16 ms·

When you look at the stats, it’s hard not to conclude that the current PhD system is fundamentally broken. Mental health issues are rife: approximately one-thir

by apo 8y ago

When you look at the stats, it’s hard not to conclude that the current PhD system is fundamentally broken. Mental health issues are rife: approximately one-third of PhD students are at risk of having or developing a psychiatric disorder like depression. The high level of dropouts is similarly worrying – and possibly another symptom of the same problem. Research suggests that on average 50% of PhD students leave graduate school without finishing – with numbers higher at some institutions. The biggest risk factor I've found for a PhD student is lack of research experience during the undergrad degree. I've seen it over and over. A newly-minted bachelor's student without research experience has no preparation for the frustration, isolation, and sense of futility that real researchers face. When it hits them, many discover they lack the temperament to actually move a research project forward. By then, they will have sunk 2-3 years of their life (or more) and a major amount of prestige into a failed attempt. If you're an undergraduate and harbor the slightest ambition to get a PhD, drop what you're doing right now and start looking for a research group to join. You're going to need 2-3 years of experience actually doing research to know if it's something you'll enjoy long term. You may well discover that you don't like what you find. If so, better to know that now than when you're in your late 20s. If things do work out, you'll have a better idea of what to look for in advisors and schools.

ginnungagap 8y ago
In Europe the norm is to do a Master after a Bachelor, some Master programmes are heavily research oriented and can give you a taste of what's to come if you choose to keep following that path. (I definitely agree with the point you're making, just pointing out that there are different possibilities)
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- chess19 8y ago
  Its pretty standard in the US (at least in the fields I am familiar with) that if you quit a PhD program you can still leave with a Master's if you've been in the program for long enough.
  - romwell 8y ago
    Not in Texas A&M math department, for example, at least a few years ago.
    - mcguire 8y ago
      It is the literal truth for the CS dept at UT Austin, as of when I was there a 10 or so years ago. They didn't have a real Masters program; the Masters was regarded as a consolation prize when you left the PhD program. Edit: To be honest, I got in by telling the graduate advisor that I would rather be in a Masters program there than a PhD program elsewhere.
extralego 8y ago
These phenomenons are interesting to witness for someone like myself who loves doing research but followed a very different academic path because I felt demonized by formal school systems in high school and at a state uni. Speaking purely from observation of many peers, there were definitely some who navigated the social and academic realms well, and garnered respect from socially-encourageable and conformist mentors, but for some reason their ambitions often lacked. All my friends with PhDs are unhappy, and do not enjoy doing research. They are all intelligent, some a little bit creative, and only curious when forced. They are experts of citations (a tease that never gets old to me, sorry) and I’m afraid are most concerned with not being left behind or achieving prestige. Having had countless long late-night chats with them in empty bars about this, I gather their habits of conformity got them that far and let them down once they were on their own. They consistently think what I’m doing in my life is more interesting than theirs. I think the opposite and would die to be in their shoes. These friends are all in mathematics or humanities, and for those in humanities, I would especially die to be in their shoes. I recommend them books on a regular basis, collaborate with them on papers for fun, sending loads of notes that get chiselled down to whatever the editor is expected to prefer. The whole process is nasty from my perspective. A pile of people desperate to wiesel off the next because that’s the skill they were selected for from early on. In my best effort to put bitterness aside, I can only rationally conclude it’s rotten to the core. To be clear, these are very intelligent people. But, the system of schooling most go through selects fiercely against curiosity at it’s earlier stages. This is only a theory. Feel free to point to research on the topic.
- NegativeLatency 8y ago
  > They consistently think what I’m doing in my life is more interesting than theirs. I think the opposite The grass is always greener
  - extralego 8y ago
