9 ms·

The True Cost of a PhD: Giving Up a Family for Academia

68 points by EndXA 7y ago

ktpsns 7y ago
This topic is difficult to address in general and world wide. What I can say is: My wife and I graduated in Germany, we both had a net salary/scholarship beyond 1200€/m, so we could easily afford anything baby-related. This would even have been possible with only a single salary -- having a baby is not expensive if you don't follow your urgent need for a house or car. In a German city, one can raise a kid in a single room apartment and study half time -- and this does not meet the national (or my subjective) definition of "poverty". The actual problem is time. Having a baby, I felt the lack of time every day and night. I could not do as much for science as I wanted to. That definitely reflects in the grades and scientific publications.
- analog31 7y ago
  Did you have access to health care? In the US, having a baby while in graduate school was profoundly risky from a financial standpoint, and there was a strong bias against women who had kids. I knew families that were bankrupted. Also, they had to completely drain their finances in order to qualify for some forms of public assistance.
  - shantly 7y ago
    As far as I know, it's quite uncommon an any OECD state other than the US to be without quite good coverage for health care bills and medical bankruptcy is even less common—I hesitate to write "unheard of" because I'm sure there are some exceptions somewhere, but it fits the colloquial use of "unheard of", certainly.
    - johncearls 7y ago
      It would be "unheard of" in the United States for a Ph.D. student in a normal program to not have good health insurance and the birth paid for. The stipend in the US is ridiculously low, and I can see having trouble affording to take care of a baby, but it is not going to be the medical costs that get you.
      - lotsofpulp 7y ago
        Do universities pay for health insurance for PhD students? In my experience, an uneventful birth costs $3k to $5k, with insurance, and it all depends on if the pregnancy costs occur in the same calendar year to avoid resetting the out of pocket maximum limit.
  - mschuster91 7y ago
    In Germany healthcare is mandatory by law and affordable - for most employees except ultra-high-income, it's a countrywide fixed percentage of income.
  - rusticpenn 7y ago
    Yes, In Germany, health insurance is proportional to your pay ( as long as you do not go private). There are laws called "Mutterschutz" to protect mothers. The mothers are eligible for 65% of their pay for 1 year (parental leave) or 300€/m if they are not working. The child gets about 200€/m from the Govt. The education is free. If you are on a contract that might end when your child is younger than x years, then the contract will be extended etc.
    - benibela 7y ago
      >Yes, In Germany, health insurance is proportional to your pay ( as long as you do not go private). Not if you are getting a scholarship for a PhD. A scholarship does not count as work income. Then you have to pay a flat fee close to 200€/month for insurance, like someone who does not work at all
      - rusticpenn 7y ago
        In most cases, the scholarship also pays more if you have a kid. Yes, you have to pay around 200€ if you have a usual scholarship.
- bart_spoon 7y ago
  > if you don't follow your urgent need for a house or car Unfortunately these are not the sole concerns in the US. Costs for rentals are spiraling out of control in many places, so whether you are renting or buying is often a moot point. And healthcare is a huge problem as well.
  - BigJ1211 7y ago
    This is happening to a lot of European countries as well. The cost of rental homes/flats is getting higher and higher. Even social rent is at the point that it is often just below 50% of their net income (assuming 1 person with a fulltime job) not sure how that compares to the US. But it is a worrying thing overall that is happening in the western society. I think it's generally recommended to be at 1/3 of your net income, which simply isn't doable in most areas here in the Netherlands.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  It’s also very difficult for mothers because the US doesn’t offer any decent time off, so all the pumping for breast milk and stress that goes along with it is discouraging.
chrisseaton 7y ago
> American universities graduated 100,000 new PhDs but only created 16,000 new professorships Here we go again - this weird idea that the only purpose for doing a PhD is to become a professor.
- lallysingh 7y ago
  Agreed. CS PhDs don't typically identify themselves with a Dr prefix, so our population (I have one, I don't use a Dr prefix) is rather hidden. People don't know how many of us there are. When I was at Google, about 25% of googlers had PhDs.
- jhbadger 7y ago
  In many fields, that's actually not far from the truth, though. Yes, PhDs in computer science, engineering, and natural sciences can find jobs in industry, but it's not like anyone getting a PhD in 19th century German literature can easily find a job using that other than in academia.
  - michaelmior 7y ago
    However, computer science is also one of the fields with the largest need for professors partially because of the competition with industry jobs. My experience from a Canadian perspective was that computer science PhDs also tend to be better funded than those in the social sciences so the overall risk is much lower.
    - barry-cotter 7y ago
      The risk may be lower but the forgone income is a lot greater. The median admit to a CS Ph.D. programme, even the worst ones in the US, can probably get a job at Google and can definitely get a job programming for a living if they have the right to live in the US. If they’re from a less developed country a Ph.D. stipend and the possibility of staying afterwards probably looks pretty great.
      - 7y ago
josh_fyi 7y ago
"Solve for the equilibrium": Only the tiniest fraction of superstars, those with nothing better to do, and foreigners from poor countries will go for a PhD. Beyond that, the talented will avoid the PhD.
RickJWagner 7y ago
I would love to have a PhD, and the associated prestige. I like academics and would probably enjoy the classes. I looked into it a few years back, I was absolutely stunned at the amount of institutional butt-kissery that was associated with it. That, and the fact that most of the PhD programmers I know are not any different from the average has convinced me to stay put.
