The missing piece to changing the university culture | Hacker News Reader

The missing piece to changing the university culture

nature.com

24 pointsshanac13 comments

Ok, so I don't have a Phd, originally I was thinking about getting one but I started working and that just sort of fell by the wayside. But I never wanted to teach. I've always been interested in things and going deeply into a subject is (for me) its own reward. And that was my impression of the Phd folks I met, not that they were wanted to teach but that they really wanted to understand something completely. Was I completely wrong about the motivation there?

It widely varies (I was in a PhD program for 2 years, left it for startups, am planning to go back at some point in the next 18-36 months because I miss research A LOT and teaching just as much, if not more).

I personally love teaching as much as research (teaching as in lecturing, but also as in advising students working on a senior project, training undergraduate researchers, first year grad students, etc), and I see the two as inseparable. There are others who would rather teach than research (although they are a minority in my experience); but yes, the majority of people prefer research to teaching, and see teaching as a chore which only wastes their precious brain time (I could not disagree more with such a position). I wouldn't say it's 99.99% though - maybe closer to 60-70%. I wonder if there have been studies about that.

To those who think teaching is a waste of time that would be better spent on research, and that a "real" researcher is too good for teaching - I always point to this writing by RPF: http://www.pitt.edu/~druzdzel/feynman.html

I believe that teaching and research should be treated as two different career paths - they require different skill sets and motivation, and it would be great if people could choose to proceed in one or another or both if they want. The only thing that would have to change is how the universities make their job offers; make two distinct positions and recruit for both.

Such things exist... successful researchers can get buyouts from most of their classes at some universities. The problem is, there is way more teaching that needs to be done then research that needs to be paid for.

Also, in many places, the professors teach the grad students, who teach the undergrads in kind, like a big pyramid, but it requires active research to keep the professors relevant to the grad students.

As a grad student at Wash U, there's certainly feels like a lot of interaction and connection with the start-up scene here in St Louis, although I've not got involved myself. Just yesterday, there was an elevator pitch competition organized by a different entrepreneurship organization.

These are the kinds of things which aren't measured when graduate programs are evaluated, but are super important for people who don't plan to plough into academia, and maybe even more so for those who do!

There's a definitely a lot of opportunity to get non academic career path advice and experience here. A grad student in my lab did a couple of internships at Google during his PhD, which clearly is not something every program/supervisor would be cool with.

Cool, I graduated from there in '07, but at that time none of the incubation stuff had even been started. Would you happen to know Albert?

Haha yes! That's who I'm talking about! Small world.

I haven't finished my Phs (and am unlikely to, due to a terribly narrow and unsupportive culture at my faculty) but I'm a much damn better epistemologist for having done all that work. I'm looking for ways to provide the in-depth analytical skills which are mostly only available at doctoral level in a cheaper and more affordable format. This will benefit all.

Pardon my crass cynicism, but exactly how is moving PhDs from one bubble (academic) to another (startups) going to help? We are going to have the same PhDs who, by the admission of the paper might be "unequipped for a nonacademic career" moving into companies. If they're unequipped for some reason or another that is about cultural knowledge of the academic vs. industrial process and folkways, then that might be fine. But what if they're unequipped because the PhD process has merely used them as interchangeable labor and not fundamentally instilled in them critical reasoning or thinking skills? How are these startups, then, going to have any chance of succeeding? Shouldn't we be worried, then that the unequipped PhDs will flood the market and drag down the people who are trying to do startups which have a shot of succeeding?

In reality, we're moving them from academia into the commercial world.

As for being unequipped, while in the short term they might lack the experience, over the long run, we're betting that educational depth will operate as leverage, which is why we have education in the first place--so that people can stand on the shoulders of prior giants.

we're betting that educational depth will operate as leverage

How? That is an assumption, but why to you think it is a good one? That seems to be te question put to you by the PP. It is the micro-analytics of leverage that are in doubt.

that's ideally why we have education, yes, and 10-20 years ago I would have applauded your efforts.

However, this has become severely distorted as countries have gone on a major [insert perjorative anatomy] measuring contest to create PhDs, and have pumped effort and money into increasing STEM for its own sake.

IF indeed that is true (I may be being overly cynical), then the "reason why we have education" has shifted from "so people can stand on the shoulders of prior giants" to "because it makes our country look good". How does that affect your analysis?

Short answer: it doesn't impact my analysis at all.

Long answer: Even if it's true that countries are funding PhD programs for national status, that doesn't imply that the programs, themselves, are compromised. The programs should still produce educated individuals.

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