6 ms·

American Professor to Chinese PhD Student: Go Make Money instead

92 points by jeb 16y ago

sliverstorm 16y ago
Music isn't necessarily a rich man's game. Orchestra and band and concert piano certainly are, but music was born elsewhere. How rich must you be to play a harmonica in the evening?
- starkfist 16y ago
  Why are orchestra and band and concert piano a rich man's game?
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - rchi 16y ago
    I guess because only a small minority can earn a living as a musician.
- coryl 16y ago
  I think he meant studying music at a high level, is a rich man's game.
  - thefool 16y ago
    Its either the rich man's, or the prodogies, game. If you are good enough, it doesn't matter how much money you have, someone else will throw money at you to ensure that you keep doing what your doing.
    - leviathant 16y ago
      My wife's studying for her PhD at UPenn in music composition, and she's not paying a dime. Scholarship pays for her tuition as well as a monthly stipend. She's actually being put through school on a fund that Ben Franklin started way back in the day. She attended one of the best private schools in Australia - also paid 100% through scholarship. The money is out there, some people are just more tenacious at looking for it.
    - rdouble 16y ago
      You don't need to be rich or a prodigy, you just have to be good.
    - erikpukinskis 16y ago
      Generally speaking, your parents need money for you to become a prodigy in music. Edit: I should add, the music establishment doesn't acknowledge the music of the poor as "real music". Prodigies on, for example, turntables, are not considered "real musicians" even if they are as much of a genius as the 10 year old violist.
      - thefool 16y ago
        True, but such disciplines also have much less traditional content to learn. Much of what they need is on the internet, and once they get to a certain base level they get feedback from performer loops. The "real musicians" have a longer history, and thus there is more to learn, which is why school is more necessary to be qualified. I.e. the best violinists come out of conservatories, whereas the best d.j.s can easily be self taught.
        erikpukinskis 16y ago
        I don't know, I think you need to check yourself. A great hip hop DJ is going to know music back to the 1950s at least. What makes you think there's more to learn? Yes, the classical library spans more years, but the library of recorded music is growing at an exponential rate. I'm quite certain that there is more recorded hip hop music available today than there is recorded/transcribed classical music. Are you aware of the volume of LPs and tapes that are circulated amongst the DJ community? It's enormous, and spans all genres, including classical music. There's an insane amount of music to learn, and the great DJs do learn it. And if that's true, then your reasoning that Conservatories exist because there is so much classical music to learn has no foundation. Conservatories are just the white way of teaching kids how to make music. Hip hop has its own methods. I can tell your intentions are in the right place, but have you ever considered the possibility that there might be something racist about the notion that classical music is somehow special?
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- erikpukinskis 16y ago
  Music is most definitely a man's game. The vast, vast majority of professional musicians are men. And I don't have any stats, but I would guess that the vast majority of pros have a decent bit of class privilege to go along with their male privilege.
  - roel_v 16y ago
    May I suggest you read the post you're replying to again...
narkee 16y ago
This could very appropriately generalized to all PhD students, and most undergraduate students as well. Anecdotally, many post-secondary students view diplomas and degrees as simply documents certifying that they've put in their time, and paid their dues. In a sense, the whole academic infrastructure has been somewhat perverted from pursuit of knowledge to pursuit of dollars/fame/status.
- timwiseman 16y ago
  I do not think this applies to undergraduates. The current lifetime earning difference between someone with a bachelors and someone with no degree was close to a million dollars last time I checked, that is strong monetary motivation to get the degree. I do not have the figures to compare for someone with a bachelors and someone with a PHD, but anecdotally it seems fairly small. More than that, there are a great many non-research career tracks that are only open to someone with a degree, and a great many others that don't technically require a degree but go much more smoothly. It only makes sense to pursue a PHD if you have both a passion for that field and at least enough money to handle the necessities. For most people, it makes sense to get a bachelors if you are able.
- Rod 16y ago
  "... and most undergraduate students as well." You are seriously out of touch with reality. Well, if you want to be a programmer, you can be a programmer right after high school, and there's no need to spend $30K per year to learn Java and Turing machines. Maybe you, too, have fallen under the spell of PG almighty and believe that "making something that people want" is sufficient to be a sucessful entrepreneur. After 10 years of trying and failing, you may come to the realization that playing the "all or nothing" game usually results in... nothing. Now you're on your late 20s, your high school friends who had more common sense are getting married and having kids, and you have nothing to show. Since you believe you're better than the ones who chose the easy path, you go "all in", hoping for that ever-elusive IPO that will make you rich enough to stick it to the system. In the process, you will have wasted your life chasing a dream. Programmers tend to think that having coding skills is all that matters to make it big. Problem is, the barrier of entry is very low in programming these days, and if a high school kid can outcompete you, you're probably playing the wrong game. People who live in the real world understand that universities sell credentials, not knowledge. Such people understand also that an undergraduate degree is little more than indoctrination, a process through which obedient employees are created. Most organizations need obedient employees, they don't need "creative" coders. Sorry, you're not a special & unique snowflake, and the world does not owe you a thing. It may suck, but being in denial won't help. An undergraduate degree serves many purposes. For one, it indoctrinates you, which sounds evil, but is a necessary evil. Second, it allows you to find out what you like and what you don't. Third, by doing what you like and meeting like-minded people, you end up realizing who you are, not by introspection (fuck that new age BS), but through action. Fourth, it allows you to network with people from all walks of life and the most various fields. Fifth, it provides the skills necessary to accomplish something. You can stay 4 years at home studying by yourself, but you'll go crazy before you accomplish anything. Being in a structured environment for 4 years is a much gentler way of building a skill set that actually matters... just as long as you stay away from sociology, psychology, "womyn" studies and other such distasteful insanity.