- hatmatrix 7y ago
  > enjoy the classes You might be teaching some classes (or grading, most likely) - but you won't be taking much of them. PhDs are about doing research. Having said that there are certainly a lot of PhDs who are not above average.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  > enjoy the classes But you don't really do 'classes' as a PhD student. At that point you should be the world expert in your subject so who would be teaching you :)
  - michaelmior 7y ago
    In my field, it seems most PhD students spend the majority of at least their first year taking classes. But it's true that the overall course load is significantly less than bachelor's degree. Of course you don't come into a PhD program already being an expert. Even if you are, there's certainly much to learn about related fields.
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    > But you don't really do 'classes' as a PhD student. In the US almost all programmes begin with a two year long Ph.D. student period at the end of which, assuming you pass your qualifying exams you can drop out with a Master’s. Once those are done you absolutely must focus on research though if you haven’t started on it already you’re behind. After the Master’s you’re a Ph.D. candidate. Somewhere in this period, if you’re doing it right you’re very likely to become the world’s leading expert on your particular, extremely narrow field. Then, or while becoming that expert you write up your thesis, defend it and get the degree. In the UK it’s still possible to go directly from Bachelor’s to Ph.D. candidate and be done in three years but the trend is away from this, at least in the exact and social sciences.
dr_coffee 7y ago
"At least with medical school, Peter said, the job prospects are better. New doctors begin making $60,000 and their salary increases by $20,000 a year during residency." Actually not true. A resident's salary might increase by $20k between the start and end of their training (esp for intensive 7-8 surgical programs), but most programs only increase salary by $3,000 per year. In the following tables, PGY stands for post-graduate year, and extends from residency into fellowship if you choose to do one. Usually the salaries are the same for all residents, regardless of whether you are training to be a neurosurgeon or a psychiatrist. https://med.virginia.edu/gme/program-resources/salary-benefits/ https://med.virginia.edu/gme/program-resources/salary-benefi... https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/emergencymedicine/em-residency/benefits/index.html https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/emergencymedicine/em-residen...
- jcranberry 7y ago
  I read that and immediately thought 'that'll be news to my surgical resident friend'.
buboard 7y ago
I dont see a problem with that. Too many people in research - market needs correction.
merlinsbrain 7y ago
The comparison of pay between what PhD students get in the US vs other countries is plain silly. It’s apples to oranges, the cost of living can be an order of magnitude different, which is not mentioned even once, favoring the absolute number comparison as a good thing. Beyond this the article talks about low stipends, while an important topic of conversation - nothing new.
euix 7y ago
The only reason to pursue a PhD is interest in the subject matter. You don't have to have all consuming passion and love but you have to be genuinely interested. Those who do it because their parents have phds or their colleagues, or they want "dr" in front of their name, in other words, for vanity, prestige or to further their career usually never do well. Either because they start at a later point in their lives, lack the dedication or drive to go beyond the call of duty. A phd is always about doing 110% of what is expected. In my field (physics), the expectation is to finish a phd within 6 years of completing your undergrad. If you have a good project or work hard 5 years is doable, 7 if you are a good student but got unlucky. This means the average age out of graduate school is between 26-31, depending on what country you received your undergraduate in. That is more then enough time to still start a career or work on other life goals. It's when you take longer then this timeline that things start to go wrong, for both futures in academia and industry and your life and mental health in general. A mediocre phd is worse then not doing a phd and there are plenty of those around but those who do well (not exceptional geniuses by any means!), a phd will open many doors even if you do not pursue a further academic career.
majos 7y ago
Man, seemingly every week on HN there’s an article attacking PhDs as monastic pyramid schemes for the foreign, financially gullible, and unemployable. As a 5th-year computer science PhD student (graduating next semester!) I think this characterization is unfair. With summer internships, I have made about 40k per year over my PhD, which was more than enough for anything I wanted. I only had to TA for one year. The jobs available to me now are much more interesting than the ones available to me 5 years ago. With the help of a great advisor, a few other hosts and mentors, and fellow grad students and postdocs, I’ve learned a lot about (and now, made some contributions I’m proud of) to a couple of areas of research. As someone who enjoys research, that has been a very rewarding process. This is not a universal truth. Things might be much worse if I had dependents, had a bad stipend, had a bad advisor, or did not like research. But in my case I had none of these complications, and I’m glad I did a PhD — not just to have the credential, but to have had the fun experience, grown, and now have a research future I’m pretty excited about.
- cbames89 7y ago
  This is pretty similar to my experience, but I also have two kids both born during graduate school. Their addition to our family will delay my graduation a bit, but they're worth it :)