    Sure. Fair. But reason can resolve a bit more detail here if we try. Particularly, I am struck that there is such little complaint over the status quo of citation dependence. Popularly speaking, of course there is, but researching PhDs just make their days of it with barely a fuss. Shouldn’t that be particularly concerning? In recognition of the congruency this has with what the authorities demanded of me when I argued with my teachers over subject matter in high school, it is infuriating. When this is what you were asking for all along, how can you be so surprised that it’s what you got? It does raise a question of how the grass is green, and why it’s on the other side. Fun fact: The grass on the hillsides in the opening sequence of The Sound Of Music was actually painted by hand. It was worth it for the altitude and the Austrian mountain backdrop.
DSingularity 8y ago
Also, professors are so often in no position to offer genuine advice. They often have massive conflicts of interest which they do not disclose: funding sources, requirements, and plans.
- chaosbutters314 8y ago
  this. They don't mention to students, who are too inexperienced, to understand funding and how it works. Professors want the prestige of having tons of students which isn't always in the best interest of the student. The professor's plan can also be "vague" in order to always hold the carrot in front of the horse's mouth. Endlessly chasing something it will never reach.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- pishpash 8y ago
  Money is the source of evil when it comes to corrupting graduate school programs. This has been especially acute since the late 2000's.
- klodolph 8y ago
  In my own personal experience, professors and academic advisers have consistently given me the worst advice (about choosing a path or personal development) when I have asked for it. It takes a certain temperament to become a professor. There are a couple exceptions, but most of the professors and academic advisers I talked to seemed to be unable or unwilling to connect with people who were not there for academia qua academia, and very few had enough experience outside academia to give any kind of credible comparison. Find someone who got a PhD and works in industry, or who got a PhD and works in an unrelated field, or someone who didn't finish their PhD. More viewpoints will give you a better picture.
  - UncleMeat 8y ago
    I'm the inverse, and so are most people I know. Every faculty member I spoke to in undergrad told me very clearly that a PhD was bad for my career, enormously stressful and risky, and led to a faculty job search that was likely to fail. I was told not to pursue it unless I desperately wanted to be a faculty member. The most common advice I got was "don't do it". This wasn't because I was a shitty candidate. I was accepted to four of the top five schools. It's a mixed bag whether you will get good advice I guess.
pishpash 8y ago
This is ridiculous. It is literally part of the job description of PhD advisors to train students and provide research experience. It is not the job of the PhD advisor to totally absolve himself/herself of hiring risk, for god's sake. If you already have 2-3 years of genuine (i.e. truly independent) research experience, you are half way to being a postdoc and the advisor is simply a funding source who should in turn have to pay market rate for employees and have greatly reduced powers over them.
chess19 8y ago
Of course this quote also suggests that maybe people who go in to PhD programs have higher rates of mental health issues. I would definitely argue that PhD programs are both bad for mental health and also attract people with poor mental health in the first place. I have known plenty of people who didn't feel like they had the skills (both technical and/or social) to go in to industry so they applied to grad school.
- doctorsher 8y ago
  You bring up a solid point. It would be interesting to see, of the students leaving a PhD program with poor mental health, what fraction already entered the program with poor mental health? My hunch is that the stark majority acquired it while they were in the PhD program, but I have no data obviously.
- pytyper2 8y ago
  Hoping that the degree will mask a lack of actual skills. I encounter this often, 'guy has phd but struggles with the decisions to make actual progress in practical terms'. Is it possible to attain a phd and rely mostly on rote memorization? Are all phd candidates required to make an original contribution to their respective field?
  - roel_v 8y ago
    "Is it possible to attain a phd and rely mostly on rote memorization?" No, but it's possible to just be a research serf to the professor, and the professor will carry you more or less to completion - very little indepenent thought needed. You do need to be able to do lots of (well defined, but tedious) work.
    - pc86 8y ago
      It's a shame that completing a mountain of well-defined, but tedious work with little independent thought is considered an original contribution to the field.
      - 8y ago
doctorsher 8y ago