thefool 16y ago
The professor gave good advice, but i don't think the guy drew the right conclusions. Science, like music or art, is one of those things that you do because you decide that you like the rewards it brings more than the struggle that is required to achieve success. If you are rich, the risks of doing it are lower, but being poor hardly stops you. If you do any of those in order to produce finacial gain, it is pretty dumb, as there are easier ways to make way more money if you have the potential to be successful in those feilds. The professor saw that the guy didn't have any real passion for science, and thus told him to do something else. The real quote i disagree with is "This is the basic theory behind the practice of tenure of professors in American universities. First, a recent PhD graduate must first steel oneself and complete 5 years of hard work. Afterwards, if you are picked by the group of tenured professors and one day pass their requirements, then for the rest of your life you will never have to worry about making a living again. At that point you can wholeheartedly devote your time to research and study. Naturally the school also knows that the overwhelming majority of these tenured professors have no research potential left in them. Equally impotent are the lowly menial workers of the research laboratory. However, out of the vast numbers of tenured professors a few stand out from the crowd that actually have talent and contribute positively to the economy." Science today needs a lot more menial laborers than professors directing research, because it works on grants and doesn't generate its own income, professors are perfectly happy to take people who are not really interested in the work, but will be methodical and will work for very low pay (like asian PhD students) because they need a lot of hands to run these tedious experiments. That doesn't mean that once a professor becomes a professor they are useless or lack talent. It seems as though he confuses positive economic contributions with positive intellectual ones (which might only be capatalized on decades later).
- Lewisham 16y ago
  Completely agree. The choice quote is: "To be honest, I wasn’t familiar with the professor’s research methods whatsoever. Instead, I said I was interested because if I didn’t do this low-paying job the professor wouldn’t give me the position of assistant research fellow and then I wouldn’t have the money for school tuition." The guy wasn't interested in research, just in money, and his professor (rightly) called him out. The PhD process is one of passion: if you don't have the passion for the subject you are studying, you are wasting everyone's time and money, not just your own.
greenlblue 16y ago
This is great advice. The market is supersaturated with graduate students that have no hope of getting any kind of tenure position anytime within the next 2 decades and I think the situation is getting worse because universities keep pumping out more and more PhD's.
geebee 16y ago
Unfortunately, US immigration law makes it very difficult to come here to "make money." Once you get a green card, you can do that, but then it would be difficult to convince smart young people to spend years as research assistants in PhD programs. So the US has created a system that makes it easier for a smart young person to come here as a sci/eng PhD student (but not so much as a law, mba, or medical student), and get hired provided they do sci/eng for a big corp or university for a while. Eventually, they'll be free, but usually at an age where they have spouses, children, and other things that keep them from doing what they would have done had they had this freedom a decade earlier. Ok, that's a big of an exaggeration, but only a bit.
- timwiseman 16y ago
  You make good points. I can definitely see arguments for making it easier for bright, hard working, educated people to immigrate legitimately. Personally, I think it might be wise for the US to consider providing a very fast and easy path to citizenship for people who earn PHDs here. In my current graduate studies I know many very bright students that could contribute tremendously to society in the US if they were actively encouraged to stay here after finishing their PHDs, and most of them would want that opportunity if they had it.
  - Lewisham 16y ago
    I know you know this, but I just wanted to clarify that international PhDs are not leaving because of a lack of encouragement, but that their F1 visas (which I also hold) stipulate that they must prove they have every intention of returning back to the home country. Obviously, the F1 forces students to leave once they graduate. The system is set up to actively discourage students to stay. I don't know which organization came up with the idea of using public money (because most will be funded this way) to educate people and then make them leave. It's somewhat bizarre, and doesn't seem to benefit the US at all.
    - gaius 16y ago
      The obvious answer is that supply and demand applies to all things. If there wasn't this bountiful supply of cheap labour, then the budget would have to cover paying the market rate to American lab assistants. The US has decided to trade a short term advantage - cheap lab workers - for a long term disadvantage - educating its competitors.
Absolute0 16y ago
The Article makes so many mistaks! Here is the scenario: You have an intelligent who just passed out of his undergrad degree. He has following options: 1. Work in his country for a Max 10k$ Per Year Job (Extremely rare, most pay just 6k$ P.A) 2. Come to USA for PhD, get Paid Double the amount + save around 4k$ per year atleast. Get Prestigious degree after 5 years and then get a job that pays at least 70k$ or Join Academia which pays 40k$ + 3. Go to USA for Masters, Pay fees out of pocket or via loan, so total cost will be ~50k$b- 80k$ Get a job which pays 60k$ P.A. post graduation. And repay the loan in next 3-4 years, after which one can go for an MBA Now Choice 1 is pointless, Choice 3 requires your parents to be waelthy enough to afford the loan. Hence an overwhelming number of them choose 2. Also there is nothing wrong with it, plus the whole make money instead argument is bullshit. Unless you have god gifted green card, no one will give you a job in USA, and regarding working in China/India the Minimum Wage here 10404*12 ~ 19k is more than best starting salary in their country