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  Your experience is atypical for Ph.D. students though not out of the ordinary for CS Ph.D. students. There are other fields that are similarly well situated like Economics, with plentiful internship opportunities and great options after the Ph.D. that aren’t academia. Even for you in CS and the others in fields where the average position is ok a Ph.D. is a pretty bad bet monetarily but if the consumption value is high enough, great, it’s worth it even if you never even wanted to be an academic. But you gave up a lot in forgone earnings and in work experience and if you’re lucky you’ll make it up in a decade. The work experience might be a wash depending on the field you end up in. The forgone earnings will not be a wash. If you’d decided to do a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature there would have been no internships, a poor stipend, wild competition for academic jobs and no real demand for your skills and expertise outside academia. If a Ph.D. was worth it for the consumption value for you that’s great and it’s fantastic that there exist fields that have similar teaching demand, stipends and exit opportunities. But the Ph.D. hate is to tell people Are there any jobs in this field or demand for its graduates? If not it will be bad. Stay away.
rubidium 7y ago
“colleges and universities must find a way to allow those pursuing academic careers to obtain the basic goods that most people seek in life: marriage, a family, and a career to support themselves. The price of pursuing a life of the mind shouldn’t be the rest of one’s life.” Wait, why is this the universities problem? If too many people want to get phds than our society can support, then less people should get phds. That or they’ll get stuck in the current academic grind. Any PhD student should be well aware of the career difficulty that follows, particularly if they want to be a professor. There’s no lack of articles like this one pointing out that fact. I got my PhD but went in well aware that I don’t want to go thru the ringer trying to be a professor. I’d love to be one, but not willing to sacrifice so much to be one. So I choose to do industry from the start. The PhD wasn’t the most financially advantageous move but I loved it for the 6 years I was there and wouldn’t trade it for the “sunk cost”.
- noobiemcfoob 7y ago
  You would think being cognizant and forward thinking enough to evaluate the prospect of a 6 year endeavor is a requisite for prospective PhD students. And yet...
- gwd 7y ago
  > Wait, why is this the universities problem? If too many people want to get phds than our society can support than less people should get phds. That or they’ll get stuck in the current academic grind. Any PhD student should be well aware of the career difficulty that follows, particularly if they want to be a professor. There’s no lack of articles like this one pointing out that fact. But I think there very much is a systemic effect that everyone is missing because it happens so slowly. Fundamentally, if the number of academic positions remains constant, then each professor only needs to train one PhD student looking to enter academia in their entire career. OK, maybe 1.1 to deal with deaths or other sorts of natural attrition. But think about that for a minute, and then think about how many PhD students a typical professor actually trains in their career. That level of "production" is OK when the number of academic positions are expanding at a similar rate. But they're not expanding at any where near the same rate these days; instead, there are longer and longer "holding patterns". And this introduces a pattern where the "holding patterns" get longer and longer, but people don't really notice. Professors who got their PhDs in the 70's didn't do any post-docs, or maybe only a year or two. Professors who got their PhDs in the 80's or 90's did a few years, but not many. PhDs getting jobs now in some fields can expect to have post-docs for a decade; but people getting PhDs now will have even longer waits. So PhD students "should be well aware", but 1) the people advising them almost certainly had a much easier time than the people currently in the pipeline, and 2) it will almost certainly be much worse by the time they actually want to get a job. Add to that that it would be nearly impossible to perform modern academic research without the army of PhD students and postdocs being paid slave wages, so there's very little incentive to give students a realistic picture of what their chances actually are. So yes, it should be up to universities and research institutions to set up a sustainable system.
maxaf 7y ago
This article and the sad reality it portrays reminded me of Episode 16 of Timesuck: “Is we getting dumberest?”[0] The most obvious conclusion to be drawn is that the brightest and most educated members of our species are incapable of producing offspring because our society does not support them economically. Throw another reason into the “why we’re getting dumber” bucket. [0]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uxUXDfvBZ7o https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uxUXDfvBZ7o
pxhb 7y ago
This is an interesting article, but I feel like it only vaguely addresses the root of the problem of grad school in the US(in my opinion). The root problem is that your grad school experience is highly dependent on what university you go to and who your advisor is. I recently finished my PhD in physics from a top university earlier this year. During my time there, I was paid enough to live comfortably (~35k/year) and had amazing free health care. My advisor was great for the most part, and I had amazing opportunities and experiences that I would not have had otherwise. On the otherhand, there are other grad students who have terrible advisors and/or at institutions with less resources and opportunities.
jusob 7y ago
I wanted to share my experience. I was a foreign student doing a Master in the US, with several other schoolmates. 3 of them decided to pursue a PhD after their master. We all understood that a Master is done in 2 years, a PhD in 3 years. So they all completed their PhD in 3 years, not a month more. But I met many students, in the same field, some with the same advisors, who were 5+ years into their PhD with no end in sight. I think a lot of it came from the state of mind. My friends had a very specific time lime to finish their PhD in 3 years and they followed it, pushed their advisors when needed, etc. There was never any doubt that they would be done after 3 years. Whereas others started an open-ended journey with no clear goals.

