A ‘Rebel’ Without a Ph.D (2014)
quantamagazine.org
quantamagazine.org
I completely agree. And I would add that it's a filter that selects status-seekers over truth-seekers, who have no reason to tolerate it.
But this is also why a Ph.D from MIT or others carries a much bigger weight than a Ph.D from University of <No one has heard of this place>. Those institutions are trusted to only hand Ph.D's to those who have earned them.
I disagree. Even MIT and the highfalutin Ivey's have a lot of mediocre grad students to keep the cogs of the research machine running. This is especially true in the biomedical field because of the cheap labor supply of grad students - vs - the cost of highly trained lab techs. All of these students pass and earn PhDs.
Inside your own little field in academia you are judged by your peers on both your work as well as who you work with, not where you sit or the stamp on the letterhead. Sadly, outside of our small fields we have very poor (if any) tools to assess researchers, and thus fall back on regular consumer judgements: brand recognition, familiarity and advertising.
As someone who has been on both sides, it can be hard to impossible to research mathematics without access to a university library and credentials. Math books are prohibitively expensive and go out of print swiftly. Articles are behind paywalls. Few research mathematicians in my experience respond to requests for preprints or clarification from non-academic e-mails.
I'm fairly confident in saying the challenge to become a professor at a respectable university in a stem field without a PhD makes it for all intents and purposes impossible.
So while the PhD system is deeply flawed, unless he can provide an alternative then theres not much to discuss.
Ok, how about a much simpler system of research apprenticeship? An apprentice is paid a low but livable salary, possibly with tuition remission for any necessary coursework, and probably with TA/RA duties as we have now. There are no grades and no qualifying exams. Instead, the apprentice must simply produce three publishable (ie: either published, or judged by their committee to be publishable) research papers within the committee's set time limit. Once they have accomplished this, the apprentice is promoted to be a professional researcher, given a proper professional salary and allowed to submit work as they please without an advisor's co-authorship.
This actually captures most of what we believe, deep-down, that PhD's are actually for, but without the bureaucracy and indignity of treating apprentice researchers as "students" who need their school's approval more than they need to do good work.
PhD students don't have grades or qualifying exams, and three publishable research papers is what most PhD students achieve anyway. The thesis is just these papers written up into one continuous piece and submitted to the people who will become their peers.
Varies a lot by country. In the U.S., most PhD students do TA/RA duties, because that's the main funding mechanism. It's rare for universities to give direct funding for an entire PhD, though some do fund students' first year directly. A smallish number of students also get multi-year fellowships, either from the university or from an external source like the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program. The common case, though, is that each semester they're hired as either a TA or RA. In the best case, the student's advisor has a grant precisely aligned with their thesis topic, and the student is hired as an RA on that grant, in which case they're being paid more or less just to do their PhD. If they're less lucky, they have to work on a grant-funded project that's more tangential to their thesis, and then essentially have a side job.
On the professor's side this system is also a pretty big source of stress, because every semester there's a question of where your students are going to be funded from the next semester. Have to bring in enough grants to hire most as RAs (ideally on projects that lead to progress on their theses), rotate some into TA positions if there aren't enough grants to pay everyone as an RA this semester, etc.
In a different form RAships are also becoming common here in Denmark, though they weren't traditionally. PhD students are all hired into a 3-year salaried contract, but increasingly those contracts are funded by European Union projects, and a student hired into a PhD position funded from that source will typically have project-related responsibilities in addition to their thesis.
>They already get a low but liveable salary without having to pay tuition. I don't think many PhDs do TA/RA duties - they're too busy researching.
In most places I've seen, PhD students are the primary source of TA/RA labor. If we're lucky, we get a base stipend and TA/RA adds to it.
>PhD students don't have grades or qualifying exams
I've never seen a PhD program with no coursework, no qualifying exams, and no grade requirements for either. Could you show me where such an arcadian academic track exists?
>and three publishable research papers is what most PhD students achieve anyway
That was my point, yes.
To begin my PhD I made contact from cold with a professor who had similar research interests to mine at the University I wanted to go to. We did an informal interview and he offered me the studentship. I didn't go through any kind of central application process, do any entrance exams or write any essays or anything.
When I started my PhD I immediately began working on my own research and writing my own papers. I never did any coursework or exams. My only assessment is a yearly review presentation and then the thesis and viva at the end. I'm not involved in any kind of group project so I'm not working for anyone else as 'cheap labour'.
