The disposable academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time • Hacker News Board

Re: The disposable academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time

#81

Post by grav1tas » Sun, Dec 19, 2010, 7:46 AM UTC

RK wrote: post #61

grav1tas wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. PhD's in the US that pursue the hard sciences and engineering are generally funded fairly well.

I think you could say that they are funded well, in the sense that no one should be paying out of pocket, but that is different than saying that they get paid well. It depends a lot on school, location, and (possibly) subject.

I think the typical engineering PhD major makes close to the equivalent of 12,000 Pounds. It's usually around 16-18 starting from what I know. When you're doing something that benefits mostly yourself (getting a degree), making that kind of money is getting paid well, in my opinion.

Re: The disposable academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time

#82

Post by Confusion » Sun, Dec 19, 2010, 10:28 AM UTC

RK wrote: post #60

microtonal wrote: post #7

On underpay: this varies highly by country. I am a PhD candidate in The Netherlands, and am employed by the university for four years (as most PhD candidates here). This gives around modal income, a 13th month of salary, holiday allowance, and about two months of holidays per year. This is a bit less than one would earn going into business immediately, but it buys you a lot of freedom. The education/research split is…

What is a 13th month of salary? Is that like a bonus?

Yeah, that's basically a predefined end-of-year bonus consisting of an extra month worth of salary. Some companies even talk of a '13th and 14th month' to indicate a 2-month bonus. It's kind of silly, but for some reason it has become common parlance.

Re: The disposable academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time

#83

Post by Confusion » Sun, Dec 19, 2010, 10:33 AM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #23

johnswamps wrote: post #20

If anyone is curious, here are the median starting salaries for graduates from Stanford's CS/EE departments (survey was self selecting so the numbers are probably skewed up, but there were a large number of responses): Undergrad: 80k Masters: 87k PhD: 114k

The PhD hits the workforce ~6 years later than the undergrad. It is entirely feasible, in fact most probable, for a 80k undergrad to hit ~115k in 6 years.

However, salary usually climbs fastest in the first few years after starting, so if they are both at 115K at some point, the next year the PhD may be at 126, while the undergrad get stuck at 118. This difference only increases and the end-of-career opportunities for the PhD are also larger: on average, he can attain jobs for which he will be preferred above the undergrad, who gets stuck at a lower rung. Of course, this is all 'on average'.

Re: The disposable academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time

#84

Post by arethuza » Sun, Dec 19, 2010, 1:43 PM UTC

RK wrote: post #64

Aloisius wrote: post #38

Not all PhDs are the same. They vary in duration and difficulty from country to country, school to school and field to field. For instance, you are not guaranteed a PhD in Chemistry from Berkeley even if you go for 8 years. You don't get one until your research pans out. This is very different from some countries where you're essentially guaranteed one after 2-4 years.

In the US (and other places I assume), the endpoint of your PhD is determined by two things: successful completion of your research and your advisor's approval. (You could argue that your advisor's approval is the only thing). That means that the time to completion is an unknown. This is a such a different feeling to what students I have met from the the UK/Europe experience, that it's almost like a different degree.…

Certainly in the UK (based on my experience in the 90s) completion of a PhD meant getting a thesis written up, getting it approved by your supervisor and then sitting an an oral examination with your supervisor, an internal academic from the same department and an external examiner who is an expert in that field. The usual rule of thumb was that you probably should have published 3 decent papers in that time.

The "3 years" came from the length of time the standard PhD student was funded for - there was no guarantee that you would finish within the three years. Quite a lot of people did PhDs while working as Research Associates - where you were typically on a 3 year fixed contract, paid a decent salary but your focus then was the research project paying your wages - not strictly your own research. Most people I knew doing it this way took between 4 or 5 years - some as long as 7 or 8 years.

Re: The disposable academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time

#85

Post by pbhjpbhj » Wed, Dec 22, 2010, 1:31 PM UTC

tjr wrote: post #31

amichail wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is not everything. A successful career as an indie developer can be a lot more rewarding than one in academia.

Sure. So maybe instead of trying to pattern our lives according to blog after blog and article after article, we should all do what we believe to be best for our own lives, be it spending more time in formal education, or be it dropping out, or be it starting a startup, or be it working for a huge company. I think that society today needs people to do all of those things, and more. We all need to find our own place,…

>We all need to find our own place, and excel there.

I'd posit that writ large this won't actual create a functioning society. Some in society need to be content where they are because we need people to do the "dirty" jobs that others won't do.