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NSF pilots 4-year PhDs with industry research placements

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Re: NSF pilots 4-year PhDs with industry research placements

#31

Post by mburns »

guitarsteve wrote: post #13
TimorousBestie wrote: post #4

Very perplexing. There’s already a 3-4 year advanced degree in the United States with an optional thesis component that companies in relevant industries can intervene in and direct if they so desire. So why are they calling it a doctorate? I don’t see the point. It’s not like the NSF under this administration is particularly fond of STEM doctorates. I’m open to any theories about what the real point of this is.

Sorry, I’m a bit thrown off. What degree are you referring to? Masters is usually about 2 years, though it could be longer in some cases or if worked on part-time. PhD is often 4-6+. What 3-4 year degree did you mean? Bachelors?

I assume they're referring to Professional (Graduate) degrees, like JD or MD.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_degree#United_Sta...

Re: NSF pilots 4-year PhDs with industry research placements

#32

Post by y-curious »

AsyncBanana wrote: post #23

I don't love the increasing move towards industry research instead of traditional academia. It is just going to mean more closely-held, proprietary advancements.

v.s. politicking forever, enslaving grad students and making only a passable salary? Not to mention being incentivized to lie, cheat and steal when publishing in order to maintain your position?

Academia as we know it has been dead for a while, and AI is the final harbinger. The reproducibility crisis got that much worse now that the papers that nobody ever bothered to reproduce have grown 10x in number with the press of a button.

At least the industry research jobs pay well, even if they suffer many of the same issues.

Re: NSF pilots 4-year PhDs with industry research placements

#33

Post by lokar »

dnautics wrote: post #24
mathisfun123 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There’s already a 3-4 year advanced degree in the United States with an optional thesis component that companies in relevant industries can intervene in and direct if they so desire. You're making this up as you go. No MS lasts 3-4 years, almost all MS theses are book reports/unpublished because the student is primarily attending classes, almost none are directed by industry (see points 1 and 2).

sometimes an institution will give an ms as a consolation prize for time spent not being able to finish a phd [0]. in those cases they can be upwards of 5 years, but they certainly aren't industry driven [0] often a leadership or personality failure of the PI

My program had an exam after 2 years. You could fail completely, do well enough to leave with a MS, or fully pass and continue to a PhD.

Re: NSF pilots 4-year PhDs with industry research placements

#34

Post by Brystephor »

moshun wrote: post #26
math_dandy wrote: post #19

My wife did her mathematics PhD under an analogous structure in Germany where it’s fairly common. She was supervised by a professor at the University of Munich and a lab at Bosch, wrote and defended a thesis as usual. Employed in industry immediately after graduating. A great experience.

While I understand the upside, the reality of why it’s being pursued in the United States is that this is intended to drive academia into an advanced version of a trade school.

That sounds like an excellent thing based on that last sentence. Anecdotally, I hear people talk about trade school as being much more practical compared to the majority of traditional 4 year degrees. So I am interpreting a "move towards trade school" as an increase in practicality and therefore utility to the student.

Re: NSF pilots 4-year PhDs with industry research placements

#35

Post by smelendez »

alephnerd wrote: post #14
lokar wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this for people who already have an MS, so 6 total?

No. It's basically allocating funding for 250 PhD seats across a couple top engineering programs (CMU, UCSD, UIUC, Columbia SEAS, Penn SEAS, etc) with the expectation that said research would be linked with an industrial partner (eg. HPE, Bayer, Nvidia) Edit: I just reread your comment. I think it is for students who are already doing their MS or have previously done so and are applying to PhD programs

Probably also for students with “just” a bachelor’s. Most PhD students don’t enter with a master’s.

I do wonder if NSF is hoping to seed more industry-sponsored PhDs as well, e.g., the first will be funded by NSF to establish the program, and industry will fund more once the program gets going.

Definitely makes sense to me they call it a PhD, not a master’s. A PhD is more prestigious and signals the holder is ready and eager to do cutting-edge research and has some experience doing so.

