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Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

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Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#441

Post by seapat »

currymj wrote: post #110
dakiol wrote: post #37

I would do a PhD if they paid me enough. I don't mind if I cannot find a job that pays well with a PhD (I actually don't need a PhD for that); I would do the PhD because I like doing research. What would bother me is to spent ~4-5 years without a decent income. The scholarships here in western europe are just too low, and I cannot justify not working for private companies in favor or pursuing a PhD during ~4-5 years

consider Switzerland. PhD salary is around the range of 80k CHF. It's not bad at all.

Where? Last time I checked the salary table of the ETH they seem to only pay around 52k, unless I misunderstood something?

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#442

Post by jenny91 »

avs733 wrote: post #132
jenny91 wrote: post #124

People seem to be getting stuck on the PhD opportunity cost piece for STEM. The matter of fact is that Americans don't do PhDs in STEM: if you look at the top schools and top departments, they are 70-90% international students. The PhD then is a phenomenal deal: by and large people are coming from places where FAANG jobs don't just fall on your lap at SF salaries. You get a free education in the US, and can jump stra…

Your numbers are way off…number of American citizen or permanent resident divided by number of doctorates awarded: 35,566 / 57862 = 61.5% (overall) 26,622 / 45,533 = 58.5% (stem PhDs) Survey of earned doctorates, national center for educational statistics, 2023 data…very useful, as are many of the data products the federal government collects, for however long this is up https://ncses.nsf.gov/surveys/earned-doctorate…

I'd say it's not that off: for computer science the numbers are 686/1150, so only about 40% are US citizens or PRs. This is even more scewed at top schools in my experience.

Also thanks for finding this data, didn't know it existed!

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#443

Post by a123b456c »

Balgair wrote: post #420
LarsDu88 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more accurate. The productive fraction of professors still follow the Pareto principle or 80/20 rule. And even then, these professors aggregate into the elite institutions making it even more skewed. To get an academic position, you need to have a star advisor either for your degree or postdoc.

I think it was The Atlantic a few years back that ran the numbers on professors and their PhD alma maters. But I can't find the article, so please accept my bad recollection. Essentially, in nearly all of the humanities, if you did not go to a top 10 PhD program, you had a 0% chance of getting tenure. Not 'like' a 0% chance, an actual 0%. There are no professors at all, anywhere in the US, in nearly all the humanitie…

I've known some English PhDs. They were more focused on self-education rather than external rewards. Many of them were training to become high school teachers eventually, and they knew it. They saw no hurry to begin that career.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#444

Post by cageface »

jltsiren wrote: post #263
cageface wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was in graduate school the chances of getting a tenured position weren't anywhere close to 1 in 3. Where are you getting that number?

Roughly speaking, there are 10-20 PhDs for every faculty position. But not every PhD wants a faculty position, even in principle. Many want to do research in the industry, or in public research labs. Many do a PhD because it opens doors in other careers, such as medicine or education. Some PhDs are hobby projects people do in retirement. Some are side projects for people who want to study something relevant to their…

Most of my classmates would have been very interested in an academic career if they thought their chances were even one in ten and this was in a top tier program. And they were all totally willing to relocate too.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#445

Post by portaouflop »

chongli wrote: post #380
portaouflop wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In reality the system is already breaking down bc so few people pay into the pension system for so many old pensioners. Idk about Norway tbh - they seem to have a much more solid social system - but in Germany I don’t expect anything from the pension system in 2060+

Norway’s pension is backed by $1.74T in sovereign wealth funds [1]. I doubt they’ll have the same issues as Germany. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor...

That’s nice if you’re Norwegian I guess

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#446

Post by ghaff »

MVissers wrote: post #255
ghaff wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds awfully generic. It doesn't sound that different from a Master's (heck, maybe even an undergrad) program that requires a thesis. Yes, there's a difference in the sense of supposedly doing novel research, but I'm not sure the degree to which you're theoretically moving the state of the art forward justifies your time investment in many cases.

You don't really learn how to learn in a masters or undergraduate. You learn how to consume information, but not how to research new things, validate those and defend it to others in a rigorous way. Whether it's worth the investment depends on ones goals in life.

