
The PhD Problem: "Talk of a ‘higher education bubble’ may not be idle chatter” - cwan
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/01/07/the_phd_problem.php
======
ojbyrne
This diagram (which I found here) probably sums up the importance and the
frustration of Ph.D. programs better than I can:

<http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/>

I'm ABD, Management, for what its worth.

~~~
St-Clock
Although this is a good representation of a Ph.D. contribution, I don't think
this is the point of the current debate. I would be perfectly happy to have
made a dent in the knowledge circle and I think it would be worth the
sacrifice, __from a knowledge perspective __. The problem is that you
sacrifice a lot to make that dent and you often don't see the benefits (e.g.,
an interesting job). It's another story for the supervisor though...

~~~
Create
...yeah. Who gets to keep the profit from the new territory that the student
has conquered, literally risking his life? Who gets to claim ownership (in
grant reports)?

------
ebiester
I am not a PhD student, but my partner is one (non-science) and I watch this
academia issue. You have a lot of people who are really smart but are not math
and science oriented. These are people very good at one thing: reading a lot
and thinking a lot and writing. Other than law (and we have too many of those,
too) what's the best economic use for these people?

~~~
Umalu
I think if you're smart and you've earned a PhD from a good program, you've
proven you have the ability to dig deep into a subject and figure it out and
move the ball forward a bit. This is an economically valuable skill that
should be broadly transferable into many fields, even those far afield from
your PhD studies. I think the problem arises for PhDs when they refuse to
leave their narrow field of specialty. A lucky few can continue to specialize
in academia, but for the rest the real world requires them to get a lot more
general and interdisciplinary in order to succeed, something I fear a lot of
them are unwilling to do. Hence our glut of unhappy PhDs. This is not a new
problem.

~~~
cdavid
Exactly: it is very wrong to think PhD are useless because you won't use what
you did during your PhD. This is stupid on two accounts: even if you do an
academic career, what you did during your PhD is rarely what you will do
later, and PhD teaches you many other things.

I only realized it afterwards, but many people are simply incapable of working
by themselves without being given precise instruction: PhD teaches you that in
some way (of course, there is a selection bias). It also trains you to
communicate to other, which is a very valuable skill. You are also used to
being criticized on somehow objective criterion: few people are able to take
critics in any other way than personal. Finally, you almost always learn
tenacity.

For me, saying that PhD is a bubble because there are few academics positions
is like saying being an entrepreneur is a bubble because so few people become
very rich. Even failure teach you a lot (where failure would be defined as not
becoming an academic in the PhD case).

~~~
St-Clock
+1 for "you almost always learn tenacity". I've seen many good and bad Ph.D.
students, but in the end, the ones who got their Ph.D. were the tenacious
ones, not necessarily the best or brightest ones.

------
miloshasan
The premise that Ph.D. degrees are supposed to be mainly training for academic
careers is wrong, at least in technical/engineering fields.

It is very common for people to enter e.g. CS or EE programs with no intention
of pursuing an academic career, and instead planning to find an industry job
afterwards. Indeed, there were some people I met in grad school that left
well-paying jobs at (say) Microsoft with the intention of getting a Ph.D. and
going back to industry to work on more interesting stuff. As far as I know,
they usually succeeded.

Does a Ph.D. increase your expected salary, if you get an industry job
afterwards? Probably not enough to be worth it. Does it raise the level of
problems you will be solving, and the quality of people you will be surrounded
with? Absolutely.

------
rmorrison
There's a similar problem with law.

While there are attorneys who get jobs at big law and make $150k+ starting, a
significant percentage of students entering law school this year will not get
a positive return on investment over the course of their career.

{The cost of the law degree} + {The opportunity cost of not working for three
years} > {the increased salary that they'll make over the remainder of their
career}

EDIT: There were a bunch of articles floating around about this over the past
year, here's one: <http://www.abanet.org/lsd/legaled/value.pdf>, or more
recently
[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/business/09law.html?src=bu...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/business/09law.html?src=busln)

