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Thesis Hatement

slate.com

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Re: Thesis Hatement

#2
To be fair, this post is about a literature Ph.D., not one in a field like Mathematics or Computer Science. Not that the job outlook is a lot rosier on that side, but it's an important distinction to be made.

Re: Thesis Hatement

#4
What a bad article. First, a humanities PhD has little relation (from a career and financial perspective) to a STEM PhD. So I don't understand why this link is on Hacker News. Second, while I complain about the relatively-not-high compensation and limited opportunities available to CS PhDs, it isn't that bad if you graduated from a top 10-20 program. Lets stop it with the PhD bashing already.

- a CS PhD

Re: Thesis Hatement

#5
Yikes. Applying FOL to Kafka, how... well let's just say recursive.

I think a labor shortage in some academic fields is a good thing. CS has been good to me, and I may eventually get over what I had to do to get my PhD, but if there wasn't a good job waiting for me, I don't see why I'd blow the opportunity cost on it.

Re: Thesis Hatement

#6

What a bad article. First, a humanities PhD has little relation (from a career and financial perspective) to a STEM PhD. So I don't understand why this link is on Hacker News. Second, while I complain about the relatively-not-high compensation and limited opportunities available to CS PhDs, it isn't that bad if you graduated from a top 10-20 program. Lets stop it with the PhD bashing already. - a CS PhD

The article is specifically about literature PhDs. I don't know why that isn't in the title here.

Re: Thesis Hatement

#7
I know several electrical engineering professors (PhD's from Carnegie Mellon, etc). They have no issue getting jobs at universities or in private sector. They are paid very well too.

Re: Thesis Hatement

#8

What a bad article. First, a humanities PhD has little relation (from a career and financial perspective) to a STEM PhD. So I don't understand why this link is on Hacker News. Second, while I complain about the relatively-not-high compensation and limited opportunities available to CS PhDs, it isn't that bad if you graduated from a top 10-20 program. Lets stop it with the PhD bashing already. - a CS PhD

The article is specifically about literature PhDs. I don't know why that isn't in the title here.

The 3 people I know with lit PhDs had full-time jobs/careers and did the PhD for love of the subject rather than anything else. None of them expected to get a tenure-track faculty job - an adjunct teaching appointment at the local college from time to time was more in line with what these people wanted.

Re: Thesis Hatement

#9
post #2

To be fair, this post is about a literature Ph.D., not one in a field like Mathematics or Computer Science. Not that the job outlook is a lot rosier on that side, but it's an important distinction to be made.

I think we should clarify that the research-job outlook is not rosy in CS. There are plenty of corporations that want to hire CS PhDs for non-research work. And there is always the entrepreneurial route (the smart VCs aren't going to hold the PhD against you).

Re: Thesis Hatement

#10
Sensational and over generalizing title. This should be downvoted for being misleading. Of course a PhD in literature is going to have almost zero prospective jobs. There's no demand. I'm a EE and in the engineering world this is certainly not the case.
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