Syllabus for Eric's PhD Students

The illusion that we are supposed to uphold is that brilliance and serendipity can be planned for, can be scheduled and made into an academic program. Actually research and scientific discovery should never be the job of someone. It should be a side product of general activity in a field, something that is already useful even without the discovery (if you're poor). Or just lesure hobby activity that is fine if nothing comes out of it (if you're rich).

It's also part of the whole inflation and treadmill thing going on in education and titles. Generations ago, going to high school was something significant. For the next generation, high school was the default and college became a special thing. Now the majority (in the US) goes to college. Within the family it feels like satisfying progress. Parents look on their kids and feel proud that they are making it further than they themselves did. But now a Master's degree can be a bit too generic. Having a PhD can be nice in industry nowadays (though of course not required).

So what used to be a special thing for a limited circle of select few with the background and fallback that allowed failure, is now becoming a factory process. PhDs are produced by the thousands and thousands, and we pretend they all pushed science forward. There is a flood of papers accompanying this. Tiny steps forward or mixing and matching existing things, but selling a big story around it, flag planting, trying to claim a huge area when only a tiny aspect of it is actually demonstrated, drawing out huge conclusions etc.

There are many reasons for this. The general societal inflation is just one thing. The other is the overall quantification, standardization and uniformization in our zeitgeist. There must be a standard process for everything. The politicians and bureaucrats demand to have a standard process for innovation. You must know in advance exactly "how many pieces of innovation" will you produce per year, what will be the impact of it etc. Then when you tell them about your plans, all they hear is the number of buzzwords mentioned from the latest fads and tune out otherwise. Ah and they look at your publication list of course. If you churned out many papers in the past, you will probably do that as well in this round of funding, and those papers can all be attached to the funding agency reports, so that will make the agency look good towards the ministry or whatever.

That’s true in undergrad too.

I had an advisor who just didn’t have a skill in or desire to advise. I didn’t discover this until in my junior year he went on sabbatical and the professor in transitioned to was really amazing. I still communicate with him 20 years later and hear about intern candidates, etc.

It’s one of those areas you need to know about — it never occurred to me to ask about or really look into what an advisor relationship can or should be!

This is a fascinating look inside the academic system.

Eric, a question if I may:

Is there room for a modern PhD that values breadth over depth?

The goal of completing a Ph.D. program is to become the most knowledgable person in the world about a specific topic. While this is a valuable goal for disciplines that reward specialization, it does not provide enough flexibility for autodidacts with a range of interests.

A P.h.D. typically takes between 3 and 6 years of self-directed study. If candidates spend between 35 to 70 hours per week, this amounts to 5,250 hours on the low-end and 21,000 hours at the extreme end.

Of course, not all of this time is spent on research. In fact, modern P.h.D. students spend more time than necessary dealing with administrative functions like teaching, grading, and paperwork for the university.

What would you recommend to someone planning their own "personal PhD"? That is, four to six years of self-directed research on a specific topic.

This is something I think about often. Many citizen scientists like Franklin, Edison, and Darwin were not the result of PhD programs but instead curious professionals who conducted independent research.

Other specific questions:

- What is a suitable replacement for the role of advisor? Is there a representative person outside of academia who would provide the same type of advice?

- What type of fields are best suited to personal PhDs? Low capital investment (ie, no expensive lab equipment) seems like a constraint?

Like I said, I think about this often and have written more on the topic here: https://sundayscaries.substack.com/p/the-lifetime-curriculum...

Hard disagree. I made every possible mistake that can be made related to being too idealistic about grad school; for example, I believed:

- My advisor and collaborators have my best interests at heart

- My primary role in graduate school is to develop novel, useful, reproducible ideas

- Grants, fellowships, and stipends are generous donations freely given in order to enable the above

- Quality is more important than quantity

These kinds of sentiments caused more damage to my career than any other mistakes I have made (fortunately, I survived...so far). When someone gives you money, they definitely expect something in return, even if that something is not always clearly stated, and that something is almost always related to the donor's own career advancement.

There are PIs who absolutely prey on this kind of idealism. They can find certain kinds of idealistic students, use them up, and discard them. Graduate students should be told from day one that they need to look out for their own interests, because no one else will. I'm sure there are exceptions, but they are just that.

The best that can be reasonably hoped for from an advisor-advisee relationship is a clear understanding that it is a mutually beneficial transaction with bidirectional expectations. It makes me uncomfortable that the OP document obscures this fact.

> they aren't paying you to advance their career

What are they paying you for, then?

Eric Gilbert is a fairly well known person, but I still think the title should mention the full name as opposed to just "Eric".

There are probably hundreds (more?) of professors called "Eric" in Computer Science alone.