Not only privileged (in terms of outcome and socioeconomic status of a post-PhD career and family), but also rather ideological. The person you asked the question to casually equates "life things" with family, house, career. It's surprisingly a conservative worldview, and IMO a PhD should expand a person's thinking more deeply than to accept ideology that way. To me this says a modern PhD education is too careerist a…
The only thing I've gathered here is that progressives are exhaustively drab and annoying to deal with. They will examine things from the point of view that is precisely aligned with only theirs, calling other people's careers useless in a rather amusing turn of events, and then say, without even slightly being self reflective, that these people they are examining are backwards and narrow minded.
To me this says profoundly nothing that was not already known, but needed to be demonstrated in full view of as many participants as possible. To say the least, derailed, but does anyone know the purpose of this derailment? It can only be explained by a progressive in the most whimsical way possible.
Not only privileged (in terms of outcome and socioeconomic status of a post-PhD career and family), but also rather ideological. The person you asked the question to casually equates "life things" with family, house, career. It's surprisingly a conservative worldview, and IMO a PhD should expand a person's thinking more deeply than to accept ideology that way. To me this says a modern PhD education is too careerist a…
It’s arguably an artifact of an increasingly competitive society. The base “cost” of existing keeps rising, its simply becoming impractical to not be career focused. While I’m sure it benefits professors to have an idealistic employe who will work for peanuts… it’s not sustainable. While a grad student is expected to be paid - they would need a 1 hour commute to afford the housing options around my rural alma matter.
> It’s arguably an artifact of an increasingly competitive society. The base “cost” of existing keeps rising, it’s simply becoming impractical to not be career focused.
The cost of practically every manufactured good and of food have been dropping for decades if not centuries. Average living space per person has likewise been getting for decades. Healthspan likewise.
In what sense has it become impractical not to be career focused? The average salary for a public high school teacher in NJ is $69K and the top $129K[1] while the average salary for a full professor in the NJ public university system is under $100K and the top is $174K[2] for the overwhelmingly dominant 9 month contracts. If you just want to get paid and you’re capable of doing a PhD you can just do a Master’s instead, in a much, much easier field and then do another job to get paid more.
Just curious, what inspired you to pursue medicine. I have been a SDE at a FAANG with 7 years of experience, but I am curious in maybe pivoting into medicine or at least combining the two fields. I have been feeling extreme boredom and dissatisfaction and was hoping pursuing medicine would give me some renewed passion.
You'll need to exhibit character like servant leadership to do well as a doctor.
And by that I mean not burning out. The demands on a M.D. are intense. At least from what I know of the ones I’ve talked to.
> people who do PhD are not actually very assertive on their own and they have very impaired cooperation skills Where exactly are you pulling this from? That has not been my experience, both from my research lab and from other students I've met at a variety of conferences.
Why they don't organize, do a mass protest and get better treatment from the system?
Because their work does not directly financially support the university in the short-term, so any forms of protest negatively affect their own advisors while the institution feels very little impact. There are still student unions and this is an ongoing discussion in the academic community.
Again, why do you claim phd students are "not assertive" with "impaired cooperation skills"? Or is that just a personal judgement on your part?
For me, the biggest drawback was doing all of the life things later. I graduated at 27, which is on the earlier end, then met my partner a year later, got married 2 years after that, bought a house 2 years after that, and then 2 years after that finally felt settled enough to have our first child (second was born 3 years later). Money was usually gating each step. We’re going to be pushing 70 before our children have…
First kid at ~33 doesn’t strike me as particularly unusual for reasonably well off professionals where I live, but maybe I’m biased by how my parents went through life and you yours.
The Nature article and OP's article identify one culprit: poor supervision. I have a shit-list of awful supervisors that I try to steer potential students away from. Universities know that these people are awful but do nothing: in some cases I personally know, the Vice-Chancellor of the university and the toxic supervisors are best buddies.
Case in point: Alan Cooper, international ancient DNA expert, was fired after a long battle because he was so incredibly toxic. He just got hired by another university! https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02147-x
Academia has no interest in weeding out its most bad members. So I, and many others, left.
When discussing with someone, proper manners enlightens a discussant to avoid painting them into a proverbial corner, since such is a negative interaction. From what I read, the person worked their tush off to get through a graduate program, then pushed for more money in a career. What aspect of this do you find privileging? Working their tush off? Pushing for opportunities? A small set of comments online tells one n…
It appeared they rant about how "doing all the things in life later" was the biggest drawback and continues to contradict the point by providing a timeline that places them at 33yo with all of the listed life goals achieved, starting with a graduation (I assume by the context, with a PhD, at 27). Some of such life goals are not even achievable for some. It sounds like a simple attempt to humble-brag.
Assuming that they worked their tush off or pushed for opportunities also sounds coming from some privileged background, as it seems to assume that hard work and proper initiative would be sufficient in achieving such things, while for some people the first guard is already getting the necessary elementary education, while being in a stable and safe environment.
Several startups back, I worked for a pompous boss, ex-Goldman-VP, who told me that people who get masters are worse programmers, especially if it's from a better school than their bachelor's. You'll be surprised how many nutty biases people have out there.
As strange as it is, I think there's validity to it. Master's degrees filter more on having the money to cover tuition than test scores, and it's easier to just buy your way into a good school than with undergraduate. I remember taking courses alongside Master's students who were anecdotally less impressive than my fellow undergraduates. This experience (along with my dwindling pocketbook) helped dissuade me from sta…
Strongly disagree. You can get a full masters from UT Austin with specialization in AI/ML for about $10k. Fully remote. https://cdso.utexas.edu/msai . Compared to a typical bachelors which is what, about $50k?
I think the only reason I was able to get through my PhD was because I am used to the work culture and expectations. After going into the industry in a relatively healthy and good company, I realized just how much stress I had and how bad it was in academia. In a way, the grinder serves as a test of willpower and discipline and those who could persevere through it can say they have the mental fortitude to handle stre…
on behalf of the world i would like to express thanks to all scientists who have borne personal costs to advance our understanding and life quality wherever it really has done so
getting phd at 27 is suuuper early. Granted, friends might start to work at 23 or 25-ish but we're talking about a doctoral degree, which makes a visible difference on job hunting in the field of computer science I'm in.
No it isn't. For instance, in the US one starts a BS at 17-18, finishes at 21-22. Median CS PhD is in the 5-6 year range (this site, based on actual data, says 5.7: https://gradschool.duke.edu/about/statistics/computer-scienc... ). So if you go straight to the PhD program (common) that puts the median finisher at 27-28.
Assume there are countries, where the usual path looks a little different. The US is not a standard for all things. In some regions you usually don't start studying at a university or institution of higher education before 18-19, a bachelor usually takes 3-4 years, leaving you at 21-23. For starting in a doctorate program, you require a master's degree (in some places this has to be in some related discipline), which again takes 1-2 years (depending on how many credits you got during the bachelor's), usually leaving you at around 23-24 before starting a PhD - at the earliest. A doctorate are 3 years minimum, more likely being around 5 years, so we're at 26-29, and this is with very little time in between to actually do anything else. Additionally, a doctorate may not enable you to get a job that pays well, but possibly do quite the opposite by leaving you on a public service salary for years, and even excluding you from certain jobs outside of academia that could be used to amortize the economical drawbacks.