~~~
miloshasan
I would expect that an oversupply of lawyers would make them cheaper to hire
and nicer to deal with. If we instead have a small group of lawyers that are
expensive and unpleasant, while a lot of younger graduates cannot find jobs,
I'd expect there must be some powerful artificial barriers of entry created by
the group of insiders, though I have no idea what they could be...

~~~
dagw
I'm guessing it's because when you are hiring a lawyer it often means that at
best millions of dollars or your entire livelihood is at stake and, at worst,
your freedom or literally your life is at stake. In those situations most
people aren't in a mood to bargain-hunt or take a risk with an unknown and
untested product, if they have an option.

------
InclinedPlane
I think it's pretty certain there's a higher education bubble.

Consider, most higher wage jobs require a college degree, sometimes any
degree. Many people attending college are doing so merely to better their
career prospects. Non-trade school colleges actually do not teach much, on
average, more so for non-technical degrees. It's getting easier and easier to
obtain financing for higher education.

Overall we have the classic elements of a bubble. People "investing"
(attending college) because of market rather than personal valuations. People
investing more casually than they otherwise would because of easy financing.
When people stop making investing decisions based on personal judgment and
begin making investing decisions blindly based on what they think the market
is doing the result is a bubble. It seems pretty clear the same thing is
happening in higher education.

------
kijinbear
There would be a lot more academic jobs for Ph.D.s if colleges and
universities hired as many professors as undergrads need. Unfortunately, this
would cost a lot of money, so we're left with undergrads suffering gigantic
classes and doctorates suffering joblessness.

~~~
javert
How many professors do undergrads "need"? I think we need to revamp the system
to focus more on self-learning, and decrease the emphasis on lectures.

No point in having a super expert physics researcher tenured professor who
hates teaching and can't teach worth shit teaching a bunch of students, when
he could be doing his research and the students could be watching a recorded
lecture of the same material from someone who _likes_ teaching, over the
internet (e.g. MIT's online course offerings).

~~~
te_chris
But then how could the students watching the recorded video ask questions of
the lecturer? There are many problems with the way higher education is
delivered, but i doubt video is the answer. There needs to be some sort of
recognition and employment position created within academic institutions that
doesn't punish academics because they enjoy teaching. Video lessons are not
really that solution when you consider that this issue (lack of effective
teachers at tertiary level and lack of encouragement for academic staff to be
good teachers) is one primarily born out of the greed of academic
institutions.

~~~
aridiculous
This could vary by institution, but at my former school (and the ones on MIT
open courseware), students rarely ask questions. There's some embarrassment
factor, but I suspect it's mostly because it takes time to formulate your
confusion into a question AND there's simply not enough time for everybody's
questions, and every student feels that.

~~~
te_chris
I guess I was less addressing the issue of asking questions in class (which
you're right, did not happen a lot in the bigger lectures at my university -
though it still did - but was super important once you were at 300 level and
above and the classes we're a lot smaller with a lot more dialogue between
lecturer and student) than the fact that this sort of policy gives academic
institutions (that charge students thousands of dollars to attend) even less
incentive to provide students with quality education from enthusiastic
teachers.

------
alanpca
This may be true of the Liberal Arts types of degrees, but where do you think
the engineering fields stand?

Engineers and computer science PhD students don't typically have to rely on
landing a professorship, as there are companies that hire the same
individuals.

But, this definitely gives me something to think about as I start my MSc next
week.

~~~
larsberg
Further, at least in Computer Science, most of my fellow PhD students came in
explicitly _not_ interested in professor jobs. They just wanted the freedom to
work on larger problems (in a research lab or at the higher levels in a
company) that a PhD affords.

Now in my fourth year, I can say that there are very few of us who are even
planning to do the tenure-track academic job hunt. More than there are jobs
available (in the US), of course.

~~~
redthrowaway
I think CS is somewhat unique. Most of my professors got their MS, worked for
a decade or two, then went back for their PhD and taught from there. In a way,
it's great: most of my professors have fairly extensive real-world experience.
Last semester my SENG prof was sick, so he got one of the CS profs to come in
and talk to us about industry for a day. Here's a guy who was a software
architect for some fairly large companies talking about his fuckups, and the
stupid things he learned in school that he had to unlearn in the real world. I
find having that kind of experience on tap to be eminently useful.

