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Comment by misnome | Hacker News Reader

Are there many people doing a science PhD for the job prospects? I mean, my understanding is that in America it involves an extra couple of years of specialization on top of the (four?) years average of the PhD itself. It's not like someone with no background in science is going into them "because market forces" (why does everything have to be done in terms of what the market demands?).

Most of the people I have met doing my PhD is doing it because they love their field and want to gain a deeper understanding, or work in the field.

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Most of the people I have met doing my PhD is doing it because they love their field and want to gain a deeper understanding, or work in the field.

Many of the people I have met doing my PhD are doing it because they didn't want to go "into the real world" after undergrad and their undergrad advisors shoehorned them into getting their PhD. Anecdotally (I'm a biologist/chemist) this is less of an issue for chemists in top programs, because many of them have spent two or three years in industry, and are getting those three letters to round out their knowledge and experience with 80-hour workweeks sleeping in synthetic labs (where they accrue on the order of thousands-of-reactions experience). Biology is arguably worse, additionally populated by students who "couldn't hack the MD track" or slightly more charitably who "hated all the other Premeds". Mathematics is stricken by the student who got As throughout (typically PUI) undergrad math but never has done a proof, and had a mistaken idea about what it actually means to be a math grad student. In all three cases, graduate programs often look aside because they need warm bodies to TA/teach the intro classes.

Now, many of these people will not get their PhD, but some do, because for all the hemming and hawwing about the process by grad students, it really is an exercise in rubber stamping (in many jurisdictions the reality is you can't get rid of a grad student without running into serious legal problems, especially when you're paying them so technically they're employees and if you treat them poorly they have the leverage of tattling about the technically illegal labor conditions)

This is also my experience. Almost everybody doing a PhD that I have met is doing so out of personal interest in the subject area. I think pretty much everybody understands that as a career path academia sucks, but they do it because they love the research they are doing (well, most of the time, from time to time you've got to hate it ;)). People doing a PhD generally seem to understand that this is not the path to making a lot of money, and most of them seem qualified enough to do something in industry if they wanted to.

Personal interest in the subject area.

How many of these people pay tution, just curious...Any?

A PhD worth getting should not involve you paying tuition. Much of the time your tuition is waived and you earn a small stipend (just enough to live frugally off of) teaching/working in a lab.

From a university's perspective, grad students are cheap labor that can eat a lot of sections of low level undergrad classes.

It's expected that your supervisor pays your tuition because he has grants. This is important signalling. No stipends means no grants and a worthless program.

I mean, my understanding is that in America it involves an extra couple of years of specialization on top of the (four?) years average of the PhD itself.

If you mean doing postdoctoral positions prior to securing a tenure-track position, then yes, that's generally true.

No, I meant because the impression I get is that in general undergraduate courses aren't specialised e.g. you choose whatever courses you want as long as the "credits" add up to the requirements for a major, versus doing every course in one subject. The overwhelming impression I've got talking with american students is that they had to have a couple of years doing a "masters" at the start of the PhD, which effectively caught them up to the equivalent level of a full time course in the subject.

Maybe this is just Physics, I don't know.

In a lot of fields a M.S. is a requirement to start a PhD. It has nothing whatsoever to do with coursework. Instead, it's a matter of research experience. (Also, at least in my field, you usually do your B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. at three different institutions.)

At least in the geosciences, it's something like:

B.S.: Basic coursework and a senior thesis

* Senior Thesis: "Here's a well-defined problem, here's how I'd start, why don't you think about how you'd do it and go solve it"

M.S.: A class or two and a Masters Thesis

* Thesis: "Here's an relevant, unsolved problem. Go solve it."

PhD: Research (and lots of seminars)

* Dissertation: "Come up with 3 relevant, unsolved, and interesting problems. Then solve all three of them."

The big difference is really in finding your own interesting problems (and often finding funding for them as well) as opposed to being handed a problem.

Depends on the school. Even in the same discipline (I'm also in the geosciences like jofer) some departments don't accept grad students as MS students except in certain circumstances, such as U. Michigan, my current employer. Most of the grad students here come in with a BS and consequently (and understandably) take a little more time and often flail a bit more at first, relative to PhD students who start with a MS. Some schools that only/mostly take PhD students on give you a MS when you've written your first paper or taken you PhD qualifying exams.

I did a MS before I did my PhD, at different schools and with reasonably different projects, and am glad I did. Where I did my PhD, it was difficult to be accepted into teh PhD program without an MS.

However, I wouldn't say that the MS or equivalent is necessary to reach a 'full time course' because the American BS is less specialized than an equivalent degree elsewhere in the world, based on what I've learned from the many non-Americans I've worked with.

edit to answer question better:

In the American system, there is a lot of unrelated coursework (which has some guidelines, it's not just a sum of credits), but there are also a fair amount of core/science courses. I just looked at my coursework list and counted 16 courses (including fieldtrips and independent studies but not labs) in geoscience, then there is the requisite math, physics, chemistry.

The American system still takes the idea of a well-rounded 'liberal arts' education seriously (feel free to be skeptical and call it welfare for poets and historians, although I don't entirely share this position). I think university in many countries is a shorter process, although their high schools may be much better...

Yeah, I was being a bit careless by saying that an MS was required. Your comment is certainly more representative of the field as a whole than mine.

