4 ms·
> They are taking a huge financial opportunity cost to work on uniquely high leverage problems. Maintaining your research group's build system is not what they
by mehrdada 5y ago
> They are taking a huge financial opportunity cost to work on uniquely high leverage problems. Maintaining your research group's build system is not what they signed up for.
Not necessarily an opportunity cost. Often they are paid in a more valuable commodity, i.e. visas.
- throwawaygh 5y agoProbably true. But I'm writing from the perspective a grant reviewer. Systematically abusing immigrant labor.... well, it isn't exactly a more charitable interpretation. So, from my perspective, a bit of a moot point :)
- throwawayjd 5y agoThat's definitely not the case, given the long queues (and low chances) for H1B and high barrier for O1 visas. I might as well get an L1 working in industry after all.
- mehrdada 5y agoI would be less than "definitely sure" about that. I know lots of folks firsthand whose primary motivation were that. This is obviously very country-dependent. If you are in a country with presence of say FAANG offices, sure you'd go for L1 or EB1C. Not everyone is that privileged. Not to mention during the Trump era, F1 visa was one of the only exempted ways to get your foot in the door for various countries. (There's also OPT, btw, which is critical in the process, and H1B lottery chance, assuming a US Masters degree, was more than 50% last time I looked at it a couple years ago. O1 (and even EB1A/B) are not that rare for well-published PhDs, and EB2-NIW is quite easy for any PhD worth their salt, I'd say.)
- throwawayjd 5y agoThanks for mentioning EB2-NIW, I didn't know that before, and I'll definitely look into it. Regarding O1, one of the PhDs I admire most failed to get an O1 despite his success. I guess publishing papers in our fields is kind of hard and maybe some fields are more easy to get an O1 than others :)
- xmprt 5y agoIf someone just wants a visa, then it's much easier to get a quick and easy masters instead of doing a PhD with 5 years of research.
- mehrdada 5y agoMaybe--very much depends on the source and destination country. Fact on the ground is lots of people have ended up choosing that as their path, optimal or not. You can master-out in the middle of a PhD program, which is frowned upon, but it is difficult to get funding if you directly apply for a masters degree. Perhaps the solution is to decrease the negative cultural backlash against predisposed intention of leaving with a masters despite applying for a PhD, which is currently seen as some sort of betrayal of the adviser if you are going to have your grad students do boring work. It'll be a win-win deal in that case.
- auxym 5y agoIn Canada, research masters are a prereq for entering a PhD program.
- simplestats 5y agoIn the US I think it's entirely up to the school. Or at least the accreditation bodies in different fields and regions. When I was in school, one applied to "MS/PhD" programs most typically. And all imaginable variants existed in terms of funding and likelihood of leaving with only a MS. Some schools would fund no one till they finish the MS stage, and others would fund everyone from the beginning (just give every accepted student a full fellowship for the first couple years). And also some schools were pretty notorious for kicking people out at the end of the MS stage, with a difficult exam at this step or not enough advisors to take them on for the PhD. One positive side, though, is if you wash out of a PhD program at any later stage, you at least walked away with a Master's.
- throwawayjd 5y agoI don't think so. It is funded and recommended, but direct doctorate is also possible, unlike many European schools.