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A glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs

theguardian.com

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Re: A glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs

#161

Post by kchoudhu »

msb wrote: post #125
kchoudhu wrote: post #62

I'm probably going to go back to get a PhD at some point in my 40s. Not because I want to become a professor, but because I think it'll be good to sit down for a period of four or five years and just think in the company of other agile minds. Of course, this is only possible because I'll have made sure to have had an entire career behind me, and I will not be worrying about putting food on my family's table or keepin…

This is me. I am 43, entering my fourth year of PhD. If you have money saved and want to challenge yourself in new ways a PhD is a worthwhile goal. A couple of thoughts: 1) Many of my 20 something peers are struggling financially, 20-30k a year is difficult to live on in CA. I made good money in my 20s and enjoyed life, having less now does not bother me. 2) I don't have children. My peers with children face a much d…

Yeah, by the time I plan on heading back to school, I'm going to have a six year old and a seven year old, and I don't think money will really be a problem (I'm effectively coasting and working on random side projects now anyhow, going to school won't really change anything).

I suspect that a lot of the stress of grad school goes away once money isn't an issue, and your progress in school isn't an existential issue. I really do wish mature grad students were more of a thing.

Re: A glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs

#162

Post by frozenport »

analog31 wrote: post #75

If you are taking a PhD, especially in the sciences, look away now. It may be stale news but I’ve just seen a graph from a 2010 Royal Society report suggesting that of every 200 people completing a PhD, only seven will get a permanent academic post. Only one will become a professor. Stale, as in, 70+ years old. I got my PhD in physics, in 1993. At that time, science students were talking about something that we refer…

But industry also has the same problem with management positions. The real problem is the terrible treatment of postdocs due to a lack of "non-training" positions. Imagine if your boss made 5x as much as you because the only two jobs at your company are intern and manager.

Re: A glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs

#163

Post by jbergens »

twblalock wrote: post #132
dabockster wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I haven't even heard the word palindrome outside of either college or outsourced coding challenges (further driving home the bullshit point).

It only takes a few seconds to explain what a palindrome is. It's a very simple concept. A candidate who can't figure out how to tell if a string is a palindrome in the normal amount of time allocated for an interview is probably not a very good programmer, even if the candidate has never heard of palindromes before.

I have assembler code for a palindrome checker but if someone asked me to explain it that would take some time :-)

Re: A glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs

#164

Post by stevenwoo »

QAPereo wrote: post #114
stevenwoo wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's laudable that the likely end results are presented so clearly and early. Have you ever done a survey immediately afterwards to see how many students goals align with the likely outcomes? It seems like if a student is in that position where they were very successful at being a student for the prior 16 years and succeeded at getting into your graduate school that they might think they are the 1 in 8 - maybe all ei…

Is it? One way to recruit a certain kind of soldier is to build up the notion of “elite” and then ask, “are you up to it?” Young people often leap at that, and you can always say you told them it would be tough.

I don't know. It does seem that law schools don't do this based on the numerous post graduation interview/surveys, where if memory serves if one doesn't get admitted to a top 20 school or so one might want to rethink a legal education as one's avenue to financial success.

Re: A glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs

#165

Post by twblalock »

dabockster wrote: post #159
twblalock wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It only takes a few seconds to explain what a palindrome is. It's a very simple concept. A candidate who can't figure out how to tell if a string is a palindrome in the normal amount of time allocated for an interview is probably not a very good programmer, even if the candidate has never heard of palindromes before.

Are you saying I'm a bad programmer because I can't recite the palindrome algorithm from memory?

No, I'm saying you are a bad programmer if, after being told what a palindrome is, you cannot invent an algorithm that tests whether a string is a palindrome.

It's pretty simple: a palindrome is something that is the same backwards as it is forwards.

Just from the definition, the naive/brute force solution is obvious: given a string or a list or any other kind of sequence, make a reversed copy of it and check to see if the reversed copy is identical to the original. You don't even need to be a programmer to figure out that approach -- anyone could do it with a pen and paper.

After that, the challenge is to write some code that can do this, and to do it more efficiently, i.e. without making a copy. That's not too hard either, because one of the popular methods that is used to reverse a string (another popular "warmup" interview question) can also be used to verify if a string is a palindrome in O(n) time and O(1) space.

I've seen far more difficult questions on phone screens, not to mention onsite interviews.