I get paid by a grant from the government of around $21k a year. That's tax-free so I guess it's maybe the equivalent of $25k. I have done about 50 paid hours of TAing (demonstrating) during three years, but it was optional and I did it just to meet some new masters students really.
The 3 papers makes a thesis also ignores the fact that it needs to be a coherent whole and pass the thesis defence, where the committee includes both a person external to the department and one external to the university. While I'll grant 3 papers is probably a thesis, it entirely depends on the papers.
Everybody in STEM courses at my university did both an RA and a TA unless they had a large scholarship and didn't need any extra money. In the CS department, it was actually expected (I was co-supervised by a CS prof for my Master's so I know what the other people in my lab did).
I had a girlfriend who did her PhD in Mechanical Engineering and she was actually required to do contract work in her lab. She couldn't even get paid for it and was still required to do it. She was in the Canadian military and they were paying for her to do the doctorate so she couldn't get paid from anyone else (but she had a scholarship which was allowed). The contract work delayed her thesis research, but the professor required her to do the work. So, you're extrapolating your knowledge and assuming it's the same everywhere which isn't true.
One big issue with the current PhD system is reliance on published articles to determine a student's worth, which transforms academia into a paper-churning factory. In your scenario, having a set time limit combined with the low pay will still make candidates rush to publish papers, perpetuating the current issues.
Ideally, I would prefer a system like in the Netherlands, where PhD students are considered employees of the university, and get paid close to median wage, and get contributions to a retirement plan. It's a demanding job, and should be paid as such. I would also like to see the recommended period for finishing a PhD extended to 7-10 years, ideally spent in 2 or more research institutions. Funding might be a concern, and universities might have to reduce the number of accepted students, but it's worth it if it reduces the current pressure to constantly publish. The process of scientific publishing itself needs to be revamped, to encourage publishing of failed hypotheses, or replication of old experiments.
That's basically describes a PhD plus a postdoc today. Which is essentially the minimum requirement for kicking off an academic career.
I completely agree that PhD students should be full employees and get paid basically the median wage of a first job in the relevant field.
That is way too long. A PhD should only be long enough as is required for the average competent person to demonstrate their competence in research. Adding extra bells and whistles, more requirements, etc, does not improve their abilities and only prolongs the apprenticeship to the advantage of their supervisors.
I think here we have a disagreement over goals. I've always thought of a PhD as being the period in which you prove you can compose and carry out a "Minimum Viable Sustained Research Project." But it's intentionally minimal: you're supposed to get it done and start your real career as a qualified scientist.
I would qualify that statement by saying that the goal of a PhD should be to demonstrate the ability to bring novel contributions, etc.
It is impossible to predict the outcome of a truly innovative project, which ideally the PhD candidate is engaged in, so the failure of any such project shouldn't be a reason to deny graduation.
The candidate should be judged instead on their ability to do research correctly, i.e. with the goal of discovering facts, however inconvenient they may turn out to be, rather than be coerced into churning out yet more useless publications with overblown claims.
See Edward Fredkin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Fredkin for a counter example
I mean now. As in a student who is currently performing their undergraduate studies. Do they honestly have a hope of an academic career without postgraduate qualifications?
This is silly. It's like saying, "to become a programmer at a respectable software company without a computer". Becoming a professor is about doing research. Getting a PhD is about doing research. If you're actually good enough to do the research, the PhD is a formality. Heck, if your research is genuinely groundbreaking, (not just pushing the envelope another predictable inch), surely you can pick and choose which school will fill out the paperwork to give you a degree for it. Certainly, it's by far the least of the STEM job candidate's worries with the current job market.
If you are making the common mistake of confusing "professor" for "lecturer", it's already routine for PhD dropouts to lecture low-level undergrad courses, at least it was at my school.
The problem is that I see this taken to the extreme in all kinds of arguments, to the point that I would almost rather not know anything about the author or his/her authority because it colors my judgement of the material itself. Give me your facts and data and opinions and let me evaluate them for myself without having to rest on your laurels.
This also applies to government and diplomatic, and high level business actions. Currently the modus operandi seems to be that people in power say, "I've been in this industry for Y years, and have worked with P, I'm the expert and you should listen to me. Oh and all this has to be done in secret, because the public wouldn't understand it anyway."
I call bullshit on that constantly. Honestly, just try it, the next time you read a published scientific paper or any material of any weight or note, keep an eye on how much time and space is wasted on people establishing their "authority".
Yeah, that assumption can and has been way wrong in the past, but I would argue that the valid/invalid ratio compared against the time needed to fully investigate every bit of research any person puts out is much preferred.