A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos • Hacker News Board

Re: A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos

#191

Post by mcguire » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 1:14 AM UTC

romwell wrote: post #186

chess19 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its pretty standard in the US (at least in the fields I am familiar with) that if you quit a PhD program you can still leave with a Master's if you've been in the program for long enough.

Not in Texas A&M math department, for example, at least a few years ago.

It is the literal truth for the CS dept at UT Austin, as of when I was there a 10 or so years ago. They didn't have a real Masters program; the Masters was regarded as a consolation prize when you left the PhD program.

Edit: To be honest, I got in by telling the graduate advisor that I would rather be in a Masters program there than a PhD program elsewhere.

Re: A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos

#192

Post by marcofloriano » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 1:22 AM UTC

apo wrote: post #14

When you look at the stats, it’s hard not to conclude that the current PhD system is fundamentally broken. Mental health issues are rife: approximately one-third of PhD students are at risk of having or developing a psychiatric disorder like depression. The high level of dropouts is similarly worrying – and possibly another symptom of the same problem. Research suggests that on average 50% of PhD students leave gradu…

Relates a lot with my entrepreneur experience. My last venture sunk like 5 years of my life and money. Guess most risked things are hard. The hardest part is to actually get experience. Experience is different from success.

Re: A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos

#193

Post by mcguire » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 1:27 AM UTC

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #64

knappa wrote: post #61

A lot of this seems ridiculous: > Mental health issues are rife: approximately one-third of PhD students are at risk of having or developing a psychiatric disorder like depression. The baseline percentage of the population which experience depression (and other mental illness) each year is known to be pretty high -- and highest in for people in their 20's. One third sounds fairly normal; at any rate, there is a burde…

>If you are starting from an undergraduate degree, you probably need at least two years to take the PhD intro classes. One year to start a research program might work in a subject like the author's where your papers are chats about social implications, but there are plenty of subjects where even the data collection is going to take longer than that. In Germany, you need a Master's with the coursework done before star…

Right. The first two years of our graduate program were "breadth" and "depth" courses. After that, you could exit with a Masters or do PhD research.

Re: A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos

#194

Post by shoguning » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 1:37 AM UTC

fullshark wrote: post #142

shoguning wrote: post #111

I disagree totally. A PhD should be about curiosity and asking the most interesting scientific questions you can think of, also known as 'basic research'. You have the rest of your career to have as much impact on society and commerce as you want. Unfortunately, the social impact factor has been creeping in, in the form of more 'applied research' funding which is not fundamental and does not move scientific knowledge…

Who is paying to support you while you explore some curiosity of yours? A PhD program is not a summer camp, it's a social tool and the public is paying money in order to grow the human knowledge base. I don't get this attitude, appreciate the fact that the public is giving you grants and funding because the alternative is you get nothing.

Perhaps you misunderstand. Scientists should study important _topics_ (virology, human genetics, materials science etc.), but within that, research direction should set by scientists not bureaucrats.

Many people share your view, though, and it's a shame. We have all of private industry to focus on short term benefits. Grad school is one place where the grinding expectation of immediate return-on-investment can be suspended. PhD students take low compensation hoping they can use curiosity and passion to direct their research. Increasingly, that's not the case.

>> appreciate the fact that the public is giving you grants and funding because the alternative is you get nothing.

This is cutting off the hand to spite the face. Taxpayers get an _unbelievable bargain_ for the work of PhD students and postdocs. Gutting research funding won't hurt them for long, they'll easily move on to much higher paying work, it's future society that will suffer.

