The Disposable Academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time (2010)
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Re: The Disposable Academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time (2010)
#2I do sometimes wonder if this "PhD is a waste of time" is being pushed so heavily to get a glut of the best computer science grads, who would otherwise consider a PhD, onto the engineer job market. A cute little trick to drive down the salaries a bit, cut back on the perks...
I mean, people posting links like this, on this board, don't really have English lit grads in mind, do they?
Not that I disagree with the sentiment entirely, but it seems to be getting a lot of mileage the past few months.
Re: The Disposable Academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time (2010)
#3I do sometimes wonder if this "PhD is a waste of time" is being pushed so heavily to get a glut of the best computer science grads, who would otherwise consider a PhD, onto the engineer job market. A cute little trick to drive down the salaries a bit, cut back on the perks... I mean, people posting links like this, on this board, don't really have English lit grads in mind, do they? Not that I disagree with the senti…
I think this is just a continuation of the old "College is a waste of time" thought, but I have noticed a _lot_ of people -- especially from China and India -- enrolling in CS PhD programs the last few years. I talked to a few of them from my college, and an exceedingly common theme seems to be family and peer pressure, so personally, I'd really like to understand more about this topic.
Re: The Disposable Academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time (2010)
#4I wonder when the first article was written claiming that doing a PhD was a waste of time? I'll bet it was in the 19th century. And we'll no doubt keep seeing such articles until such time as the PhD fades from history.
(Nothing against the article in question, which is a better-than-usual discussion of the issue.)
Re: The Disposable Academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time (2010)
#5A computer science Ph.D. is nothing like what is described in this article. For various reasons
(other opportunities, generous industry grants, minimal financial overhead to run a lab), students
in computer science are comparatively well paid and free to work at their own pace. YMMV based on advisor.
It's been exhaustively shown that stopping after undergrad or masters degrees will be more financially lucrative, so some reasons to go on:
- you want one of the specialized researchy positions that
are typically filled by Ph.D. holders
- you have a genuine interest in some specialized field and
want to work purely on learning/investigating that field
- you want to be a professorRe: The Disposable Academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time (2010)
#6I do sometimes wonder if this "PhD is a waste of time" is being pushed so heavily to get a glut of the best computer science grads, who would otherwise consider a PhD, onto the engineer job market. A cute little trick to drive down the salaries a bit, cut back on the perks... I mean, people posting links like this, on this board, don't really have English lit grads in mind, do they? Not that I disagree with the senti…
I think this is just a continuation of the old "College is a waste of time" thought, but I have noticed a _lot_ of people -- especially from China and India -- enrolling in CS PhD programs the last few years. I talked to a few of them from my college, and an exceedingly common theme seems to be family and peer pressure, so personally, I'd really like to understand more about this topic.
An important, but rarely overtly stated reason for foreigners to attend grad school in the United States is immigration. A graduate degree (esp in STEM disciplines) is a relatively secure way of getting a student visa, getting a job while on OPT, getting an H1B and finally a Green Card. Of course it does not mean that immigration is the sole reason for asians to attend US grad school in hordes, but it is an important one.
Funnily enough, when you apply for your student visa, you're required to assert that you will return to your country after your education in the US is over :-)
Re: The Disposable Academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time (2010)
#7I do sometimes wonder if this "PhD is a waste of time" is being pushed so heavily to get a glut of the best computer science grads, who would otherwise consider a PhD, onto the engineer job market. A cute little trick to drive down the salaries a bit, cut back on the perks... I mean, people posting links like this, on this board, don't really have English lit grads in mind, do they? Not that I disagree with the senti…
I think this is just a continuation of the old "College is a waste of time" thought, but I have noticed a _lot_ of people -- especially from China and India -- enrolling in CS PhD programs the last few years. I talked to a few of them from my college, and an exceedingly common theme seems to be family and peer pressure, so personally, I'd really like to understand more about this topic.
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Re: The Disposable Academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time (2010)
#8I think it depends on whose perspective you're talking about. I think for typical engineers, especially in EE/CS, the increase in earning power from the PhD doesn't make up for the six years of lost income and career progression. But I think from the point of view of society, it's absolutely worth it. The most brilliant engineers I know are PhDs. They have this incredible depth of theoretical understanding of a particular area that I think is hard to achieve without those years of dedicated study.
Re: The Disposable Academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time (2010)
#9As a hiring manager of non-specialized software developers, I take people with 4-6 years of real world coding over a phd any day. We generally hire phd's at the same level/pay as a bachelors in cs with maybe only a nominal amount more in salary. the skills you learn as a phd are not really what the industry needs, unless you manage to find one of the small number of jobs that requires whatever specific thing you studied as a phd. like the article says, those are very few and far between compared to the # of students exiting with degrees.
Re: The Disposable Academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time (2010)
#10As a hiring manager of non-specialized software developers, I take people with 4-6 years of real world coding over a phd any day. We generally hire phd's at the same level/pay as a bachelors in cs with maybe only a nominal amount more in salary. the skills you learn as a phd are not really what the industry needs, unless you manage to find one of the small number of jobs that requires whatever specific thing you stud…
I concur. My experience with CS PhDs is that they lack the production-oriented mindset needed for the real world. We hired a CS PhD to write reports for us. In six months he did not write one single line of code, but produced a very impressive whitepaper about the code he intended to write. He went on to write more whitepapers for a company specializing in vaporware somewhere else.
I've had similar experiences with PhDs in many other fields as well. I have a great deal of respect for the degree, the person who worked so hard for it, and I love to read their often brilliant research, but either the effort of getting the degree or the mindset it takes to want to obtain one makes these people nearly useless in the business world. Give me an entry-level BS degree or 5-6 years equivalent experience any day.