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You are assuming that most grad students aim to be a professor, you have any data to back it up? Since that has not been my experience at all.
by xfer 9y ago
You are assuming that most grad students aim to be a professor, you have any data to back it up? Since that has not been my experience at all.
- loeg 9y agoI don't think you need to make that assumption. Regardless of the number of grad students leaving academia, there is a huge and increasing backlog of postdocs waiting for professorship.
- mikebenfield 9y agoThis is a recurring topic here, but this varies a lot by field. In many fields literally the only reason to go to grad school is to (try to) become a professor.
- smallnamespace 9y agoOn the flip side, I'm pretty sure grad school is not financially rational if you intend to go to industry. At best, you'll get a scholarship and maybe a teaching salary/stipend of ~30k over 5-6 years. In my experience, people who can do a PhD could've been making 2-3x that much in industry. PhDs do get hired at a higher position, but you can easily get there the normal way over 5 years. IMO a lot of grad school students are just here to immigrate.
- xfer 9y agoA chance to work on hard research problems; that is not possible without mentoring for most people. If everything you do in life is just money to you; then sure PhD is irrelevant and you find absurd reasons like immigration to justify it.