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> Limiting the number of graduate students. Isn't a lot of the graduate school product providing a way for people to immigrate to the United States? The econo

> Limiting the number of graduate students. Isn't a lot of the graduate school product providing a way for people to immigrate to the United States? The economy around it is pretty complicated and definitely there's way more pressure to supply more, not fewer, spots.

vkou 6y ago
No, the problem is a bit more structural then that. A single professor trains dozens of grad students over the course of their career. Even if you remove every single foreigner, and every single person who does not want to pursue a career in academia, you still end up with dozens of graduates - per professor. The number of jobs available for those graduates? One - that professor's - when he or she retires. And until then, they get to burn the midnight oil, doing grunt work on their projects, in the hopes of competing their dozen collegaues for a shot at that one spot.
- nl 6y ago
  > The number of jobs available for those graduates? One - that professor's - when he or she retires. This simply isn't true. Remaining in academia is only one of many career paths for graduate students, and many are financially compensated much better. Some examples of these include physics and math grad students being recruited by hedge funds, comp sci grad students being recruited by tech companies and geology grad students being recruited by oil, gas and resource companies. Even within academia the size of the market isn't static. New and emerging universities are hungry for qualified research professors and many come from these programs.
  - vkou 6y ago
    I already excluded the people who are getting a degree because they want to go to industry with it. Of the 'stay-in-academia' camp, the ratio is hideously stacked against the graduates. New and emerging universities aren't doubling the academic jobs pool every five years... Which is what it would take to keep up with the graduates being churned out. (And incidentally, they are also contributing to the oversupply, because their professors will also be churning out even more new graduates.)
deleted 6y ago
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vkou 6y ago

No, the problem is a bit more structural then that. A single professor trains dozens of grad students over the course of their career. Even if you remove every single foreigner, and every single person who does not want to pursue a career in academia, you still end up with dozens of graduates - per professor. The number of jobs available for those graduates? One - that professor's - when he or she retires. And until then, they get to burn the midnight oil, doing grunt work on their projects, in the hopes of competing their dozen collegaues for a shot at that one spot.

nl 6y ago
> The number of jobs available for those graduates? One - that professor's - when he or she retires. This simply isn't true. Remaining in academia is only one of many career paths for graduate students, and many are financially compensated much better. Some examples of these include physics and math grad students being recruited by hedge funds, comp sci grad students being recruited by tech companies and geology grad students being recruited by oil, gas and resource companies. Even within academia the size of the market isn't static. New and emerging universities are hungry for qualified research professors and many come from these programs.
- vkou 6y ago
  I already excluded the people who are getting a degree because they want to go to industry with it. Of the 'stay-in-academia' camp, the ratio is hideously stacked against the graduates. New and emerging universities aren't doubling the academic jobs pool every five years... Which is what it would take to keep up with the graduates being churned out. (And incidentally, they are also contributing to the oversupply, because their professors will also be churning out even more new graduates.)

deleted 6y ago

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