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A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

president.mit.edu

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Re: A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

#461

Post by gowld »

jrflo wrote: post #147

Besides the people in this thread bemoaning the state of research funding, international students, etc. (all of which are valid), a lot of people are becoming disillusioned with academia. Probably 80% of the recent PhD grads I know are looking to leave academia, despite the fact that they went into it to pursue a career in academia. The median science PhD takes 6 years now, and is grueling work for terrible pay, all…

A professor has many more than 5 PhD students. Why would you be surprised to concerned that most PhDs go on to get jobs in industry?

Re: A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

#462

Post by ohyoutravel »

garciasn wrote: post #451
nomadygnt wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking a longer time to graduate to become the “world expert” in their field is fine if grad students weren’t paid next to nothing for the 60+ hours a week that they are expected to work. As it is now it’s better to finish as quickly as possible so they can have a real life.

Isn’t this sort of how all terminal degrees work? MDs, JDs, etc are all putting the candidates through the wringer, for relatively low wages, until they’re “experienced”. I’m not saying it’s right, but it’s common knowledge it’s the way things work if you want to have those magic letters of a terminal degree next to your name in your email signature. Don’t want to deal with the machinations required? Opt for the mast…

Masters in Law so you can…pontificate about the law?

Re: A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

#463

Post by 59percentmore »

robotresearcher wrote: post #434
arenaninja wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was disillusioned with academia before I started. We had a candid talk during undergrad with a grad student who was a TA in our class and he laid it out for us: there wouldn't be enough jobs in the US for our small graduating class each year so if you needed a job to support yourself it would not make financial sense. I stopped then and there, maybe one or two classmates continued. That was almost 20 years ago. I'm…

Are you also disillusioned with professional sports, music, acting, and art? Most people who study and aspire in these fields don't make a sustainable living in it either. It's a tough competition. There's work and luck involved, as well as talent. I think most grad students understand this, and it sounds like it was communicated clearly to you in a timely way.

Those other fields are ones in which there is a lot of readily-available support to pursue them as hobbies, without going broke or being put on a three-letter-agency list somewhere.

Re: A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

#464

Post by biophysboy »

onetimeusename wrote: post #266
biophysboy wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a real shame too, because industry is completely incapable of doing basic research. Universities make the fuzzy ideas, and companies turn them into widgets. The only exceptions in history to this are the monopolies, which have their own obvious problems. They cannot produce non-rival, non-excludable goods - stuff that's hard to patent.

Sometimes. I've seen researchers who just churn out useless junk for citation mining and I don't see a lot of overlap between their work and what industry does. That's probably one of the most demoralizing things about academia in my opinion. You sometimes have to be obsequious to people whose goal is just citation farming and whose papers are useless junk filled with buzzwords. I see this a lot in systems and securi…

Yes, I hear you on how academia chases metrics. I would argue this phenomena is not worse than Company Z making a boilerplate AI chat tool that is no more useful than the flagship popular products. I think the fairest comparison is comparing the best researchers in academia/industry. I think they accomplish different things because they have different goals/incentives.

Re: A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

#465

Post by simonw »

spyckie2 wrote: post #406
simonw wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably 0% on their 401k returns, which is the more appropriate comparison point to an endowment.

Respectfully, comparing a janitor's 401k to a $27.4 billion endowment is (very) tone deaf. But yes, the tax goes against "keeping sacred systems sacred" principles and is an opinionated policy against rich entities that the current administration dislikes.

Yes, it's tone deaf. And comparing tax on an endowment to "tax a janitor pays" is arguing in bad faith.

Re: A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

#466

Post by smith7018 »

nomadygnt wrote: post #366
jasonhong wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as someone who has graduated over a dozen PhD students in computer science... Yes, it is possible to complete a PhD in 3-4 years, but it's not really good for your career. The bar our department sets for a PhD is that at the end of it, you should be a world expert in your specific topic. A PhD is more like an apprenticeship, where you develop and refine your skills, your background knowledge in your area of…

Taking a longer time to graduate to become the “world expert” in their field is fine if grad students weren’t paid next to nothing for the 60+ hours a week that they are expected to work. As it is now it’s better to finish as quickly as possible so they can have a real life.

