Why I got a PhD at age 61
nature.com
nature.com
I was talking to a theoretical Physics PhD at a conference recently, and even he was quite jaded (he switched to CS post PhD). It was obvious that this person was wicked smart and had quant knowledge. So if you want a PhD for transferable skills, go for it! A masters might be faster though.
Do what makes you happy at the end.. it is sort of nice I can drop in the fact I have a PhD and it was probably good for me on the whole .. but if you are thinking of getting a PhD in CS, consider attending top conferences in your field before committing (e.g. SOSP for OS/Systems, CVPR for vision, CHI for HCI,...). I just had no clue what I was getting into and I actively wish someone had given me this sort of info before I got into it. A PhD has a huge opportunity cost.
The PhD definitely isn't required if your goal is to maximize learning & earning, apply research to commercialization, or to make a huge dent on the world -- the latter is just exceedingly rare statistically speaking.
That's a very surprising statement. The number of advances in systems in the 21st century is.. embarrassingly low. It feels like a stale dead field. People keep pumping money into what is basically a dead body at this point.
> consider attending top conferences in your field before committing (e.g. SOSP for OS/Systems, CVPR for vision, CHI for HCI,...). I
I don't think that this is good advice. Certainly I would never suggest it to my own students. It's hard to see what they would gain.
So you go to CVPR or NeurIPS, you see hundreds of posters per session and talk after talk. Maybe you stick around for workshops to interact with people. So what? This gives you zero information about what you will be doing as a PhD student or how useful your PhD will be.
The way to figure out if you want to do a PhD is simple: do research first. Spend a summer in a research lab related to some topic you like and figure out if you like it.
> I was talking to a theoretical Physics PhD at a conference recently, and even he was quite jaded (he switched to CS post PhD).
Speaking of dead fields... I know many postdocs who come from physics into ML because many areas of theoretical physics just don't seem to be going anywhere anymore. Not a good sign!
Next up is biology etc…. but there’s a new kid in town which is ML/AI/DNNs
These are great little democratic black boxes.
I do not necessarily agree with the notion that many fields are dead --- they could just be "resting" until some paradigm-shifting idea comes along, at which point they may spring back to life --- but I do agree with your observation that many people with PhDs have to move out of science or research. There simply are too few jobs available in research, so many people with PhDs eventually transition to non-scientific or non-research roles as their opportunities to continue doing research diminish. It's just economics. I do have to agree that it is frustrating how slow progress can be while conducting research, but I think people leave science more often due to the lack of job opportunities than the lack of progress in their research.
It has become pretty important, since: all the quad copter controllers run it, and it is in network flow management protocols. I would have used it, unlike most of what I did study.
Sore subject, huh.
I suspect the same happens in many other countries.
So it already puts one above everyone else that has a classical university degree.
A masters thesis is a few month's work from an untrained student going through an idea that's already being explored by the school's research group. A PhD typically involves far more deep independent work that's deemed relevant by at least one research institution.
In my experience, a master student's final project typically constitute their first foray into / encounter with academic research. So yes, untrained in that sense.
The fact that you are paid doesn't preclude it being a traineeship.
No not really. A PhD student at most receives a scholarship, and currently at least in Europe has to undergo a curricular part comprised of a dozen or so courses. How does that not count as schooling?
If I'm not mistaken the only exception to the schooling requirement is if a student is able to publish a few research papers on a topic that are coherent and related to a concrete research topic that could support their thesis.
I don't know what could possibly lead you to believe that someone just starting off his master's thesis has any experience whatsoever in research, and has any contact with any academic topic beyond the standard curriculum that every single one has to go through to get a degree.
Does that count as experienced in your book?
I saw it demoed in Ann Arbor, back in ‘89, or so; before Adobe brought it. It was introduced as “A friend’s masters thesis.”
Somehow that flew over most of the people replying to me, who thought I was implying that a master thesis is inferior to a PhD thesis.
Probably projecting their own insecurities.
But the product of a PhD, according to me and many mentors I respect, is you. It’s your mind and experience (not even necessarily the knowledge). A good phd fundamentally transforms who you are as a person. I’d wager a PhD is probably the most reliable way to effect real change in your mind as an adult. I probably realistically lost millions I could have earned in my twenties because I spent 9 years on my higher education (which has nothing to do with what I do now). But I’d not have done most anything different about it!
Caveat being that it needs to be a good PhD with a good mentor - which is harder to find than a good job or even a good partner lol.
Not sure how you define change, but I'm pretty sure one experience with psychedelics is going to effect more change in about 4 hours than a PhD in 4 years. Not the same type of change, granted.
Kary Mullis claims to have come up with the idea for PCR while on an LSD trip, though he also said a lot of nonsense so I'm not sure you should be too much weight on that.