~~~
billswift
I don't think it's that unique. When I was in school, in the early 1980s, many
engineering professors had similarly returned to the university after gaining
professional experience. I remember hearing that that was normal for most
engineering schools. And while less common, it was also true of many in the
business school.

~~~
redthrowaway
That's undoubtedly true. My comment was meant to be taken as a foil to arts
PhDs. My cousin's boyfriend is doing an economics/geography/statistics post-
doc (modelling the behaviour of people in cities in regards to travel to and
from work, traffic, etc), and his focus is entirely on research. He would be
very hard pressed to get a job in the private sector, so his goal is to get
published many times then get a tenure track position at a research
university. There's nothing wrong with that, but I appreciate the fact that my
professors have actually worked in the field they're training us for.

------
vyrotek
_"What happens when you take a degree whose main use is teaching other people
who are taking degrees?"_

I once had a philosophy professor admit this in class. He basically told
everyone not to even bother with a degree in philosophy because they would
only end up competing for the same teaching jobs.

~~~
brudgers
On the other hand, YC is the product of a philosophy major.

------
joe_the_user
Shimers college, a great books college, had a tuition of $21,000/year in
2009–2010 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimer_College>

"Classes are exclusively small seminars in which students discuss original
source material rather than read textbooks." Shimers is also rated among the
top liberal arts schools in the country.

IE, education involving more attention from teachers can be _cheaper_ than
what now the standard in college education. The large university today is
essentially a racket which takes undergraduate tuition to pay for the capital
expenses (building-booms) and then tells the undergraduates how lucky they are
to be there.

------
Create
No it is not idle chatter: and to make matters worse, some attempts to cure
the situation just make it worse. For PhD-s, at least.

The European Commission is making an experiment within its FP-s (i.e. FP6) to
introduce an "alternative" training after a BSc or MSc (doesn't matter which
really), called Early Stage Training (EST). It is supposed to alleviate the
overproduction of devaluated PhD-s, by proposing a "new and improved"
alternative.

EST-s get all the upsides of a PhD programme: they are scheduled to
conferences in advance (i.e. ACEOLE in IEEE, CHEP etc.) and don't really get
their papers rejected (their supervisors - and coauthors - tend to be on
Editorial Boards). They also get full pension during the training, 500€/month
for training expenses (conferences). At the end, they are not required to
write a thesis, and would be formally expected to go to work in the industry.

But. Already having the credentials in research (i.e. conf. attendances etc.
on CV) EST-s can more easily stay in public research institutions, and if they
bother to apply a dissertator (i.e. paperclip) to their 2-3 proceedings paper
(which they don't need to write anyway), they can "get downgrade too", by
handing it in for a PhD certificate (which committee would refuse an
application containing 2-3 peer reviewed papers in a field?) It is also good
for the supervisors, because FP WP-s are good money, can be turned to career
benefits without the downside of inflating their own scientific grade peer
pool.

And the doctoral students can only watch this through (on conferences too) and
are expected to suck it up. Invest several years (no pension, min. salary,
min. publication budget etc.) to be advised to go to Vegas in the end.

------
liedra
There seems to be a lot of generalisation going on in these sorts of articles.
The situation in the US might be bad for humanities doctorates but if you're
going into academia there's almost no chance you'll be able to find a job near
where you grew up. You have to have an open mind and be willing to travel or
diversify by finding applications of your chosen subject. Then it's down to
networking, building your portfolio (publications), and creating your own
research projects (taking advantage of things like early career research
grants). People who succeed in academia make their own way, they don't wait
for things to be handed to them on a silver platter.

------
yason
The PhD issue sounds like it's about gaming a system: merely trying to
maximize yields from hard studying, assuming that the degrees have, or ought
to have, an intrinsic value, and that value had better be somehow reflected
economically and on the job/career markets.

It's all talked about as if there was some absolute value of a PhD that works
the same for everyone. That there was a thing that would unilaterally be a
good choice for just anyone who only can take it and carry it out.

But, in reality, the world has a different world for everyone.

In the real world, the valuations of events and choices and lessons aren't
apparent, until perhaps later. The valuations don't necessarily come in terms
of mere financial survival, like getting a job or getting more money. It's all
dependent on the time, the place, the person, and the circumstances leading to
the choices made and the lessons learned from them.

