, approaching solutions from different paradigms and articulating their thinking in writing. If you're trying to hire a PhD for a programming job, in most cases you WILL be disappointed. That…

I was disappointed that he couldn't even come up with a solution for odd or even. I get it for some low-ranked schools, but if for example someone from UC Berkeley can't do any decent programming (I don't expect everyone write a transcompiler because I have no idea how to myself) I'd be very surprised.

Transpilers are easy, algorithms are hard.

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

#96

Post by fspeech »

Maybe academia shouldn't be considered a normal career. Rather it is a reward for pursuing something you are passionate about. You are willing to do it for free so anything you get is a bonus -- perhaps not literally, but that is the yard stick one should use when considering an academic career. At least that is what I am telling my older one who is applying to colleges right now.

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

#97

Post by alexasmyths »

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?

"So why should a tenure track position be any different"

Economics and reality come into play as we are adults.

There's basically no excuse for 'the smartest among us' to not have a basic grasp of the dynamics of how their education will play out into their careers.

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

#98

Post by seanmcdirmid »

ianai wrote: post #84
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure I get what you mean? If the specific title of PhD is unrelated to people using their titles as false sources of authorities, then what I said isn't wrong. I guess you could argue that in research many people have PhDs, so whether you have one or not is no longer a big deal.

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

#99

Post by laichzeit0 »

School-Cotton wrote: post #53
santaclaus wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big (and some even not-so-big) companies hire lots of PhDs -- roughly 8% of Google's employees have doctorates.

That doesn't imply that all those people needed a PhD for their job, though. I worked with multiple people at Amazon who had PhDs who were doing the exact same job I was.

Some people do their PhD while they're working. You might want to change career paths, e.g. specialize in some machine learning subfield.

I'm pretty sure Doctors specialize further, whilst working, as well?

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

#100

Post by analog31 »

lovich wrote: post #88
analog31 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Indeed, my parents put me through college, and I finished grad school with money in the bank thanks to the NSF.

At the time, the conventional wisdom was: Don't get a graduate degree unless somebody else is paying for it, or you are in a job that guarantees a salary bump for doing it. I don't think that's changed.

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