[dead]
Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees
241–250 of 485 posts
Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm slowly, very slowly, realizing this and that my objections to this are quite literally pissing into the wind to the wrong crowd. Begging and pleading for people to make tech that doesn't torture and depress the average user seems to just fall upon deaf ears, because all that ever mattered to them was the money.
> Begging and pleading for people to make tech that doesn't torture and depress the average user seems to just fall upon deaf ears, because all that ever mattered to them was the money. I think there are some people on HN who care about other things than money. I've seen a number of references here to encrapification and the rot economy, noting that chasing unlimited growth seems to lead to harmful, anti-social techn…
Enshittification.
Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are many research jobs at Microsoft, Google, etc., that require a STEM PhD.
True, but how competitive are those jobs to get? If one goes to a lesser-known university that has a PhD program and does related research are they getting an interview, or are these research jobs intended for specific university pipelines (Harvard, MIT, the usuals, etc.)?
> True, but how competitive are those jobs to get?
Personally knowing a couple PhDs who did the rounds, it is highly competitive.
Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
True, but how competitive are those jobs to get? If one goes to a lesser-known university that has a PhD program and does related research are they getting an interview, or are these research jobs intended for specific university pipelines (Harvard, MIT, the usuals, etc.)?
I have a CS PhD from a good (but not top 5) program and have published in top venues. I perceived my chances of getting a job at Microsoft Research (MSR) to be low (on par with getting a faculty position at a top place) and didn't feel like going through the unpleasant prospect of coming up with job talks and slides, sending off to universities while I'm at it, writing diversity statements, etc, for fairly low chance…
> then you're on your ass
My understanding from PhDs in the research business at major companies is that once you're in the club, it's a lot easier to get a position at another one.
(No, not me, I don't have a PhD.)
Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ya but, based on the brief resume in your profile, you've also probably made out quite well, no? Is that a completely incidental thing, or do you think you'd feel even a little differently if what you earned throughout your intellectual journey ended up leaving you financially vulnerable, whatever that would mean in your geographic region? To me it's a question of how much cost a person should reasonably incur in ord…
In STEM, PhDs are probably not terrible financial outcomes in general (in that they probably mostly avoid a huge amount of student loan debt and may offer a leg-up for some commercial opportunities), but they also may be sub-optimal financially in many cases relative to just landing a job out of academia earlier.
Ya you may be right, at least in terms of expense, but I'm also considering the external cost vs reward even if debt is zero. A woman struck up a conversation with me yesterday at a cafe and we got to chatting. She had already had two careers, first in film, then teaching film, and now starting a PhD in philosophy, which I think is fantastic. But... she's a retired grey hair who owns her home, and the topic of whether her former students or myself would even continue to feasibly attend school or stay present in the community was unavoidable. There was no malice or particularly negative sentiments exchanged in our brief conversation, there didn't need to be, but there was more of an exasperated acknowledgement that there's no possible scenario wherein myself, her students, or her own adult children could secure a house remotely like hers in the broader municipal area by our own means, without winning a literal or figurative lottery with immense career success. Land is too expensive, prospects don't pay enough and they're too volatile.
She wouldn't have been able to either, it was just plausible, though still probably pretty expensive for her at a different time, likely with another income.
It's not impossible to make some pursuits work, but tbh some things are not worth pursuing if they ain't gunna pay. It's an existential crisis that people are well-aware of; why invest ones finite resources into something that won't even let you form a stable adulthood?
Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
This doesn’t contribute to the discussion
Sure it does, wealth hoarding is a significant factor in students enrolling in doctoral degrees. Be it because it is a step towards more wealth, or because it's not (and as such a group that might be a good fit, but prefer more wealth over deeper education will no longer enrol). Combine that with very visible people actively promoting that, or representing that, you get yourself a discussion about knowledge, money, a…
If you read a biography of Musk, you'll find that he did not hoard wealth. At each step in his rise, he bet essentially all of his fortune on the next step.
After all, investing in Tesla was not a sane business decision. Nobody had ever started a successful car company in America since the 1920s or so. Bricklin, Tucker, Delorean, the path is littered with utter failure.
