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Abolish the PhD (2016)
11–20 of 197 posts
Re: Abolish the PhD (2016)
#12"Problem is, “graduate students” are not students. They are workers." Graduate students are both . My students benefit heavily from me not necessarily treating them to the same standards as I would treat a full time research employee. And while they are the primary workhorses of research, there are large swathes of their graduate student careers where they are not particularly (or often negatively) productive. I will…
It depends where. Both the article and the responses throw everything in the same basket, as if it all universities are the same and all education systems are the same. The bologna accords sure tried to make all higher-ed work in the same fashion and it has been a disaster.
There is no doubt that in the US in a lot of universities graduate students are a cheap workforce that reinforces corporate interests through research that is funded by them to sway public opinion in certain directions.
To some extent this is due to the sheer amounts of money that flow into academy and the amount of money that you need to stay competitive. So you can't piss off your patrons.
For a long time at least the fact that graduate students in europe received a steady subsidy that is enough to comfortably live and universities received fixed amounts that are not dependent on industry push allowed universities to stay independent for the longest time. Although that too is changing.
There is a fair share of critique on the latter system, but in general it allows for more independent research institutions.
Re: Abolish the PhD (2016)
#13"Problem is, “graduate students” are not students. They are workers." Graduate students are both . My students benefit heavily from me not necessarily treating them to the same standards as I would treat a full time research employee. And while they are the primary workhorses of research, there are large swathes of their graduate student careers where they are not particularly (or often negatively) productive. I will…
In industry we just call those junior and senior employees.
This a thousand times.
> And while they are the primary workhorses of research, there are large swathes of their graduate student careers where they are not particularly (or often negatively) productive.
Um, hello. This happens in industry as well. It's called training, learning, whatever. It's an investment on the part of the company in the future of its workforce. Why should academia expect to only pay employees who are "fully educated" and require no non-productive time to learn things?
As someone who has been there, academica is so f*cked up and those in it seem completely out of touch with the reality outside of it.
Re: Abolish the PhD (2016)
#14Does anyone have experience with being a non-traditional PhD student and doing your PhD later in life?
I worked a bit and want to return for a PhD in CS. I took some courses at a nearby (and good) institution and did well (for fun). I want to continue taking graduate courses and and get involved in research before I apply for PhD programs (since I been out of school for a while).
Curious to hear from older students their experiences or from professors on thoughts about older students (say late 30s/early 40s) and whether there are job opportunities in industry for folks in this age range upon completion (in say applied areas).
I’m doing it because I really want to do research and enjoy hard theoretical problems outside the scope of your regular SWE job.
Re: Abolish the PhD (2016)
#15> Mind you: this is not part-time work, or even standard 9-to-5. It is hard, continuous work, with weekends and nights spent in the lab or writing research papers (see e.g. here). Journals advise graduate students to work most weekends and long hours, because that’s how you succeed.
Or could the “because” be that you find the work deeply intellectually stimulating to the point where it’s hard to step away? I guess maybe that crowd isn’t writing about it, since they’re off doing, you know, science. This is my problem with the monthly “down with PhDs!” screed that shows up on the front page of HN. There is a huge anti-survivor bias.
Re: Abolish the PhD (2016)
#16"Problem is, “graduate students” are not students. They are workers." Graduate students are both . My students benefit heavily from me not necessarily treating them to the same standards as I would treat a full time research employee. And while they are the primary workhorses of research, there are large swathes of their graduate student careers where they are not particularly (or often negatively) productive. I will…
It depends where. Both the article and the responses throw everything in the same basket, as if it all universities are the same and all education systems are the same. The bologna accords sure tried to make all higher-ed work in the same fashion and it has been a disaster. There is no doubt that in the US in a lot of universities graduate students are a cheap workforce that reinforces corporate interests through res…
"There is no doubt that in the US in a lot of universities graduate students are a cheap workforce that reinforces corporate interests through research that is funded by them to sway public opinion in certain directions."
Citation is needed for this subject. Large amount of research in University is funded by NSF or the Federal Government. While industrial interest also contribute significantly to research fund, it is excessive to accuses a lot of universities to be a crony in a corporate-academic-complex.
Re: Abolish the PhD (2016)
#17Does anyone have experience with being a non-traditional PhD student and doing your PhD later in life? I worked a bit and want to return for a PhD in CS. I took some courses at a nearby (and good) institution and did well (for fun). I want to continue taking graduate courses and and get involved in research before I apply for PhD programs (since I been out of school for a while). Curious to hear from older students t…
Your real world experience is an advantage, try to position yourself among relatively young scholars (recently tenured) and write one paper and submit it before entering grad school.
Re: Abolish the PhD (2016)
#18its just one persons opinion based on his experiences, I do not share his views because my experience was completely different, for the sake of having a different perspective let me share how it went for me:
I did my PhD (and an MSc before that) in EU, as a PhD I was paid an above average salary and it even provided me enough time to work as a consultant in parallel where I was able to get a few patents - which also look good from "academic perspective"
my phd advisor didn't really care at all as long as I was producing papers that got accepted to conferences / journals and he was a co-author even though he literally never even talked to me about any of the topics of my research, so basically zero supervision as long as I produced "academic results"
I finished my PhD in 3 years (normally it should have taken more) and went straight to running my startup
would I have done it again? sure
can it be done better? sure - science and all the institutions around it are just "processes" that the collective mankind came up with over last few centuries, there will always be outliers that do not fit in, I never did fit in myself, but i sucked it up and made the best out of it, and that is what i believe the greatest thing that phd thought me - persistence under extreme pressure, and i still do that to this day - the pressure is much higher than it was back then because the stakes are much higher, but phd was the first step - breaking the barriers showing that even I can push the boundaries of what is considered possible
if money are an issue - just do a phd in EU, here I never heard of an unpaid phd position
Re: Abolish the PhD (2016)
#19As someone who hates schools and formal education with a passion, if money was not an issue (say I win a big lottery) I would be motivated by a phd (crypto in my case because I suck at it). The level of research and work demanded of you honestly feels like it would be worth it and you actually do stuff instead of pass exams and write papers the way the teacher wants it writtem and all is good, you have to have results and original thought.
Re: Abolish the PhD (2016)
#20"Problem is, “graduate students” are not students. They are workers." Graduate students are both . My students benefit heavily from me not necessarily treating them to the same standards as I would treat a full time research employee. And while they are the primary workhorses of research, there are large swathes of their graduate student careers where they are not particularly (or often negatively) productive. I will…
You can go from undergrad to phd???