If undergrad doesn't teach you how to learn at at least some level, that probably makes me question some of the value in getting an undergrad degree at all as that's one of the arguments for going through undergrad. I won't argue that a PhD isn't something of a next level but obviously there's a big cost involved, especially if PhD-type research isn't something you'll be doing.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#447

Post by jltsiren »

cageface wrote: post #444
jltsiren wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roughly speaking, there are 10-20 PhDs for every faculty position. But not every PhD wants a faculty position, even in principle. Many want to do research in the industry, or in public research labs. Many do a PhD because it opens doors in other careers, such as medicine or education. Some PhDs are hobby projects people do in retirement. Some are side projects for people who want to study something relevant to their…

Most of my classmates would have been very interested in an academic career if they thought their chances were even one in ten and this was in a top tier program. And they were all totally willing to relocate too.

The best estimate I can find is that about 3.5 million people in the US have a PhD or another research doctorate. That includes non-immigrants who study or work in the US. According to AAUP statistics, there are ~200k full-time equivalent tenured or tenure-track faculty in what they consider doctoral institutions. Such positions are the typical but not the only option for a research career in the academia. The numbers are well within the parameters I used for my estimate.

It's important to understand that in this context, willingness to relocate means willingness to spend your life outside your home country. Even in a large country like the US, there are often structural reasons why universities are not interested in hiring someone like you when you are in the job market.

For example, maybe a field such as ML starts getting popular. Universities respond by hiring new faculty, who in turn hire new PhD students. Almost a decade later, when those students have graduated and are in the job market, the demand may have stablized. Universities already have a plenty of faculty in that field and have little interest in hiring more.

Which means that if you chose a popular field, your chances of getting hired may be below the average. If you want to stay in the academia, your best bet may be moving to a country that didn't experience a similar hiring frenzy and is now trying to catch up.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#448

Post by scarface_74 »

selimthegrim wrote: post #433
scarface_74 wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being in the right place at the right time with the right connections and not having your equity diluted helps. There are plenty of “smart” people who aren’t rich.

I live in New Orleans. I went to the same school he did. Thank you for conveying my point.

I see nowhere in Musks history that he went to school in New Orleans

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#449

Post by KPGv2 »

WalterBright wrote: post #277
oneplane wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading a biography mostly informed me about the lack of general empathy, remorse, sympathy. Only regret came forward a little (and only once). > be crazy enough to bet it all Anyone who doesn't suffer any real consequences. Having parents with a lot of money makes it not matter all that much. As for the other bad decisions; it doesn't really show much positive except maybe persistence, but persistence in a vacuum is…

> Anyone who doesn't suffer any real consequences. Having parents with a lot of money makes it not matter all that much. You're not going to starve in America if you lose all your money. Besides, Elon's dad at one point invested in Elon's company. Elon was already a success in business by then. From $20,000, he became the richest man in the world. All by luck! Pretty amazing! Me, I could scrape up $20,000. Could I tu…

> You're not going to starve in America if you lose all your money.

claim, meet data: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10990269/#:~:text=%...

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#450

Post by surajrmal »

garciasn wrote: post #111
jltsiren wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But can you still get $125k directly after undergrad? How many employers are willing to pay 2x the median wage to someone with no experience and no demonstrated skills, simply because they went to a school? To someone who is likely to make a net negative contribution until they learn how things work and require less guidance? To someone who is at a high risk of taking another job after a couple of years? It's more co…

FAANG or some company in a high-rent area where you could most definitely not save that kind of money, as far as I know. And, I love how making $125K is some sort of great salary. I live in MN and while it’s above the median HHI for the state, it’s by no means a comfortable enough wage to save that kind of money unless your housing is covered by family or something. Here in the MSP metro, you’re looking at $2500/mo f…

It's amazing how out of touch people are. It's one thing to say your lifestyle choices make it hard to save money at that income level, but it's certainly also true that many folks are perfectly able to save a lot at that income level. Out of college, rent in my area was $1500 for a one bedroom, but I was able to rent a house with a few friends for $800/month per person. Even with frequent eating out and outings I saved up over half my income per year, making under 100k the entire time. If you want a really nice car, travel a bunch, or similar, or live alone, I'm sure it gets much harder to save much, but those are lifestyle choices.
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