I'd argue you get the best and most significant contributions to society in the long run with stable government funding of basic research. Don't believe me? Ask Steven Chu, Nobel Prize winner and energy secretary:

https://www.amacad.org/multimedia/pdfs/wsjoped.pdf

Re: A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos

#195

Post by frankling_ » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 1:58 AM UTC

jvanderbot wrote: post #141

andreyk wrote: post #107

This is a rather poor essay. "Many academics enter science to change the world for the better. Yet it can often feel like contemporary academia is more about chasing citations. Most academic work is shared only with a particular scientific community, rather than policymakers or businesses, which makes it entirely disconnected from practice. ... This new PhD would see students go out into the field and talk to practit…

> AFTER a PhD is finished they can go on and try to influence society using their skills, or not. Exactly this. The primary skill developed during a PhD (for me, and those around me), is knowing the difference between: 1. solutions that can be pulled from literature (bake), 2. solutions that should be easy to assemble from existing solutions (buy), 3. what technology requires a small-to-medium delta above and beyond…

If all three of these are research, what is engineering?

Re: A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos

#196

Post by nakashimakid » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 2:13 AM UTC

Academia has always been, and always will be, about new knowledge. The article laments the pursuit of citations but fails to note that it is today's primary quantitative measure of new knowledge - though imperfect.

"Improving society" as academia's objective will have its own set of misaligned incentives, potentially much worse than the pursuit of "academic kudos". How would this be measured?

Re: A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos

#197

Post by brandonjm » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 2:21 AM UTC

> Most academic work is shared only with a particular scientific community, rather than policymakers or businesses...

The university where I am currently doing my PhD has a very heavy focus on the outputs of a PhD contributing something worthwhile not only to academia but also to industry or the world. It isn't a massively high ranking university but it does force academics to think practically as well as theoretically. We are required to have an industry (non-academic) advisor on our supervisory panel who helps guide the research so it can be useful and not just gather dust once finished.

Re: A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos

#198

Post by brandonjm » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 2:27 AM UTC

baby wrote: post #166

fhood wrote: post #58

Man, this view of getting a PhD, which seems fairly common, is so alien to me. Both my parents are research professors, both regularly have students, and I have never seen any of the misery or stress that people keep bringing up. Sure, if you are unprepared to do research then you shouldn't do a PhD, but my parents' students are hand picked, and it is very rare that they end up with a student that doesn't want to, or…

I guess it depends on your field, but I've definitely seen that happening in Physics and Math. I have many friends who continued school to pursue a PhD while I left to work in the industry. It's a mix of: * dropped out (some changed field completely) * failed to pass their defense * were miserable until they obtained their PhD * managed to obtain their PhD after a looooong time and a lot of financial trouble. After t…

> The one guy that was uber successful absolutely loved what he was doing.

This is the absolute most most important thing. I could have taken an increased scholarship however I would be bound to researching what the top-up provider wanted. Instead I opted to be on a base level scholarship but I got to choose exactly what path I wanted to take.

Re: A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos

#199

Post by bbgm » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 4:39 AM UTC

doctorsher wrote: post #119

apo wrote: post #14

When you look at the stats, it’s hard not to conclude that the current PhD system is fundamentally broken. Mental health issues are rife: approximately one-third of PhD students are at risk of having or developing a psychiatric disorder like depression. The high level of dropouts is similarly worrying – and possibly another symptom of the same problem. Research suggests that on average 50% of PhD students leave gradu…

> The biggest risk factor I've found for a PhD student is lack of research experience during the undergrad degree. Previous research experience might help, but there still are a number of factors that need to align in order to have a relatively smooth PhD. In my mind, it depends on the quality of your previous research experience, your advisor, and your goals upon graduation. For my experience in particular, I did tw…

The bulk of the second year of my master’s research with limited class work. Learning how to set up experiments, writing a thesis, and doing the groundwork for publication (which happened a few years later) helped a lot get right into my PhD although it was not at all related to my Master’s work.

Re: A PhD should be about improving society, not chasing academic kudos

#200

Post by mattkrause » Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 5:44 AM UTC

nakashimakid wrote: post #171

mattkrause wrote: post #10

Great! Except that if you stop chasing those kudos, you will promptly find yourself unemployed and thus unable to do any research at all.

Exactly, while imperfect, these kudos are one of the only measures of academic ability.

That’s not even close to true.

However, these “kudos” are the principle measure of academic ability/productivity used by those making hiring and funding decisions so...barring a top-down change, we are stuck with them.