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Why do older grad students become bitter?

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Re: Why do older grad students become bitter?

#91

Post by sam_goody »

justaburner wrote: post #81
sam_goody wrote: post #28

1. If you put a sixth grader in second grade, they wont be happy because they are doing a lot less than they should and could be doing. I think this feeling applies for sixth year students, that know they could be starting a real job or building a family. 2. Academia is built on the the theoretical. Learning is cool, and theories are nice, and colleges are full of kids that don't bear the responsibility of their acti…

Do you think the fundamental problem lies within the idea of utopia?

I highly recommend Jan Valtin's book, recently on HN: https://thebaffler.com/latest/unflinching-prisoners-of-a-gra...

It is the biography of German Communist in WWII. To quote from the review "few books have ever done a finer or more honest job of describing the appeal and disappointments of ideology. "

Re: Why do older grad students become bitter?

#92

Post by Symbiote »

michaelt wrote: post #79
rwalle wrote: post #2

> A decent STEM PhD student stipend in the US is about $40k. I don't know where that number comes from. In most universities you'd be looking at $20k-lower 30k, sometimes less. In fact, in public schools, salaries for teaching assistants/research assistants are public data and people can look them up.

Yes - here in the UK a typical STEM PhD stipend is £17,668 [1] or $21,400 It's tax-free, and you don't have to pay any tuition fees - but it's nowhere near $40k. [1] https://www.ukri.org/what-we-offer/developing-people-and-ski...

Britain really undervalues PhD students.

PhD students at the University of Copenhagen earn 36,000DKK/month, which after taxes works out to around £34,000 or $40,000 per year. They are considered normal employees with a pension, holiday etc.

German PhD salaries seem only slightly lower, but taxes and living costs are also lower, so it's probably similar or slightly better.

https://uniavisen.dk/en/salaries-at-the-university-of-copenh...

https://academicpositions.com/career-advice/phd-postdoc-and-...

Re: Why do older grad students become bitter?

#94

Post by jvvw »

MereInterest wrote: post #54
jvvw wrote: post #19

As somebody from the UK, six years feels such a long time. Our PhDs are usually three years, although there's more specialisation earlier on at the undergraduate levels, and people might have done masters first, so you are launched straight into research pretty much when you start. You generally have four years from the start to submit your thesis and three years of funding, although I don't know if that has changed…

In the US, PhD programs will usually be combined with the Masters, and will start with ~2 years of coursework. This can cause no end of communication issues when discussing how far one is along a PhD.

Can you leave with a Masters after two years then? I was vaguely aware that Grad School in the US wasn't quite equivalent to here. I went straight from my undergraduate to my PhD, but I guess because of the earlier specialisation that the second half of my undergraduate was vaguely similar to a Masters in the US say.

Re: Why do older grad students become bitter?

#95

Post by FooBarBizBazz »

jhbadger wrote: post #8
rwalle wrote: post #2

> A decent STEM PhD student stipend in the US is about $40k. I don't know where that number comes from. In most universities you'd be looking at $20k-lower 30k, sometimes less. In fact, in public schools, salaries for teaching assistants/research assistants are public data and people can look them up.

It depends on how you want to compute the stipend. Many stipends are officially $50K or more but that's because they include the tuition (which is kind of silly as most PhD students aren't really students in the traditional sense beyond the first year or two, but still officially have to pay tuition). But yes, students are unlikely to see more than lower $30K as actual pay as the tuition is generally taken out automa…

To expand on this, IIRC postdocs cost professors about the same, but have double the salary, only because the school isn't taking the "tuition" cut. Of course, the incoming grant money to pay for the postdoc is still "taxed" at 50% by the university. So the lowly PhD student is probably only seeing 25% of what they're costing the government.

Re: Why do older grad students become bitter?

#96

Post by filoleg »

lapcat wrote: post #62
bioemerl wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> now where's my reward I was promised?" These people deserve more without question, but at the end of the day if this is their reaction they didn't look forward far enough. It's a slightly less bad decision than people who decide to try to become professional athletes. You're subjecting yourself to getting treated like absolute shit for a half a chance at a mediocre job. I do not understand why anyone would ever cho…

> It's a slightly less bad decision than people who decide to try to become professional athletes. Tell that to the professional athletes. > at least one at any institution that has this sort of crazy imbalances of applicants and positions Every institution has that imbalance. That's not particularly relevant, because grad students don't typically get jobs at their alma mater.