Re: A glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs

#166

Post by analog31 »

frozenport wrote: post #162
analog31 wrote: post #75

If you are taking a PhD, especially in the sciences, look away now. It may be stale news but I’ve just seen a graph from a 2010 Royal Society report suggesting that of every 200 people completing a PhD, only seven will get a permanent academic post. Only one will become a professor. Stale, as in, 70+ years old. I got my PhD in physics, in 1993. At that time, science students were talking about something that we refer…

But industry also has the same problem with management positions. The real problem is the terrible treatment of postdocs due to a lack of "non-training" positions. Imagine if your boss made 5x as much as you because the only two jobs at your company are intern and manager.

Indeed, post-docs are a whole 'nother ball o' wax. I skipped doing a post-doc altogether. In fact, when I knew that I wasn't headed for academia, then suddenly a lot of the hoops vanished, including the need to have a lot of publications.

Re: A glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs

#167

Post by dabockster »

twblalock wrote: post #165
dabockster wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying I'm a bad programmer because I can't recite the palindrome algorithm from memory?

No, I'm saying you are a bad programmer if, after being told what a palindrome is, you cannot invent an algorithm that tests whether a string is a palindrome. It's pretty simple: a palindrome is something that is the same backwards as it is forwards. Just from the definition, the naive/brute force solution is obvious: given a string or a list or any other kind of sequence, make a reversed copy of it and check to see…

Ah, okay. Thanks for explaining a bit better. There are definitely programmers out there who would call someone an idiot if they don't know what a palindrome or other [insert college CS problem here].

Re: A glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs

#168

Post by [deleted] »

dekhn wrote: post #154
dabockster wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I haven't even heard the word palindrome outside of either college or outsourced coding challenges (further driving home the bullshit point).

Weird. I grew up with palindromes. They were a common concept in writing. A man, a plan, a canal. Panama!

[deleted]

Re: A glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs

#169

Post by geezerjay »

Cyph0n wrote: post #79
geezerjay wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can also be a good, e.g., mechanical engineer without getting an engineering degree, but this is an exception to the rule. That's an awfully incorrect analogy. Enrolling in a PhD program has absolutely nothing in common with getting an engineering degree. An engineering degree is conceived to give the students a pre-established set of skills and technical knowledge that meets industry demands. A PhD program is…

> That's an awfully incorrect analogy. I would say "not entirely accurate", rather than "incorrect". Are you familiar with what happens in PhD research and the skills you can acquire during a PhD? > [.،.] so that in about 4 years he is able to produce some scientific findings and defend a thesis in front of a jury. And that's exactly what having a PhD proves: that you can start from a cursory understanding of a topic…

> Are you familiar with what happens in PhD research and the skills you can acquire during a PhD?

Yes, very familiar. I've worked as a researcher in a public university and enrolled in a PhD program, but I dropped out after it was made patently clear that the whole thing was a complete waste of time.

I even had my advisor pressure me to continue working for the research group with scare tactics such as warning that getting a job would be virtually impossible and working for the research group was my only viable option.

> And that's exactly what having a PhD proves: that you can start from a cursory understanding of a topic and end up contributing something novel to the field.

...and that on its own is worth absolutely zero. You either have marketable skills or you don't, and a PhD degree does not help a PhD candidate develop marketable skills, It's years of drudge work for a research group that managed to get funding for areas which more often than not are entirely irrelevant. To develop marketable skills the PhD candidate needs to devote extra time that he doesn't have to go out of his way to make himself relevant as a job candidate.

Re: A glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs

#170

Post by fspeech »

Chinjut wrote: post #147
fspeech wrote: post #96

Maybe academia shouldn't be considered a normal career. Rather it is a reward for pursuing something you are passionate about. You are willing to do it for free so anything you get is a bonus -- perhaps not literally, but that is the yard stick one should use when considering an academic career. At least that is what I am telling my older one who is applying to colleges right now.

Lots of people are passionate about academic research in their chosen field, and extremely talented and qualified and even PhDed, and still don't get to do it (certainly, it's difficult to get time to do things for free in a world where one needs money to live), so, I dunno…

That does sound sad. It could happen when your love becomes a profession and you are pressured to do things that keep you the job rather than make you happy. This is what I warn my son about. It may be a happier outcome if one just focuses on using one's skills to make the best living and keeping one's passion a hobby instead, except one may suffer excessively from FOMO (fear of missing out). I really don't know what the answer is. Everyone has to make their own choice.
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