Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Disappearing American Grad Student

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 142 posts

Re: The Disappearing American Grad Student

#131

Post by newen »

chrisseaton wrote: post #67
aaron-lebo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Class hours are a substantial requirement of many phd programs. You can't do independent research without knowing what's come before. :)

You learn about what's come before by reading papers and reproducing experiments. I can't imagine how a class for PhD students works - everyone has such focused research topics that how can you find something relevant to teach to more than one person at a time? When I did my PhD on optimising dynamic programming languages I would guess there were maybe ten other students in the entire world doing something vaguely si…

Of course PhD students take classes. Most universities make you do 36 credit hours before you can pass your qualification exams. They just don't have courses on specialized topics but there are plenty of relevant graduate level courses you can take in the department that end up being very useful for you.

Re: The Disappearing American Grad Student

#132

Post by nunez »

tyoma wrote: post #38

The monetary value proposition of grad school simply isn't very good if you're a US citizen. There is non-monetary value (like advancing human knowledge) that makes grad school worth it for some, but the pay is low. Imagine you just graduated from a quality undergrad with high grades and strong recommendations from your professors. Maybe you had an internship or two or spent a summer doing research. Maybe you even ha…

Those countries also pay significant amounts of money to place those students in our graduate programs, thus making this calculus even easier for them.

Re: The Disappearing American Grad Student

#133

Post by nunez »

smilbandit wrote: post #123
tyoma wrote: post #38

The monetary value proposition of grad school simply isn't very good if you're a US citizen. There is non-monetary value (like advancing human knowledge) that makes grad school worth it for some, but the pay is low. Imagine you just graduated from a quality undergrad with high grades and strong recommendations from your professors. Maybe you had an internship or two or spent a summer doing research. Maybe you even ha…

How are international students paying for the degrees? I know a masters degree can cost nearly $100k for a student without any scholarships.

Wealthy family and/or country pays for them to attend (with living costs, IIRC)

Re: The Disappearing American Grad Student

#134

Post by kumarvvr »

kristopolous wrote: post #16

They make a single mention of what could be a significant contributing factor; student debt. A quick google search for India and China show that many of their top public universities charge ~$300 and ~$800/year while UC Berkeley is over $14,000. After 4 years, with on-campus housing the first year, the Berkeley student owes about $72,000 while the Indian student owes $1,200. As far as the income differences between t…

What I don't understand is that top universities in US receive grants, hold patents, receive royalties and contributions from alumni. They seem to have a lot of money. Is it not self-serving to reduce the costs for fees so that eligible students can join the university and be a factor in it's march ahead?

Or do these universities go bankrupt without such high student fees??

Re: The Disappearing American Grad Student

#135

Post by taurath »

zxcmx wrote: post #88
taurath wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, I'm not knocking my parents here, more pointing out how much the culture has changed

Yeah you never win or pay off "ancestor debt", and you'll never be free of the debts you owe your children. At the end of it, being an adult looks a lot like working for everyone else all of the time and it sucks. It is what is is though and it's worse to be useless. At least that's how I get through the week.

I have a very different perspective but I also had some advantages and a particular “character roll” of genetics and upbringing (much was not positive). One thing - nobody is required to have kids!

Re: The Disappearing American Grad Student

#137

Post by geezerjay »

drewg123 wrote: post #80
tyoma wrote: post #38

The monetary value proposition of grad school simply isn't very good if you're a US citizen. There is non-monetary value (like advancing human knowledge) that makes grad school worth it for some, but the pay is low. Imagine you just graduated from a quality undergrad with high grades and strong recommendations from your professors. Maybe you had an internship or two or spent a summer doing research. Maybe you even ha…

There's also option 1.5: You start at a grad school in a PhD program (so that you have support and do not pile up debt), and you leave with a Masters as quickly as you can. I managed to get my MS in CS back in the early 90s in one calendar year. I had full support via a fellowship since I was one of the top students, so I did not have to be an RA or TA, and could take additional classes. I finished all but my MS Thes…

> I managed to get my MS in CS back in the early 90s in one calendar year. I had full support via a fellowship since I was one of the top students, so I did not have to be an RA or TA, and could take additional classes.

Unfortunately that strategy is only valid in the US, where higher education is inexplicably, absurdly and unjustifiably expensive. In countries where higher education is affordable, it still makes absolutely no sense to look at a PhD as anything other than a pastime that makes sense only as a personal pursuit.

Re: The Disappearing American Grad Student

#138

Post by yebyen »

Delmania wrote: post #87
drewg123 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also option 1.5: You start at a grad school in a PhD program (so that you have support and do not pile up debt), and you leave with a Masters as quickly as you can. I managed to get my MS in CS back in the early 90s in one calendar year. I had full support via a fellowship since I was one of the top students, so I did not have to be an RA or TA, and could take additional classes. I finished all but my MS Thes…

> I managed to get my MS in CS back in the early 90s in one calendar year. I had a similar path, RIT has (or had) a dual degree program for Computer Science that only added a year to the regular undergrad program. Rather than take free electives, you swapped in the additional master's course you needed and all your undergrad classes became master's level courses (i.e. more work). I was suffering from depression at th…

Shout out for RIT!

I actually didn't know there really was a PhD program in Computer Science. I just found this page with a link to list of dissertation defenses[1] that I have never seen before; historically, I've always thought it was a big joke because of this page with the overview[2] link that just recurses on itself and just displays a different image... (go ahead, don't you want to read the overview? Just click again...)

TIL that RIT has actually given out a few PhDs in Computer Science! [3] Of course I feel like I earned a PhD by spending seven years there just to get my bachelor's degree.

[1]: https://www.cs.rit.edu/phd-computing-and-information-science...

[2]: https://www.rit.edu/gccis/computingsecurity/academics/phd/ov...

[3]: https://www.cs.rit.edu/recent-phd-dissertations-advised-cs-f...

Re: The Disappearing American Grad Student

#139

Post by vinchuco »

drewg123 wrote: post #80
tyoma wrote: post #38

The monetary value proposition of grad school simply isn't very good if you're a US citizen. There is non-monetary value (like advancing human knowledge) that makes grad school worth it for some, but the pay is low. Imagine you just graduated from a quality undergrad with high grades and strong recommendations from your professors. Maybe you had an internship or two or spent a summer doing research. Maybe you even ha…

There's also option 1.5: You start at a grad school in a PhD program (so that you have support and do not pile up debt), and you leave with a Masters as quickly as you can. I managed to get my MS in CS back in the early 90s in one calendar year. I had full support via a fellowship since I was one of the top students, so I did not have to be an RA or TA, and could take additional classes. I finished all but my MS Thes…

> You start in a PhD program (so that you have support and do not pile up debt), and you leave with a Masters as quickly as you can.

"Student freeloads with this weird trick. Grad schools hate him!"

Re: The Disappearing American Grad Student

#140

Post by amauta »

This is everywhere, not just here. My wife is Chinese and she tells me in China, ppl don’t see the need for grad school unless you go abroad. They rather work or make their own business if they stay in China. The reason they go abroad is to try to find a job in the foreign country, have a degree in USA and go back to find a job easier. All the stupid programs usa universities are making up just to get more students is useless for real life. I hope universities becomes useless in a decade or so and we find a better way to get knowledge.
Post reply on HN