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Consider applying for grad school

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Re: Consider applying for grad school

#151

Post by azhenley »

analog31 wrote: post #49
jarsin wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To increase productivity of engineers include the following in all employment contracts: "All engineers will become as rich as the founders and investors if this company succeeds." Instant productivity increase.

This is a tautology. The more you are paid, the more productive you are by definition.

This morning I listened to the Freakonomics podcast from July 18th about “Why we choke”.

About 22 minutes in, a researcher is discussing a study he did where they paid participants a months wage for a single task to see if they would perform better. They didn’t. They actually performed worse! A follow up study at MIT found this to be particularly true for cognitive tasks.

Would this apply to a job over time instead of a single task? Probably not, but I’m also not convinced that salary will increase productivity after some relatively low amount.

Re: Consider applying for grad school

#152

Post by deviationblue »

dragonwriter wrote: post #91
deviationblue wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not, if your PhD is in something mindless, like political science.

Political science isn't, at all, mindless, and there are focus areas within it that are extremely rigorous either elitist or analytically or both. OTOH, there's not a lot of places where a PoliSci Ph.D. would substitute for industry experience (or, for that matter, vice versa.) If you want to substitute an academic degree in that general space for “industry” experience, you go for public policy and/or public administ…

Yes, all PhDs are equal. But some are more equal than others.

Re: Consider applying for grad school

#153

Post by madmax96 »

TTPrograms wrote: post #96
Nimitz14 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may shock you, but some people prefer doing research to working a normal job and earning lots of money. Those are the types of people that should and will do PhDs (there are unfortunately a lot who think like you and still try and do a PhD for god knows what reason).

You don't need a PhD to do research. All information is free now. It's fully possible for individuals to self teach in a working environment and be capable of performing effective research with 2-4 years of good experience after undergrad. To assume that the only way to accomplish this is via PhD is silly. This is especially the case when talking about computer science fields, where the barrier to entry is basically…

>It's fully possible for individuals to self teach in a working environment and be capable of performing effective research with 2-4 years of good experience after undergrad.

It's technically possible, but it's unrealistic. The work that is published in journals often demonstrates results that are known by the community years before the actual publication. There's effectively a "secret club" in many disciplines that you need to have connections to in order to actually understand the current state-of-the-art. Without those connections, it's hard to understand what is high-impact and meaningful. This means the research you would do is likely to be insignificant, or already done and pending publication.

An easy way to avoid this is to start attending conferences and working with establishment players, which is exactly what doing a PhD entails.

Re: Consider applying for grad school

#154

Post by sgillen »

hyperpallium wrote: post #124
dwaltrip wrote: post #34

One point jumped out at me, which I haven't seen anyone respond to: > We are concerned about untrained amateurs going directly into trying to solve very difficult global problems. They can then cause harm overall, by lowering the average quality of analysis or launching ill-considered projects due to a lack of experience or understanding. A PhD reduces the risk you’ll accidentally do this. This point is operating off…

A PhD won't make you smart, but does make you read the literature. You could do that on the job, but who would? ...and who would pay you to? Real world experience won't give you even the breadth of knowledge (unless you're working with all the world-leading experts) - let alone feeling the value of the literature, and the skills to access it. This helps you avoid well-known stupid mistakes, and concentrate your energ…

> This helps you avoid well-known stupid mistakes, and concentrate your energies on all-new stupid mistakes.

I really like this, basically sums up my PhD experience so far.

Re: Consider applying for grad school

#155

Post by slavik81 »

Fomite wrote: post #119
slavik81 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If those things are valued, the academics will be doing them. Like in your lab, for instance.

"If those things are valued, the academics will have already be doing them. Like in your lab, for instance." We're trying to. Doesn't mean I wouldn't like to hire someone whose better at it. Just like we do a lot of mathematical analysis, but I was still excited about hiring an applied mathematician. And when I said I knew people with fruitful careers, that implies I know academics already doing them.

That's great to hear. I do think those values are spreading, but they are definitely not universal yet.

If a prospective student wants to be sure that sort of contribution will be appreciated, they should seek out groups who have expressed interest in those skills.

Re: Consider applying for grad school

#156

Post by cosmic_ape »

fangsout wrote: post #135
cosmic_ape wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine a hospital where a new initiative is taken. Nurses follow doctors during their daily patient rounds for 6 months. Then the nurses are expected to do the rounds instead of the doctors. No doctors are left on the premises. Its not very clear cut, there are some blurry boundaries, but still, would you want people to use that hospital?