> The biggest risk factor I've found for a PhD student is lack of research experience during the undergrad degree. Previous research experience might help, but there still are a number of factors that need to align in order to have a relatively smooth PhD. In my mind, it depends on the quality of your previous research experience, your advisor, and your goals upon graduation. For my experience in particular, I did two summers of research at an R1 when I was in undergrad. Continuing on that path, I went to graduate school for my PhD. I am five years in; looking back, I was still extremely unprepared for the realities of research. When I did the undergraduate research, my hand was being held by the PhD students I was working under. Sure, I did some interesting stuff, but I received a substantial amount of guidance. Now in graduate school, my PhD advisor is very hands off, and our group tends to work in isolation. I have to push my research forward on my own. It took me years to get used to this, and not feel completely incompetent. My previous research experience was not a good predictor of my life as a PhD student. In my mind, the best preparation would be to do a thesis-based masters degree and try to publish during that.
- bbgm 8y ago
  The bulk of the second year of my master’s research with limited class work. Learning how to set up experiments, writing a thesis, and doing the groundwork for publication (which happened a few years later) helped a lot get right into my PhD although it was not at all related to my Master’s work.
bjourne 8y ago
> A newly-minted bachelor's student without research experience has no preparation for the frustration, isolation, and sense of futility that real researchers face. Don't you need a master's degree to be eligible for a doctorate program? > If you're an undergraduate and harbor the slightest ambition to get a PhD, drop what you're doing right now and start looking for a research group to join. How does undergraduates find a research groups to join?
- buildbot 8y ago
  > Don't you need a master's degree to be eligible for a doctorate program? At least at most US schools, you do not. Having one helps your chances of being accepted in most cases though > How does undergraduates find a research groups to join? Research fairs like career fairs, or just asking profs from classes you enjoyed - every undergrad I knew in grad school just asked my prof if they could try out research.
- pc86 8y ago
  > Don't you need a master's degree to be eligible for a doctorate program? There are 8 or 9 former classmates of mine with PhDs and only one went out of his way to get a Master's prior, and only because it was a much more prestigious institution (Georgetown) than our undergrad (unknown liberal arts college). Everyone else either entered their respective programs directly from undergrad or had industry/life experience first.
- tsumnia 8y ago
  > Don't you need a master's degree to be eligible for a doctorate program? Can't speak for all schools, but NC State accepts bachelors into their Masters and PhD program. While getting your PhD, you have the option to earn an MS "en route". > How does undergraduates find a research groups to join? For larger, research-oriented schools, this is as easy as visiting each professor's website. Most will have a link to their current or archived projects and their recent publications. Similar to the joke that you can get any academic paper for free by emailing the professor, the same can happen with research. Ask them about it and if you can join in on any of the on-going projects. For teaching-oriented schools, this can be a little more difficult. My bachelors program only had 1 (maybe 2) labs, so if that wasn't your interest good luck. You can still do the same process, find a professor in a research area you're interested in and speak to them. There may not be funding, but you could be the spark under that prof's butt to start applying for some grants.
pc86 8y ago
> > The high level of dropouts is similarly worrying Why? Some things are hard and those things will by definition have higher dropout rates. The fact that PhD programs have high dropout rates is not necessarily an issue unto itself. > You're going to need 2-3 years of experience actually doing research to know if it's something you'll enjoy long term. Is it realistic to expect a college sophomore to know whether or not they want to pursue a PhD program? I wish more undergraduate programs focused on original research but if yours doesn't you may not get any exposure to it until your senior year (if even then).
marcofloriano 8y ago
Relates a lot with my entrepreneur experience. My last venture sunk like 5 years of my life and money. Guess most risked things are hard. The hardest part is to actually get experience. Experience is different from success.
sfifs 8y ago
Absolutely right! I did it in my third and fourth year of engineering and got very clear academic research isn't the way for me to go even though I turned out to be pretty good at it. Ended up in business research and analytics

