Just want to point out that many of the complaints in the comments here are US specific. At many PhD programs in Europe for example you are considered an employee of the university and not a student, this often comes with full benefits: salary, bonuses, vacation time, pension, etc. Academia in the US in particular is falling into disrepair.
We Need a Yelp for Doctoral Programs
101–110 of 118 posts
Re: We Need a Yelp for Doctoral Programs
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not really any better outside of the humanities. Maybe the prospects are slightly better, but grad school is still a crappy choice. I got a bachelors in Computer Science and then worked for 15 years before going back and getting a masters. While there I was asked to work for free on numerous occasions, we can call if different things, but that's how I saw it. Already knowing the value of my labour I finished my…
Computer science professor here: I love to have students work on research in my courses, provided that they understand this is the point of the course and they choose to do it. Some of my best students (who went on to great careers in industry or academia) did terrific research projects of their own choosing. I don’t ask students to do research projects because I expect “free labor” from them (unless they’re my PhD a…
Yes I think what the person you replied to identified as work isn't really much work at all in the sense that you would find in a software dev job or something like that. You aren't asking your students to write another database interface or something. You are giving them projects to let them know what you do, what that part of the field is about, and to expose them to ideas that they might carry forward. The view presented is so cynical is hard to take serious tbh.
Re: We Need a Yelp for Doctoral Programs
#103A decent review site would be awesome. I have been looking at WGU for an online MBA degree. Reviews are just scattered everywhere from Reddit to affiliates websites.
Can I ask why WGU? Instead of at least a mid-tier school ?
WGU is a competency based school. So I can finish my MBA from anywhere between 6 months - 3 years. On brick-mortar schools, you are limited to 3-4 classes per semester.
Re: We Need a Yelp for Doctoral Programs
#104No. We don't need a consumer review website, because PhD students (I am one) are not the consumers of doctoral programs. We're the workers. We need a union. If we're in a good program, we're receiving valuable training both in our coursework (or before PhD in an MS/MA if your country does it that way) and in our research work. Ideally, we're building up a network of collaborations and acquaintances in the scientific…
On a PhD you work for yourself - you shouldn’t need a union against yourself!
>On a PhD you work for yourself
What field do you work in? Modern science is team science. I think the paper I have under review right now has... six authors? That's pretty average for the particular interdisciplinary collaboration I happen to work in right now.
It would just be silly to claim that every other junior author on the paper is working for me, as the first author, rather than admit that I work for my adviser (who I haven't complained about here because I lucked out and got a very good one).
Re: We Need a Yelp for Doctoral Programs
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really depends on your mentor. I've seen some gross abuses where the union was absolutely essential. Also the union hooked up like BBQs and whatever so like, that's nice.
What bargaining power do you bring in this situation? Give us what we want or... we'll quit our degrees and throw away years of our lives?
>Give us what we want or... we'll quit our degrees and throw away years of our lives?
Give us what we want or you have no teachers and your research output drops to near-zero. Most of the actual work of scientific research is done by what we politely euphemize as "early career researchers" or "junior authors": grad-students and postdocs. Tenured and tenure-track professors don't do the bulk of the bench-work, even when they really enjoy it.
Re: We Need a Yelp for Doctoral Programs
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
On a PhD you work for yourself - you shouldn’t need a union against yourself!
>On a PhD you work for yourself What field do you work in? Modern science is team science. I think the paper I have under review right now has... six authors? That's pretty average for the particular interdisciplinary collaboration I happen to work in right now. It would just be silly to claim that every other junior author on the paper is working for me , as the first author, rather than admit that I work for my adv…
> What field do you work in?
Computer science.
> It would just be silly to claim that every other junior author on the paper is working for me
Exactly - the all work for themselves. I'm sure they all have their own research goals and they come together on papers along the way.
But what you need to focus on is the publications you achieve. You achieve them for yourself not your advisor.
Re: We Need a Yelp for Doctoral Programs
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is a good framing. When I explain it to people, I compare it to the NBA. Except it's like trying to get into the NBA when all of your coaches over your entire basketball life up until that point have been in the NBA. Proximity can trick you into thinking you just have to "decide" to pursue such a position, not knowing that such positions are the result of a ruthless tournament system.
The thing is that there are more prosport athletes hired each year than there are new professor slots in most disciplines. There are probably 3-5 new players on each NBA team each year which amounts to 75-150 people taken from the draft. Most academic disciplines have only a few dozen slots available each year.
The reason I pick the NBA is because there are only 450 positions available (30 teams, 15 players per team). This is the least number of total positions in popular team sports in the US. The ratios will never be perfect, they just need to be relatively similar. The point is to use something which people already have an intuition for; everyone already has an intuition for how unlikely it is for any given high school or college basketball player to play in the NBA.
Re: We Need a Yelp for Doctoral Programs
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
What bargaining power do you bring in this situation? Give us what we want or... we'll quit our degrees and throw away years of our lives?
>Give us what we want or... we'll quit our degrees and throw away years of our lives? Give us what we want or you have no teachers and your research output drops to near-zero. Most of the actual work of scientific research is done by what we politely euphemize as "early career researchers" or "junior authors": grad-students and postdocs. Tenured and tenure-track professors don't do the bulk of the bench-work, even wh…
But if they don't do any research they will kill their own careers as well.
Re: We Need a Yelp for Doctoral Programs
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
In many disciplines, too, the answer is "don't go to any program." Most humanities fields, for example, have numerous essays written about why doing grad school in them is a poor life choice, like my contribution: https://jakeseliger.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-know-befo... . One could say the same of most social sciences.
I was at a social event and got to talking with a professor at an Ivy League school. He had a really insightful take on this. He said that the only fair way to present a doctoral program to prospective students is to compare it to trying to become a rockstar. Every day tons of people form garage bands and have dreams of becoming rock stars. But...they do so knowing they almost certainly won't make it. This professor…
Unless becoming a rockstar is equivalent only to becoming an Ivy League professor, passing a PhD program really isn’t that hard for most PhD programs even in the best schools. To pass a PhD program, you just need to come in every day and do your work for The students who did their PhD the quickest in my program did exactly that. The students who failed or took longer usually slacked off, skipped days, focus on other stuff, etc etc etc. I know one person who disappeared for weeks and then quit. Thing is, he could still have come back and resumed his PhD even after that disappearance.
You could argue that it’s difficult for students to plan and do work on a consistent basis while having full academic freedom and very little direction (my advisor when I joined with almost no research experience told me to “read papers” and then we’ll discuss what to do after you do; like what does read papers mean anyway; I had no idea at the time but I learned by asking fellow students). But it’s not something that you get lucky in. It’s something that you keep at it until you finish it.
Re: We Need a Yelp for Doctoral Programs
#110Good luck getting honest reviews. Graduates and recent post-docs are dependent upon good letters of recommendation from their advisors for perhaps a decade after leaving their research groups. The truly disillusioned won't mind complaining, but those with even constructive criticism will feel constrained in their ability to speak out and be specific. The graduate-student experience is deeply advisor-specific. Profess…
To add on top of it, majority of graduate students are from countries like India and China and their life/career is tied to F1 visa status which make students even more vulnerable to disclose any sincere/legit info. about the program they are in.
Only 5% of graduate stduenst in US are International. In engineering, computer sciene and MBA they constitute 25% of population. In phd, less than 5%.