Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees • Hacker News Board

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#161

Post by aeonik » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 11:07 PM UTC

daft_pink wrote: post #84

DanielHB wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are discarding opportunity cost in your assessment.

Maybe, but if you compare paying 30-50k per year plus living expenses for an average masters program for 2-3 years and then paying student loans for a really long time because you couldn't afford it in the first place vs paying no tuition and getting a $30k-40k stipend for 4-5 years. The advantage of a year or two of additional work isn't as great as you think, when you subtract out tuition and the stipend they give…

You could always do what I did, get your employer to pay for the Masters, still work full time.

No debt, no opportunity cost.

Wish one would let me do the same with a PhD.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#162

Post by snats » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 11:09 PM UTC

matthewdgreen wrote: post #157

janalsncm wrote: post #85

I considered a PhD in machine learning. It’s mostly downsides. Granted, most fields are not like this but: 1) The field moves too fast to focus on a single thing for 4 years. A lot of people were devastated when ChatGPT essentially solved their NLP tasks. 2) Cutting edge NLP/vision research is being done in industrial labs as much as universities. And industry will probably outgun you with equipment (GPUs) and high q…

If I could go back to that age, I'd focus my PhD on actually understanding what's going on in ML models. Industry is always going to be incentivized to build things and not understand, so you can fill in the details. Plus it would be fascinating.

yup, if i went to do a PhD interpretability is the only interesting subject for academia IMO right now

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#163

Post by ImaCake » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 11:14 PM UTC

yodsanklai wrote: post #101

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…

Maybe it depends on the institution? I, and many of those I know who went to the same institution, had terrible PhD experiences. I burnt out and left with a Masters, others just quit, one committed suicide. Even those who completed the PhD said it was miserable.

Its hard to know if the risk of a bad time is always high or if it is dependent on culture etc, but I do not recommend PhDs as a pathway anymore.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#164

Post by janalsncm » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 11:17 PM UTC

matthewdgreen wrote: post #157

janalsncm wrote: post #85

I considered a PhD in machine learning. It’s mostly downsides. Granted, most fields are not like this but: 1) The field moves too fast to focus on a single thing for 4 years. A lot of people were devastated when ChatGPT essentially solved their NLP tasks. 2) Cutting edge NLP/vision research is being done in industrial labs as much as universities. And industry will probably outgun you with equipment (GPUs) and high q…

If I could go back to that age, I'd focus my PhD on actually understanding what's going on in ML models. Industry is always going to be incentivized to build things and not understand, so you can fill in the details. Plus it would be fascinating.

It’s not like interpretability research is immune. You could’ve been in year 4 of your degree when Anthropic released their sparse autoencoder research. It’s just less busy because as you correctly note, industry mostly cares about getting the black box to print money.

> Plus it would be fascinating

You can do research on the weekend even if you’re not in a PhD. I’ve done it. And no one was breathing down my neck to publish it.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#165

Post by xanderlewis » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 11:20 PM UTC

From the discussion here, it seems that HN turns out to be a very money-centric place. Somewhat surprising.

It doesn’t even seem to occur to people that one might pursue a doctoral degree because one is interested in the subject and wants to do research. It’s always talked about as if getting a PhD is just another rung in a long ladder towards… earning a lot of money? Not only that — it’s apparently such an obvious fact that it’s an unacknowledged (though implicitly present) assumption in almost every comment here.

The obsession with the ‘STEM’ acronym (well, really the grouping rather than the name) also winds me up, but I better not go there…

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#166

Post by xanderlewis » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 11:22 PM UTC

lthornberry wrote: post #44

some_random wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Academia doesn't have a monopoly on intellectualism, and in fact "tech bros" tend to emphasize the reason and rationalism that typically defines intellectualism.

This is Dunning-Kruger in sentence form.

Dunning-Kruger is itself kind of a tech bro-ey catchphrase though…

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#167

Post by mnky9800n » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 11:24 PM UTC

ImaCake wrote: post #163

yodsanklai wrote: post #101

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…

Maybe it depends on the institution? I, and many of those I know who went to the same institution, had terrible PhD experiences. I burnt out and left with a Masters, others just quit, one committed suicide. Even those who completed the PhD said it was miserable. Its hard to know if the risk of a bad time is always high or if it is dependent on culture etc, but I do not recommend PhDs as a pathway anymore.

You can have a poorly paid bad time doing lots of things. A PhD isn’t the worst option by a long shot haha.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#168

Post by Blackthorn » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 11:26 PM UTC

seanwilson wrote: post #49

There's something to say here about getting the paid opportunity to spend several years thinking deeply about a problem without distraction. You'll make more money working at a startup or big tech churning out features each sprint, but usually you'd be very lucky to get a day or two to explore tangential ideas before the next project deadline in comparison. Some people aren't optimizing for money so it's not best to…

There were tons and tons of distractions during mine. Pressure to publish doesn't just start at postdoc.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#169

Post by declan_roberts » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 11:27 PM UTC

xanderlewis wrote: post #165

From the discussion here, it seems that HN turns out to be a very money-centric place. Somewhat surprising. It doesn’t even seem to occur to people that one might pursue a doctoral degree because one is interested in the subject and wants to do research . It’s always talked about as if getting a PhD is just another rung in a long ladder towards… earning a lot of money? Not only that — it’s apparently such an obvious…

The only difference between a PhD and a hobby is money, or the presumption of it indirectly (certain jobs, etc)

Or else we just call it pursing our natural hobbies and interests. You don't need to go to school for that.

If you didn't need more money you wouldn't seek the accreditation.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#170

Post by bsder » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 11:27 PM UTC

xanderlewis wrote: post #165

From the discussion here, it seems that HN turns out to be a very money-centric place. Somewhat surprising. It doesn’t even seem to occur to people that one might pursue a doctoral degree because one is interested in the subject and wants to do research . It’s always talked about as if getting a PhD is just another rung in a long ladder towards… earning a lot of money? Not only that — it’s apparently such an obvious…

> It doesn’t even seem to occur to people that one might pursue a doctoral degree because one is interested in the subject and wants to do research.

What people are, quite rightly, pointing out about getting a PhD is the "will live in poverty for a decade+ with better odds of winning the lottery than getting a tenured position to do research".

Even if you want to do research, you have to eat, too.