by apo 8y ago

ginnungagap 8y ago

In Europe the norm is to do a Master after a Bachelor, some Master programmes are heavily research oriented and can give you a taste of what's to come if you choose to keep following that path. (I definitely agree with the point you're making, just pointing out that there are different possibilities)

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
chess19 8y ago
Its pretty standard in the US (at least in the fields I am familiar with) that if you quit a PhD program you can still leave with a Master's if you've been in the program for long enough.
- romwell 8y ago
  Not in Texas A&M math department, for example, at least a few years ago.
  - mcguire 8y ago
    It is the literal truth for the CS dept at UT Austin, as of when I was there a 10 or so years ago. They didn't have a real Masters program; the Masters was regarded as a consolation prize when you left the PhD program. Edit: To be honest, I got in by telling the graduate advisor that I would rather be in a Masters program there than a PhD program elsewhere.

extralego 8y ago

These phenomenons are interesting to witness for someone like myself who loves doing research but followed a very different academic path because I felt demonized by formal school systems in high school and at a state uni. Speaking purely from observation of many peers, there were definitely some who navigated the social and academic realms well, and garnered respect from socially-encourageable and conformist mentors, but for some reason their ambitions often lacked. All my friends with PhDs are unhappy, and do not enjoy doing research. They are all intelligent, some a little bit creative, and only curious when forced. They are experts of citations (a tease that never gets old to me, sorry) and I’m afraid are most concerned with not being left behind or achieving prestige. Having had countless long late-night chats with them in empty bars about this, I gather their habits of conformity got them that far and let them down once they were on their own. They consistently think what I’m doing in my life is more interesting than theirs. I think the opposite and would die to be in their shoes. These friends are all in mathematics or humanities, and for those in humanities, I would especially die to be in their shoes. I recommend them books on a regular basis, collaborate with them on papers for fun, sending loads of notes that get chiselled down to whatever the editor is expected to prefer. The whole process is nasty from my perspective. A pile of people desperate to wiesel off the next because that’s the skill they were selected for from early on. In my best effort to put bitterness aside, I can only rationally conclude it’s rotten to the core. To be clear, these are very intelligent people. But, the system of schooling most go through selects fiercely against curiosity at it’s earlier stages. This is only a theory. Feel free to point to research on the topic.

NegativeLatency 8y ago
> They consistently think what I’m doing in my life is more interesting than theirs. I think the opposite The grass is always greener
- extralego 8y ago
  Sure. Fair. But reason can resolve a bit more detail here if we try. Particularly, I am struck that there is such little complaint over the status quo of citation dependence. Popularly speaking, of course there is, but researching PhDs just make their days of it with barely a fuss. Shouldn’t that be particularly concerning? In recognition of the congruency this has with what the authorities demanded of me when I argued with my teachers over subject matter in high school, it is infuriating. When this is what you were asking for all along, how can you be so surprised that it’s what you got? It does raise a question of how the grass is green, and why it’s on the other side. Fun fact: The grass on the hillsides in the opening sequence of The Sound Of Music was actually painted by hand. It was worth it for the altitude and the Austrian mountain backdrop.

DSingularity 8y ago

Also, professors are so often in no position to offer genuine advice. They often have massive conflicts of interest which they do not disclose: funding sources, requirements, and plans.

chaosbutters314 8y ago
this. They don't mention to students, who are too inexperienced, to understand funding and how it works. Professors want the prestige of having tons of students which isn't always in the best interest of the student. The professor's plan can also be "vague" in order to always hold the carrot in front of the horse's mouth. Endlessly chasing something it will never reach.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
pishpash 8y ago
Money is the source of evil when it comes to corrupting graduate school programs. This has been especially acute since the late 2000's.
klodolph 8y ago
In my own personal experience, professors and academic advisers have consistently given me the worst advice (about choosing a path or personal development) when I have asked for it. It takes a certain temperament to become a professor. There are a couple exceptions, but most of the professors and academic advisers I talked to seemed to be unable or unwilling to connect with people who were not there for academia qua academia, and very few had enough experience outside academia to give any kind of credible comparison. Find someone who got a PhD and works in industry, or who got a PhD and works in an unrelated field, or someone who didn't finish their PhD. More viewpoints will give you a better picture.
- UncleMeat 8y ago
  I'm the inverse, and so are most people I know. Every faculty member I spoke to in undergrad told me very clearly that a PhD was bad for my career, enormously stressful and risky, and led to a faculty job search that was likely to fail. I was told not to pursue it unless I desperately wanted to be a faculty member. The most common advice I got was "don't do it". This wasn't because I was a shitty candidate. I was accepted to four of the top five schools. It's a mixed bag whether you will get good advice I guess.

pishpash 8y ago

This is ridiculous. It is literally part of the job description of PhD advisors to train students and provide research experience. It is not the job of the PhD advisor to totally absolve himself/herself of hiring risk, for god's sake. If you already have 2-3 years of genuine (i.e. truly independent) research experience, you are half way to being a postdoc and the advisor is simply a funding source who should in turn have to pay market rate for employees and have greatly reduced powers over them.

chess19 8y ago

Of course this quote also suggests that maybe people who go in to PhD programs have higher rates of mental health issues. I would definitely argue that PhD programs are both bad for mental health and also attract people with poor mental health in the first place. I have known plenty of people who didn't feel like they had the skills (both technical and/or social) to go in to industry so they applied to grad school.

