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Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

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Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#201

Post by neuromantik8086 »

gowld wrote: post #105
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?

The PhD first really became a requirement for professors wanting to teach at SLACs around the 1940s. Prior to that point, it wasn't that uncommon for you to find teachers that "only" had BAs. This transition (a BA being the minimum to a PhD being the minimum) occurred substantially earlier at large universities [0].

During the period between the 1940s and the late 80s-ish, the PhD involved research, but not with nearly the same competitiveness as today. As such, budding candidates were able to devote substantially more time to developing their pedagogical skills (even in the past this viewed more like an extracurricular pursuit, but a lot of PhDs took it seriously enough that they got really good at it).

The folks who came out of this era had dual competencies in teaching and research. The need for research skills primarily was to help more advanced and motivated students (juniors and seniors) to get some limited research experience on-campus.

Sometime between the late 90s and early 2000s, the balance in competencies shifted due to hyper-competitiveness. As a result, almost no PhD students today really focus on pedagogy and it is still treated as an increasingly neglected extra-curricular pursuit. This has become a very big problem for SLACs, since almost all PhDs coming out now are enculturated to feel that they have to create a large research program, and almost view working at a SLAC as a "backup" option if they don't land a large university job rather than a goal in and of itself. SLACs have had to compensate for this by offering increasingly attractive incentives / research starter packages to get new faculty. This trend is also being aggravated by helicopter parents who now insist that their children participate in research at increasingly younger ages (oftentimes high school) so as to pad their resumes for med school.

[0] https://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/octopus.html

Disclaimer: Source for some of this is free recall from a temporary job in SLAC archive. Some of it may be wrong. Visit a SLAC archive if you care enough to verify.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#202

Post by tnecniv »

luizfzs wrote: post #20
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why the hell should I research for publishing? Because publications pretty much define your scientific contributions, i.e. your productivity as a researcher. > One should get the results AND THEN publish it. You must have had a body of work that was just about worthy of publication though, right?

Im not saying 'why publishing?'. Im saying 'why publish if I barely know if what Im doing will have some positive result? Think of this example: we are researching for a few months whether an arbitrary compound X has relieffing effects on people with headache, but since we are still researching, there is no concrete result or any slight evidence yet. maybe the compound will relief the headache in 30min but maybe it w…

If you have no results, there's nothing you can do.

However, unless you stumble upon something that works out very nicely right before a deadline, a publication requires planning many months in advance what you are going to do.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#203

Post by gww »

dsfafsdaf wrote: post #101
gww wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think it's tragic that they low ball international students that way. Many of the ones I have met work exceptionally hard; including doing activities like you mentioned.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#204

Post by Fomite »

drharby wrote: post #188
Fomite wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm at an American university, and while technically this is true, an advisor going to the committee and saying "I want this person and I have the grant funding to support them" is profoundly influential, to the point that I would be shocked if the committee said no.

This terribly punishes military servicemen who wish to return to normal life and attempt a phd Note:just making an observation

As some other commenters have stated, I'm not really following your logic.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#205

Post by analog31 »

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 enjoyed my PhD too. But I think that in spite of my own experience, I have a strong misgiving about doctoral education because of the attrition risk. Too many things can happen, completely out of your control, that can throw you out on the street with no degree. I've seen...

Your advisor can drop dead, get sent to the hoosegow, lose grant funding, lose tenure, or change jobs without taking you along. Your research topic could turn out to be controversial among feuding members of your committee. You could be subjected to harassment, discrimination, etc. You might have to escalate matters with your advisor in order to get your final thesis approved, meaning you get your PhD but without a vital source of recommendation.

