9 ms·

PhD training is no longer fit for purpose – it needs reform now

45 points by NalNezumi 4y ago

jseliger 4y ago
It also needed reform 20 and 10 years ago, but it does now as well.
- 082349872349872 4y ago
  at least until the next Sputnik moment, when supporting PhDs will suddenly become much more popular once again...
neodypsis 4y ago
Will PhD training eventually scale to allow for more people to participate in research?
- jonathanstrange 4y ago
  That's a strange question because academia is totally overrun with people looking for postdoc positions. I've served in committees and issued calls. There are dozens to hundreds of candidates for every postdoc position, and at least half of them (usually most of them) are so qualified that they could even count as overqualified. It's painful to write the rejection letters, sometimes I even had to include a personal remark to emphasize that it was an extremely close call and that their application and CV were flawless.
  - neodypsis 4y ago
    Perhaps you are from a top institution, so, naturally, you'll get a lot of high-quality applications; which in turn influences your perspective. But in the grand scheme of things, the total number of PhD students must be very limited. There's certainly more demand than supply for such training. If there's an over supply of overqualified postdocs, maybe they could help train new PhDs?
    - jonathanstrange 4y ago
      > If there's an over supply of overqualified postdocs, maybe they could help train new PhDs? Why? That would merely increase the number of unemployed postdocs. There are already too many people with a PhD, not too few.
      - neodypsis 4y ago
        Not necessarily. Not all PhD holders want to become postdocs. Why restrict supply artificially?
  - dagw 4y ago
    There are dozens to hundreds of candidates for every postdoc position Are you at a University people will recognise the name of (perhaps even internationally)? I have a friend at a small department at a smaller university and his department sometimes struggles to even get 2 or 3 actually qualified candidates to their postdoc applications.
Penyngton 4y ago
The problem is that universities, at least in my experience here in the UK, are just getting more bureaucratised and less committed to pure (non-corporate/"enterprise") research. I don't trust them to reform anything and actually improve it.
- neodypsis 4y ago
  I think it is crazy that master's programs in the UK can be just one year long.
  - Penyngton 4y ago
    Yes, my own MSc dissertation was very rushed and of low quality, unfortunately...
    - neodypsis 4y ago
      That can also happen in two-year long programs as well, especially in those that allow you for less than a semester from proposal to defense. I can certainly perceive a scaling issue in academia. Will MOOC-style initiatives be able to solve this problem in the future?
      - Penyngton 4y ago
        > That can also happen in two-year long programs as well, especially in those that allow you for less than a semester from proposal to defense. I can imagine that. My own programme had two terms with exams in January and May/June, then the dissertation from June till September and it was a nightmare! > I can certainly perceive a scaling issue in academia. Will MOOC-style initiatives be able to solve this problem in the future? If I were running a university, I'd definitely move the large early undergrad courses to MOOCs to free up lecturers time for more advanced/specialised courses and direct supervision of students. It seems crazy to me that there are thousands of basic algorithms, calculus, etc courses being taught across the world by people who could use their time a lot more productively teaching the more specialised knowledge they have acquired through their research.
musicale 4y ago
Is there really an army of suckers who are rushing to waste years of their lives on doctoral degrees and the associated lengthy, underpaid indentures? The statistics would seem to say so. Or perhaps this is the natural progression of the research (especially academic research) pyramid scheme? Are we going to up the degree requirements for everything? High school to college diploma, bachelor's to master's, master's to doctorate, doctorate to ???
- neodypsis 4y ago
  A PhD degree in a relevant subject area (think STEM) can be a door-opener in industry, not just academia. Many interesting jobs are reserved for PhD holders, or at least, are more readily available for them.
  - musicale 4y ago
    It can serve as a meal ticket in certain fields, yes. Should it? I'm not entirely sure. The opportunity cost is certainly high. In less fortunate areas you can be consigned to a permanent adjunct or postdoctoral purgatory.
    - neodypsis 4y ago
      Very true, the opportunity cost can be very high. There's always the risk of pursuing a wrong research path. At some point I've considered that a second master's in a complementary field could make more sense than a PhD.
  - DocTomoe 4y ago
    Beware, though, because in other fields - particularly in STEM - a PHD may actually lower your job prospects. "You're overqualified" gets old really fast if no one offers jobs that align with your proficiency level.
    - neodypsis 4y ago
      Do you see this happening in CS? I've seen positions where they don't care if you have formal training or not, then why would being a PhD holder hinder your chances?
lamchob 4y ago
The question is, do we really need a PhD reform? Or should we restructure the academic process to enable more people to pariticipate without going through the ardous process of writing a thesis? I have a PhD and work in an industrial research environment, with 50/50 PhD and non-PhD colleagues. There is no difference in quality of work and output. So maybe universities should be less discriminatory against non-PhD research fellows.
