Comment by Topolomancer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Topolomancer | Hacker News Reader

There are some very good points in the article. As someone whose adviser proved troublesome when it came to graduating and letter writing (a horrible practice as well!), I second most of the points made.

At the same time, there's also reason for cautious optimism. In the German system, for instance, PhD students are paid (mind you, it's an academic salary, which is not a lot but a first year PhD student with a full time contract already makes more money than the median German salaried worker) and new graduate school regulations are supposed to crack down on advisers abusing the system.

Yes, not everything is perfect, and there's a bunch of people in academia that are trying hard to keep the status quo, but things are shifting slightly.

The most worrisome trend, also mentioned in the article, is that there are just so many highly qualified academics. If the trend I see in machine learning continues, the next generation of PhD students will require multiple publications before being admitted to a job... That's highly problematic in more than one way.

> In the German system, for instance, PhD students are paid (mind you, it's an academic salary, which is not a lot but a first year PhD student with a full time contract already makes more money than the median German salaried worker)

Just to put numbers on this: PhD students earn roughly 4300€ per month (before taxes and insurance), resulting in something like 2600€ take-home pay. This is for a “full-time” position (quotes because all positions are full-time, it is only the pay that is reduced). In CS full-time positions are common, in most other fields they are not.

If you want to look up details, search for E13 TV-L.

For most other fields, the salary for PhDs is 65% or 50% of these numbers. Considerably lower than median salary then.

> In the German system, for instance, PhD students are paid

Sometimes paid. In engineering and CS you might be able to land a full position, but for example in physics you can call yourself lucky if you get a half position -- with the same amount of work, obviously. Many must apply for scholarships, which is comparable to a half position but has the downside of not paying into unemployment insurance.

In the humanities, my understanding is that PhD students are not paid at all.

It also depends on the university. There are usually positions as a teacher's aide in both STEM and humanities that provide a stipend for grad students. You are paid to grade undergraduates and sometimes teach, tutor, help in labs, etc. Depends on the university but one of the few ways to support grad students in the humanities.

I was offered a half position, which was actually a 37.5% position. My second advisor proposed a summa cum laude, but my prof said its pretty close (0.6) but not there and awarded a magna cum laude with a proposal that I do a Habilitation under him…

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