Comment by walnutclosefarm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by walnutclosefarm | Hacker News Reader

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walnutclosefarm

It seems the author is taking the experience of Science PhDs, and realistically, a specific kind of Science Phd, and tarring the entire notion of a doctoral degree on that basis. US Universities grant PhDs in a wide range of academic disciplines across the Humanities and Sciences, and quite a few professions (Engineering and Education come immediately to mind). My children both have PhDs and academic careers (one as faculty in top-ranked University, and one as a research associate in the Health Sciences, an neither's experience is particularly close to that the author outlines. The author's one-size fits all criticism really doesn't fit all.

That's not to say there aren't abuses and inefficiencies in Science doctoral programs. Just that "Abolish the PhD" is the wrong rallying cry.

As someone in his late 30s who's doing a Master's degree and likely to go on for a PhD, I agree. It should be reformed, not abolished.

What should be abolished are 97 percent of postdoc positions. Postdocs used to be a rare, prestigious opportunity to do something different one might not want to do for one's whole life, like work for IAS in Princeton or for the government doing cryptography. What they became is something else entirely: another stupid rung on the ladder, an excuse to dangle the carrot of tenure (which isn't "lifetime job security" as academic detractors like to claim, but merely the presence of due process, as opposed to arbitrary whim, around personnel decisions) for longer.

Yes, most post-docs exist for the purpose of getting cheap, highly trained and specific expertise in a way that does not threaten the hierarchy of authority and prestige. Like medical internships, they institutionalize exploitative labor practice, but are even worse, because unlike internships, where physicians at least do learn skills and the reality of how medicine is practiced, they are almost purely for the purpose of augmenting the master's portfolio of work.

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