- yodsanklai 4y ago
  > I have a PhD and work in an industrial research environment, with 50/50 PhD and non-PhD colleagues. There is no difference in quality of work and output. So maybe universities should be less discriminatory against non-PhD research fellows. I don't disagree. But if we consider that researchers need to publish papers, requiring a PhD isn't not much different than requiring a bunch of publications (when you have 3-4 publications, basically you have a PhD thesis, just need to introduce context and glue everything together).
  - akjssdk 4y ago
    To be fair, this is really field dependent. In the sciences this is (mostly) true, but in the humanities your output for your PhD is sometimes just your thesis. The problem is fundamentally that the PhD traject is geared towards an academic career, but there are not enough academic positions for all those PhD students, so they end up in industry. And there their skills don't really translate that well, as OP also says.
    - bob_theslob646 4y ago
      >The problem is fundamentally that the PhD traject is geared towards an academic career, but there are not enough academic positions for all those PhD students, so they end up in industry. And there their skills don't really translate that well, as OP also says. This is a gigantic problem and thank you for highlighting it. Imagine you're in the United States and you have a PhD but you're not a citizen here and you just invested a ton of time and effort but you have to go back home all because there's not a position in your field. It's absolutely nonsensical to think about how the United States justs pisses away talent.
madsbuch 4y ago
To be honest, we probably see an alternative to academia grow and disrupt it before we see academia reform itself – the academic institution is so old and has so much legacy at this point, that it is close to impossible. I am curious on how these new structures would look.
- legerdemain 4y ago
  Lambda School and other JavaScript web developer bootcamps have been very successfully disrupting the "traditional CS degree" as the only route to software engineering. Perhaps the thing to disrupt stale academia will be a wave of bootcamp PhD's coming out of Lambda University. In the short term, there may be a side effect of deflating the FAANG-style compensation, job stability, and perks of "tenured faculty." It seems obvious that there is an enormous benefit of a more mobile, agile, and adaptable academic workforce of folks who only contract to teach for a semester or two before dipping back into industry careers or trying out another institution (or maybe even working at multiple institutions at once to broaden their teaching and research skills!).
  - watwut 4y ago
    The "traditional CS degree" was never the only route to software engineering. That claim is just not true, a self learning developers, the ones who went to entirely different field or the ones who dropped out were and are ridiculously common. By "different field" I mean both people who studied physics/math similar fields and psychology/sociology further away fields. And even now, people who came from bootcamps are rare compared to the above.
- flanked-evergl 4y ago
  hot take from someone in Europe: I have no degree and work as a software engineer. New masters graduates I have worked with still need a lot of guidance to do basic things: making pull requests, writing unit tests, structuring code, setting up CI and CD pipelines, network communication, IaC, cloud, microservices, parallelism and state management. Most of what they do know is of limited value. They don't seem to really grasp the fundamentals of computers very well, they maybe grasp some math, but nothing more than what they could have learnt in maybe 3 months or less, and the math is pretty useless if they don't have a feeling for how to apply it to something like a stateless microservice. I think in our industry having these people go directly to work internships would be much more valuable for them and society than what is currently happening. While I do think free education is good in principle, I am not very happy that my tax money is propping up this broken system.
jonathanstrange 4y ago
These experts in education unfortunately take one thing for granted, that PhDs need to be trained. I really don't think that's true and that there is any need for PhD training. At least, there shouldn't be any need. Here is the thing: The purpose of a PhD is to demonstrate the ability to conduct scientific research independently. When a student enters a PhD program, they should have all the prerequisites to do that. If not, the university has failed and the study program needs to be reformed. A PhD student needs to have the ability to conduct research and write a thesis, and they get more time for that than they will ever have again as a postdoc. In my opinion it's really that simple: Do the research and write your PhD thesis, and finish it in time. This "training" idea comes from the US, and the only effect of this in Europe I've seen so far is that unnecessary and off-topic PhD courses with point systems have been invented. At least in my area, these are completely useless and merely delay work on the PhD thesis. What they should do, however, is to stop the grade inflation and stop handing out a PhD to everyone, no matter how bad the thesis. That's the real problem, I've seen plenty of lazy, extremely low-effort theses, and every time the lazy PhD student passes the defense and gets the PhD. That devalues the PhD and the work of those who take it seriously. Please start to let at least the worst PhD students fail.
- mnky9800n 4y ago
  But PhD in USA doesn't require master level education but Europe does. That's a big difference. But actually I mostly agree with you. PhD should be focused on apprenticeship and nothing else.
  - arethuza 4y ago
    The UK doesn't require a master's degree before doing a PhD - at least it didn't back in the 1980s/1990s....
