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The Ph.D Bust: America's Awful Market for Young Scientists

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Ph.D Bust: America's Awful Market for Young Scientists

#91

Post by goodcanadian »

suyash wrote: post #6

The article fails to compare Computer Science PhD's who are in high demand and job openings for them far exceed the supply of CS PhD grads.

I am extremely skeptical of this . . .

Of course, there are plenty of job openings that ask for PhDs, but most of the work does not truly require a PhD. Those jobs are filtering out the vast majority of capable candidates while targeting people who have already shown that they would prefer a different sort of work by doing the PhD in the first place. Is it a surprise that they can't fill the position?

Does that mean that CS PhDs can easily get jobs? Perhaps.

Does it mean they can easily get interesting jobs? I am more doubtful.

Does it mean that producing more PhDs is necessary or even useful? I doubt it.

Re: The Ph.D Bust: America's Awful Market for Young Scientists

#92

Post by tomrod »

javert wrote: post #26
Xcelerate wrote: post #20

I am surprised that so many people are relating PhD's to the money you'll make. I hear (very frequently) that "the amount of time you spend doing your PhD will put you far behind the 4 years of having a job" or "if you want to get rich, go into ...", or "management is where all the money is; you need an MBA for that". Uh... I'm doing a PhD because I like scientific research and can't stand the thought of being a proc…

your chances of being able to do exactly the kind of research you want goes up significantly with a PhD, plus you've already had the experience of doing it for 4 years. I'm not so sure that's a valid generalization. I'm getting a PhD in computer science, but any corporate R&D department I know of that would hire a fresh graduate would only let you do R in service of their particular D needs, i.e., you have too little…

You ever hear of Horn from Horn & Johnson fame (Matrix Analysis)? Guy had a 9-5 for years and researched at nights in his home office. That would be my ideal setup, I think.

Re: The Ph.D Bust: America's Awful Market for Young Scientists

#93

Post by timr »

begurken wrote: post #86
timr wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Have you or somebody you know successfully made the transition from (non-computer) science into a tech career? In the current economy, what are the chances you'd hire a highly motivated science dropout with programming competence and basic stats knowledge?" I did it, have worked with others who have done it, and would now hire people who did. The important part is your ability to program. There are tons of PhD stude…

Also, do not be deceived by "data science": it's mostly a bullshit term, and translates roughly to "programmer who knows basic statistics" This is utter rubbish; I really wish people would keep quiet about things they know nothing about. I suggest that you have never actually discussed a domain with a data scientist if you think it's "basic statistics". In our dev. shop, we have a lot of great programmers, but none o…

"I suggest that you have never actually discussed a domain with a data scientist if you think it's 'basic statistics'."

Utter rubbish, perhaps. But since I've actually done the job, I do happen to know something about the subject. It's a marketing term, not a term of art.

The vast majority of "data science" performed at web companies boils down to knowledge of summary statistics and probability theory, a smattering of basic statistical models, and (most importantly) the ability to write code. There's not much that would challenge an advanced undergraduate, let alone a doctoral-level statistician.

Re: The Ph.D Bust: America's Awful Market for Young Scientists

#94

Post by tomrod »

malloc47 wrote: post #66
Evbn wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opportunity cost. PhD stipends pay less than unskilled labor, after you subtract "tuition"

If you consider the sheer number of hours I tend to spend on my dissertation work compared to the stipend I get, I'm paid criminally less than minimum wage. But you're not given the leeway to focus "exclusively" on a single research contribution in a focused manner in other higher-paying options. Even if you're not taking out a loan in the monetary sense, you're taking out a loan from your long term earnings, one tha…

> If you consider the sheer number of hours I tend to spend on my dissertation work compared to the stipend I get, I'm paid criminally less than minimum wage.

That may be so. Are you familiar with the concept of a wage being equivalent to the marginal product of labor (or value of last hour worked)? :).

I'm with you. I'm working on my dissertation at the moment.

Re: The Ph.D Bust: America's Awful Market for Young Scientists

#95

Post by lolcraft »

hyperbovine wrote: post #12
insaneirish wrote: post #3

Most jobs, even technical ones, truly do not require a Ph. D. This is just the market sorting things out. Why have zero (or negative) income to get post baccalaureate education if you can go work somewhere (for money) and learn on the job?

Physical and intellectual freedom are worth more to me than money.

Agreed, but, I don't see what a PhD has to do with any of these. My snarky, probably very ignorant, reply would be something like, if you want intellectual freedom, get a subscription to a library. Renegotiate your lowly Bachelor of Sciences' contract to work fewer hours, that'll get you physical freedom.

