

Fix the PhD - psawaya
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v472/n7343/full/472259b.html

======
shou4577
From the article: "Imagine bright young things entering a new kind of science
PhD, in which both they and their supervisors embrace from the start the idea
that graduates will go on to an array of demanding careers — government,
business, non-profit and education — and work towards that goal (see page
381). The students meet supervisors from a range of disciplines; they acquire
management, communication, leadership and other transferable skills alongside
traditional academic development of critical thinking and analysis; and they
spend six months to a year abroad."

This sounds a lot like my undergrad degree, and not at all what I expect from
a PhD.

In my opinion, people get bachelors degrees in order to get a job. It used to
be that was what trade school was for, but now it seems that you need a degree
just to qualify for an interview in a lot of fields. In my opinion, though,
you get a PhD because you are interested in the subject - not because you need
it for a job.

I think PhDs are an end in themselves, not a means to an end. Please don't
water down my PhD by forcing me to do cross-discipline studies that do not
interest me, or by teaching me management skills - I'm not in business school.

Now, a smart PhD student would realize that they might be getting a job in the
industry, and they might not be able to get the job that they are hoping for,
and plan accordingly. For example, while I hope to get a job at a research
institution when I graduate, I realize that it is possible that I may not, so
I take extra-curricular courses and seminars to prepare me for other jobs. But
I do this because I choose to, not because some people somewhere else think
that I might not get the job they think that I want.

Frankly, it may be rude, but if there are more PhDs than job openings, that's
a good thing. It creates a lot of competition. It keeps mediocre people (or at
least it helps to) out of these critical positions. It prevents people (or at
least helps to) from trying to get a PhD solely for the purpose of getting a
job, which cheapens the degree all around.

So long as PhD students are aware of their future prospects (and I don't know
any who aren't - this stuff is crammed down our throats), I think that this is
fine. Entrepreneurs do this all the time. They know that starting a business
is not guaranteed - indeed, they might go bankrupt. But they might hit it big.
This isn't a problem, and we don't start government initiatives to help
entrepreneurs who fail get a good job anyway. We don't make entrepreneurs take
back-up courses in plumbing and construction, so that when some of them fail
they have a fall-back job. They don't want that job anyway. If they did, they
would prepare for it on their own, because they are smart people.

In science it is the same thing. The people who love science for science's
sake - these are the people we want to be scientists. These are the people we
can trust with tenure, because they would do research even if we didn't pay
them at all. They are smart, and they know that they might not make it into
their dream job, so they can prepare themselves for alternatives if they want.
Or they can shoot for broke, spend years of their lives doing fantastic
research and focusing on doing only the things they love (which, by
coincidence, help the rest of the world). But forcing them to prepare for
alternatives because some of them might benefit from it is just a turn-off.

~~~
khandelwal
"Please don't water down my PhD ... by teaching me management skills - I'm not
in business school.""

Most faculty manage groups of 5 - 20 people (their lab), a budget (their
startup and other research funds) and have to deal with all the problems of
running a team of people with varied skills, interest and motivation. Some
faculty go on to be department heads or directors of institutes. In all these
cases, management skills would be useful. Sure, you're still doing research,
but you'll spend a good chunk of your time managing the lab.

"These are the people we can trust with tenure, because they would do research
even if we didn't pay them at all"

It's this attitude that keeps the postdoc (and in some cases the junior
faculty) salaries so low. Just because you love what you do, you shouldn't
have to raise a family on $40,000/year

~~~
apl
The higher you climb, the less hands-on research (including everything from
planning to write-up to manual procedures) you do -- absolutely. It's
staggering how much money is wasted in the process due to lack of management
skills.

One solution would indeed be adding managerial skills to the PhD curriculum.
However, most PhD will never reach such a "position of power." Hence, the more
efficient way around this issue appears to be hiring of full-time lab
managers.

The whole science-pyramid requires restructuring.

------
tomkinstinch
I'm reminded of this illustration: <http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-
in-pictures/>

As credentials for employment we have already bachelor and master degrees.

Entering a PhD program purely to improve job prospects is asking for trouble.

It seems that the goal of a PhD should be, as it has been, to become a
academic subject expert--one who can either push the boundaries of a field, or
comprehensively educate less knowledgable students. PhD students should be
those with a general passion for a field, not those who hope to use the
experience as a stepping stone to something completely different.

