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

theguardian.com

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

#71

Post by pishpash »

DSingularity wrote: post #56
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…

Also, professors are so often in no position to offer genuine advice. They often have massive conflicts of interest which they do not disclose: funding sources, requirements, and plans.

Money is the source of evil when it comes to corrupting graduate school programs. This has been especially acute since the late 2000's.

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

#72

Post by Miltnoid »

warcher wrote: post #53

The only real rot I see in the PhD track is the dangerous imbalance of degrees to jobs in certain areas (not STEM usually, although STEM is pretty uncompromising for tenure track). IMHO in the humanities the PhD is some kind of sick ponzi scheme, where advanced degrees serve to subsidize tenured faculty's careers with little to no hope of going on to anything of their own. (I know STEM isn't much better, but it's a l…

I don't know a single reputable program that makes you pay for a PhD. Typically the salaries are subsidized through the school, that gets it's money from taking a cut of stem grants, donations, masters tuition, and undergraduate tuition. Saying that most humanities professors get their salaries by doing some sort of ponzi scheme of charging their advisees is just spreading misinformation.

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

#73

Post by klodolph »

DSingularity wrote: post #56
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…

Also, professors are so often in no position to offer genuine advice. They often have massive conflicts of interest which they do not disclose: funding sources, requirements, and plans.

In my own personal experience, professors and academic advisers have consistently given me the worst advice (about choosing a path or personal development) when I have asked for it. It takes a certain temperament to become a professor. There are a couple exceptions, but most of the professors and academic advisers I talked to seemed to be unable or unwilling to connect with people who were not there for academia qua academia, and very few had enough experience outside academia to give any kind of credible comparison.

Find someone who got a PhD and works in industry, or who got a PhD and works in an unrelated field, or someone who didn't finish their PhD. More viewpoints will give you a better picture.

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

#74

Post by eli_gottlieb »

tachyonbeam wrote: post #57
extralego wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These phenomenons are interesting to witness for someone like myself who loves doing research but followed a very different academic path because I felt demonized by formal school systems in high school and at a state uni. Speaking purely from observation of many peers, there were definitely some who navigated the social and academic realms well, and garnered respect from socially-encourageable and conformist mentors…

I work in a large academic research lab and I'm with you on the lack of creativity and conformism. Most people here don't have ambitious ideas. They always think in terms of basic improvements to ideas that were recently published about. They seem to automatically think that progress can only be made in the direction of the latest cool papers from well-established authors in the field. Me, I'm with Peter Thiel... Don…

What institution are you at? We've got plenty of weirdos here where I work. I'm one such person.

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

#75

Post by jderick »

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…

According to this website, the baseline for depression in America is 6.7%.

http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/conditions/depression

1/3 is not normal at all.

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

#76

Post by SuperGent »

tachyonbeam wrote: post #57
extralego wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These phenomenons are interesting to witness for someone like myself who loves doing research but followed a very different academic path because I felt demonized by formal school systems in high school and at a state uni. Speaking purely from observation of many peers, there were definitely some who navigated the social and academic realms well, and garnered respect from socially-encourageable and conformist mentors…

I work in a large academic research lab and I'm with you on the lack of creativity and conformism. Most people here don't have ambitious ideas. They always think in terms of basic improvements to ideas that were recently published about. They seem to automatically think that progress can only be made in the direction of the latest cool papers from well-established authors in the field. Me, I'm with Peter Thiel... Don…

Because of the way that STEM is taught, free thinking is often discouraged, and the 'freaks' leave academia as soon as possible or become conformist. This is not a new thing, Einstein was mocked for his free thinking ideas.

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

#77

Post by pytyper2 »

chess19 wrote: post #68
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…

Of course this quote also suggests that maybe people who go in to PhD programs have higher rates of mental health issues. I would definitely argue that PhD programs are both bad for mental health and also attract people with poor mental health in the first place. I have known plenty of people who didn't feel like they had the skills (both technical and/or social) to go in to industry so they applied to grad school.

Hoping that the degree will mask a lack of actual skills. I encounter this often, 'guy has phd but struggles with the decisions to make actual progress in practical terms'. Is it possible to attain a phd and rely mostly on rote memorization? Are all phd candidates required to make an original contribution to their respective field?

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

#78

Post by btrettel »

extralego wrote: post #65
btrettel wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that academia selects for conformists, which is bad for curiousity driven research. Jeff Schmidt's book "Disciplined Minds" makes a similar argument. I have not read it all, though, so perhaps I should pick it up again. The book has a good description of the problem, but in my view the author views the process as more political than it necessarily is. I also think the book's solutions are unlikely to help. Bu…

Oof. Funny you mention that. I just bought it, but haven’t read it yet; only flipped through a little. It’s clearly a dangerous topic for me and if I can find the discipline in myself, I’ll return it before it’s too late. Thanks for the thoughts, and the other comments here are all very lucid. These points aren’t lost on me, and I expect plenty of truth to them.

Norbert Wiener's book "Invention" is another on a similar topic. He argues that research should be driven more by the interests of individual researchers rather than managers and bureaucrats.

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

#79

Post by jderick »

One thought I had about this was related to a book I was reading recently about the Math Olympiad. It was discussing how in the US the way math is taught never allows the students to struggle with any hard problems. That experience of going up against something potentially intractable is totally foreign to most students, even at the undergrad level I suspect. When you throw someone into a totally new environment where their life revolves around doing something they have never done before, it is kind of a shock. I think part of the solution here would be to introduce harder problem solving earlier into the standard curriculum. For this reason, I would be curious if PhDs in Russia or Eastern Europe, where the school systems are known for being more mathematically difficult from an early age, suffer from the same level of problems that exist in the US system.

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

#80

Post by [deleted] »

chaosbutters314 wrote: post #60
DSingularity wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, professors are so often in no position to offer genuine advice. They often have massive conflicts of interest which they do not disclose: funding sources, requirements, and plans.

this. They don't mention to students, who are too inexperienced, to understand funding and how it works. Professors want the prestige of having tons of students which isn't always in the best interest of the student. The professor's plan can also be "vague" in order to always hold the carrot in front of the horse's mouth. Endlessly chasing something it will never reach.

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