Seriously. IMO someone reading through, say, the TAOCP, Rudin's Real and Complex Analysis, Horowitz & Hill's TAOE, or any selection of good, difficult books like these, will have acquired undoubtedly more intellectual freedom afterwards than any PhD graduate. For starters, it's self-directed study, which is orders of magnitude harder, and more important to self-growth, than study directed by an advisor, or any bit of structure. It's also faster. It doesn't sink you in any significant debt, which is a plus on the order of physical freedom. It's much more eclectic, which is incredibly important, both in terms of the monopoly power you'll bear, and the scientific value your unique analogies between concepts will create. Hopefully.

Sure, there's no paper afterwards to show. My take is that, credentials or not, you'll still have to show your competence to a potential employer or investor, your exposition tailored to the particular needs you suspect they have.

Re: The Ph.D Bust: America's Awful Market for Young Scientists

#96

Post by geebee »

One thing this article leaves out is the sky high attrition rates in PhD programs. The grim statistics presented are for the people who actually finish. Overall attrition rates for PhDs in engineering, the best of the bunch, are about 35%. It only gets worse for science and humanities. Keep in mind that attrition rates for elite law or medical schools are generally less than one half of one percent. So it is no exaggeration to say people fail out of elite PhD programs at roughly 100 times the rate for elite professional schools.

It does frustrate me to watch congress base public policy on the notion of a shortage of scientists and engineers when the evidence clearly does not support that assertion.

Re: The Ph.D Bust: America's Awful Market for Young Scientists

#97

Post by [deleted] »

Xcelerate wrote: post #88
flatline wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nate Silver has a similar point[1], and claims that he has been successful by choosing fields that were not already saturated with excellent players. Baseball prediction was waiting to be cracked wide open with modern statistical techniques. It would now be much, much harder to make meaningful gains, you'd be competing with a host of competent firms who have years of experience and have long since claimed all the low…

> Baseball prediction was waiting to be cracked wide open with modern statistical techniques. Interesting point. How about Bitcoin? Am I too late to that game, or is it too hard to model?

[deleted]

Re: The Ph.D Bust: America's Awful Market for Young Scientists

#98

Post by fnbr »

zissou wrote: post #77
confluence wrote: post #48

The problem here is merely a misunderstanding of career statistics. The statistics for success in academia are thoroughly against any one Ph.D. The competition is too high, the rewards are too low, and the competitors are too desperate. This is not a place where you wish to compete - unless you have some kind of overwhelming advantage - aka really, really brilliant - you know who you are. For everyone else - look str…

Couldn't agree more! I'm an economics Ph.D. dropout who focused primarily on microeconomics and game theory (because like you said, current macro theory [see: DSGE] is completely bogus) and I think your points about finding monopolies is a great one. I left my Ph.D. early because it was a losing game as I wanted to be learning more computer science since it was a necessary skill to obtain in addition to a microeconom…

Hey, I'm an undergrad considering a phd in Econ. Could I email you some questions about your experience?

I'd also love to hear about the big data work that you do.

Re: The Ph.D Bust: America's Awful Market for Young Scientists

#99

Post by prewett »

geebee wrote: post #96

One thing this article leaves out is the sky high attrition rates in PhD programs. The grim statistics presented are for the people who actually finish. Overall attrition rates for PhDs in engineering, the best of the bunch, are about 35%. It only gets worse for science and humanities. Keep in mind that attrition rates for elite law or medical schools are generally less than one half of one percent. So it is no exagg…

I'm not sure that all of them fail out. When I got my masters, the prevailing wisdom seemed to be that you had a better chance of being accepted if you applied for a Ph.D. and then quit with a Masters, which is what I did. Also, many of the other posters here decided that the job prospects were terrible and quit.

Re: The Ph.D Bust: America's Awful Market for Young Scientists

#100

Post by bathat »

javert wrote: post #26
Xcelerate wrote: post #20

I am surprised that so many people are relating PhD's to the money you'll make. I hear (very frequently) that "the amount of time you spend doing your PhD will put you far behind the 4 years of having a job" or "if you want to get rich, go into ...", or "management is where all the money is; you need an MBA for that". Uh... I'm doing a PhD because I like scientific research and can't stand the thought of being a proc…

your chances of being able to do exactly the kind of research you want goes up significantly with a PhD, plus you've already had the experience of doing it for 4 years. I'm not so sure that's a valid generalization. I'm getting a PhD in computer science, but any corporate R&D department I know of that would hire a fresh graduate would only let you do R in service of their particular D needs, i.e., you have too little…

Sure, but, unless you're a rockstar graduate student, you do R in service of your advisor's grant needs. Unless you're a rockstar post-doc, you do R in service of your PI's grant needs. Unless you're a rockstar PI, you do R in service of your own grant needs. Wherever you end up, someone is writing the checks. That someone gets to determine what you research.

I'd guess that computer science is very different from experimental physical science disciplines: In experimental, you have to have a research advisor with grant money if you want to have vacuum pumps/oscilloscopes/glassware/liquid nitrogen/etc., even if you plan to TA your way through grad school.

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