10 ms·

The monetary value proposition of grad school simply isn't very good if you're a US citizen. There is non-monetary value (like advancing human knowledge) that m

by tyoma 9y ago

The monetary value proposition of grad school simply isn't very good if you're a US citizen. There is non-monetary value (like advancing human knowledge) that makes grad school worth it for some, but the pay is low. Imagine you just graduated from a quality undergrad with high grades and strong recommendations from your professors. Maybe you had an internship or two or spent a summer doing research. Maybe you even have authorship on a published paper as an undergrad. You could be a very strong grad school candidate. Or you could just get a corporate job right out of undergrad. Lets look at the options. Option 1: You go to grad school and spend ~6 years working extremely long hours at nearly minimum wage with no benefits. Option 2: You start at ~100K USD/year with benefits working for Big Tech/Finance/Big Oil/Pharma/Defense/etc. In those ~6 years you likely work fewer hours than a grad student. You have the free time to meet someone and the income to start a family. Most people will chose Option 2. The two main types of people who chose Option 1 are those who are passionate about learning and advancing human knowledge and those who want a career where a PhD is required. If instead you're a citizen of "India, China, Korea, Turkey and other foreign countries" (quoted from the article) then the calculus is completely different. Not only do you get to advance human knowledge, but you get to live and work (as a TA or RA) in the US for ~6 years. After graduation you have a good chance of landing a well paying job for a US-based firm or becoming a professor or research scientist.