68 points by EndXA 7y ago

This topic is difficult to address in general and world wide. What I can say is: My wife and I graduated in Germany, we both had a net salary/scholarship beyond 1200€/m, so we could easily afford anything baby-related. This would even have been possible with only a single salary -- having a baby is not expensive if you don't follow your urgent need for a house or car. In a German city, one can raise a kid in a single room apartment and study half time -- and this does not meet the national (or my subjective) definition of "poverty". The actual problem is time. Having a baby, I felt the lack of time every day and night. I could not do as much for science as I wanted to. That definitely reflects in the grades and scientific publications.

analog31 7y ago
Did you have access to health care? In the US, having a baby while in graduate school was profoundly risky from a financial standpoint, and there was a strong bias against women who had kids. I knew families that were bankrupted. Also, they had to completely drain their finances in order to qualify for some forms of public assistance.
- shantly 7y ago
  As far as I know, it's quite uncommon an any OECD state other than the US to be without quite good coverage for health care bills and medical bankruptcy is even less common—I hesitate to write "unheard of" because I'm sure there are some exceptions somewhere, but it fits the colloquial use of "unheard of", certainly.
  - johncearls 7y ago
    It would be "unheard of" in the United States for a Ph.D. student in a normal program to not have good health insurance and the birth paid for. The stipend in the US is ridiculously low, and I can see having trouble affording to take care of a baby, but it is not going to be the medical costs that get you.
    - lotsofpulp 7y ago
      Do universities pay for health insurance for PhD students? In my experience, an uneventful birth costs $3k to $5k, with insurance, and it all depends on if the pregnancy costs occur in the same calendar year to avoid resetting the out of pocket maximum limit.
- mschuster91 7y ago
  In Germany healthcare is mandatory by law and affordable - for most employees except ultra-high-income, it's a countrywide fixed percentage of income.
- rusticpenn 7y ago
  Yes, In Germany, health insurance is proportional to your pay ( as long as you do not go private). There are laws called "Mutterschutz" to protect mothers. The mothers are eligible for 65% of their pay for 1 year (parental leave) or 300€/m if they are not working. The child gets about 200€/m from the Govt. The education is free. If you are on a contract that might end when your child is younger than x years, then the contract will be extended etc.
  - benibela 7y ago
    >Yes, In Germany, health insurance is proportional to your pay ( as long as you do not go private). Not if you are getting a scholarship for a PhD. A scholarship does not count as work income. Then you have to pay a flat fee close to 200€/month for insurance, like someone who does not work at all
    - rusticpenn 7y ago
      In most cases, the scholarship also pays more if you have a kid. Yes, you have to pay around 200€ if you have a usual scholarship.
bart_spoon 7y ago
> if you don't follow your urgent need for a house or car Unfortunately these are not the sole concerns in the US. Costs for rentals are spiraling out of control in many places, so whether you are renting or buying is often a moot point. And healthcare is a huge problem as well.
- BigJ1211 7y ago
  This is happening to a lot of European countries as well. The cost of rental homes/flats is getting higher and higher. Even social rent is at the point that it is often just below 50% of their net income (assuming 1 person with a fulltime job) not sure how that compares to the US. But it is a worrying thing overall that is happening in the western society. I think it's generally recommended to be at 1/3 of your net income, which simply isn't doable in most areas here in the Netherlands.
lotsofpulp 7y ago
It’s also very difficult for mothers because the US doesn’t offer any decent time off, so all the pumping for breast milk and stress that goes along with it is discouraging.

