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You seem to imply that there is a general expectation among grad students that if they just keep at it long enough and do good work, they will become a professo

You seem to imply that there is a general expectation among grad students that if they just keep at it long enough and do good work, they will become a professor one day. Isn't that kind of a crazy assumption? What's wrong with continuing your career as a researcher indefinitely? Or leave for industry/NGOs/public sector/politics/entrepreneurship if that's not what you want? I'd think that the vast majority of people who enter grad school now don't do that with the intention do "climb up the academic career ladder", and if that is true, it doesn't need to be a problem at all. There seems to be this assumption that it's desirable for everyone to always be progressing upwards in the institutional hierarchy. I don't think all these people are as delusional as you imply.

fock 6y ago
I guess historically grad school was an apprenticeship for academic research and teaching. I don't think you "need" this kind of skills (working 4+ years on one thing with a very small team) anywhere else. Nowadays, the excess of graduate students made this _the_ convenient signalling criterion for a lot of jobs (ML at FANG, liberal arts jobs (for which studying makes real sense - think museum curator, school curriculum development)). While this has been around for these kind of jobs for ages, the glut of PhDs, etc. effectively limits access to people being able to finance their PhD and having access to the required signalling from their undergrad. In the US in general and liberal-arts worldwide this effectively means that the aforementioned positions (of a certain power) are only available to the already privileged. If you get a rare living-wage scholarship or happen to live in certain parts of the EU, this can be quite ok though if you want to increase your signalling value and do something off the beaten path.
marcosdumay 6y ago
> You seem to imply that there is a general expectation among grad students that if they just keep at it long enough and do good work, they will become a professor one day. That's because there is. It's not universal, but it's much more common than what would be healthy. And it's often incentivized by the professors and academic administrations (most with the best interest of the student at their hearth, but also delusional themselves). > Isn't that kind of a crazy assumption? Yes. That's what the discussion is all about. > There seems to be this assumption that it's desirable for everyone to always be progressing upwards in the institutional hierarchy. There is this generalized assumption that it's desirable for everyone to always be progressing upwards on whatever hierarchy they find themselves. Students happen to find themselves on the academic hierarchy. It's not a healthy assumption in any circle. But the academics get the worst form of the problem for many reasons. You are perfectly correct in thinking that an academic formation should primary lead into some innovation related career, or into some high complexity practical field. You are not correct in thinking that people are not delusional enough to be a problem.

fock 6y ago

I guess historically grad school was an apprenticeship for academic research and teaching. I don't think you "need" this kind of skills (working 4+ years on one thing with a very small team) anywhere else. Nowadays, the excess of graduate students made this _the_ convenient signalling criterion for a lot of jobs (ML at FANG, liberal arts jobs (for which studying makes real sense - think museum curator, school curriculum development)). While this has been around for these kind of jobs for ages, the glut of PhDs, etc. effectively limits access to people being able to finance their PhD and having access to the required signalling from their undergrad. In the US in general and liberal-arts worldwide this effectively means that the aforementioned positions (of a certain power) are only available to the already privileged. If you get a rare living-wage scholarship or happen to live in certain parts of the EU, this can be quite ok though if you want to increase your signalling value and do something off the beaten path.

marcosdumay 6y ago

> You seem to imply that there is a general expectation among grad students that if they just keep at it long enough and do good work, they will become a professor one day. That's because there is. It's not universal, but it's much more common than what would be healthy. And it's often incentivized by the professors and academic administrations (most with the best interest of the student at their hearth, but also delusional themselves). > Isn't that kind of a crazy assumption? Yes. That's what the discussion is all about. > There seems to be this assumption that it's desirable for everyone to always be progressing upwards in the institutional hierarchy. There is this generalized assumption that it's desirable for everyone to always be progressing upwards on whatever hierarchy they find themselves. Students happen to find themselves on the academic hierarchy. It's not a healthy assumption in any circle. But the academics get the worst form of the problem for many reasons. You are perfectly correct in thinking that an academic formation should primary lead into some innovation related career, or into some high complexity practical field. You are not correct in thinking that people are not delusional enough to be a problem.