The change I've experienced throughout my PhD (that is, becoming a confident researcher with at least some depth to his ideas) has probably been more intense and almost certainly more long-lasting than my psychedelic experiences. Nurturing an uncomfortable familiarity with the immense limits of my knowledge, as well as regularly pushing myself to exhaustion in order to overcome those limits - inch by milimiter by angstrom - has completely transformed me as a person.
If anything psychedelics had the effect of making me believe that I had become enlightened to various true-natures-of-everything whilst providing me very little concrete understanding as to why this was the case. Much of the personal change that followed my experiences were less due to the substances and more due to my own desire for those experiences to mean something in the long run. Psychs are great and I'd recommend it wholeheartedly for those who have the courage (note: that's not to say that the classical psychedelics are dangerous - they're only dangerous for people who are scared of them). It is my opinion that one should not start believing that these things anything more than chemicals that make you feel a certain way, or help you along the path to doing so.
Huh? I've heard this a lot and I just don't see it. What is supposed to happen to you? I got one in math, published my 3 papers like they wanted, and that was it. I don't think I changed me one bit, other than not enjoying education/academia anymore.
If you’re able to do all of those things even before a PhD then I suppose you’re born gifted.
Also it should never be about just the fucking papers. Either you get them or you don’t who cares. Not me at least.
Unless you’re working next to Terrance Tao, I.e., at the top of whatever game you’re supposed to be in, you clearly haven’t pushed yourself to be better. Of course that’s a choice to begin with if you want to even do it. But given that you do, a PhD should have been the time when you got better at everything no matter where you started. If you already started with amazing skills then you should have become world class at it by now. If you did a good PhD that is. In your case, if the 3 papers you published were “pedestrian” by your standards, you and your mentors should both have pushed for more ambitious stuff.
One could argue that research in general is a probabilistic, distributed gradient descent search and you are fulfilling a certain voluntary social duty even if you are not successful.
Unfortunately that doesn't apply to many pursuits because of various perverse incentives in modern academia...
The record shows that [...] Edward Jenner heard a dairymaid say, “I shall never have smallpox for I have had cowpox.[...]” It fact, it was a common belief that dairymaids were in some way protected from smallpox[1].
That knowledge (regardless of the accuracy of the specific story of the dairymaid) helped Jenner to develop the smallpox vaccine, and that in turn helped Pasteur in coming up with his array of vaccines and other innovations.
So, I would argue that every person who contributes to research is making a dent in the universe. Your published paper may have been the impetus for someone else to make a "visible dent". Publishng papers of failures would have been ideal, but until that happens, every person who contributes to research is contributing to the progress of humanity in the long run.
If you made some nontrivial insights that were only temporarily useful but other people used it to make their own insights without having to go through the manyears of doing your work, and then the process repeats, there is something permanent there that would not have happened without your work.
Of course someone else might have done your work in your stead, but the same is true for literally all the other scientific greats we can think off, it's extremely unlikely that we would just end up at a standstill with nobody figuring out what's going on if certain people never existed.
A saying in my circles is that the less likely someone credentialed can operate on a human heart, the more likely they’ll tell you they’re a doctor
The point is that if you value money over knowledge and unique experiences, then by all means keep doing what you love the most.
Some of use are prepared to build up our savings and then live frugally on less than ramen noodles stipend whist pursuing making a tiny dent in the universe of knowledge in a specialized field.
At my university there were dozens of mature age PhD students doing research in a broad spectrum of fields. None of whom I met were rich in materialistic terms.
In order to prepare a successful proposal you need to read 20-100 recent papers in the field and cite at least 10 of them. Going to conferences is good for social networking, but you will only get a briefest summary of the research being conducted. The purpose of a presentation at a conference is to raise sufficient interest for some of the attendees to read the presenter's paper(s).
This one gentleman had the benefit of hindsight; he had tinkered with early computers, and had seen its evolution.
(This was with regards to Bachelor's and Master's degree, though I don't see why they wouldn't accept mature people to PhD programs).
If you need to do complex multi year research projects (e.g. developing new machine learning algorithms), a PhD is useful. It teaches you how to plan research, break through research blockages and communicate with others to a degree very difficult to gain in any other way.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cb3Y6M1sYW-/?utm_medium=copy_lin...
She was, to my knowledge, the oldest person to get a PhD from the University of Edinburgh (starting in her retirement and getting it in her '70s). In the late 1990s she explained to me how she would go in to the University computer labs and write her thesis using 'ed'. Even then I was impressed :)
Hell, I have a friend who’s 20 years into his DPhil taking it at a snails pace, but gives him accommodation when he’s in town for the pub.
People talking about how much of a dent you’ll make within your PhDs field… almost definitely zero! Your thesis will probably be read by you, your supervisor, and viva board. You’re still a student and it’s a course on how to do research. It could be fun to dig deep into a subject and that’s a totally awesome reason to do one, making a significant change to your field is very very very unlikely.
