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

Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

cbc.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 259 posts

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#101

Post by dsfafsdaf »

gww wrote: post #15
brightball wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, that’s what needs to happen. Thin out the ranks of professors as they move to greener pastures in the workforce and eventually you’ll see schools get in a position where they have to work harder to recruit. Better pay, benefits, support, etc.

I am skeptical that will ever happen. At least in North America there are a plethora of international students willing to train here for next to nothing and in some cases I've heard rumours of post-docs not taking a salary at all.

The post-doc where I got my PhD was making $5k less than I, or around 17k

His English sucked, his physics PhD in non linear quantum mechanics useless and his resume-writting skills was non existent.

Yet, he's the only person to read my thesis, the cluster worked only thanks to his efforts, and he administered 20~30 workstations while doing his research. I would not have graduated without him and he is more dear to me than anyone I met at school.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#102

Post by gowld »

brightball wrote: post #13
gww wrote: post #11

A few of my colleagues with bio PhD's have started microbreweries with various levels of success. They seem to be much happier than my colleagues and myself who have chosen the post-doc route. This is a bit of a tangent but it seems to be a common trend now among labs to arrest trainees (particularly phd students and post-docs) in their positions as long as possible. For example, the institute I am at has recently ex…

In my opinion, that’s what needs to happen. Thin out the ranks of professors as they move to greener pastures in the workforce and eventually you’ll see schools get in a position where they have to work harder to recruit. Better pay, benefits, support, etc.

Professor is already a very comfortable job. Adjunct lecturer is an awful job, but the requirements for those are already quite low, and frankly generally don't include "is an effective teacher". IMO, the problem here isn't supply-and-demand for the lecturer job; the problem is that the service being provided ("teaching a course") isn't the product the customer (student) is buying! In the common case, the student is buying a degree and doesn't care about the course (because the course is a "distribution requirement" inside or outside of major, or because the whole major/degree is a a pointless arbitrary requirement put in place by employers). On both sides, student and teacher, parties are simply going through the motions to fulfill the illusion of a meaningful degree.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#103

Post by mikec3010 »

amyjess wrote: post #65
geebee wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that "Graduate School in the Humanities - Just Don't Go" is a gem of an essay, because it does a good job explaining why students still enter these programs when the data screams out that they shouldn't. https://www.chronicle.com/article/Graduate-School-in-the/448... One thing that is often overlooked is that the US does have a very restrictive immigration system for people who don't have relatives here and c…

> In this case, getting advanced STEM degrees provides a path towards residency, work rights, and perhaps eventually a green card or citizenship. At my very first job, nearly all of my coworkers were Indian. As I met more people at work and started adding them on LinkedIn, I noticed one thing in common with all their LinkedIn profiles: they all got their bachelor's in India and their master's in the US. One day, I wa…

> before I learned how fucked-up our immigration system is.

Fucked up because they give higher-educated people preference, or fucked up because corporations lobby for more H1B workers to depress engineering wages industry wide?

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#104

Post by lazyjeff »

ska wrote: post #86

Just to offer a bit of a counter to much of the negative views here, I enjoyed my Ph.D very much. I went into it with my eyes open, and realizing that an academic career wasn't the only option that would work for me. Through scholarships I was paid enough to be comfortable while spending my time on interesting things. The scholarship game is a bit winner-take-all though, and I know the minimum funding level in my dep…

I agree with you, and I think it depends a lot on the department you are in. Too many people just apply for the top N schools for the field they want to go into. There's a huge difference in culture and feels of each school, and how they deal with funding or advising.

My PhD was some of my best years of my life, and I was truly lucky. It was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and even now I wish I could return to being a PhD student for the rest of my life. I had a great set of friends, all the research freedom I wanted, supportive department, and I did research internships at least once a year so my average salary was pretty decent (about half a software developer salary at that time). If your goal is to make as much money as fast as possible, then you will be disappointed with a PhD.

I was in a department that was in between social science and computer science, and out of the 8 of us that started together, all 8 graduated. 7 of the 8 landed R1 tenure-track faculty positions, most of us directly after the PhD (the remaining 1 was running a successful business).

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#105

Post by gowld »

chriskanan wrote: post #74

A PhD is a degree in conducting research. Get one if you want a career in research. If you don't like research, don't do a PhD. Any decent program pays students about a $1.5-3K monthly stipend. Don't have being a professor as the only acceptable end-goal. There are lots of careers that benefit from or require a PhD besides being a professor. People with STEM PhDs are found in great concentration in R&D settings. For…

I thought the entire appeal of a "liberal arts" college was that the college focuses on quality teaching instead of research. Why on earth would they demand their profressors have PhDs?

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#106

Post by anothergoogler »

rsinmtl wrote: post #100

The main subject in this story was pursuing a PhD in "Women's Studies". Not to disparage that field of study, but it's quite obvious that it is a pretty useless degree that limits you to a career as a Women's Studies professor. I don't think this is a good illustration of people who leave PhD programs

I feel like your comment leads to every debate about the practical value of a liberal arts degrees, ever. Either that or you're specifically devaluing Women's Studies. That makes no sense, given the push for gender diversity in the business world (and in general).

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#107

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #69
raziel2701 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did you go to school that you were able to pay a mortgage and have a family while doing your phd? I'm paying a wee bit more than half my monthly salary on rent alone. Am in Bay Area though.

The UK, but our base stipend is similar to the US. Internships and part-time research contracts can make up your income to a workable level, and that applies in the US as well. I didn't earn a lot, but it was enough to get on with life like a normal person. I didn't eat dried ramen like the stereotype.

Ahh the UK where health insurance coverage is much easier to attain...

Where in the UK? What field? There are several important details you are leaving out.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#108

Post by chrisseaton »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #107
chrisseaton wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK, but our base stipend is similar to the US. Internships and part-time research contracts can make up your income to a workable level, and that applies in the US as well. I didn't earn a lot, but it was enough to get on with life like a normal person. I didn't eat dried ramen like the stereotype.

Ahh the UK where health insurance coverage is much easier to attain... Where in the UK? What field? There are several important details you are leaving out.

Manchester, programming languages. Not superstar machine learning or anything like that.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#109

Post by anticensor »

chriskanan wrote: post #74

A PhD is a degree in conducting research. Get one if you want a career in research. If you don't like research, don't do a PhD. Any decent program pays students about a $1.5-3K monthly stipend. Don't have being a professor as the only acceptable end-goal. There are lots of careers that benefit from or require a PhD besides being a professor. People with STEM PhDs are found in great concentration in R&D settings. For…

8>Some research doctorates require taking instuctor education as part of completion requirements.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#110

Post by gowld »

rsinmtl wrote: post #100

The main subject in this story was pursuing a PhD in "Women's Studies". Not to disparage that field of study, but it's quite obvious that it is a pretty useless degree that limits you to a career as a Women's Studies professor. I don't think this is a good illustration of people who leave PhD programs

"Women's Studies" opens doors to a career as an author or a political activist. Like other PhDs, it prepares to have an impact on the world via the field of study. It's not a likely financially lucrative career, but it's not a useless one.
Post reply on HN