92 points by jeb 16y ago

Music isn't necessarily a rich man's game. Orchestra and band and concert piano certainly are, but music was born elsewhere. How rich must you be to play a harmonica in the evening?

starkfist 16y ago
Why are orchestra and band and concert piano a rich man's game?
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- rchi 16y ago
  I guess because only a small minority can earn a living as a musician.
coryl 16y ago
I think he meant studying music at a high level, is a rich man's game.
- thefool 16y ago
  Its either the rich man's, or the prodogies, game. If you are good enough, it doesn't matter how much money you have, someone else will throw money at you to ensure that you keep doing what your doing.
  - leviathant 16y ago
    My wife's studying for her PhD at UPenn in music composition, and she's not paying a dime. Scholarship pays for her tuition as well as a monthly stipend. She's actually being put through school on a fund that Ben Franklin started way back in the day. She attended one of the best private schools in Australia - also paid 100% through scholarship. The money is out there, some people are just more tenacious at looking for it.
  - rdouble 16y ago
    You don't need to be rich or a prodigy, you just have to be good.
  - erikpukinskis 16y ago
    Generally speaking, your parents need money for you to become a prodigy in music. Edit: I should add, the music establishment doesn't acknowledge the music of the poor as "real music". Prodigies on, for example, turntables, are not considered "real musicians" even if they are as much of a genius as the 10 year old violist.
    - thefool 16y ago
      True, but such disciplines also have much less traditional content to learn. Much of what they need is on the internet, and once they get to a certain base level they get feedback from performer loops. The "real musicians" have a longer history, and thus there is more to learn, which is why school is more necessary to be qualified. I.e. the best violinists come out of conservatories, whereas the best d.j.s can easily be self taught.
      - erikpukinskis 16y ago
        I don't know, I think you need to check yourself. A great hip hop DJ is going to know music back to the 1950s at least. What makes you think there's more to learn? Yes, the classical library spans more years, but the library of recorded music is growing at an exponential rate. I'm quite certain that there is more recorded hip hop music available today than there is recorded/transcribed classical music. Are you aware of the volume of LPs and tapes that are circulated amongst the DJ community? It's enormous, and spans all genres, including classical music. There's an insane amount of music to learn, and the great DJs do learn it. And if that's true, then your reasoning that Conservatories exist because there is so much classical music to learn has no foundation. Conservatories are just the white way of teaching kids how to make music. Hip hop has its own methods. I can tell your intentions are in the right place, but have you ever considered the possibility that there might be something racist about the notion that classical music is somehow special?
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
erikpukinskis 16y ago
Music is most definitely a man's game. The vast, vast majority of professional musicians are men. And I don't have any stats, but I would guess that the vast majority of pros have a decent bit of class privilege to go along with their male privilege.
- roel_v 16y ago
  May I suggest you read the post you're replying to again...