You could argue that certain industrial roles require a degree of
specialization that only a PhD holder would possess. Fine. Working near the
boundary of knowledge like that you're bound to bump into it now and then.
Those are really academic jobs in disguise.

Something a PhD does indicate, I suppose, is that a degree holder possesses
the tenacity and grit to persevere through years of arduous work.

------
nagrom
I am someone doing post-doctoral research, looking for an academic position
and working in a university environment. I've seen students come in to the
university at undergraduate level, students come into the post-graduate
program and leave with PhDs. I've also worked in high schools, helping educate
kids about physics, and taken students from high schools into the university
for 'work-experience' placements.

It strikes me that Nature's second idea is what is actually happening right
now; people are getting PhDs and leaving to do anything else (mostly banking
and medical physics in my field). It's part of an overall trend: our
undergraduate syllabus needs to cover a lot of the stuff I was taught in high
school 15 years ago. Our post-graduates come into our research group with an
expectation of spoon-feeding. Our PhD students have the kind of 'awakening'
experiences that were maybe associated with a good undergraduate program back
in the 60s and 70s. As more people come into education, the experience (but
not necessarily the knowledge) is watered down and so a post-graduate degree
is necessary to turn out the kind of well-rounded, hard-working, self-starting
individual that might have been found exiting an undergraduate program 40
years ago.

Thus a post-doctoral research position becomes essential if one wants to find
an academic position - very, very few people get a permanent position without
doing at least one post-doc.

This may be a good trade-off for the greater numbers with a better education,
but it seems that society's expectations are still to catch up.

------
unignorant
_Imagine bright young things entering a new kind of science PhD, in which both
they and their supervisors embrace from the start the idea that graduates will
go on to an array of demanding careers._

This already seems to be the case in fields like computer science. An academic
career path is only one 'successful' route, among many. It's not uncommon to
see CS PhD students take positions in software development, industry research,
finance/banking, consulting, startups, and so on.

While academics may be biased towards academia, CS students seem well aware of
their options.

~~~
larsberg
Further, at least at my school, the majority of the incoming CS PhD students
have no interest in a tenure-track teaching position and are targeting those
other jobs from the start.

------
iqster
From the article: "That is because increased government research funding from
the US National Institutes of Health and Japan's science and education
ministry has driven expansion of doctoral and postdoctoral education without
giving enough thought to how the labour market will accommodate those who
emerge."

I think this is SPOT ON. I'm surprised this doesn't come up more often. You
can add Canada to the list. Universities are given $$$ (and this is in CDN
funds so you know it is worth something) for the number of PhD students that
graduate their program. While this policy certainly increases the number of
PhDs, it doesn't do anything to help them get jobs afterwards.

I felt this led to a odd situation in recent years. Smart kids in their
Masters program realized that it wasn't the best use of their time to get a
PhD. They got out. The people who are left either really wanted the PhD (for
its own sake or to teach or were simply exceptional scientists), people who
were using it to further immigration goals, and the not-so-smart kids.

------
goalieca
Wow, so much elitest attitude in here. I've seen everything from "don't water
us down" to "back in the old days, degrees used to mean something". My view is
more in line with Nature. We need to fix the system, we need to realize that
management is important if we want to be leaders, and finally that PhD will
gain so much useful skill and insight in their own field and that we should
encourage people to take those skills out into the market. Hyper-specializing
in a specific biological testing technique is all fine and dandy but maybe a
few more broad general skills so that we can do more interdisciplinary work
and solve the hard problems in the world is important as well.

Also, I see grad students and postdoc students as highly skilled labourers. A
lot of what we do is grunt work that can't be automated or easily done because
we're pushing the boundaries and haven't quite smoothed the process out yet.

~~~
shou4577
I think that I'm one of those elitist attitude people. I apologize for this, I
don't mean to sound elitist (I certainly don't think of myself as elite). I
agree with you that we are just skilled laborers.

What I mean to say is that graduate students are adults. Let us decide for
ourselves what is important. I agree that hyper-specialization is probably not
best for humanity, and that interdisciplinary work can really crack open some
unsolved problems. And there are jobs that want people to have these skills. I
think that a grad student is much more hire-able (for many positions) if
he/she has some broad skills. But why should getting a PhD require this?
Shouldn't it be up to the person doing the work to decide whether or not the
work they are doing will help themselves/the world?

I simply don't think that we should alter our degrees to match requirements
for job openings. We certainly should alter our skill sets, but a PhD should
be a certification that you are knowledgeable and capable of research. It's
not (and I don't think that it should be) a certification that you are ready
for a job (regardless of what that job is).