chrisseaton 7y ago

> American universities graduated 100,000 new PhDs but only created 16,000 new professorships Here we go again - this weird idea that the only purpose for doing a PhD is to become a professor.

lallysingh 7y ago
Agreed. CS PhDs don't typically identify themselves with a Dr prefix, so our population (I have one, I don't use a Dr prefix) is rather hidden. People don't know how many of us there are. When I was at Google, about 25% of googlers had PhDs.
jhbadger 7y ago
In many fields, that's actually not far from the truth, though. Yes, PhDs in computer science, engineering, and natural sciences can find jobs in industry, but it's not like anyone getting a PhD in 19th century German literature can easily find a job using that other than in academia.
- michaelmior 7y ago
  However, computer science is also one of the fields with the largest need for professors partially because of the competition with industry jobs. My experience from a Canadian perspective was that computer science PhDs also tend to be better funded than those in the social sciences so the overall risk is much lower.
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    The risk may be lower but the forgone income is a lot greater. The median admit to a CS Ph.D. programme, even the worst ones in the US, can probably get a job at Google and can definitely get a job programming for a living if they have the right to live in the US. If they’re from a less developed country a Ph.D. stipend and the possibility of staying afterwards probably looks pretty great.
    - 7y ago

josh_fyi 7y ago

"Solve for the equilibrium": Only the tiniest fraction of superstars, those with nothing better to do, and foreigners from poor countries will go for a PhD. Beyond that, the talented will avoid the PhD.

RickJWagner 7y ago

I would love to have a PhD, and the associated prestige. I like academics and would probably enjoy the classes. I looked into it a few years back, I was absolutely stunned at the amount of institutional butt-kissery that was associated with it. That, and the fact that most of the PhD programmers I know are not any different from the average has convinced me to stay put.

hatmatrix 7y ago
> enjoy the classes You might be teaching some classes (or grading, most likely) - but you won't be taking much of them. PhDs are about doing research. Having said that there are certainly a lot of PhDs who are not above average.
chrisseaton 7y ago
> enjoy the classes But you don't really do 'classes' as a PhD student. At that point you should be the world expert in your subject so who would be teaching you :)
- michaelmior 7y ago
  In my field, it seems most PhD students spend the majority of at least their first year taking classes. But it's true that the overall course load is significantly less than bachelor's degree. Of course you don't come into a PhD program already being an expert. Even if you are, there's certainly much to learn about related fields.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  > But you don't really do 'classes' as a PhD student. In the US almost all programmes begin with a two year long Ph.D. student period at the end of which, assuming you pass your qualifying exams you can drop out with a Master’s. Once those are done you absolutely must focus on research though if you haven’t started on it already you’re behind. After the Master’s you’re a Ph.D. candidate. Somewhere in this period, if you’re doing it right you’re very likely to become the world’s leading expert on your particular, extremely narrow field. Then, or while becoming that expert you write up your thesis, defend it and get the degree. In the UK it’s still possible to go directly from Bachelor’s to Ph.D. candidate and be done in three years but the trend is away from this, at least in the exact and social sciences.