narkee 16y ago

This could very appropriately generalized to all PhD students, and most undergraduate students as well. Anecdotally, many post-secondary students view diplomas and degrees as simply documents certifying that they've put in their time, and paid their dues. In a sense, the whole academic infrastructure has been somewhat perverted from pursuit of knowledge to pursuit of dollars/fame/status.

timwiseman 16y ago
I do not think this applies to undergraduates. The current lifetime earning difference between someone with a bachelors and someone with no degree was close to a million dollars last time I checked, that is strong monetary motivation to get the degree. I do not have the figures to compare for someone with a bachelors and someone with a PHD, but anecdotally it seems fairly small. More than that, there are a great many non-research career tracks that are only open to someone with a degree, and a great many others that don't technically require a degree but go much more smoothly. It only makes sense to pursue a PHD if you have both a passion for that field and at least enough money to handle the necessities. For most people, it makes sense to get a bachelors if you are able.
Rod 16y ago
"... and most undergraduate students as well." You are seriously out of touch with reality. Well, if you want to be a programmer, you can be a programmer right after high school, and there's no need to spend $30K per year to learn Java and Turing machines. Maybe you, too, have fallen under the spell of PG almighty and believe that "making something that people want" is sufficient to be a sucessful entrepreneur. After 10 years of trying and failing, you may come to the realization that playing the "all or nothing" game usually results in... nothing. Now you're on your late 20s, your high school friends who had more common sense are getting married and having kids, and you have nothing to show. Since you believe you're better than the ones who chose the easy path, you go "all in", hoping for that ever-elusive IPO that will make you rich enough to stick it to the system. In the process, you will have wasted your life chasing a dream. Programmers tend to think that having coding skills is all that matters to make it big. Problem is, the barrier of entry is very low in programming these days, and if a high school kid can outcompete you, you're probably playing the wrong game. People who live in the real world understand that universities sell credentials, not knowledge. Such people understand also that an undergraduate degree is little more than indoctrination, a process through which obedient employees are created. Most organizations need obedient employees, they don't need "creative" coders. Sorry, you're not a special & unique snowflake, and the world does not owe you a thing. It may suck, but being in denial won't help. An undergraduate degree serves many purposes. For one, it indoctrinates you, which sounds evil, but is a necessary evil. Second, it allows you to find out what you like and what you don't. Third, by doing what you like and meeting like-minded people, you end up realizing who you are, not by introspection (fuck that new age BS), but through action. Fourth, it allows you to network with people from all walks of life and the most various fields. Fifth, it provides the skills necessary to accomplish something. You can stay 4 years at home studying by yourself, but you'll go crazy before you accomplish anything. Being in a structured environment for 4 years is a much gentler way of building a skill set that actually matters... just as long as you stay away from sociology, psychology, "womyn" studies and other such distasteful insanity.

