11–19 of 19 posts
This seems like a biased angry rant rather than a legitimate criticism, coming from the perspective of being an academic PI running a research lab. In what sense are an academics accomplishments not "real world achievements?" excepting cases of fraud, etc. To get tenure you need to publish a lot of papers in good journals as the lead PI. Co-authorship means you were supervising people, e.g. effectively running a team…
This seems like a biased angry rant rather than a legitimate criticism, coming from the perspective of being an academic PI running a research lab. In what sense are an academics accomplishments not "real world achievements?" excepting cases of fraud, etc. To get tenure you need to publish a lot of papers in good journals as the lead PI. Co-authorship means you were supervising people, e.g. effectively running a team…
From my perspective, the author's basic thesis which is that a) there is a glut of PhDs b) getting tenure is political and c) publication quality is generally low is true. That doesn't mean that people who are successful in the system aren't smart or don't have meaningful real world successes. But my decade in higher ed through a postdoc made it very clear that even at top institutions, many, if not most, faculty are not doing work with significant real world implications.
University and college students used to have one standard deviation higher intelligence compared to the general population. With credential creep, this has disappeared. College students are average. There's no reason to believe the same thing hasn't affected PhD students. In other words, the quality is just not there (on average). There are also much better career tracks for the best minds in 2024 compared to 1924 (s…
This seems like a biased angry rant rather than a legitimate criticism, coming from the perspective of being an academic PI running a research lab. In what sense are an academics accomplishments not "real world achievements?" excepting cases of fraud, etc. To get tenure you need to publish a lot of papers in good journals as the lead PI. Co-authorship means you were supervising people, e.g. effectively running a team…
This response comes across as rather defensive and makes a number of assumptions that are not universal across all fields. From my perspective, the author's basic thesis which is that a) there is a glut of PhDs b) getting tenure is political and c) publication quality is generally low is true. That doesn't mean that people who are successful in the system aren't smart or don't have meaningful real world successes. Bu…
a) There are more PhDs than PI positions, but most of the hard science PhDs are in high demand, in industry jobs that generally pay much better than academic PI positions. At my institution we lose more of the postdocs we would like to recruit as PIs to industry offers than other academic positions. b) You do need a lot of political skill to get tenure, which is unfortunate and pushes out a lot of the smartest scientists. In this sense politics means social and emotional skills- which are required for doing anything involving other, and isn’t unique to academia. Still, sure it would be nice if academia could better accommodate people with technical skill but lacking in political skill. c) Not in my field or experience at least. To publish in a high impact journal nowadays the work usually has to be pretty solid. Obviously not everyone will agree on which work is good or not. Sometimes people do skimp on making it easy to access or use, e.g. publishing good code, making biological samples available, etc. but usually this is because they could not fund that part of the work.
I cannot think of anyone I know in any science or engineering department at research focused university whose work lacks significant real world implications. In fact, I find this annoying- as I think there would be a lot of value in more abstract and risky work, but the big funding agencies only fund things with obvious practical value based on their official priorities.
I feel like this article missed the mark, getting a PhD used to be something for affluent people who genuinely felt like contributing toward the progress of society. There’s always a disconnect between a romanticized ideal and what is practically possible. And reading the comments what some departments do to secure funding seem like a far cry from the ivory towers universities were known for.
"Brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough." -- Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture A Ph.D. filters out people who do not want to be a scientist enough whilst training the doctoral candidate in the "publish or perish" mantra that now prevails. But for every smart observation there are exceptions: Fields medal recipient (well, he won it but rejected to take it) G. Perelman (born 1966 and joble…
Not accurate, he published relatively few papers (less than 20), but several in top journals like Journal of the AMS. His papers also have been cited plenty
I feel like this article missed the mark, getting a PhD used to be something for affluent people who genuinely felt like contributing toward the progress of society. There’s always a disconnect between a romanticized ideal and what is practically possible. And reading the comments what some departments do to secure funding seem like a far cry from the ivory towers universities were known for.
"Brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough." -- Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture A Ph.D. filters out people who do not want to be a scientist enough whilst training the doctoral candidate in the "publish or perish" mantra that now prevails. But for every smart observation there are exceptions: Fields medal recipient (well, he won it but rejected to take it) G. Perelman (born 1966 and joble…
While it is certainly possible that the role falls on people who want it enough, there simply aren't a lot of people financially able to do 5-7 additional years of school on a meager research stipend, esp. if they are graduating their bachelor's program with debt. You can buoy yourself with side work or internships, but what if the thing you're passionate about isn't something that excites industry?
G. Perelman is a recluse. He sees the point of mathematicians is to advance math, not mathematicians. He's so much the opposite of what this blog post seems to shoot for.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough." -- Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture A Ph.D. filters out people who do not want to be a scientist enough whilst training the doctoral candidate in the "publish or perish" mantra that now prevails. But for every smart observation there are exceptions: Fields medal recipient (well, he won it but rejected to take it) G. Perelman (born 1966 and joble…
Someone Ph.D track in my research group was paying tutors and having homework performed for them. While it is certainly possible that the role falls on people who want it enough, there simply aren't a lot of people financially able to do 5-7 additional years of school on a meager research stipend, esp. if they are graduating their bachelor's program with debt. You can buoy yourself with side work or internships, but…
A few other incidents and I had to jump ship to industry. Kind of embarrassing that the university couldn’t even protect an employees from what amounts to corporate espionage and bullying.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Someone Ph.D track in my research group was paying tutors and having homework performed for them. While it is certainly possible that the role falls on people who want it enough, there simply aren't a lot of people financially able to do 5-7 additional years of school on a meager research stipend, esp. if they are graduating their bachelor's program with debt. You can buoy yourself with side work or internships, but…
Worse, during my PhD my personal computer was hacked and my BitBucket account was emptied. A few other incidents and I had to jump ship to industry. Kind of embarrassing that the university couldn’t even protect an employees from what amounts to corporate espionage and bullying.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Someone Ph.D track in my research group was paying tutors and having homework performed for them. While it is certainly possible that the role falls on people who want it enough, there simply aren't a lot of people financially able to do 5-7 additional years of school on a meager research stipend, esp. if they are graduating their bachelor's program with debt. You can buoy yourself with side work or internships, but…
Worse, during my PhD my personal computer was hacked and my BitBucket account was emptied. A few other incidents and I had to jump ship to industry. Kind of embarrassing that the university couldn’t even protect an employees from what amounts to corporate espionage and bullying.