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Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

nature.com

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Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#101

Post by yodsanklai »

As usual, lot of PhD bashing in the comments. My experience was generally positive.

The good things

1. I had mostly fun doing it. Being paid to learn things is great.

2. I got to work in different countries, and travel to many places

3. I was able to have more than one career. PhD + academia, before switching to industry. Gave me more perspectives.

4. I did learn a few things and skills (public speaking, I learned a lot of things while teaching too).

The bad things

1. Opportunity cost. I could have earned more but, would have I had the same career with the PhD? hard to tell

2. A lot of what I learned is totally useless.

3. Doing a PhD was fun, being a professor wasn't. Boring administrative work, lots of bitterness among academics, unhealthy competition. (and I wasn't good enough).

Overall, I would probably do the PhD again, but wouldn't go to academia. I find that working for a big corporation can be depressing/stressful. I'm glad I did other things in my life.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#102

Post by michaelcampbell »

whatshisface wrote: post #87
BeetleB wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to take away from his brilliance, but generally Taylor approximations perform far worse than the standard library implementations. It's also the first tool of choice for physicists, so who knows ...? My guess, though, is that if he improved the performance, he used some other wizardry (Chebyshev or something similar).

Sometimes what you need is less precision, much faster. Carmack's famous inverse square root falls into this category. If anything it's a lesson that the definition of brilliance is being in the wrong place at the wrong time... ;-)

Carmack denied writing it, and if WP is to be believed, he didn't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_inverse_square_root

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#103

Post by fujinghg »

I was going to do a mathematics PhD years ago but I’ll be honest and I’m not bashing the process or the outcome here.

I literally just couldn’t be bothered to put the effort in. It’s not an insurmountable task but there were easier things that made me feel better. One of which inadvertently lead to a family.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#104

Post by xyst »

Yup. Forget college or post-graduate degrees. This is no longer a meritocracy. We are in a grinding and grifting mindset. This is a jokers/jesters economy.

Forget pricey degrees. Just start streaming, become controversial af, gain an audience of young followers, sell them on quasi-legal gambling platforms, rake in that cheddar.

Or become a “political talking head” that doesn’t contribute to the conversation but instead provokes audiences with click baity material.

Or if you are traditionally attractive, start teasing the waters with “Just Chatting” streams and potentially switch up to selling OF subs. Nothing wrong with it, got to make that cheddar. Right?

I’m calling it now. The alignment with neoliberal economic policy is the downfall of not just the United States but the end of capitalism itself.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#107

Post by WalterBright »

vonneumannstan wrote: post #92

In STEM in particular the opportunity costs of a PhD are extremely high and with little payoff at the end. Even if you want to stay in academia, which is the only real reason to do a PhD now, there are far more PhDs graduating per year than open faculty positions. Many get stuck in Postdoc or adjunct hell for years and can never get a tenure track role.

There are many research jobs at Microsoft, Google, etc., that require a STEM PhD.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#108

Post by ckrapu »

The PhD is has become the de facto replacement for the advanced workforce training programs (apprenticeship, guilds, corporate talent development programs) that many civilizations used to use. For some fields, you really do need to bang your head against a small number of problems without anyone holding your hand before you become proficient.

Not all PhD graduates get there; many just skate by because no one wants to fail them. They are an essential part of the modern labor force, though.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#109

Post by currymj »

comrade1234 wrote: post #19

Credit Suisse here in Switzerland used to only hire PhDs for programming positions. It didn’t matter what the PhD was in - they’d train you how to program. Note: credit Suisse collapsed a few years ago and now no longer exists.

their collapse didn't have anything to do with computer systems failing though.

they just spent a period of about 10 years making sure they were involved in every major financial scandal due to poor judgment.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#110

Post by currymj »

dakiol wrote: post #37

I would do a PhD if they paid me enough. I don't mind if I cannot find a job that pays well with a PhD (I actually don't need a PhD for that); I would do the PhD because I like doing research. What would bother me is to spent ~4-5 years without a decent income. The scholarships here in western europe are just too low, and I cannot justify not working for private companies in favor or pursuing a PhD during ~4-5 years

consider Switzerland. PhD salary is around the range of 80k CHF. It's not bad at all.
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