There are all kinds of master’s degrees (I say as someone who has one) and reasons for getting them, so they’re not as strong a signal of anything in particular. And they can mean someone switched careers, someone dropped out of a PhD program, someone took advanced classes during undergrad, someone got a bachelor’s in one country and wanted to study and work in another, etc.

Re: NSF pilots 4-year PhDs with industry research placements

#36

Post by Beijinger »

Beijinger wrote: post #27
math_dandy wrote: post #19

My wife did her mathematics PhD under an analogous structure in Germany where it’s fairly common. She was supervised by a professor at the University of Munich and a lab at Bosch, wrote and defended a thesis as usual. Employed in industry immediately after graduating. A great experience.

This is just because of the PhD inflation in Germany. It has little scientific value.

Why the Downvote?

Re: NSF pilots 4-year PhDs with industry research placements

#37

Post by gwd »

moshun wrote: post #26
math_dandy wrote: post #19

My wife did her mathematics PhD under an analogous structure in Germany where it’s fairly common. She was supervised by a professor at the University of Munich and a lab at Bosch, wrote and defended a thesis as usual. Employed in industry immediately after graduating. A great experience.

While I understand the upside, the reality of why it’s being pursued in the United States is that this is intended to drive academia into an advanced version of a trade school.

Do the math: The number of professorial positions is not growing (or not very quickly). Under steady-state, each professor only needs to train one single tenure-track PhD in their entire career. (Or maybe 10 professors need to train 11-12 students, to account for various forms of attrition.)

If you want more PhD's than that, you have to figure out a place for them to work; industry is a good "pressure relief valve".

Re: NSF pilots 4-year PhDs with industry research placements

#38

Post by smelendez »

mathisfun123 wrote: post #29
dnautics wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sometimes an institution will give an ms as a consolation prize for time spent not being able to finish a phd [0]. in those cases they can be upwards of 5 years, but they certainly aren't industry driven [0] often a leadership or personality failure of the PI

Why do people do this kind of "well actually" thing? Yes you're correct but it has nothing to do with whether the degree itself is intended for that.

I mean, how common is a terminal master’s program in STEM fields?

I imagine there are departments where it’s more common to get a master’s by dropping out of the PhD program early than through any other path. Especially for people with a bachelor’s in the same field.

Re: NSF pilots 4-year PhDs with industry research placements

#39

Post by mulderc »

Brystephor wrote: post #34
moshun wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I understand the upside, the reality of why it’s being pursued in the United States is that this is intended to drive academia into an advanced version of a trade school.

That sounds like an excellent thing based on that last sentence. Anecdotally, I hear people talk about trade school as being much more practical compared to the majority of traditional 4 year degrees. So I am interpreting a "move towards trade school" as an increase in practicality and therefore utility to the student.

There is no reason to assume it is “more practical” or that it will increase utility for the student. Especially at the graduate level, the deeper you are able to explore a subject and the more you can connect that subject to a broader range of topics the more utility you get from the degree. Less time to finish a degree means you are less able to do that. I would think this will decrease the likelihood of new ideas being developed which will quickly become a problem for society in general. Also no one gets a PhD because it is practical, you get it because you want to explore a topic and push the boundaries of human knowledge.

Re: NSF pilots 4-year PhDs with industry research placements

#40

Post by tudelo »

Brystephor wrote: post #34
moshun wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I understand the upside, the reality of why it’s being pursued in the United States is that this is intended to drive academia into an advanced version of a trade school.

That sounds like an excellent thing based on that last sentence. Anecdotally, I hear people talk about trade school as being much more practical compared to the majority of traditional 4 year degrees. So I am interpreting a "move towards trade school" as an increase in practicality and therefore utility to the student.

I just wanted to echo your comment. Most people, in my experience, pursue an undergrad program with the intention of being employable. This is my personal experience, but also a learned opinion from being a teaching assistant for some years. Places like waterloo stress co-op, it is built in to the program. IMO the average person seeking an education are served under a model that places them in or near industry related work at some point. While I understand the original post is relating to PHDs, I think most programs (or rather, participants in programs) would love to have this sort of integration despite it being a hard problem.
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