Abolish the PhD (2016)

My son is currently working on his Ph.D. in CS. I've been working in industry for nearly 40 years. Let me address some of your points.

1. Many, many jobs don't have an actual contract listing your hours or any sort of vacation policy. Even for the jobs that do, there's no guarantee you'll actually be able to take your vacation, or take it when you'd like.

2. See (1). Vacations are almost always worked around projects. I grew up in an engineering environment and I can tell you that's just life in an engineering environment.

3. Many universities offer student health plans. And check your calendar - the year is 2022. Pensions don't exist anywhere - at least not for new employees.

4. I've experienced that working for a start-up too. It happens.

5. My son hasn't had a problem finding work over the summer - that's the bulk of his income. Yes, he also has to continue his research. But, working 60-80 hours per week for 3 months per year is pretty much normal at many places. Whether that should be the case or not is another issue, but I don't see the Ph.D. student getting hit particularly harder than anyone else.

6. The trick is to align your jobs with your research. My son hasn't had problems in that regard. Also, CS departments like to forge and maintain contacts in private industry. So there's research alignment and department alignment to think about.

7. Pursuing your own research that's not aligned with your department isn't smart. After all, you chose that department - weren't you into what they were researching? Hadn't you talked about what kinds of things you were interested in before they brought you on? This is a two-way street - there's things they're looking to get from you and there's things you're looking to get from them. Also, no person is an island - you're going to need help. No one is likely to help you if you're viewed as a maverick who isn't aligned with the department goals.

You are correct that the wages are barely livable. I can tell you from the experience my daughter had in pursuing a Ph.D. that the stipends for CS students are considerably higher than the stipends available for other fields in science. Plus the CS students have the opportunity to work over the Summer and make the "big bucks." Altogether you should be making $60K-$70K per year, which isn't a lot as far as CS grads go, but it's considerably better than subsistence living. That's the equivalent of making $30-$45 per hour which is a wage most Americans would find damn good, and can only dream about earning that kind of money.

All told, there's a lot you have to go through to get a Ph.D. and lots of it is politicking. That's why smart people hire Ph.D. grads - they know they're people who can work against the long odds and still come out successful. That's a desirable trait to have in the people you hire.

So yes, you can easily make double the money you're currently making, but you're never going to have the opportunity to research as you do now. Hopefully you chose your department wisely and are aligned with the kind of research they're into.

In Biology and Physics at least, the professor owns the data because they funded the project. They also have final say about authorship and can remove you from a paper at any moment, with no recourse.

>You are correct that the wages are barely livable. I can tell you from the experience my daughter had in pursuing a Ph.D. that the stipends for CS students are considerably higher than the stipends available for other fields in science. Plus the CS students have the opportunity to work over the Summer and make the "big bucks." Altogether you should be making $60K-$70K per year, which isn't a lot as far as CS grads go, but it's considerably better than subsistence living. That's the equivalent of making $30-$45 per hour which is a wage most Americans would find damn good, and can only dream about earning that kind of money.

This is almost totally unique to CS students and frankly many advisors may not allow their students to skip the opportunity to do more research over the summer.

I'm not sure why you spent so much time defending the PhD system in the US which is frankly broken and borderline abusive.

> Aren't PhD students working long hours already?

Depends highly on the field. I knew some materials science PhD students who were relatively well-funded to work in the lab (~$35k per year), but often spent nights and weekends baby sitting experiments. But there was no undergraduate materials science program, so no teaching!

I was in the mathematics department where most people worked as teaching assistants for $22k per year (summer work available) but otherwise did as they pleased. I would maybe meet with my adviser for a few minutes per week? And after you've taught calculus five times, you can kind of coast.

I won't weigh in much either way because I mostly don't understand the Ph.D. process or phenomenon. Why that fact might be weird or notable; my full time job is in a non-research teaching role, in higher-ed, for 15+ years.

Even weirder, my law degree is what technically qualifies me to teach graduate students in an IT program (maybe not THAT weird, I do teach legal research and Info Policy...but also web design/admin/programming)