Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees • Hacker News Board

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#91

Post by derbOac » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 9:34 PM UTC

_hark wrote: post #7

Maybe a correction is needed. Academia has become so gamified. It's supposed to be about ideas, truth, beauty. Too many are in it for the prestige, which has ironically made it less prestigious. Very few true eccentrics left.

I don't disagree with you really, although the reasons for that are complicated.

Everyone wants the benefits of research but no one wants to pay for it, and slowly over the last three or four decades administrations have pushed researchers into these Faustian bargains that have led to the system have today. A lot of what we have is a pyramid scheme, but that pyramid scheme exists in part because people somewhere along the legislator-funder-administrative chain decided that is what would be rewarded. Once it started and was encouraged it snowballed.

All of it is made worse by governments that don't seem to understand the problems or implications of their decisions. Anti-immigration laws (not talking about the US here actually necessarily) hurts enrollment, which has downstream effects even though that immigration is bringing in net income. Yes, indirect costs are gamified sometimes, and there should be some accountability system put in place with researcher protections (the original point of tenure), but no, that doesn't mean just cutting indirect costs down to some unsustainable level that doesn't reflect real costs.

Also to be fair there's a lot of this gamification and false prestige that happens all over the US and world economy, we just don't like to admit it. I think it's one of the defining problems of our time probably.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#92

Post by vonneumannstan » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 9:38 PM UTC

In STEM in particular the opportunity costs of a PhD are extremely high and with little payoff at the end. Even if you want to stay in academia, which is the only real reason to do a PhD now, there are far more PhDs graduating per year than open faculty positions. Many get stuck in Postdoc or adjunct hell for years and can never get a tenure track role.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#93

Post by jcarrano » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 9:43 PM UTC

asabjorn wrote: post #5

If you are high skill enough to do a PhD in anything meaningful, why enter into an open-ended low-paid work contract with a professor with no definite end-date on when the PhD is granted? An american has even less incentive, as the reward of a work permit is not on the other side. Only reason should be that you want to be a professor, research can be done in private companies without this license. 95% of a PhD is wor…

In my rather limited experience, private research was way more productive and enjoyable and I was able to do it and get things working without a PhD. In fact, during my short stay a iRobot I was quite surprised to find that none of the PhD's there could help me with what I was doing or provide guidance.

Later I worked with PhDs and PhD candidates in a university setting. What shocked me the most was the narrowness of their knowledge and their lack of consideration for practical matters.

I'd rather let the market judge my work than an academic committee.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#94

Post by derbOac » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 9:45 PM UTC

glial wrote: post #31

rhines wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for other fields, but this does seem true of computer science. I worked in a university lab for a couple years and knew many PhD students, and most of them were most interested in leveraging the PhD to make more money in industry. I think the issue, should that be an issue, is in industry setting unrealistic requirements for education. There certainly are some jobs where the work is true research and a…

> industry setting unrealistic requirements for education This sounds like a market dynamic to me. If it were difficult to find qualified candidates, requirements would be lowered. Just leaving this here... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction

Overproduction is relative to the system under consideration. If you set up a system in a certain way, almost all labor can be overproduced.

To take an extreme rhetorical example: if slavery is allowed, human capitol becomes ridiculously cheap and you can say labor is overproduced.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#95

Post by jltsiren » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 9:46 PM UTC

zitterbewegung wrote: post #82

fhars wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counter party to your opportunity costs doesn't send collection agencies, though.

$250k in savings in six years is doable with a salary of $125k after undergrad.

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 common that entry-level jobs in highly paid fields start at close to the median wage. Salaries can rise rapidly once you have demonstrated your worth. But unless there is a talent shortage in your field, it doesn't make sense to pay much for an unknown quantity.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#96

Post by mrguyorama » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 9:46 PM UTC

dingnuts wrote: post #90

BeetleB wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to take away from his brilliance, but generally Taylor approximations perform far worse than the standard library implementations. It's also the first tool of choice for physicists, so who knows ...? My guess, though, is that if he improved the performance, he used some other wizardry (Chebyshev or something similar).

Honestly the whole story sounds like a tall tale to me. > He also learned C++ in a weekend and was vastly better at it by the end of that weekend than most people I’ve met in industry I doubt this. Really, really doubt this. Sure, geniuses exist, but I don't buy it.

Having seen physicists code, I REALLY doubt this.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#97

Post by null_shift » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 9:48 PM UTC

dingnuts wrote: post #90

BeetleB wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to take away from his brilliance, but generally Taylor approximations perform far worse than the standard library implementations. It's also the first tool of choice for physicists, so who knows ...? My guess, though, is that if he improved the performance, he used some other wizardry (Chebyshev or something similar).

Honestly the whole story sounds like a tall tale to me. > He also learned C++ in a weekend and was vastly better at it by the end of that weekend than most people I’ve met in industry I doubt this. Really, really doubt this. Sure, geniuses exist, but I don't buy it.

If he already knew how to code in other object oriented languages, and was really just learning C++ syntax over the weekend, it’s not as much of a stretch.

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#98

Post by aprilthird2021 » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 9:51 PM UTC

A lot of people will point out the utility of a doctoral degree is low, but there's another angle.

Men, specifically, are becoming less likely to enroll in Medical or Law school also. Women pick up the slack here but not in STEM doctoral degrees.

I don't think men are less competitive. See how many are in tech and finance still. I think they just see academia as a place that isn't for them and are less likely to opt for more years in it than they need

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#99

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 9:52 PM UTC

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #77

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

Aren't grad school students just another form of visa-indentured labor by now?

[deleted]

Re: Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees

#100

Post by cjbgkagh » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 9:53 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #87

BeetleB wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to take away from his brilliance, but generally Taylor approximations perform far worse than the standard library implementations. It's also the first tool of choice for physicists, so who knows ...? My guess, though, is that if he improved the performance, he used some other wizardry (Chebyshev or something similar).

Sometimes what you need is less precision, much faster. Carmack's famous inverse square root falls into this category. If anything it's a lesson that the definition of brilliance is being in the wrong place at the wrong time... ;-)

I think Carmack credits someone else as the origin - possibly some magazine entry.

These days I think the reciprocal square root intrinsic is the fastest where precision is not that important.

I think there was a bit twiddling hack for pop count which was consistently faster than the equivalent cpu intrinsic due to some weird pipelining effect, so sometimes it is possible to beat the compilers and intrinsics with clever hacks.