s0rce 9y ago
Where were you 10 years ago. Well, I guess I was "passionate about learning and advancing human knowledge" but that didn't turn out to be all that practical.
- tyoma 9y ago
  Honest answer? I was just starting grad school. I went for my MS and had a wonderful experience. Would do it again in a heartbeat. There are many positives about grad school if you enjoy learning and research. There is definitely an opportunity cost and it is not surprising there are so few US citizens in grad school -- at least in technical fields. I hear it's a different story in the humanities.
sungx105 9y ago
Your option 1 is incomplete. It should read more closely to: You go to grad school and spend ~6 years working extremely long hours at nearly minimum wage with no benefits. You then spend 2-3 years on a postdoc still with relatively low compensation. There still are far too few academic positions available. You now either become an adjunct (and get caught in that vicious cycle) or you do another postdoc. Repeat ad nauseum (or until you give up and move to industry anyway)
- frozenport 9y ago
  Or after graduating, get an industry job supervised by one of your undergrads (happened to a friend).
- konschubert 9y ago
  That is, if you are planning to stay in academia after handing in your thesis. I think most people don't.
laichzeit0 9y ago
Why not go for Option 2, but do your post-grad part time while working? It might take 10 years instead of 6, but by then you'd have 10 years work experience, capital, etc.
- adrianN 9y ago
  It's hard to find part time jobs that still pay reasonably well and help you advance your career.
- smallnamespace 9y ago
  If you're single and planning to stay that way, taking an extra 4 years is ok. If you plan or want to have a family, not so much. Doubly so if you're a woman -- pregnancy risks start ramping past the early-mid 30s.
- wickberg 9y ago
  Part time PhD's are rare - most professors need their grad students to be working on their grant-related research projects as RAs. That work is then used as the basis for your dissertation. As a part time PhD student you'd need to either have your own research planned out (and separate from the professor's grant-related work) which also implies you're likely to be paying out of pocket for tuition. Or find a professor who was willing to accept a slower pace of work on something that's presumably backed by a grant, which is pretty unlikely as the funding agency is usually holding them to strict deadlines. Part-time Masters degrees are more common (and what I did myself), but come with similar trade-offs and usually need to be paid for by yourself or by your employer. And as you're not committing to being a part of a professor's research group for the next 5+ years, it's harder to find a good match for an advisor and a good thesis. Co-terminal degrees (B.S. + M.S. all at once, with an extra year after undergrad to do your thesis) mitigate this, but you're going to be out of pocket for that extra year of tuition on top of the bachelor's.
  - hocuspocus 9y ago
    I live in Switzerland where privately funded PhDs are possible (though also rare) and things work a bit differently since tuition is about $500 a semester. Yet, it's typically not a good deal (for you, that is, for the school it's an incredible deal). You're typically hired at a 50-60% rate by your employer, and while that's comparable to a university salary, overall it's a lot more work, you have to deal with your boss plus your supervisor, the school and the company fight over ownership of your work, and you still have some obligations as a student in terms of credit and TA hours. The worst of both worlds :)
slimshady94 9y ago
For foreign citizens, option 2 is pretty much a no-brainer because a US green card implies societal respect, relatively high income and subsequently marriage proposals from their home country.
trevyn 9y ago
If you take some initiative, you can also learn a lot working in industry. It’s important to avoid being a code monkey stuck in a cubicle, only doing what you’re told and collecting a paycheck. Instead, be curious and enthusiastic about all aspects of the business and chat up all of your colleagues in different departments. Express interest and “help out” a little on your own time for projects out of your area of responsibility that appeal to you and that you want to learn more about. Assist someone by offering to do some research or putting together a slide deck for them. Offer to present it to their team. Offer your help in meetings. Get noticed, take more responsibility, and work cross-functionally. You’ll be amazed at the doors that open to you.
- eli_gottlieb 9y ago
  >If you take some initiative, you can also learn a lot working in industry. It’s important to avoid being a code monkey stuck in a cubicle, only doing what you’re told and collecting a paycheck. Instead, be curious and enthusiastic about all aspects of the business and chat up all of your colleagues in different departments. Why would you want to be curious and enthusiastic about your industry job if your real interest was research? This whole thread seems to be discussing a Generic Excellent Student who's simply choosing between academia and industry based purely on remuneration, and who possesses the marvelous ability to direct their passions straight towards money by sheer force of will. Well, of course that person is going to go to industry, but there are many people whose actual interests will point them preferentially towards one or the other. I went to school with a guy (call him P) who was talented and could have taken some research experience at any time, but he just plain wanted to be an entrepreneur.
drewg123 9y ago
There's also option 1.5: You start at a grad school in a PhD program (so that you have support and do not pile up debt), and you leave with a Masters as quickly as you can. I managed to get my MS in CS back in the early 90s in one calendar year. I had full support via a fellowship since I was one of the top students, so I did not have to be an RA or TA, and could take additional classes. I finished all but my MS Thesis requirement in 2 semesters and owed nothing thanks to the fellowship. I then decided I was leaving with an MS, and paid for my MS Thesis credits over the summer. This cost me only a year, and it happened immediately after undergrad when I was really good at studying anyhow. I am far enough into my career to realize that it strengthened my resume early on, and I think it has really helped my long-term career earnings. The funny thing is that I didn't intend to be so mercenary. My original intent was to get my requirements out the way early to leave more time for research the second year. I realized part-way through the year that I was not as enamored with the topic that I wanted to study as I thought I was, and I hadn't hit it off with the only logical choice for an advisor in that topic, so I wanted to get out something totally different.
- Delmania 9y ago
  > I managed to get my MS in CS back in the early 90s in one calendar year. I had a similar path, RIT has (or had) a dual degree program for Computer Science that only added a year to the regular undergrad program. Rather than take free electives, you swapped in the additional master's course you needed and all your undergrad classes became master's level courses (i.e. more work). I was suffering from depression at the time, so it took me a year to do my master's project (it's on Github, and it's not hard to find me there). I thought about going back for my PhD, but then realized the cost wasn't worth it. > The funny thing is that I didn't intend to be so mercenary. I was and still am. I got my degree from the perspective it would help me get more money. I strongly believe the only thing my job is for is money.
  - yebyen 9y ago
    Shout out for RIT! I actually didn't know there really was a PhD program in Computer Science. I just found this page with a link to list of dissertation defenses[1] that I have never seen before; historically, I've always thought it was a big joke because of this page with the overview[2] link that just recurses on itself and just displays a different image... (go ahead, don't you want to read the overview? Just click again...) TIL that RIT has actually given out a few PhDs in Computer Science! [3] Of course I feel like I earned a PhD by spending seven years there just to get my bachelor's degree. [1]: https://www.cs.rit.edu/phd-computing-and-information-sciences https://www.cs.rit.edu/phd-computing-and-information-science... [2]: https://www.rit.edu/gccis/computingsecurity/academics/phd/overview https://www.rit.edu/gccis/computingsecurity/academics/phd/ov... [3]: https://www.cs.rit.edu/recent-phd-dissertations-advised-cs-faculty https://www.cs.rit.edu/recent-phd-dissertations-advised-cs-f...
epalmer 9y ago
I have a friend that went to John Hopkins for one year in CS and dropped out. Just did not think he was suited for college. For the last year he worked at low wages for a sensor board company doing electronics and firmware coding. He just got a job doing cloud programming at a bank for $80K. Sometimes you don't even need an undergraduate degree.
ulucs 9y ago
Don't forget that in some industries (like tech) you can earn the same amount of money in a summer internship that you would have to work a whole year for in your home country.
indubitable 9y ago
You didn't hit on the shifting literal economics of academia. I was interested in continuing further in academia. Publish or perish, combined with the devaluation of negative results in publication, was a deterrent but workable. The thing that killed all interest in academia for me was the revelations of Stefan Grimm. Measuring the value of research in dollar bills? I mean you can give practically countless examples of how absurd this is. The square root of negative numbers? What sort of nonsense is this? We need to be studying real, important science - like how to make a better horse saddle or boat sail.
eli_gottlieb 9y ago
>Most people will chose Option 2. The two main types of people who chose Option 1 are those who are passionate about learning and advancing human knowledge and those who want a career where a PhD is required. I was under the impression that "those two main types of people" are the only ones who're really supposed to go into PhD programs in the first place, so shouldn't we be talking about the incentives important to them? Not to say money isn't important, but to say that from their point of view, Big Tech/Finance/Oil/Pharma/Defense may simply be a slog. There are also plenty of people who graduate with strong grades from a good undergrad and some nice experience and... simply don't get offered six-figure salaries right out of school. All my first job-offers were right around $80k/year.
- tyoma 9y ago
  I should have clarified my point better. Yes, those two main types of people are exactly who is supposed to go to grad school. But desire and qualifications are not enough. One also has to be willing to live in near poverty and delay starting a family for ~6 years. It is hardly surprising few people take that option when instead they could be living comfortably (even 80K/year is well above median US income) at a job they're not passionate about.
  - eli_gottlieb 9y ago
    >It is hardly surprising few people take that option when instead they could be living comfortably (even 80K/year is well above median US income) at a job they're not passionate about. But we're talking about a "disappearing" American grad-student. What has actually changed about lucrative professions being more lucrative than a grad-student stipend? This whole thread comes across as people just wanting to brag that they went into industry rather than think about the question.
smilbandit 9y ago
How are international students paying for the degrees? I know a masters degree can cost nearly $100k for a student without any scholarships.
- nunez 9y ago
  Wealthy family and/or country pays for them to attend (with living costs, IIRC)
grigjd3 9y ago
I'm effectively a nobody engineer at a large tech firm and I make three and a half times what I used to make as a postdoc at highly respected universities.
sytelus 9y ago
This is a wrong theory and wrong view. Being grad student pays unlike being masters or undergrad. Although the pay is not all that high, it's important to realize that vast majority of fresh out of the college students earns $55K or less. In fields like CS, grad students have phenomenal prospects. The reason American students are vanishing from grad schools is simply because (1) grad schools don't have quota system that forces them to accept only limited number of international students (2) they compete with best of the best of ALL countries. If you are going to compete with top students of China, India, Russia and other 200 countries then most likely you are going to lose.
nunez 9y ago
Those countries also pay significant amounts of money to place those students in our graduate programs, thus making this calculus even easier for them.
fulafel 9y ago
Why do you need to work long hours? Do you get fired or not-rehired if you do 9-5?