In my opinion, "Getting a PhD" and "Getting a Job" should be as disjoint as
possible. Otherwise people who want one will do the other simply because they
have to, and this is good for nobody.

I think that a Master's degree is more the type of degree that this is suited
for. Most people that I know who are getting Master's degrees are getting them
for the express purpose of getting a specific job. This is fine. Most people I
know who are getting PhD's are getting them for the purpose of learning their
subject, not to get a job. Sure, they need a job after they graduate, but this
is tangential in their motivations, and should therefore be tangential in
degree program as well. At least, that's my opinion.

------
chalst
This is part of Nature's _The Future of the Phd_ series, which has been linked
to a few times here on HN, but never had a proper discussion.

Series: <http://www.nature.com/news/specials/phdfuture/index.html>

------
tseabrooks
The US labor depts numbers for unemployment show something like 10% for folks
without a college degree and 2ish % for people with a phd. This tells me there
are lots of jobs just maybe not in academia. That seems like a good thing to
me. Less publicly funded research and more private industry taking over. (e.g.
SpaceX)

Frankly, lots of people arent cut out for acadeia. I realized I wasn't and
left my phd program with a masters and couldn't be happier.

~~~
apl

      > 10% for folks without a college degree and 2ish % for
      > people with a phd.
    

Doesn't say much about job _quality_ , though. Nobody could sensibly argue
that it's impossible to get a job with a PhD; it evidently isn't. But this
includes career paths that make acquisition of a PhD either pointless or even
detrimental.

Ask, for instance, burger-flipping or even Excel-wielding zoologists if (a)
their PhD was worth the time, effort and money it cost and if (b) they're
happy with their current employment situation. Because, statistically, they're
employed.

~~~
hugh3
The burger-flipping zoologist seems to be a bit of a myth. Of all the folks I
know who have (science) PhDs, they're all either employed in their field _or_
making craploads of money outside it. Of course the latter group of people are
smart enough that they'd _also_ be making craploads if they'd skipped the PhD.

If you do a PhD for the right reasons I don't think you're likely to regret
it. I, for instance, have a PhD in physics because I couldn't imagine _not_
having a PhD in physics. When they offered to pay me a pittance to do physics
research for three and a half years in order to get the word "Doctor" before
my name my reaction was not "hmm, let me calculate the effect of this on my
total lifetime earnings" but "Wow? You mean you'll actually pay me to do this?
A whole pittance? I'm in!"

------
geebee
I liked a suggestion from the RAND institute. This article took the
interesting approach of concluding that the lack fo interest (among Americans)
in Science & Engineering PhD programs is a rational response to long,
uncertain training times and poor pay and career prospects relative to the
"professions" (law, dentistry, mba, medicine, etc..) One suggestion was moving
these PhDs to something more resembling the "professional" model...

<http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html>

"Adopt the “professional school model” for S&E PhD programs. This strategy
aims to reduce the early costs and uncertainties of training for an S&E career
rather than increasing later career rewards. The adoption of this strategy by
academe, even any resolve toward attempting it, seems remote. Still, more
young people might select these S&E doctoral programs over professional
schools if the years to S&E PhD completion were rolled back to, say, 1970
levels, if this term were predictable and uniform, and if the subjective and
arbitrary aspects of the PhD path were curtailed."

Truth is, almost all (98%+) of of the people who get into Stanford's law
school or MBA program finish their degrees on time. You can't say this about
the PhD programs - not a knock on Stanford here, it's one of the friendlier
campuses from what I've heard. This is typical of any university.

Make the PhD programs shorter and more predictable, and they'll be more
appropriate for the kind of non-academic careers this article discusses. As
for academics? Well, law professors don't typically have PhDs. No reason
people can't continue to learn to do research as a junior professor.

I do agree that the odds of this happening are very low, largely because the
university system is addicted to cheap graduate student labor, and because
they'll be able to fill the gap left by Americans who overwhelmingly prefer
the professions with international students whose visa terms make it difficult
to walk away from the grad program without also losing US residency.

------
hessenwolf
Honestly, my PhD and ensuing postdoc probably cost me money, and they were
worth every penny, and a whole lot more. Spending that number of years doing
pure research, thinking 24 hours a day, with access to huge libraries of
research materials, was fucking awesome.

I know the startup buzz is also 24 hours a day and fucking awesome too, but
it's much more about the kaching than the enlightenment.

