4 ms·
Attitudes about graduate school are changing.
- mymex1 16y agoAs an old teacher of mine use to say, "Don't let school get in the way of your education."
- BornInTheUSSR 16y agoMark Twain probably had the same teacher
- T-R 16y agoAll the linked articles in "further reading" are about graduate school in the humanities. Does that mean that it doesn't apply to science, engineering, and business, or that it does, but humanities is just an easier target?
- goalieca 16y agoI just got a Master's in engineering and I rejected funding to continue on into the PhD because I could not see myself continue for 4 to 5 more years of the same. I'm looking at jobs right now and of course I'd guess that most places don't really care that I have a Masters since most of the positions available are unrelated to my specialized field. PhD's are far too specialized and it seems there is little collaboration with industry. I'm starting to think that if you don't have a job lined up by the time you graduate your chances are cut in half.
- danteembermage 16y agoThe job market for newly minted accounting PhDs is very, very, good. ASU placed an accounting student at USC for example.
- rflrob 16y agoThe problem with a vast majority of these Doom and Gloom articles about grad school is that they implicitly lump in all subjects together. The subtitle on this site at least says "its focus is on the humanities and social sciences," but I for one find subtitles easy to overlook. There is a vast difference in employability, debt, and time-to-completion of a Science/Engineering PhD (comparatively High, Low, and Short, respectively) compared to a Social Science/Humanities PhD. I would suspect that most HN readers considering grad school would be pursuing technical degrees anyways (unless they're going after MBAs, which are a totally different class).
- danteembermage 16y agohttp://www.aacsb.edu/dataandresearch/reports/08-09-salsurvexecsumexcerpt.pdf http://www.aacsb.edu/dataandresearch/reports/08-09-salsurvex... Mean salary for new hires in (AACSB accredited) finance is $193,300
- mechanical_fish 16y agoDid you just characterize a science/engineering Ph.D.'s time to completion as "Short"? Or am I reading that incorrectly? Maybe if you're a theorist, or if you choose a fortunate field, but at Cornell the average experimental physics Ph.D. used to take 5 or 6 years. 7 was not at all rare, and it was not hard to find someone who had been around for 8. Meanwhile, most of the EE Ph.Ds I know took at least 5 years. And then your postdocs start...
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- rflrob 16y agoI meant the "comparatively" to apply to all of those measures. The median time to completion at top-rated humanities programs seems to be in the 7-8 year range, with Columbia Art History as high as 9. The same stat for Physical and Mathematical Science, Engineering, or Biological Science at top rated schools is more typically 5-6 years. Social Science seems to be more spread out, I'd say roughly 5-8 years. While I don't mean to suggest that half a decade is a drop in the bucket, it's certainly faster than in the humanities, and if you believe me that the pay is better, not quite as onerous as the popular culture tends to portray it. [1] http://www.nap.edu/rdp/ http://www.nap.edu/rdp/
- gamble 16y agoThe average for English is over ten years.
- wheaties 16y agoIs it me or the adds next to the article purporting "earn masters degree at home" too ironic?
- Waldemar 16y agoThe problems are severe and fairly widespread across academia, although the liberal arts (including the sciences) may be worse off than professional programs (with the exception of law, which also suffers from degree overproduction and a tight job market). Here is a view from the world of chemistry: http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/01/07/the_phd_problem.php http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/01/07/the_phd_prob...
- powellc 16y agoI feel like T.S. Eliot knew all about this before the second world war...