dr_coffee 7y ago

"At least with medical school, Peter said, the job prospects are better. New doctors begin making $60,000 and their salary increases by $20,000 a year during residency." Actually not true. A resident's salary might increase by $20k between the start and end of their training (esp for intensive 7-8 surgical programs), but most programs only increase salary by $3,000 per year. In the following tables, PGY stands for post-graduate year, and extends from residency into fellowship if you choose to do one. Usually the salaries are the same for all residents, regardless of whether you are training to be a neurosurgeon or a psychiatrist. https://med.virginia.edu/gme/program-resources/salary-benefits/ https://med.virginia.edu/gme/program-resources/salary-benefi... https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/emergencymedicine/em-residency/benefits/index.html https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/emergencymedicine/em-residen...

jcranberry 7y ago
I read that and immediately thought 'that'll be news to my surgical resident friend'.

buboard 7y ago

I dont see a problem with that. Too many people in research - market needs correction.

merlinsbrain 7y ago

The comparison of pay between what PhD students get in the US vs other countries is plain silly. It’s apples to oranges, the cost of living can be an order of magnitude different, which is not mentioned even once, favoring the absolute number comparison as a good thing. Beyond this the article talks about low stipends, while an important topic of conversation - nothing new.

euix 7y ago

The only reason to pursue a PhD is interest in the subject matter. You don't have to have all consuming passion and love but you have to be genuinely interested. Those who do it because their parents have phds or their colleagues, or they want "dr" in front of their name, in other words, for vanity, prestige or to further their career usually never do well. Either because they start at a later point in their lives, lack the dedication or drive to go beyond the call of duty. A phd is always about doing 110% of what is expected. In my field (physics), the expectation is to finish a phd within 6 years of completing your undergrad. If you have a good project or work hard 5 years is doable, 7 if you are a good student but got unlucky. This means the average age out of graduate school is between 26-31, depending on what country you received your undergraduate in. That is more then enough time to still start a career or work on other life goals. It's when you take longer then this timeline that things start to go wrong, for both futures in academia and industry and your life and mental health in general. A mediocre phd is worse then not doing a phd and there are plenty of those around but those who do well (not exceptional geniuses by any means!), a phd will open many doors even if you do not pursue a further academic career.

majos 7y ago

Man, seemingly every week on HN there’s an article attacking PhDs as monastic pyramid schemes for the foreign, financially gullible, and unemployable. As a 5th-year computer science PhD student (graduating next semester!) I think this characterization is unfair. With summer internships, I have made about 40k per year over my PhD, which was more than enough for anything I wanted. I only had to TA for one year. The jobs available to me now are much more interesting than the ones available to me 5 years ago. With the help of a great advisor, a few other hosts and mentors, and fellow grad students and postdocs, I’ve learned a lot about (and now, made some contributions I’m proud of) to a couple of areas of research. As someone who enjoys research, that has been a very rewarding process. This is not a universal truth. Things might be much worse if I had dependents, had a bad stipend, had a bad advisor, or did not like research. But in my case I had none of these complications, and I’m glad I did a PhD — not just to have the credential, but to have had the fun experience, grown, and now have a research future I’m pretty excited about.

cbames89 7y ago
This is pretty similar to my experience, but I also have two kids both born during graduate school. Their addition to our family will delay my graduation a bit, but they're worth it :)
barry-cotter 7y ago
Your experience is atypical for Ph.D. students though not out of the ordinary for CS Ph.D. students. There are other fields that are similarly well situated like Economics, with plentiful internship opportunities and great options after the Ph.D. that aren’t academia. Even for you in CS and the others in fields where the average position is ok a Ph.D. is a pretty bad bet monetarily but if the consumption value is high enough, great, it’s worth it even if you never even wanted to be an academic. But you gave up a lot in forgone earnings and in work experience and if you’re lucky you’ll make it up in a decade. The work experience might be a wash depending on the field you end up in. The forgone earnings will not be a wash. If you’d decided to do a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature there would have been no internships, a poor stipend, wild competition for academic jobs and no real demand for your skills and expertise outside academia. If a Ph.D. was worth it for the consumption value for you that’s great and it’s fantastic that there exist fields that have similar teaching demand, stipends and exit opportunities. But the Ph.D. hate is to tell people Are there any jobs in this field or demand for its graduates? If not it will be bad. Stay away.