by tyoma 9y ago

s0rce 9y ago

Where were you 10 years ago. Well, I guess I was "passionate about learning and advancing human knowledge" but that didn't turn out to be all that practical.

tyoma 9y ago
Honest answer? I was just starting grad school. I went for my MS and had a wonderful experience. Would do it again in a heartbeat. There are many positives about grad school if you enjoy learning and research. There is definitely an opportunity cost and it is not surprising there are so few US citizens in grad school -- at least in technical fields. I hear it's a different story in the humanities.

sungx105 9y ago

Your option 1 is incomplete. It should read more closely to: You go to grad school and spend ~6 years working extremely long hours at nearly minimum wage with no benefits. You then spend 2-3 years on a postdoc still with relatively low compensation. There still are far too few academic positions available. You now either become an adjunct (and get caught in that vicious cycle) or you do another postdoc. Repeat ad nauseum (or until you give up and move to industry anyway)

frozenport 9y ago
Or after graduating, get an industry job supervised by one of your undergrads (happened to a friend).
konschubert 9y ago
That is, if you are planning to stay in academia after handing in your thesis. I think most people don't.

laichzeit0 9y ago

Why not go for Option 2, but do your post-grad part time while working? It might take 10 years instead of 6, but by then you'd have 10 years work experience, capital, etc.