That's an example that hits close to home as 2 close family members are Nurse Practitioners. This is a flawed example because Registered Nurses do not do the same job as a physician and are legally not allowed to learn how to do it. What if the nurses were allowed to shadow the physicians for 4 years? That would be called residency. What if you have Nurse Practitioners with a Nursing BS, 4 years of nursing experience…

Just to remove any doubt, I have a lot of respect for nurses.

But the question was more about, say, should we close now all the MD schools and replace them by the alternative path you describe?

Re: Consider applying for grad school

#157

Post by nolemurs »

retsibsi wrote: post #121
nolemurs wrote: post #69

> PhDs are intellectually demanding, and not everyone will be able to finish. In the US between 41 and 78% of people who start PhDs have finished them after ten years, depending on their sub field. Computer and Information Science has the lowest graduation rates (41%) Right... I've met a good number of PhD dropouts - I am one myself. None of them dropped out because it was too "intellectually demanding." They all dro…

While I suspect you're right, anecdotal evidence must be fairly weak here. Not many people would admit to themselves that they weren't up to the intellectual challenge -- let alone admit it to other people.

My own experience was that part of the problem was that there was no intellectual challenge. I actually suspect that if PhD programs were a little more intellectually challenging drop-out rates would go down.

Re: Consider applying for grad school

#158

Post by Fomite »

slavik81 wrote: post #155
Fomite wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If those things are valued, the academics will have already be doing them. Like in your lab, for instance." We're trying to. Doesn't mean I wouldn't like to hire someone whose better at it. Just like we do a lot of mathematical analysis, but I was still excited about hiring an applied mathematician. And when I said I knew people with fruitful careers, that implies I know academics already doing them.

That's great to hear. I do think those values are spreading, but they are definitely not universal yet. If a prospective student wants to be sure that sort of contribution will be appreciated, they should seek out groups who have expressed interest in those skills.

Indeed. But I think the demand is there - most of my colleagues are actually having trouble recruiting people with those skills.

We complain about it on...a regular basis.

Re: Consider applying for grad school

#159

Post by analog31 »

azhenley wrote: post #151
analog31 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a tautology. The more you are paid, the more productive you are by definition.

This morning I listened to the Freakonomics podcast from July 18th about “Why we choke”. About 22 minutes in, a researcher is discussing a study he did where they paid participants a months wage for a single task to see if they would perform better. They didn’t. They actually performed worse! A follow up study at MIT found this to be particularly true for cognitive tasks. Would this apply to a job over time instead o…

I think there's "productivity" from two standpoints. In the worker's eyes, she's more productive if she's paid more, by definition. In the employer's eyes, she's more productive if she produces more for the company, by definition.

A classic "efficient" market should close any gaps between these two definition, but it doesn't work perfectly in practice.

Re: Consider applying for grad school

#160

Post by pdfernhout »

j7ake wrote: post #137

Of course here is a counterpoint from Jonathan Katz , a professor of physics, about doing graduate school. http://katz.fastmail.us/scientist.html TL;DR. Don't do it!

From that article: "Why am I (a tenured professor of physics) trying to discourage you from following a career path which was successful for me? Because times have changed (I received my Ph.D. in 1973, and tenure in 1976). American science no longer offers a reasonable career path. If you go to graduate school in science it is in the expectation of spending your working life doing scientific research, using your ingenuity and curiosity to solve important and interesting problems. You will almost certainly be disappointed, probably when it is too late to choose another career."

People saying related things:

http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science

http://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/

https://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20130115173649/http://www.villag...

A previous comment I made with quotes from those links four months ago with various replies (then the topics was "Time to talk about why so many postgrads have poor mental health"): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16725676

For all that, there are many good STEM-related jobs which seem to require a PhD these days, so obviously there are nuances to the topic and whether a PhD is worth it. If you are getting a PhD and someone else is paying for it (current job or a fellowship) and you already know and like the professor who you will be working for, and you already know of a good industry job prospect (in five to seven years, so hard to predict), and you like academic work, then it may not be quite as financially risky as otherwise (although it still may be emotionally draining). Also, if you are independently wealthy and do a PhD for fun, then again a PhD can make sense.

For people in the USA thinking about getting a PhD, consider schools in Western Europe as they tend to be more research-oriented with less-to-no classroom busywork.

It's sad things have come to this in a country with as much wealth as the USA -- especially given how much advanced research can (in theory) potentially improve people's lives if you are allowed to research such things.

Bottom line: as people have said here, a PhD represents a tremendous opportunity cost with a significant risk of having nothing to show for it.

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