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

Post by xijuan » Thu, Feb 21, 2013, 10:48 AM UTC

jseliger wrote: post #38

zeteo wrote: post #10

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. They are rather intelligent, motivated individuals, who choose to work on projects that are more interesting/important than optimal ad placement or crafty financial swaps, and…

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…

Post by bromang » Thu, Feb 21, 2013, 2:14 PM UTC

zissou wrote: post #77

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…

Couldn't agree more! I'm an economics Ph.D. dropout who focused primarily on microeconomics and game theory (because like you said, current macro theory [see: DSGE] is completely bogus) and I think your points about finding monopolies is a great one. I left my Ph.D. early because it was a losing game as I wanted to be learning more computer science since it was a necessary skill to obtain in addition to a microeconom…

Post by March_Hare » Thu, Feb 21, 2013, 4:05 PM UTC

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.

Post by rlanday » Thu, Feb 21, 2013, 8:05 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #31

hexonexxon wrote: post #19

Canada is handing out citizenship for anybody with a Ph.D right now, so are a lot of other countries. If you don't want to move write books or self publish ebooks, or write articles for industry journals or mailing lists and watch offers come in. This is what a girl I know with a doctorate in anthropology did: write endless articles for some academic publication, she had a job offer in Israel after the first few mont…

That's an exaggeration for Canada. As http://www.workpermit.com/canada/points_calculator.htm says, a PhD is +25 points and you need 67 to get in. It helps a lot, but far from a guarantee.

Post by ssw1n » Fri, Feb 22, 2013, 6:58 PM UTC

huherto wrote: post #64

javert wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "amazing triangle" idea is just nonsense. For example, computers have gotten faster, better, AND cheaper over time. There definitely are women who are sane, smart, and beautiful. Are you kidding me? Just walk around any research university where they're doing graduate-level research and you will see lots of them. As for the other gender triangle, pg is definitely handsome, sensitive and rich, so there's your dis…

The point that breaks the triangle(rectangle?) is if you add whether or not she is interested on you.