Sometimes I think when the kids are grown up and I've saved enough for retirement, I'd like to go into science again. Just for fun. I would probably be happy to move to some crazy place and get an intern's salary if the project was interesting and meaningful. Alas, that doesn't seem possible in the academic system.
Outside of a few specialised fields (medicine, law, etc), the purpose of university was to learn, challenge and grow. This crazy concept that everyone should go there to get a degree for their career is just degrading the institutions and fleecing students of their money.
Edit: or as soon as i have enough money in the bank to not care about work.
> My advice is: if you have the opportunity to dive into a new field, take it
Also, you are 41 and I would definitely agree that doing one when you are in your 40s would be almost impossible due to things like career, kids and mortgages etc. But the author around 60! I don’t think it’s “tone deaf” to suggest that one may be able to find some freedom to squeeze in a phd while working part time after working till 60.
Edit: I will acknowledge that having a good job and being able to comfortably retire or cut income around 60 is a privilege that many people unfortunately won’t have. But I don’t think its unachievable though.
Moreover, this dramatically lowers the opportunity cost.
The median household income in 2020 was $67,521 [1]
[1]: https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2021/demo/p60-27...
Median personal income is around $36k. [0] Annualized median earnings of the full-time employed are around $52k. [1] Households often have more multiple income earners.
In exchange the company will pay you 50% of your salary plus a stipend so that your total take home salary doesn't drop off too much. Does such a thing exist where you live?
Getting a PhD at 60 might not help society as getting it at 30, but it certainly will keep your mind flexible at old age.
It's somewhat different if you can get a PhD part-time and have the income of a business to support you. By all means, get a PhD on the side if you can make it work.
I know lots of people still working at 75, so 20 - 30 year for my final career is longer than I spent at any previous career so far.
I've had students aged above 50 years old in my undergrad degree, and I plan on going back to school myself for another undergrad in an unrelated field in my 30s.
I highly doubt you have any experience around promovendi
It's very easy for newly minted engineers to get sucked into the grind. Most entry level engineering work consists of organizing and arranging things, fitting things together, troubleshooting, bureaucracy, and attending meetings. It's easy to become so busy with those things that you forget your math & theory (or whatever fundamentals you learned in your field). Many engineers are happy to operate the machines (CAD, IDE, etc.) all day long, and get paid a lot.
To learn more in those 3 years requires some combination of potential, motivation, and luck. You might be someone who refused to join the grind, and were strong enough to get away with, or found a great mentor. You might be capable of grinding for 8 hours, then going home and immersing yourself in a fructifying side project.
Granted, a PhD doesn't guarantee any of those things either. It also requires potential, motivation, and luck. There's massive attrition in PhD programs, and they will let you render yourself unemployable. There's no filter at the start of the PhD program that weeds out people who will struggle with the soft skills required for success in higher level jobs.
The usual points against are the very low probability of having a successful academic career due to the difficulty of getting a tenured position and the very low chance of actually making a major research contribution to your field, and when you then give up an an academic career and get a job in programming or finance the opportunity cost of the say 6 years you spent not doing that job.
It is true that the longer you delay starting that programming or finance career, the farther the gap in income and wealth between you and your fellow undergraduates who went straight into programming or finance.
It's like a rocket race in a Newtonian universe. If we have identical rockets capable of constant 1/10 g acceleration and have lifelong race but you get a 6 year head start, the farther we get into the race the bigger the distance between us.
In that rocket race after 5 years you'd be 0.4 parsec farther along than me, and you'd be moving away at 0.52 c.
After 10 years, you'd be 1.3 parsecs ahead of me, and going 0.64 c faster than me.
After 15, the gap is 2.3 parsecs, and you are going 0.65 c faster than me.
At 30 years, you are 5.1 parsecs ahead of me, and going 0.68 c faster than me.
At 50 years, you are 8.9 parsecs ahead of me, and going 0.72 c faster than me.
But in terms of time at 10 years you are 6 years ahead of me. And at year 50 you are still 6 years ahead of me. Anyplace you reach I reach 6 years later.
Both of us are going to make so much money that unless we have unusually expensive tastes and hobbies we are both going to be quite well off when we retire even if we retire at the same age, able to continue to live our preferred lifestyles. That 6 year head start of yours largely just means you'll leave a bigger estate when you die.
I think this takes a lot of the force out of the opportunity cost argument.
On the pro-PhD side on the other hand, at least for STEM PhDs, is that it is ~6 years where are getting paid to learn and research something of great interest to you. And if you turn out to be one of the rare people who actually can have a successful academic career this is the only way you are going to find that out.
And don't forget the regret cost in not doing it. I didn't seriously consider graduate school because I was sure I would end up programming anyway. But I didn't lose my interest in math and physics. Many a PBS Space Time episode makes me wish I had a much deeper understanding of physics than I do now. It is possible to learn much of that on your own, but it is a lot harder and slower than it would have been had if I had went to grad school for it.