Most applicants know that that outcome is antithetical to pursuing a PhD. It's common knowledge that a PhD involves 5-7 years of academic work (read: low pay) in pursuit of becoming an expert in a specialized topic. You don't enter a PhD program expecting to immediately make money or to graduate as soon as possible. It's not a coding bootcamp.

Re: A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

#467

Post by coffeemug »

magicalist wrote: post #272
cmiles8 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same issue with grad school… the value isn’t there for this to make sense. Folks are better off just going right into them private sector.

The value absolutely is there. The NSF and NIH were both very cheap and have had huge ROI. The cuts to academic funding have been monumentally stupid.

Brass tacks, if an institution has an overwhelming political leaning toward faction X and works to undermine faction Y, is it really surprising that when Y gets into power it attempts to damage the institution? This is precisely why publicly funded institutions should maintain agnostic political posture.

Re: A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

#468

Post by tty456 »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #318
jrflo wrote: post #147

Besides the people in this thread bemoaning the state of research funding, international students, etc. (all of which are valid), a lot of people are becoming disillusioned with academia. Probably 80% of the recent PhD grads I know are looking to leave academia, despite the fact that they went into it to pursue a career in academia. The median science PhD takes 6 years now, and is grueling work for terrible pay, all…

I used to work with a brilliant and humble guy. He got accepted to MIT at 14, but his parents made him go to community college for a year to give him a little more time to mature. He then went to MIT and graduated after three years, then went to Berkeley and got a masters in one year, then went to Stanford and it took six years to get his PhD? Why? Because his advisor milked him for his work. She had a pile of papers…

Sad to think of the kind of impact someone like that could have in private sector had they not pursued the phd.

Re: A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

#469

Post by Arodex »

noosphr wrote: post #423
Arodex wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Confederates' common folks tried to burn the USA to the ground to save their inalienable right to own slaves. Who will listen to the "perception and needs" of the racist, misogynistic common folks who want to impose their religious liberty (by banning abortion) and and elevate their financial situation (by pushing downward brown and black people)? (The GOP, that's who.) And don't you tell me it's a minority, when…

The French revolted because bread was too expensive then guillotined more than half of their best and brightest. I guess democracy was a mistake and we need to get back to inbread monarchy instead of the blood thirsty unwashed masses.

Democracy is a mistake, which is why we have Republics, with rules and constitutions. Not "anything you can get a slim majority to vote for, once".

Re: A message from President Kornbluth about funding and the talent pipeline

#470

Post by mathisfun123 »

jasonhong wrote: post #335
tasty_freeze wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work with a brilliant and humble guy. He got accepted to MIT at 14, but his parents made him go to community college for a year to give him a little more time to mature. He then went to MIT and graduated after three years, then went to Berkeley and got a masters in one year, then went to Stanford and it took six years to get his PhD? Why? Because his advisor milked him for his work. She had a pile of papers…

Speaking as someone who has graduated over a dozen PhD students in computer science... Yes, it is possible to complete a PhD in 3-4 years, but it's not really good for your career. The bar our department sets for a PhD is that at the end of it, you should be a world expert in your specific topic. A PhD is more like an apprenticeship, where you develop and refine your skills, your background knowledge in your area of…

> Yes, it is possible to complete a PhD in 3-4 years, but it's not really good for your career.

this is such a "trust me bro it's good for you" con.

i graduated in 3.5 years and went directly to FAANG where i make 2x the highest paid TT at the T10 school i graduated from. do you really have the gall to tell me that it wasn't good for my career to accelerate my PhD and thereby minimize its cost (i.e., opportunity cost).

> A PhD is more like an apprenticeship

the vast majority of advisors have no skills other than how to hack the pub game. they literally have zero clue about the research. the remainder are the "exceptions that prove the rule".

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