rubidium 7y ago

“colleges and universities must find a way to allow those pursuing academic careers to obtain the basic goods that most people seek in life: marriage, a family, and a career to support themselves. The price of pursuing a life of the mind shouldn’t be the rest of one’s life.” Wait, why is this the universities problem? If too many people want to get phds than our society can support, then less people should get phds. That or they’ll get stuck in the current academic grind. Any PhD student should be well aware of the career difficulty that follows, particularly if they want to be a professor. There’s no lack of articles like this one pointing out that fact. I got my PhD but went in well aware that I don’t want to go thru the ringer trying to be a professor. I’d love to be one, but not willing to sacrifice so much to be one. So I choose to do industry from the start. The PhD wasn’t the most financially advantageous move but I loved it for the 6 years I was there and wouldn’t trade it for the “sunk cost”.

noobiemcfoob 7y ago
You would think being cognizant and forward thinking enough to evaluate the prospect of a 6 year endeavor is a requisite for prospective PhD students. And yet...
gwd 7y ago
> Wait, why is this the universities problem? If too many people want to get phds than our society can support than less people should get phds. That or they’ll get stuck in the current academic grind. Any PhD student should be well aware of the career difficulty that follows, particularly if they want to be a professor. There’s no lack of articles like this one pointing out that fact. But I think there very much is a systemic effect that everyone is missing because it happens so slowly. Fundamentally, if the number of academic positions remains constant, then each professor only needs to train one PhD student looking to enter academia in their entire career. OK, maybe 1.1 to deal with deaths or other sorts of natural attrition. But think about that for a minute, and then think about how many PhD students a typical professor actually trains in their career. That level of "production" is OK when the number of academic positions are expanding at a similar rate. But they're not expanding at any where near the same rate these days; instead, there are longer and longer "holding patterns". And this introduces a pattern where the "holding patterns" get longer and longer, but people don't really notice. Professors who got their PhDs in the 70's didn't do any post-docs, or maybe only a year or two. Professors who got their PhDs in the 80's or 90's did a few years, but not many. PhDs getting jobs now in some fields can expect to have post-docs for a decade; but people getting PhDs now will have even longer waits. So PhD students "should be well aware", but 1) the people advising them almost certainly had a much easier time than the people currently in the pipeline, and 2) it will almost certainly be much worse by the time they actually want to get a job. Add to that that it would be nearly impossible to perform modern academic research without the army of PhD students and postdocs being paid slave wages, so there's very little incentive to give students a realistic picture of what their chances actually are. So yes, it should be up to universities and research institutions to set up a sustainable system.

maxaf 7y ago

This article and the sad reality it portrays reminded me of Episode 16 of Timesuck: “Is we getting dumberest?”[0] The most obvious conclusion to be drawn is that the brightest and most educated members of our species are incapable of producing offspring because our society does not support them economically. Throw another reason into the “why we’re getting dumber” bucket. [0]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uxUXDfvBZ7o https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uxUXDfvBZ7o

pxhb 7y ago

This is an interesting article, but I feel like it only vaguely addresses the root of the problem of grad school in the US(in my opinion). The root problem is that your grad school experience is highly dependent on what university you go to and who your advisor is. I recently finished my PhD in physics from a top university earlier this year. During my time there, I was paid enough to live comfortably (~35k/year) and had amazing free health care. My advisor was great for the most part, and I had amazing opportunities and experiences that I would not have had otherwise. On the otherhand, there are other grad students who have terrible advisors and/or at institutions with less resources and opportunities.

jusob 7y ago

I wanted to share my experience. I was a foreign student doing a Master in the US, with several other schoolmates. 3 of them decided to pursue a PhD after their master. We all understood that a Master is done in 2 years, a PhD in 3 years. So they all completed their PhD in 3 years, not a month more. But I met many students, in the same field, some with the same advisors, who were 5+ years into their PhD with no end in sight. I think a lot of it came from the state of mind. My friends had a very specific time lime to finish their PhD in 3 years and they followed it, pushed their advisors when needed, etc. There was never any doubt that they would be done after 3 years. Whereas others started an open-ended journey with no clear goals.