adrianN 9y ago
It's hard to find part time jobs that still pay reasonably well and help you advance your career.
smallnamespace 9y ago
If you're single and planning to stay that way, taking an extra 4 years is ok. If you plan or want to have a family, not so much. Doubly so if you're a woman -- pregnancy risks start ramping past the early-mid 30s.
wickberg 9y ago
Part time PhD's are rare - most professors need their grad students to be working on their grant-related research projects as RAs. That work is then used as the basis for your dissertation. As a part time PhD student you'd need to either have your own research planned out (and separate from the professor's grant-related work) which also implies you're likely to be paying out of pocket for tuition. Or find a professor who was willing to accept a slower pace of work on something that's presumably backed by a grant, which is pretty unlikely as the funding agency is usually holding them to strict deadlines. Part-time Masters degrees are more common (and what I did myself), but come with similar trade-offs and usually need to be paid for by yourself or by your employer. And as you're not committing to being a part of a professor's research group for the next 5+ years, it's harder to find a good match for an advisor and a good thesis. Co-terminal degrees (B.S. + M.S. all at once, with an extra year after undergrad to do your thesis) mitigate this, but you're going to be out of pocket for that extra year of tuition on top of the bachelor's.
- hocuspocus 9y ago
  I live in Switzerland where privately funded PhDs are possible (though also rare) and things work a bit differently since tuition is about $500 a semester. Yet, it's typically not a good deal (for you, that is, for the school it's an incredible deal). You're typically hired at a 50-60% rate by your employer, and while that's comparable to a university salary, overall it's a lot more work, you have to deal with your boss plus your supervisor, the school and the company fight over ownership of your work, and you still have some obligations as a student in terms of credit and TA hours. The worst of both worlds :)

slimshady94 9y ago

For foreign citizens, option 2 is pretty much a no-brainer because a US green card implies societal respect, relatively high income and subsequently marriage proposals from their home country.

trevyn 9y ago

If you take some initiative, you can also learn a lot working in industry. It’s important to avoid being a code monkey stuck in a cubicle, only doing what you’re told and collecting a paycheck. Instead, be curious and enthusiastic about all aspects of the business and chat up all of your colleagues in different departments. Express interest and “help out” a little on your own time for projects out of your area of responsibility that appeal to you and that you want to learn more about. Assist someone by offering to do some research or putting together a slide deck for them. Offer to present it to their team. Offer your help in meetings. Get noticed, take more responsibility, and work cross-functionally. You’ll be amazed at the doors that open to you.

eli_gottlieb 9y ago
>If you take some initiative, you can also learn a lot working in industry. It’s important to avoid being a code monkey stuck in a cubicle, only doing what you’re told and collecting a paycheck. Instead, be curious and enthusiastic about all aspects of the business and chat up all of your colleagues in different departments. Why would you want to be curious and enthusiastic about your industry job if your real interest was research? This whole thread seems to be discussing a Generic Excellent Student who's simply choosing between academia and industry based purely on remuneration, and who possesses the marvelous ability to direct their passions straight towards money by sheer force of will. Well, of course that person is going to go to industry, but there are many people whose actual interests will point them preferentially towards one or the other. I went to school with a guy (call him P) who was talented and could have taken some research experience at any time, but he just plain wanted to be an entrepreneur.

drewg123 9y ago

There's also option 1.5: You start at a grad school in a PhD program (so that you have support and do not pile up debt), and you leave with a Masters as quickly as you can. I managed to get my MS in CS back in the early 90s in one calendar year. I had full support via a fellowship since I was one of the top students, so I did not have to be an RA or TA, and could take additional classes. I finished all but my MS Thesis requirement in 2 semesters and owed nothing thanks to the fellowship. I then decided I was leaving with an MS, and paid for my MS Thesis credits over the summer. This cost me only a year, and it happened immediately after undergrad when I was really good at studying anyhow. I am far enough into my career to realize that it strengthened my resume early on, and I think it has really helped my long-term career earnings. The funny thing is that I didn't intend to be so mercenary. My original intent was to get my requirements out the way early to leave more time for research the second year. I realized part-way through the year that I was not as enamored with the topic that I wanted to study as I thought I was, and I hadn't hit it off with the only logical choice for an advisor in that topic, so I wanted to get out something totally different.

