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The Ph.D Bust: America's Awful Market for Young Scientists

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Ph.D Bust: America's Awful Market for Young Scientists

#81

Post by djt »

xmattus wrote: post #36

The missing half of this article is the failure on the part of academic departments to even acknowledge this problem publicly in their recruitment process. I was an astrophysics Ph.D student at a fairly well-known program until last year when I left with an M.S. to go full time for the web development shop I started. It was a good decision on my part, for sure, but what really struck me is that after I broke the news…

I agree deeply. After I chose not to do a PhD I was told all the downsides from everyone. Before that it was all Roses to try and get me to do my PhD with everyone.

Re: The Ph.D Bust: America's Awful Market for Young Scientists

#82

Post by xijuan »

Reading the article and then reading the comments. I start to feel very confused. Do we need a huge debate about this? Some of us just want a higher degree and we just want to go to graduate school to do research. For me, I also love the people I have met in graduate school. It may turn out to a wrong decision? But we will never know that because we could not go back and re-make those decisions. Even if somehow one day I knew for certain that going to grad school was a wrong decision, so what? It was something I wanted to try and I tried it. I think I would regret more if I didn't try something I really wanted...

Re: The Ph.D Bust: America's Awful Market for Young Scientists

#83

Post by dishank »

Xcelerate wrote: post #20

I am surprised that so many people are relating PhD's to the money you'll make. I hear (very frequently) that "the amount of time you spend doing your PhD will put you far behind the 4 years of having a job" or "if you want to get rich, go into ...", or "management is where all the money is; you need an MBA for that". Uh... I'm doing a PhD because I like scientific research and can't stand the thought of being a proc…

You make a good point with people relating PhD's with the amount of money you will make. PhD's not only have a cost of paying for university but also opportunity cost is also existent. Also I completely agree with your comment on the idea that you can live comfortably, not rich on a PhD.

Re: The Ph.D Bust: America's Awful Market for Young Scientists

#84

Post by montecarl »

pmb wrote: post #61
javert wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, I really just meant "at R1 universities." Which isn't fair to all those other tenured professors at non-R1 universities (and I may possibly even be one, someday). Of course, I have heard of R1 tenured professors who claim to spend 50% of their effort procuring funding (though I think 10% is a much more representative estimate).

Writing a grant proposal is about as hard as writing a paper. So if they apply for three grants and also write three papers in a year, then yeah - that's 50%.

Getting a grant proposal accepted is much more difficult than getting a paper accepted.

Re: The Ph.D Bust: America's Awful Market for Young Scientists

#85

Post by montecarl »

jedbrown wrote: post #63
Evbn wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opportunity cost. PhD stipends pay less than unskilled labor, after you subtract "tuition"

Tuition should be covered by grant funding (RA) or the department (TA). If a university "accepts" you in a science/engineering PhD program, but is not offering tuition and salary, they're really saying they can't take you. Note that at many universities, students will cost a grant more than postdocs for this reason.

I think his point was that if you don't consider your salary as your take home pay plus the tuition that is paid on your behalf, then it is a very meager income.

Re: The Ph.D Bust: America's Awful Market for Young Scientists

#86

Post by begurken »

timr wrote: post #57
jurassic wrote: post #55

Awareness of the opportunity cost and likely outcomes has been hitting me hard lately as I consider dropping out of my top-5 science (not CS) program 2 years in. I've gotten to a comfortable place with python/numpy/matplotlib and am wondering how hard it would be to break into web development as somebody who has only programmed in a scientific setting. Besides Python, I also know enough R and statistics to build line…

"Have you or somebody you know successfully made the transition from (non-computer) science into a tech career? In the current economy, what are the chances you'd hire a highly motivated science dropout with programming competence and basic stats knowledge?" I did it, have worked with others who have done it, and would now hire people who did. The important part is your ability to program. There are tons of PhD stude…

Also, do not be deceived by "data science": it's mostly a bullshit term, and translates roughly to "programmer who knows basic statistics"

This is utter rubbish; I really wish people would keep quiet about things they know nothing about. I suggest that you have never actually discussed a domain with a data scientist if you think it's "basic statistics".

In our dev. shop, we have a lot of great programmers, but none of them can touch our data scientist when it comes to working out what our tens of millions of users are actually doing and what their salient attributes are.

As for the data scientist needing to 'implement their theories', that's what the developers are for. The data scientist does the analysis, then works with the developers to implement systems that incorporate the results. Neither group is capable of the other's work.

Re: The Ph.D Bust: America's Awful Market for Young Scientists

#87

Post by jseliger »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #74
jseliger wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been to graduate school and disagree with your comment about expecting a tenure-track job. When you get to know them, PhD students are not poor deluded souls slaving away in the misguided expectation of a plush, secure position at the end. I have too (see here: http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-kno... for some comments, mostly job-related), and I think most grad students—at least during th…

Ah, right, because doing anything financially sub-optimal is delaying adulthood .

Can you cite a sentence in which I said that?

Re: The Ph.D Bust: America's Awful Market for Young Scientists

#88

Post by Xcelerate »

flatline wrote: post #72
confluence wrote: post #48

The problem here is merely a misunderstanding of career statistics. The statistics for success in academia are thoroughly against any one Ph.D. The competition is too high, the rewards are too low, and the competitors are too desperate. This is not a place where you wish to compete - unless you have some kind of overwhelming advantage - aka really, really brilliant - you know who you are. For everyone else - look str…

Nate Silver has a similar point[1], and claims that he has been successful by choosing fields that were not already saturated with excellent players. Baseball prediction was waiting to be cracked wide open with modern statistical techniques. It would now be much, much harder to make meaningful gains, you'd be competing with a host of competent firms who have years of experience and have long since claimed all the low…

> Baseball prediction was waiting to be cracked wide open with modern statistical techniques.

Interesting point. How about Bitcoin? Am I too late to that game, or is it too hard to model?

Re: The Ph.D Bust: America's Awful Market for Young Scientists

#89

Post by mdda »

cinfinity wrote: post #29

"Employment at graduation" is not a particularly meaningful metric, because STEM PhDs who are not employed at graduation usually just means that they haven't gotten a post-doc. They will take a few months and find a job in the tech industry.

In addition : The end-date of a PhD is indeterminate (at least in the UK), since one doesn't know for sure whether the thesis defense will require any re-writing, etc. So it's difficult to have a job fixed up completely on the day the magic letter arrives.
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