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Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs
111–120 of 259 posts
Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
I bailed out three years into a chemistry PhD and my only regret is that I started it at all. I'm not saying that going to graduate school is necessarily a mistake but I think a lot of people go because they've done well in school up to that point and aren't sure what else to do with themselves.
When I was an undergrad, there was a PhD candidate who advised me to go to grad school for exactly this reason. He told me it was years I could spend avoiding having to find a job.
Same here. I encountered a lot of students, especially international, who were in grad school because it was a socially acceptable alternative to going home and getting a job.
Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs
#113Just to offer a bit of a counter to much of the negative views here, I enjoyed my Ph.D very much. I went into it with my eyes open, and realizing that an academic career wasn't the only option that would work for me. Through scholarships I was paid enough to be comfortable while spending my time on interesting things. The scholarship game is a bit winner-take-all though, and I know the minimum funding level in my dep…
Same here. The academic freedom that I had during my PhD combined with the intellectually stimulating environment, I cannot find anywhere else. Also most of my current close friends I made during my PhD.
I'm nearing the end of my PhD in physics and I feel the same way. I've really enjoyed it and I'm absolutely OK not pursuing an academic career. I'm starting to lay out my plan for applying for jobs in industry - and I won't be applying for anything with "physicist" in the job title. I got to work on fun and interesting projects while having the freedom to learn other things that were interesting and enjoyable to me. I've also made amazing friends along the way.
Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs
#114A PhD is a degree in conducting research. Get one if you want a career in research. If you don't like research, don't do a PhD. Any decent program pays students about a $1.5-3K monthly stipend. Don't have being a professor as the only acceptable end-goal. There are lots of careers that benefit from or require a PhD besides being a professor. People with STEM PhDs are found in great concentration in R&D settings. For…
I thought the entire appeal of a "liberal arts" college was that the college focuses on quality teaching instead of research. Why on earth would they demand their profressors have PhDs?
Requiring a PhD to teach serves the same purpose as requiring a degree to apply for a job: an arbitrary but easy to apply filter. While PhDs are research-oriented, in reality you can end up in a research or pedagogy track depending on (a) what you want and (b) how your research progresses.
Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that "Graduate School in the Humanities - Just Don't Go" is a gem of an essay, because it does a good job explaining why students still enter these programs when the data screams out that they shouldn't. https://www.chronicle.com/article/Graduate-School-in-the/448... One thing that is often overlooked is that the US does have a very restrictive immigration system for people who don't have relatives here and c…
> In this case, getting advanced STEM degrees provides a path towards residency, work rights, and perhaps eventually a green card or citizenship. At my very first job, nearly all of my coworkers were Indian. As I met more people at work and started adding them on LinkedIn, I noticed one thing in common with all their LinkedIn profiles: they all got their bachelor's in India and their master's in the US. One day, I wa…
The quality of the degrees are very different. The US is known from having a good level and it's respected in most places around the world.
Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs
#116The main subject in this story was pursuing a PhD in "Women's Studies". Not to disparage that field of study, but it's quite obvious that it is a pretty useless degree that limits you to a career as a Women's Studies professor. I don't think this is a good illustration of people who leave PhD programs
> The main subject in this story was pursuing a PhD in "Women's Studies". Not to disparage that field of study, but it's quite obvious that it is a pretty useless degree that limits you to a career as a Women's Studies professor.
It isn't obviously useless, or even less applicable than many social science degrees, but for signaling purposes it's probably less useful to get a Ph.D. in an interdisciplinary field like Women's Studies than in one of the fields of more broadly recognized utility which it overlaps (which you can probably do with exactly the same research.) Because pretty much the whole thing about interdisciplinary fields is that they (in terms of the whole field) cross traditional fields of study, which tend to align somewhat with vocational fields, which makes degrees in them (without considerstion of things like the area of your personal research) less useful for non-acadenic vocational signalling.
Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs
#117A PhD is a degree in conducting research. Get one if you want a career in research. If you don't like research, don't do a PhD. Any decent program pays students about a $1.5-3K monthly stipend. Don't have being a professor as the only acceptable end-goal. There are lots of careers that benefit from or require a PhD besides being a professor. People with STEM PhDs are found in great concentration in R&D settings. For…
>> 2) High levels of impostor syndrome.
I felt this, but was surprised that while there were a few genuine genius-level people in my program, the vast majority spent most of the effort trying to look like a genius but were far from it.
One of the things I tell people when they ask me about grad school is, "I thought everybody would be smarter".
Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs
#118I think CS PhD programs in particular can be a little strange. I decided to go back to school to pursue a CS PhD after chatting with a retired mathematician about his PhD. He was talking about how he took classes for two years to explore different areas of mathematics and to pass the general exams, then he decided on a branch of mathematics (topology) and approached a professor in that area to be his advisor. After w…
I think different schools have different philosophies as far as that goes. There are schools that admit to the department and have students do very little research for their first two years, and there are schools that admit by advisor and you start research immediately.
My PhD was the latter, but for me it was actually one of the major selling points for me on the program. I had a pretty good idea of the area that I wanted to work in, and I was always bad at learning from classes as opposed to hands-on self-driven learning. By the end of two years, I'd already gotten a lot of research done and moving towards the end of my PhD I was able to branch out within my area and take my own path in a way I doubt I would have been able to do in a different style program, where I wouldn't have had the same depth of knowledge in my field.
All that to say, I think these are two different philosophies in designing a grad program, and each works better for a different style of student. To those that are still thinking about applying, its something that I think should be a serious consideration when looking at program fit.
Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You live off a meager stipend for about a decade Keep in mind that this is not necessarily true for schools in countries outside of the US. At my school, KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, as a PhD student you are considered an employee of the school and you are paid a living wage with full benefits. The current salary starts at 28600 SEK/month and can reach up to 33500 SEK/month [1] which is definitel…
This has been my experience as a CS Ph.D. student at a top US university as well--the pay is way less than industry, but it's enough to have a decent quality of life. In my department, students make about $40K/year as a base salary, which is not a lot, but enough to get by with. Add a summer internship to this, and your income is not too shabby--I made about $70K this year. Now, of course, I realize this is half or l…
>In my department, students make about $40K/year as a base salary, which is not a lot,
Erm. It's the median personal income and more than like 61% of the country's population makes. More than I make after 12 years on the job.
Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
This has been my experience as a CS Ph.D. student at a top US university as well--the pay is way less than industry, but it's enough to have a decent quality of life. In my department, students make about $40K/year as a base salary, which is not a lot, but enough to get by with. Add a summer internship to this, and your income is not too shabby--I made about $70K this year. Now, of course, I realize this is half or l…
>In my department, students make about $40K/year as a base salary, which is not a lot, Erm. It's the median personal income and more than like 61% of the country's population makes. More than I make after 12 years on the job.
> It's the median personal income
But below median for a college graduate, much less one with an undergraduate degree in CS or another high-demand technical field, and way below median (and quite possibly poverty level) for some of the local areas where big-name CS graduate programs are located.