Delmania 9y ago
> I managed to get my MS in CS back in the early 90s in one calendar year. I had a similar path, RIT has (or had) a dual degree program for Computer Science that only added a year to the regular undergrad program. Rather than take free electives, you swapped in the additional master's course you needed and all your undergrad classes became master's level courses (i.e. more work). I was suffering from depression at the time, so it took me a year to do my master's project (it's on Github, and it's not hard to find me there). I thought about going back for my PhD, but then realized the cost wasn't worth it. > The funny thing is that I didn't intend to be so mercenary. I was and still am. I got my degree from the perspective it would help me get more money. I strongly believe the only thing my job is for is money.
- yebyen 9y ago
  Shout out for RIT! I actually didn't know there really was a PhD program in Computer Science. I just found this page with a link to list of dissertation defenses[1] that I have never seen before; historically, I've always thought it was a big joke because of this page with the overview[2] link that just recurses on itself and just displays a different image... (go ahead, don't you want to read the overview? Just click again...) TIL that RIT has actually given out a few PhDs in Computer Science! [3] Of course I feel like I earned a PhD by spending seven years there just to get my bachelor's degree. [1]: https://www.cs.rit.edu/phd-computing-and-information-sciences https://www.cs.rit.edu/phd-computing-and-information-science... [2]: https://www.rit.edu/gccis/computingsecurity/academics/phd/overview https://www.rit.edu/gccis/computingsecurity/academics/phd/ov... [3]: https://www.cs.rit.edu/recent-phd-dissertations-advised-cs-faculty https://www.cs.rit.edu/recent-phd-dissertations-advised-cs-f...

epalmer 9y ago

I have a friend that went to John Hopkins for one year in CS and dropped out. Just did not think he was suited for college. For the last year he worked at low wages for a sensor board company doing electronics and firmware coding. He just got a job doing cloud programming at a bank for $80K. Sometimes you don't even need an undergraduate degree.

ulucs 9y ago

Don't forget that in some industries (like tech) you can earn the same amount of money in a summer internship that you would have to work a whole year for in your home country.

indubitable 9y ago

You didn't hit on the shifting literal economics of academia. I was interested in continuing further in academia. Publish or perish, combined with the devaluation of negative results in publication, was a deterrent but workable. The thing that killed all interest in academia for me was the revelations of Stefan Grimm. Measuring the value of research in dollar bills? I mean you can give practically countless examples of how absurd this is. The square root of negative numbers? What sort of nonsense is this? We need to be studying real, important science - like how to make a better horse saddle or boat sail.

eli_gottlieb 9y ago

>Most people will chose Option 2. The two main types of people who chose Option 1 are those who are passionate about learning and advancing human knowledge and those who want a career where a PhD is required. I was under the impression that "those two main types of people" are the only ones who're really supposed to go into PhD programs in the first place, so shouldn't we be talking about the incentives important to them? Not to say money isn't important, but to say that from their point of view, Big Tech/Finance/Oil/Pharma/Defense may simply be a slog. There are also plenty of people who graduate with strong grades from a good undergrad and some nice experience and... simply don't get offered six-figure salaries right out of school. All my first job-offers were right around $80k/year.

tyoma 9y ago
I should have clarified my point better. Yes, those two main types of people are exactly who is supposed to go to grad school. But desire and qualifications are not enough. One also has to be willing to live in near poverty and delay starting a family for ~6 years. It is hardly surprising few people take that option when instead they could be living comfortably (even 80K/year is well above median US income) at a job they're not passionate about.
- eli_gottlieb 9y ago
  >It is hardly surprising few people take that option when instead they could be living comfortably (even 80K/year is well above median US income) at a job they're not passionate about. But we're talking about a "disappearing" American grad-student. What has actually changed about lucrative professions being more lucrative than a grad-student stipend? This whole thread comes across as people just wanting to brag that they went into industry rather than think about the question.

smilbandit 9y ago

How are international students paying for the degrees? I know a masters degree can cost nearly $100k for a student without any scholarships.

nunez 9y ago
Wealthy family and/or country pays for them to attend (with living costs, IIRC)

grigjd3 9y ago

I'm effectively a nobody engineer at a large tech firm and I make three and a half times what I used to make as a postdoc at highly respected universities.

sytelus 9y ago

This is a wrong theory and wrong view. Being grad student pays unlike being masters or undergrad. Although the pay is not all that high, it's important to realize that vast majority of fresh out of the college students earns $55K or less. In fields like CS, grad students have phenomenal prospects. The reason American students are vanishing from grad schools is simply because (1) grad schools don't have quota system that forces them to accept only limited number of international students (2) they compete with best of the best of ALL countries. If you are going to compete with top students of China, India, Russia and other 200 countries then most likely you are going to lose.

nunez 9y ago

Those countries also pay significant amounts of money to place those students in our graduate programs, thus making this calculus even easier for them.

fulafel 9y ago

Why do you need to work long hours? Do you get fired or not-rehired if you do 9-5?