Neither was investing in rockets. At one point, he was down to bankruptcy if one more rocket exploded. What car executive would be crazy enough to bet it all on reusable rockets?
Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees
#247I got caught cheating in my very last college course so can never get my PhD. I use to be atrocious at school bc I had adhd and was about to drop but did a complete 180 and finally learned how to learn which changed everything. I discovered my love for Math and my immediate and only goal from that point forward was to get my PhD. My temple became the library and would go there immediately after class and every weeken…
>In a PhD program you are given unlimited resources to make that happen. Did you ignore almost every other comment in this thread when you wrote this?
The resources a PhD student has vs. a guy who works construction has significantly more tools at their disposal than I do. I have zero so any more than that from my perspective is seen as unlimited.
Also, my mom was a secretary assistant for a professor at UCLA so I’ve seen the labs and students throughout the years and will say their lack of resources is part of the reason they become experts in their field.
Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure - it's just a hobby that pays money. That and the library access, and the fact that you don't have to fit it in around a job, obviously. Kinda goes without saying. And you get a supervisor who might point you in the right direction and keep you on track - but I'm sure you barely need that! Of course the equipment access and technician support goes without saying. Not like anyone else is going to be letting you u…
All incredible points, but academia still doesn't appeal to people like me in the slightest. The hierarchy, the bureaucracy, the various costs, the unreliable supposed rewards, none of it was even remotely appealing enough to do an undergraduate, let alone a masters and then a PhD. Funny thing is, the hierarchy, the bureaucracy, the various costs, the unreliable supposed rewards, related to industries of technology,…
I used to think that, money aside, I'd be interested in a PhD in whatever subject.
But really, I can buy the library access at my alma mater for a trivial sum. And, were I in the city, I could access a ton of the other stuff too. No, not the labs for the fields that require them for the most part--or generally discussion seminars, but there's a lot you can access for free-ish if you work at it.
Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nah. The difference is one of (learning) rigor. Intellectual and scientific. You learn a lot in the process of getting a Ph.D. about how to think, how to analyze, and how to research.
That sounds awfully generic. It doesn't sound that different from a Master's (heck, maybe even an undergrad) program that requires a thesis. Yes, there's a difference in the sense of supposedly doing novel research, but I'm not sure the degree to which you're theoretically moving the state of the art forward justifies your time investment in many cases.
I'm assuming you don't have a Ph.D. if it sounds generic to you. I think it's really impossible to explain to somebody who hasn't gone through it how much a Ph.D. changes the way you think.
Whether it's worth the time investment is another matter, however, which I'll leave alone.
Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nah. The difference is one of (learning) rigor. Intellectual and scientific. You learn a lot in the process of getting a Ph.D. about how to think, how to analyze, and how to research.
That sounds awfully generic. It doesn't sound that different from a Master's (heck, maybe even an undergrad) program that requires a thesis. Yes, there's a difference in the sense of supposedly doing novel research, but I'm not sure the degree to which you're theoretically moving the state of the art forward justifies your time investment in many cases.
It's a matter of degree. A _typical_ undergrad thesis is more spoon-fed from the perspective of "here's the idea, go do it". A typical masters project is still more advisor-generated than student-generated. A typical Ph.D. project is more student-generated than advisor-generated in many cases. Please add copious "not all"s to this paragraph as the variance is extremely high and everyone's case is unique. And the rigor expected increases substantially. Again, generally.
The major thing of a Ph.D. isn't really how much it moves the state of the art forward, it's how much it moves you forward. You will almost certainly approach research and your area fundamentally differently after.
That's true for me as well as a professor with respect to research: I'm pretty convinced that my largest contribution is the Ph.D. students I've mentored more than the chunks of research I've done. I'm proud of the research. But I'm more proud of the students. They've gone on to do wonderful things.
The thing it hangs on is "justifies" - financially, a Ph.D. in CS is hard to "justify." Intellectually, it's easy. Depends a lot on your individual utility function! I could have dropped out of my Ph.D. program to go be a pre-IPO employee at Google or Akamai and, ah, let's say that my financial picture would have a few extra zeros on it compared to where I am now. :-) But I'm really glad I didn't. It's been a very fun journey and I've never felt like I'm just doing the routine. That's worth a lot for me.