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Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

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Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#311

Post by adastra22 »

lizknope wrote: post #192
daft_pink wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Lots of masters students are also research / teaching assistants and end up finishing with little debt.

You can also just not get a masters.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#312

Post by adastra22 »

aeonik wrote: post #161
daft_pink wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Some do.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#313

Post by adastra22 »

jltsiren wrote: post #95
zitterbewegung wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$250k in savings in six years is doable with a salary of $125k after undergrad.

But can you still get $125k directly after undergrad? How many employers are willing to pay 2x the median wage to someone with no experience and no demonstrated skills, simply because they went to a school? To someone who is likely to make a net negative contribution until they learn how things work and require less guidance? To someone who is at a high risk of taking another job after a couple of years? It's more co…

Yes? That seems to be the standard entry level salary in the Bay Area.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#314

Post by adastra22 »

morelandjs wrote: post #48

The smartest people I’ve ever worked with to date were from physics grad school. Still remember the time my coworker was doing code profiling, decided he was unhappy that the exponential function from the standard library was too slow, and decided to write a Taylor series approximation that gave him the precision he needed and cut the run time in half. He also learned C++ in a weekend and was vastly better at it by t…

The smartest people I’ve ever worked with were college dropouts.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#315

Post by trw55 »

globalnode wrote: post #199
yieldcrv wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Why is it surprising? The market is saying most people don’t have that privilege and academia is still in denial about that and completely out of touch, your surprise suggests you are… in touch? if this was a standardized test question, which you’re probably good at, you…

Thats a depressing outlook. I feel the lower levels of uni have been co-opted as you say, but once you're passed the undergrad level I think it would become more about interest in the subject and less about a job, don't you think? (Sadly I may be wrong)

This is interesting. How do you support yourself if it’s not about the money? Are you in the US? If you are have you noticed you will be paying $10 for a dozen of eggs?

In what world does getting a PhD for curiosity make sense in 2025? It’s not even about money, it’s about literal survival.

The people here in this thread talking about getting a PhD to satisfy an interest in a subject must have never gone to bed for dinner because if they had they’d understand why this position they’re taking doesn’t make a lick of sense.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#316

Post by adastra22 »

marklar423 wrote: post #116
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…

What sort of benefits come from getting a Masters? Everyone I talk to seems to say a Masters in CompSci is useless, and that you may as well do a PhD instead.

As someone who hires, my opinion is the exact opposite. A masters is good, but a PhD is at least a yellow flag.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#317

Post by interludead »

Not surprising at all. The PhD pipeline has been broken for years: low stipends, ridiculous workloads, a shrinking number of stable academic jobs. Who wants to spend 5-7 years in a grueling program only to end up in postdoc purgatory or fighting for adjunct gigs? And the irony is that academia needs PhDs...

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#318

Post by zeroq »

In Elbonia people have to play a game to stay in academia.

Every year you have to accumulate enough points. The main source of points are publications. But they're not valued based on the gravitas of your writing, rather than which publisher is willing to publish. And these valuation seems to be random. Senior people will often offer to open doors to younger reserchers in exchange for their name to be put in their papers. Stealing someones ideas is not even the goal as is getting more points.

I have no idea how this translates to other countries, but as someone who - with one or two different choices in my youth - could easily end up as a sociology scholar, and who has a lot of friends who chose that path, I'm deeply flabbergasted.

A young naive version of me seen academia as polar opposite of working for evil bigco, but the reality that the amount of politics and backroom scheming is just mind boggling.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#319

Post by interludead »

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…

Interest in research and intellectual curiosity are great motivators, but they don't pay rent. The problem isn't that people expect a PhD to be a path to riches. It's that in many places, it barely provides a livable income at all

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#320

Post by interludead »

janalsncm wrote: post #225
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…

> HN turns out to be a very money-centric place In defense of being money centric, we are not talking about yachts and drugs level money. To me, money means buying a house, starting a family, taking care of my parents, looking after my own health, and overall stability. These are the hallmarks of what used to be a middle class lifestyle in America. If people are getting PhDs to earn more money long term, these are al…

Exactly this. Wanting financial stability isn't the same as being "money-centric" in some greedy or extravagant way. A PhD used to be a reasonable path to a stable career, but for many, it no longer is.
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