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Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

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Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#251

Post by brewdad »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #210
sweeter wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also dismisses the effect it has on society entirely. In a sane world, we would enable anyone who wants to pursue a PhD in hopes in advancing things like medical science or our understanding of the world. The fact that people really can only care about the economic value education can bring, and the fact we all act like that's normal, is very radicalizing to me.

I disagree. More people have a desire to advance our understanding than have the ability to advance our understanding.

True, but like the VC model with companies, it's very difficult to consistently identify those people in advance. Invest in a load of qualified, promising individuals and hope more than a few "hit".

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#252

Post by MVissers »

kevinsync wrote: post #240
michaelt wrote: post #223

Earlier 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,…

It doesn't need to appeal to everyone. It's also very very lab dependent. I didn't find a lab at my European institute in my area of interest, so ended up not doing a PhD. I still do some science for fun though as a hobby.

I spent some time at Harvard as an undergrad doing research there though, and it was the most intellectually stimulating environment I've ever been in. Maybe YC is similar, but it's a lot about money in those environments and most startups aren't that interesting either.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#253

Post by oneplane »

WalterBright wrote: post #246
oneplane wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Reading a biography mostly informed me about the lack of general empathy, remorse, sympathy. Only regret came forward a little (and only once).

> be crazy enough to bet it all

Anyone who doesn't suffer any real consequences. Having parents with a lot of money makes it not matter all that much.

As for the other bad decisions; it doesn't really show much positive except maybe persistence, but persistence in a vacuum is not a good thing. In a way, it mostly read like "a skewed mind made a bunch of bets and got lucky". Perhaps mostly an example of survivorship bias in a business sense.

Now, if we go back to the hoarding; it's not about when someone didn't hoard, it's about the here and now. I'm pretty sure we can find a period of time where Gates or Kamprad didn't do any hoarding, or not the hoarding we'd expect. But concentration of anything doesn't really happen by accident, and wherever we see it now, we can assume it was intentional.

There are of course also examples of people on their death bed realising their hoard doesn't really matter anymore and they might give most or all of it away. But that doesn't mean the hoarding never happened. It doesn't turn someone into a genius or a saint. When such things happen, we might consider it commendable, but that doesn't mean history disappears.

In a way it works not like a balance or a sum but more like a ratchet; it's about the degree to which someone hoarded stuff and how they acted with their hoard (doesn't have to be money, can be property or secrets or power or knowledge etc).

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#254

Post by RachelF »

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.

From my experience, 40 years ago PhD used to be hard to do and meant that the person who had it was smart. These days the only thing it indicates is that the person spent many years at university.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#255

Post by MVissers »

ghaff wrote: post #238
dgacmu wrote: post #208

Earlier 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.

You don't really learn how to learn in a masters or undergraduate. You learn how to consume information, but not how to research new things, validate those and defend it to others in a rigorous way.

Whether it's worth the investment depends on ones goals in life.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#256

Post by MVissers »

ocschwar wrote: post #216
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. " Frankly, no. Because as beautiful as that concept is, it's 6 years in your younger decades, where the magic of compound interest makes every dollar you save or spend count a lot more than any money you make later in life. Add tuition and loans, also with compound intere…

You could say the same about doing a startup. They pay is shit, grueling hours and 90% of them don't amount to anything meaningful.

Doesn't mean that it's not worth it for most. Some people just want to do science. Or startups.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#257

Post by darth_avocado »

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…

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

It’s not HN. It’s the fact that doing PHD is only a reasonable choice if you either want to get into academia long term or you come from wealth. (Historically science and research was a rich people thing, and only became accessible once student loans were more accessible)

I genuinely considered doing PhD after my Masters degree. No matter what I couldn’t justify spending 5 more years, borrowing more money on top of my tens of thousands of student loans just to stay afloat. I would still be living roommates well into my 30s, have no prospects when it came to dating, rely on student loans and my parents to support me, while literally any job I did would put me in a better position. Like I could bartend full time and I’d be making more money than the stipend. All of this in the hopes of what? That I’d have a dissertation in super specialized field, not necessarily the one I want in because I won’t have the advisor I need and the one I have only wants me to do very specific things they want. And that dissertation may or may not be relevant to the industry or even academia in a year or two.

And if you decide after your PhD, that you’ll join the industry, you’ve lost out on 5 years of compounded growth financially and personally. It’s not like a PhD gets you more money in 95% of the jobs.

Realistically, the only people with me who ended up committing to doing this were people who had no other prospects or were looking for a full time role in academia.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#258

Post by ckrapu »

saturn8601 wrote: post #212
ckrapu wrote: post #108

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…

That may not be entirely true. Just look at all these people working in semiconductor fabs that China is trying to copy. A lot of that knowledge is institutional knowledge gathered from decades of specializing in one tiny area of the chain. That knowledge may be in a PHD program somewhere but more likely it is only on the job training.

That’s an interesting counter example. I agree to an extent, but I also point out that only in semiconductor work is it normal to have factory shifts of technicians who have PhDs.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#259

Post by lthornberry »

musicale wrote: post #229
ocschwar wrote: post #213

Good. Academia is done growing. We're in a steady state, which means if you're in grad school, look at your advisor. Look at the other grad students who have him. Look at the work of the grad students who came before you, with this advisor. Think about the ones that will come after. Only ONE of you will take your advisor's place, statistically speaking. If you an afford to pursue a PHD for the sake of doing the work…

> Only ONE of you will take your advisor's place, statistically speaking The academic pyramid was never sustainable. However, for some fields (science and engineering being good examples) there are decent jobs outside of academia.

Most academics teach in departments that don’t grant phds. They’re at liberal arts Colleges or regional state universities. True that statistically only a small percentage of grad students will go on to have their own PhD students, but that doesn’t mean there are no jobs for the rest.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#260

Post by foobarian »

musicale wrote: post #229
ocschwar wrote: post #213

Good. Academia is done growing. We're in a steady state, which means if you're in grad school, look at your advisor. Look at the other grad students who have him. Look at the work of the grad students who came before you, with this advisor. Think about the ones that will come after. Only ONE of you will take your advisor's place, statistically speaking. If you an afford to pursue a PHD for the sake of doing the work…

> Only ONE of you will take your advisor's place, statistically speaking The academic pyramid was never sustainable. However, for some fields (science and engineering being good examples) there are decent jobs outside of academia.

> The academic pyramid was never sustainable

Theoretically it wasn't, or every human on Earth would be a PhD candidate within the century.

However there was a period after WW2 where a lot of empty professor chairs needed to be filled and so I believe that people came to expect the growth. So for example you would have the post-war generation push their kids into it, saying "but of course you can be a professor like me, they will be beating down your door to get you hired!" But of course that seems to have stopped around the end of the century.

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