More and more schools seem to be heading towards PhD only for graduate geoscience programs (which is a mistake, i.m.o.). A lot of professors at Wisconsin were strongly pushing for it while I was there, though an equal number were opposed. I also think there's a large benefit to doing a separate MS, preferably at a separate institution. (If nothing else, it dramatically increases your breadth of experience.)

At any rate, I certainly agree with you. Having an MS makes it much easier to get into competitive PhD programs. Also, an MS is a common working degree for a large number of geoscientific jobs, so there's a strong demand for industry-focused MS graduates.

For those reasons (and not because a B.S. doesn't have enough coursework, i.m.o.), separate MS and PhD degrees are very common in the geosciences

Something I've found as a quant and data scientist without a PhD is that PhD Bigotry is common. Really fucking common. Plenty of companies will give you second-rate projects just because you don't have a PhD.

That said, it would never make sense for me to get a PhD for job-related reasons: the opportunity cost is too high. (In fact, it's too high even considering that I have a lot of intellectual reasons why, if I had more time, I'd do one.) Economically, I'm better off to deal with the annoyance of PhD bigotry (and leave jobs if it is an issue) than go into a program that has almost (and possibly over) $1 million in opportunity costs and that I'll exit (if I'm lucky) at the unfundable age of 35.

I know why PhD bigotry exists; people conceive that the alternative is to admit that 4-6 years of time were wasted, so they have to build up this bullshit belief that without a PhD, you're just not research-grade. But I find that ridiculous. 4-6 years learning things you're passionate about and can use is never wasted; but don't bring me down (by insisting that everyone who hasn't made such an investment is somehow inferior) just because you're insecure about your choices. (Who isn't?)

Is it really PhD bigotry you are experiencing? Or general degree bigotry? I would guess the latter. You see the same complaints from people without CS/Eng degrees who none-the-less have the skills to do the job.

Wouldn't the distribution of PhDs-in-research-positions and BS/MS-in-research-positions be different depending on whether its the former or latter? I think so. I wonder how much, or even if, there is any data about that.

Speaking from personal experience I'd largely agree with the parent's point. Also, speaking from my personal experience in academia, I'd suggest the field of academics, science or otherwise, is largely like any other industry: one's ability and intelligence can only carry one so far; who one knows typically has a far greater impact. This is especially true when applying to graduate school in the sciences. A person who is well-connected is far more likely to be picked up in a research program that is: a) of interest to him and b) well funded (as well as can be, in this area).

Oh absolutely. I'm only suggesting that the problem isn't one unique to PhD degrees, but rather a more general problem with title and degrees. I think it's an important distinction if we want to understand or fix the problem.

You are also correct that "connections" can count for a lot. Though pure degree discrimination is still very frequent.

The whole point of a PhD is that it is a third-party-backed proof that you're capable of doing independent research on a novel topic.

Compare: "I'm good at doing this, trust me", and "I'm good at doing this, so sayeth this big university". It's a form of vetting, and we're all familiar with people who say they have long experience in something and are good at selling you on that, yet they wouldn't know their arse from their elbow. Or lack the deep knowledge a PhD would require of the topic.

Of course you can be awesome without a PhD (and far from all PhDs are awesome), but it's a credentialled form of vetting. A PhD also proves you can complete a multi-year project through the hard yards, and most of them run into plenty of difficulties.

A PhD proves one can convince a group of 5 (or so) people that one's efforts are worth signing off on so that the "Big University" will grant a certificate. In other words, it's the same "so sayeth this big university" process you disparage, but in a different sphere. It does not signal, to me, the ability to complete a multi-year project "through the hard yards," in and of itself.

People who are extremely bright and capable researchers wash out of PhD programs all the time for a variety of reasons entirely unrelated to their abilities or desires, and people who would be lost without their committee chairperson guiding their research complete their PhDs all the time.

As I understand the grandparent post, he's not disparaging "So sayeth this big university", he's disparaging "So sayeth myself." Basically, my interpretation was that he's saying that a Ph.D is imperfect as a credential, but it's far better than just "Trust me, I'm awesome". Which I think most people would agree with, right?

That is pretty much what I was getting at.

I wasn't actually meaning to be disparaging at all, just waxing a little poetic, though I thought it was funny that I was being chided for being disparaging in a comment that was disparaging the exact same thing :)

I agree there's a reasonable amount of that, but in technology research specifically, my impression has been that publications trump degrees. If two people without any recent impressive publications are being compared, then the person with a PhD gets to pull that card. But if you're looking at graphics researchers, say, if and how recently you've published at SIGGRAPH is often a bigger factor than what degrees you have, when it comes to whether other graphics researchers consider you a legit graphics researcher. Industry guy with a BSc who publishes there regularly is seen as more of a real graphics researcher than PhD-holder who used to work in the field but last published there in 1995 (unless what they published in 1995 was truly revolutionary, maybe).

I've found that demonstrated competency & achievements count for more than both publications and degrees. When I was working on Google Authorship, I was the only one on the team without an advanced degree, and only two others lacked a Ph.D. I never once felt like I was looked down upon - actually, it seemed like I was quite well-respected, and for a year after I left the team they continued to ask my manager to keep me sitting in the same office for occasional consulting. Why? Because I had written much of the code that got the project off the ground, I understood how everything fit together, and I was very willing to consider and advocate for ideas of how it could all be improved.

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