Some of those things can happen to you in a regular day job as well, but at least when you lose a regular job, you haven't lost everything.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#206

Post by hpcjoe »

throwawaymath wrote: post #132
gms7777 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think different schools have different philosophies as far as that goes. There are schools that admit to the department and have students do very little research for their first two years, and there are schools that admit by advisor and you start research immediately. My PhD was the latter, but for me it was actually one of the major selling points for me on the program. I had a pretty good idea of the area that I…

With regard to your first paragraph, I don't think there are any American universities that admit students by advisor. As far as I'm aware, your admission is a decision made solely by the graduate admissions committee. Even if you have an advisor ready to take you on the most they can do is recommend you to the committee, not supplant it. When you're admitted there are still criteria aside from research to work on. I…

For my PhD program, I specifically looked for advisors doing the type of simulations I was interested in. There weren't many (1989-1990 time frame). I found one who on paper looked great: lots of good recent publications, assistant prof (she was working on getting tenure, so she was hungry), she had reasonable grants for a theorist, and she needed an apprentice.

Having that helped my application. I started working for her before starting school.

I still had to take courses. I passed the PhD qual test on entry, and had 2 years worth of courses to take. Transferring in some of the masters courses helped some. I offered to test out of the courses, but it was explained to me that the physics department liked their revenue, even though most of the money coming in was research grant based. The BS I had to go through to take a chemistry course which would have been helpful was a side effect of their love of inbound revenue, and dislike of outbound payments.

Basically, I think the economic model at my alma mater was quite broken. This model generally governs behavior of schools, departments, etc. Having a group to start working with helped me clear some of this BS, but I still had to deal with other crap.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#207

Post by neuromantik8086 »

1996 wrote: post #146
neuromantik8086 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> driver by reputation ("publications", "impact factor") and where the bad eggs can't even be fired ("tenure") From personal experience, I've always felt as though the existence of "rock star" academics always gave academia a Hollywood-like feel in terms of systemic abuse and candidly bizarre and maladaptive behaviors on the part of researchers.

At least Hollywood has tabloids to keep things reasonable!

Academia does have Retraction Watch [0]. Unfortunately/fortunately, it operates outside the system.

[0] https://retractionwatch.com/

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#208

Post by impendia »

throwawayjava wrote: post #183
awelkie wrote: post #97

I think CS PhD programs in particular can be a little strange. I decided to go back to school to pursue a CS PhD after chatting with a retired mathematician about his PhD. He was talking about how he took classes for two years to explore different areas of mathematics and to pass the general exams, then he decided on a branch of mathematics (topology) and approached a professor in that area to be his advisor. After w…

I have experience with both mathematics and CS departments, and I have exactly the opposite opinion. I think the Old School Mathematics model is absolute garbage and often explicitly and intentionally exploitative. 1. It's not like those math Ph.D.s are sitting around reading textbooks with their advisors. They are TA'ing service courses. A lot of TA'ing. In addition to TA'ing, they are prepping for a high-stakes exa…

> The exam will wash out the 50-70% of people who are needed as temp TA labor but whom the department has no intention of advising through to a Ph.D.

At which department?

Speaking as a math professor in an American research university -- this is unusual. Pass rates at most places are reasonably high, and professors hope that as many people as possible pass.

It is true that grad students are expected to TA (if they want funding); usually grant funding is not available to support them. But generally the teaching burdens are relatively modest, around ~15 hours a week including grading and office hours.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#210

Post by tnecniv »

xiii1408 wrote: post #77
navidfarhadi wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You live off a meager stipend for about a decade Keep in mind that this is not necessarily true for schools in countries outside of the US. At my school, KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, as a PhD student you are considered an employee of the school and you are paid a living wage with full benefits. The current salary starts at 28600 SEK/month and can reach up to 33500 SEK/month [1] which is definitel…

This has been my experience as a CS Ph.D. student at a top US university as well--the pay is way less than industry, but it's enough to have a decent quality of life. In my department, students make about $40K/year as a base salary, which is not a lot, but enough to get by with. Add a summer internship to this, and your income is not too shabby--I made about $70K this year. Now, of course, I realize this is half or l…

> In my department, students make about $40K/year as a base salary.

That's incredibly high as a base rate! Most departments I know pay between $28k and $32k. The only people I know at $40k have an NSF fellowship.

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