thefool 16y ago

The professor gave good advice, but i don't think the guy drew the right conclusions. Science, like music or art, is one of those things that you do because you decide that you like the rewards it brings more than the struggle that is required to achieve success. If you are rich, the risks of doing it are lower, but being poor hardly stops you. If you do any of those in order to produce finacial gain, it is pretty dumb, as there are easier ways to make way more money if you have the potential to be successful in those feilds. The professor saw that the guy didn't have any real passion for science, and thus told him to do something else. The real quote i disagree with is "This is the basic theory behind the practice of tenure of professors in American universities. First, a recent PhD graduate must first steel oneself and complete 5 years of hard work. Afterwards, if you are picked by the group of tenured professors and one day pass their requirements, then for the rest of your life you will never have to worry about making a living again. At that point you can wholeheartedly devote your time to research and study. Naturally the school also knows that the overwhelming majority of these tenured professors have no research potential left in them. Equally impotent are the lowly menial workers of the research laboratory. However, out of the vast numbers of tenured professors a few stand out from the crowd that actually have talent and contribute positively to the economy." Science today needs a lot more menial laborers than professors directing research, because it works on grants and doesn't generate its own income, professors are perfectly happy to take people who are not really interested in the work, but will be methodical and will work for very low pay (like asian PhD students) because they need a lot of hands to run these tedious experiments. That doesn't mean that once a professor becomes a professor they are useless or lack talent. It seems as though he confuses positive economic contributions with positive intellectual ones (which might only be capatalized on decades later).

Lewisham 16y ago
Completely agree. The choice quote is: "To be honest, I wasn’t familiar with the professor’s research methods whatsoever. Instead, I said I was interested because if I didn’t do this low-paying job the professor wouldn’t give me the position of assistant research fellow and then I wouldn’t have the money for school tuition." The guy wasn't interested in research, just in money, and his professor (rightly) called him out. The PhD process is one of passion: if you don't have the passion for the subject you are studying, you are wasting everyone's time and money, not just your own.

greenlblue 16y ago

This is great advice. The market is supersaturated with graduate students that have no hope of getting any kind of tenure position anytime within the next 2 decades and I think the situation is getting worse because universities keep pumping out more and more PhD's.

geebee 16y ago

Unfortunately, US immigration law makes it very difficult to come here to "make money." Once you get a green card, you can do that, but then it would be difficult to convince smart young people to spend years as research assistants in PhD programs. So the US has created a system that makes it easier for a smart young person to come here as a sci/eng PhD student (but not so much as a law, mba, or medical student), and get hired provided they do sci/eng for a big corp or university for a while. Eventually, they'll be free, but usually at an age where they have spouses, children, and other things that keep them from doing what they would have done had they had this freedom a decade earlier. Ok, that's a big of an exaggeration, but only a bit.

timwiseman 16y ago
You make good points. I can definitely see arguments for making it easier for bright, hard working, educated people to immigrate legitimately. Personally, I think it might be wise for the US to consider providing a very fast and easy path to citizenship for people who earn PHDs here. In my current graduate studies I know many very bright students that could contribute tremendously to society in the US if they were actively encouraged to stay here after finishing their PHDs, and most of them would want that opportunity if they had it.
- Lewisham 16y ago
  I know you know this, but I just wanted to clarify that international PhDs are not leaving because of a lack of encouragement, but that their F1 visas (which I also hold) stipulate that they must prove they have every intention of returning back to the home country. Obviously, the F1 forces students to leave once they graduate. The system is set up to actively discourage students to stay. I don't know which organization came up with the idea of using public money (because most will be funded this way) to educate people and then make them leave. It's somewhat bizarre, and doesn't seem to benefit the US at all.
  - gaius 16y ago
    The obvious answer is that supply and demand applies to all things. If there wasn't this bountiful supply of cheap labour, then the budget would have to cover paying the market rate to American lab assistants. The US has decided to trade a short term advantage - cheap lab workers - for a long term disadvantage - educating its competitors.

Absolute0 16y ago

The Article makes so many mistaks! Here is the scenario: You have an intelligent who just passed out of his undergrad degree. He has following options: 1. Work in his country for a Max 10k$ Per Year Job (Extremely rare, most pay just 6k$ P.A) 2. Come to USA for PhD, get Paid Double the amount + save around 4k$ per year atleast. Get Prestigious degree after 5 years and then get a job that pays at least 70k$ or Join Academia which pays 40k$ + 3. Go to USA for Masters, Pay fees out of pocket or via loan, so total cost will be ~50k$b- 80k$ Get a job which pays 60k$ P.A. post graduation. And repay the loan in next 3-4 years, after which one can go for an MBA Now Choice 1 is pointless, Choice 3 requires your parents to be waelthy enough to afford the loan. Hence an overwhelming number of them choose 2. Also there is nothing wrong with it, plus the whole make money instead argument is bullshit. Unless you have god gifted green card, no one will give you a job in USA, and regarding working in China/India the Minimum Wage here 10404*12 ~ 19k is more than best starting salary in their country