doctorsher 8y ago
You bring up a solid point. It would be interesting to see, of the students leaving a PhD program with poor mental health, what fraction already entered the program with poor mental health? My hunch is that the stark majority acquired it while they were in the PhD program, but I have no data obviously.
pytyper2 8y ago
Hoping that the degree will mask a lack of actual skills. I encounter this often, 'guy has phd but struggles with the decisions to make actual progress in practical terms'. Is it possible to attain a phd and rely mostly on rote memorization? Are all phd candidates required to make an original contribution to their respective field?
- roel_v 8y ago
  "Is it possible to attain a phd and rely mostly on rote memorization?" No, but it's possible to just be a research serf to the professor, and the professor will carry you more or less to completion - very little indepenent thought needed. You do need to be able to do lots of (well defined, but tedious) work.
  - pc86 8y ago
    It's a shame that completing a mountain of well-defined, but tedious work with little independent thought is considered an original contribution to the field.
    - 8y ago

doctorsher 8y ago

> The biggest risk factor I've found for a PhD student is lack of research experience during the undergrad degree. Previous research experience might help, but there still are a number of factors that need to align in order to have a relatively smooth PhD. In my mind, it depends on the quality of your previous research experience, your advisor, and your goals upon graduation. For my experience in particular, I did two summers of research at an R1 when I was in undergrad. Continuing on that path, I went to graduate school for my PhD. I am five years in; looking back, I was still extremely unprepared for the realities of research. When I did the undergraduate research, my hand was being held by the PhD students I was working under. Sure, I did some interesting stuff, but I received a substantial amount of guidance. Now in graduate school, my PhD advisor is very hands off, and our group tends to work in isolation. I have to push my research forward on my own. It took me years to get used to this, and not feel completely incompetent. My previous research experience was not a good predictor of my life as a PhD student. In my mind, the best preparation would be to do a thesis-based masters degree and try to publish during that.

bbgm 8y ago
The bulk of the second year of my master’s research with limited class work. Learning how to set up experiments, writing a thesis, and doing the groundwork for publication (which happened a few years later) helped a lot get right into my PhD although it was not at all related to my Master’s work.

bjourne 8y ago

> A newly-minted bachelor's student without research experience has no preparation for the frustration, isolation, and sense of futility that real researchers face. Don't you need a master's degree to be eligible for a doctorate program? > If you're an undergraduate and harbor the slightest ambition to get a PhD, drop what you're doing right now and start looking for a research group to join. How does undergraduates find a research groups to join?

buildbot 8y ago
> Don't you need a master's degree to be eligible for a doctorate program? At least at most US schools, you do not. Having one helps your chances of being accepted in most cases though > How does undergraduates find a research groups to join? Research fairs like career fairs, or just asking profs from classes you enjoyed - every undergrad I knew in grad school just asked my prof if they could try out research.
pc86 8y ago
> Don't you need a master's degree to be eligible for a doctorate program? There are 8 or 9 former classmates of mine with PhDs and only one went out of his way to get a Master's prior, and only because it was a much more prestigious institution (Georgetown) than our undergrad (unknown liberal arts college). Everyone else either entered their respective programs directly from undergrad or had industry/life experience first.
tsumnia 8y ago
> Don't you need a master's degree to be eligible for a doctorate program? Can't speak for all schools, but NC State accepts bachelors into their Masters and PhD program. While getting your PhD, you have the option to earn an MS "en route". > How does undergraduates find a research groups to join? For larger, research-oriented schools, this is as easy as visiting each professor's website. Most will have a link to their current or archived projects and their recent publications. Similar to the joke that you can get any academic paper for free by emailing the professor, the same can happen with research. Ask them about it and if you can join in on any of the on-going projects. For teaching-oriented schools, this can be a little more difficult. My bachelors program only had 1 (maybe 2) labs, so if that wasn't your interest good luck. You can still do the same process, find a professor in a research area you're interested in and speak to them. There may not be funding, but you could be the spark under that prof's butt to start applying for some grants.

pc86 8y ago

> > The high level of dropouts is similarly worrying Why? Some things are hard and those things will by definition have higher dropout rates. The fact that PhD programs have high dropout rates is not necessarily an issue unto itself. > You're going to need 2-3 years of experience actually doing research to know if it's something you'll enjoy long term. Is it realistic to expect a college sophomore to know whether or not they want to pursue a PhD program? I wish more undergraduate programs focused on original research but if yours doesn't you may not get any exposure to it until your senior year (if even then).

marcofloriano 8y ago

Relates a lot with my entrepreneur experience. My last venture sunk like 5 years of my life and money. Guess most risked things are hard. The hardest part is to actually get experience. Experience is different from success.

sfifs 8y ago

Absolutely right! I did it in my third and fourth year of engineering and got very clear academic research isn't the way for me to go even though I turned out to be pretty good at it. Ended up in business research and analytics