>> It's a slightly less bad decision than people who decide to try to become professional athletes.

> Tell that to the professional athletes.

I think the point they were trying to make is that you should talk not to professional athletes, but to those who tried to become one. Those who became professional athletes is just a tiny subset of those who tried. And within that, there is an even smaller subset of those who actually made it worth it for them (in terms of career earnings, getting out without debilitating lifelong injuries, etc.).

In a similar vein, you shouldn't be talking to Brad Pitt as a way to gauge your decision to become an actor, you should be talking to someone a bit more representative of the pool of those who tried to become actors (aka those who failed to get there, which is the vast majority).

Re: Why do older grad students become bitter?

#97

Post by dralley »

VLM wrote: post #18

I think the psychological aspect of first failure and injustice is rough on grad students. Hypercompetitive to get into a good enough BS program to get into a MS program yet unlike post-BS tracks like med school, 98% aren't getting that job in academia and will fail out. Its a pyramid with a very pointy top, much like college football usually doesn't lead to a NFL career. Meanwhile the "failures" who were not smart e…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26414881

Re: Why do older grad students become bitter?

#98

Post by bryanrasmussen »

lapcat wrote: post #38
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>or the academic pyramid becomes populated with only those with burnable wealth. yes, but it doesn't reasonable that people should ruin themselves out of - what? Some patriotic duty to keep American schools egalitarian? the people taking risk on loans are making a bad decision for themselves, the academic pyramid population problem is a bad decision for society.

> the people taking risk on loans are making a bad decision for themselves Everyone in the world takes risks. Can you say it was a bad decision for the people who took the risk, took out loans, and eventually became tenured professors? Of course in retrospect it feels like a bad decision for those who didn't become tenure track professors, but nobody knows in advance who will beat the odds and who won't.

there will of course be a subset of people for whom the loans will be a very good risk, of those people some will fail despite it being a good risk - the unlucky.

there will be a subset of people for whom the loans are a bad risk but some of them will succeed - the lucky. It seems unlikely there would be many lucky in such a hotly contested area.

But most of the subset of people for whom the loans are a bad risk will fail.

Re: Why do older grad students become bitter?

#99

Post by lapcat »

filoleg wrote: post #96
lapcat wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a slightly less bad decision than people who decide to try to become professional athletes. Tell that to the professional athletes. > at least one at any institution that has this sort of crazy imbalances of applicants and positions Every institution has that imbalance. That's not particularly relevant, because grad students don't typically get jobs at their alma mater.

>> It's a slightly less bad decision than people who decide to try to become professional athletes. > Tell that to the professional athletes. I think the point they were trying to make is that you should talk not to professional athletes, but to those who tried to become one. Those who became professional athletes is just a tiny subset of those who tried. And within that, there is an even smaller subset of those who…

It's not a question of advice. Of course take a wide variety of advice.

The question is whether it's a "bad decision" to pursue a highly competitive field, despite knowing the odds are against you, if you think you might have the talent to make it. I'm not convinced that it's a bad decision. Risky? Yes. Bad? That's debatable.

Did Brad Pitt make a bad decision? According to the logic that a big risk is never worth it, then he made a bad decision. But I don't agree with that. And I don't agree that failed actors necessarily made a bad decision either.

As I stated in another comment, there is no safe, guaranteed path in life. It's risk all the way down. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35196444

Should nobody ever become an actor? Nobody an athlete? Nobody a philosopher? Or are you going to say, only those kids born into wealth? In other words, non-wealthy kids don't ever get to have any ambition?

Re: Why do older grad students become bitter?

#100

Post by lapcat »

jvvw wrote: post #94
MereInterest wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, PhD programs will usually be combined with the Masters, and will start with ~2 years of coursework. This can cause no end of communication issues when discussing how far one is along a PhD.

Can you leave with a Masters after two years then? I was vaguely aware that Grad School in the US wasn't quite equivalent to here. I went straight from my undergraduate to my PhD, but I guess because of the earlier specialisation that the second half of my undergraduate was vaguely similar to a Masters in the US say.

Yes, granting a Masters after the completion of required coursework is commonplace on the way to a PhD, regardless of whether you leave or stay in the program.
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