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Abolish the PhD (2016)

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Re: Abolish the PhD (2016)

#51

Post by thevania »

arpa wrote: post #41
thevania wrote: post #18

its 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…

Get out more. Elsewhere in the EU PhD is not paid, at best you're doing lectures all while without any paid time off, sick leave, and if you want a good laugh from the universities' administrators, bring maternal leave up. The experience of my partner left me with a very bleak and medieval picture of the academia. And of course, if you're getting a research grant through the university, it comes as a loan of ~60-90k€…

sure if you can not handle it you tend to hate it

i know a lot of guys that were not able to finish phd or even basic bachelor degrees because they were too "proud" to adapt and believed they do not need to adapt and can live a good enough life without it

personally, in my organization i would never hire a person without at least a MSc for a non-research position and without a Phd for a research position - because to me the degree signifies they can adapt and will do what is necessary to accomplish the goals and won't quit on me when they will be pushed out of their comfort zone

Re: Abolish the PhD (2016)

#52

Post by brabel »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #10
Fomite wrote: post #6

"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.

Agree 100%... in tech, specifically, almost everyone is junior in at least some parts of your stack... by OP's standards we are all "students", which is true in some sense as we're always learning even after 20 years in the industry... but that doesn't mean a 20-year career veteran should be considered a "student" and given a different treatment because he/she never used Kafka or k8s and has to learn those from scratch. I really don't see how it's any different in research (I have no Phd, but I was with my wife through her whole Phd so I know how things go in that world).

Re: Abolish the PhD (2016)

#53

Post by fruffy »

Fomite wrote: post #6

"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…

As a current CS PhD in the US I find this sentiment aggravating. I am not a mere "student", I am a full-time employee. I do not take classes and I am not interested in taking classes. I would either like to teach or work on my research in a collaborative environment with other like-minded peers.

Many PhDs are in their late 20s/early 30s, coming from all swaths of life. They are not children. However, in the American education system they are treated as if they were. While this sentiment can have its perks, as shown in the OP, it also means PhDs do not get proper contracts, pay, benefits, or any voice.

Thankfully, I managed to maneuver myself into a position that is livable but I frequently talk to other CS PhDs from other American institutions. It is depressing to hear what people have to put up with in their degree. Sure, the PhD requires initial training, but the ramp-up is not so slow that it is necessary to be stuck in the same serf status for 5+ years.

Unfortunately, I think this is a systemic issue that is not easy to solve.

Re: Abolish the PhD (2016)

#54

Post by danielscrubs »

anonimamente wrote: post #36

That we only need to abolish PhD programs is like shaving the foam off the top of a spoiled bear and thinking that fixes it. The whole premise of college has been rendered obsolete by the Internet a long time ago. What does a University provide that you cannot find online? You are paying to read textbooks and listen to someone quote from those textbooks. Do you need someone to tell you that you must study X for N hou…

“ What does a University provide that you cannot find online? ”

Motivation and likeminded students who put in effort for years.

Programming happens to be very addictive but this is rarely the case in other types of work.

Re: Abolish the PhD (2016)

#55

Post by MontyCarloHall »

>After all, having a shitty job is a privilege! The abovelinked article tells it with a straight face: “Those who stick with a career in science do so because, despite the relatively poor pay, long hours and lack of security, it is all we want to do.”

This is an inherent, intractable problem with many careers that are also passions. There will always be a contingent of people willing to put in extremely long, brutal hours because they genuinely love what they’re doing. This disadvantages, if not entirely disqualifies people who simply want a regular 9-5 job in said career, since they will invariably be less successful than people for whom the career is their passion and thus push themselves because they genuinely enjoy it.

As an extreme example, consider Olympic athletes. Often for little-to-no pay, they put their bodies through long, grueling training regimens that make backbreaking sweatshop labor look easy by comparison. It is simply impossible to be a “casual” Olympic athlete.

I know a junior PI who pledged when they started their lab to maintain a culture of healthy work/life balance. That ended up going nowhere, since most of their trainees worked hard anyway because they genuinely enjoyed it. After hiring a couple trainees who were not so passionate about their work and produced very little by comparison (and caused the lab to not get funded for a major grant in the process), the PI made it a point to only hire passionate trainees, and so the cycle was complete.

Re: Abolish the PhD (2016)

#56

Post by madsohm »

wodenokoto wrote: post #24

My understanding is that US system places Ph.D. and masters degree in the same course. In Europe and Asia you take a bachelor, then a masters degree. Both as university students. A masters opens the door to apply for a Ph.D. In Denmark, for example, a Ph.D. is commonly a job position, with a limited contract. Union governed, pay, pension. You apply for a position when one is announced, just like many other jobs. Lite…

Do note that, specifically in Denmark, you can do a 4+4, where you do a 4 year bachelor/master and a 4 year PhD, instead of the regular 3 year bachelor, 2 year master and then 3 year PhD. Here you'd have to apply for the PhD well before entering the university, or at least whist doing the bachelor studies.

Re: Abolish the PhD (2016)

#57

Post by avidphantasm »

There are problems with the way we conduct research; we rely too much on low-paid and precarious graduate research assistants and not enough on professional research scientists. However, parts of the (ideal) PhD experience are invaluable. For example: having vast stretches of distraction-free time to read, learn, and explore ideas; having your supervisor shield you completely from administrative bullshit. I don’t know how to fix our research system, but whatever we do, we must protect the good in the current system.

Re: Abolish the PhD (2016)

#58

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

From what I got from my colleagues who were pursuing PhDs and order such degrees (like Russian Candidate of Sciences), "Science" is mostly a bureaucratic cartel that has very little too do with actual science, and ~99% of efforts are consumed by satisfying the bureaucratic requirements.

Re: Abolish the PhD (2016)

#59

Post by MontyCarloHall »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #10
Fomite wrote: post #6

"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.

The standards for junior employees are much higher. I have encountered several PhDs in computational fields who barely knew how to code when they were first admitted to their grad programs. They would not have been hired as junior software engineers at any decent company.
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