For example, for one man it might be absolutely golden to first start a PhD,
then end up flunking out, internalize some of the facts of his life, and
finally end up doing something different, something that is him even if it's
not highly regarded in the careerwise or otherwise, in how we like to define
"success". Yet, for another man, starting a PhD, finishing it, getting a top
job, building a top-notch career for ten years might, in the scope of his
life, be the worst possible choice that merely helped him to spend 15 years
avoiding ever being challenged in his life's weak spots.

The former man has gone somewhere, the latter man has gone nowhere. A PhD is
can be perfect if you can channel your life, your self and your creativity
through it. A PhD can be worthless if you just do it for the sake of the
degree.

------
bryanh
Bubble spotting is extremely difficult, but all the same, I have a hard time
people will continue to pay the increasing costs for _any_ degree that will be
worth less and less over time (as the labor pool is inundated with people with
identical degrees).

I am wondering where the "wall of rationality" is for education costs, and
will we stop at that wall (efficient markets prevail) or go past that wall
(into a bubble)?

------
NIL8
The U.S. Occupational Outlook projections seem to say the exact opposite:

<http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos066.htm#outlook>

I would like to see a breakdown of careers to compare which occupations
actually benefit from a PhD and which would benefit from a mixture of
postsecondary education and some other complimentary training.

------
dustinupdyke
Is it truly so black and white that one might say those in the humanities do
not go into "industrial jobs"?

------
mmaunder
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymsHLkB8u3s#t=3m24s>

------
klbarry
Note: I don't have a PhD, this is just based on the article and other things I
have read.

It seems to me that this article goes around the two main, most obvious
aspects of a PhD;

1) Improve yourself (smarter, better critical thinking, etc) 2) Appearing more
valuable to others (Getting grants, getting hired)

So the question is, does it fulfill these goals, and if it doesn't, do
prospective applicants realize it?

Certainly there are better uses for your time if you want to appear more
valuable to others (work experience), and there might be better ways to
improve yourself for the same time and money.

If the average applicant realizes this, but proceeds anyway, then it's not a
bubble, as there must be other factors at play when they think about the value
of their degree. If they don't, then there is a bubble that will burst when
the information becomes more plain.

~~~
mayank
In my experience, the PhD does makes you smarter in a sort of trial by fire. I
haven't met a single (math/CS) PhD student who wasn't intimidated by the
magnitude of their research field when they started, or seriously intimidated
by the math in a seminal research paper in their area, but came out with a
mastery of the subject (which is not to say that there aren't any crap PhDs --
there are). At the very, very least, if you finish your PhD diligently, or
even get close to finishing it, you will develop a confidence that you can in
fact chip away at the most abstract and difficult problems, and usually come
up with a good solution, while building on the efforts of much smarter people.
At a very practical CS/algorithmic level, a lot more will seem possible, and
you'll reinvent the wheel a lot less.

I've often seen very smart people in CS/ML who didn't have a PhD. However,
they sometimes also lack the body of knowledge in advanced algorithms or
statistics that comes from 5-6 years of monk-like reading and chipping away at
immense intellectual problems that have been tackled by some of the smartest
people in the world.

So if you don't mind 5-6 years of near-poverty, intensely difficult problems,
a possible lack of interest from your advisor (thankfully not in my case),
peer-review rejections that sometimes seem arbitrary and disheartening, and
can take 3 months to come around each time, large minds and frequently larger
egos, intense orgasmic breakthrough eureka moments that come from spending
months or years working on a problem, self-learning some truly amazing things,
and drinking discount "St. Remy" brandy instead of Remy Martin, then by all
means go in for a PhD -- you'll come out sharper if you make it.

~~~
javert
And you can actually get paid a decent stipend (e.g. not be near-poverty) as a
grad student in computer science.

~~~
mayank
Um...I guess "decent" is subjective :)

~~~
sliverstorm
To some people, 'above the poverty line' is pretty hot stuff. Me, for example.

If you've worked part time as a student all your life, even the poverty line
seems like a cornucopia of wealth.