  - red-iron-pine 4y ago
    Many PhD programs in the US take ~5 years or more, and often hand out "boilerplate" Master's degrees in the process. Source: saw it happen a bunch at big state schools in California, and heard of similar things in VA, and NY schools.
dsq 4y ago
There's a description for spending years in a tertiary degree: not needing a full time income, or having it come from somewhere else While I completely understand the sentiment and would also personally like that, the fact remains that to live for years untrammeled by the need for an economic relationship is something that is paid for by somebody. Should society be saddled with excessive taxes for academic welfare? Society pays for a lot of waste, so maybe it's unfair to single out academia. But it's a symptom of some kind of imbalance.
low_tech_love 4y ago
One thing that most people don't realize (or willingly try not to think about) is that every "higher education" level, all the way from the BSc to the last day of your PhD, is actually, first and foremost, a selection process. I have felt this ever since I got my first foot in my first BSc lecture, and the feeling has never left me. And I'm doing the exact same thing right now as an Associate Professor, both as a lecturer and as a supervisor. Most the talk and ideas we hear all the time about pedagogical skills, teaching methods, better techniques for supervision, etc. will fall to earth when push comes to shove: the truth is that the vast majority of higher education staff has no idea what they are doing when it comes to actually educating students. We do our best, we present our knowledge in the best way we can think of, and we are genuinely interested in students learning them, but the truth is that the knowledge of exactly what kind of education techniques work better or worse, is non-existent (for all practical matters). So, what happens is that, some students learn, others don't. Would they still have learned if we were using completely different teaching methods? Probably. Would they have learned even if we were not there? Maybe, but probably not. Because our real task (we as in, the staff), when you really get down to the basic core of what is happening in higher education, is to be there and give them a goal: if you want to have this certificate, if you want to be like me, and reach this milestone, you have to endure this, and pass these tests. I'll show you some things here and there in an arrangement that is probably as close to random as it is to not random, and well, you deal with it and find a way to pass the test. It doesn't really matter how you do it, how you find your motivation to keep on keeping on, what matters is that you survive this process and reach the end. And so is the selection process implemented.
- seydor 4y ago
  Maybe in a few american Ivy-league it's a selection process. For most of the world it's "who has the patience and perseverance to go through that ancient hierarcy". In the past 15-20 years academic success has become increasingly based on social standing , and there are many ways to hack that one
  - marginalia_nu 4y ago
    Hasn't it sort of always been that way though? Social standing is a huge force multiplier in almost every human endeavor.
tigerlily 4y ago
As universities are medieval institutions, it's apt that they run their education programs like a gauntlet.
concinds 4y ago
Excellent points have been raised in both the article and the comments (especially the reliance on a single advisor; that's trouble). But one thing that no one is addressing, is the fact that a much of the reproducibility crisis is caused by bad methodologies. Why are PhDs still misapplying statistical tools meant for normal distributions, by using them for power law distributions? That's endemic in the social sciences (see: economics, psychology). Why aren't universities giving all PhD students a proper background in stats & probability?
seydor 4y ago
The PhD is never going to be "updated" because it has never been updated throughout its history. It will be obsoleted Education is changing before our eyes. The world increasingly has all the material and resources to learn, customized and tailored to the ability of each student. There will soon be a tipping point where traditional school-based education becomes irrelevant, all-at-once
- nicce 4y ago
  > where traditional school-based education becomes irrelevant, all-at-once This is actually studied subject. Everyone needs general knowledge base before they even realise why they study at all. The whole point of university is to shape your thinking model. Even your movie experience will be downgraded. If you don't know Western fairytales, you will find Shrek movie unfunny.
  - sambapa 4y ago
    I would rather have one anarchistic Leonardo da Vinci who doesn't give a fuck about Shrek than hordes of standarized, cookie-cutter groupthink people that find some capitalistic product funny.
- eesmith 4y ago
  > it has never been updated throughout its history As Wikipedia points out, "The doctorates in the higher faculties were quite different from the current PhD degree in that they were awarded for advanced scholarship, not original research. No dissertation or original work was required, only lengthy residency requirements and examinations." and "The doctorate of philosophy developed in Germany as the terminal teacher's credential." The modern system, with its focus on research training, is derived from Prussian educational reforms in the early 1800s, which then spread around the world.
c7b 4y ago
The article feels more like a rant than a well-thought-out argument. It hardly says concretely what the problems with current PhD training are (it mentions a few problems in different places, but misses important ones like the ongoing mental health crisis in academia [0]), and it makes very few suggestions about what concretely should change to address them. The authors don't even say what they mean by 'PhD training', ignoring the vast heterogeneity in the structure and duration of doctoral education programs between countries, institutions and even between different programs in the same institution. In the US, PhD training typically consists of a coursework phase and a research phase, with a target duration of about 5 years. In the EU, a PhD has a target duration of 3 years, according to the European Qualifications Framework [1]. While some coursework will typically be demanded in EU PhDs, it would usually be more lightweight than the coursework in a 5-year US PhD. Some EU institutions will offer doctoral schools that mimic the US model, some institutions will actually offer multiple styles of doctorates in parallel programs (even for the same subject). The UK has 'Centres for Doctoral Training' (CDT) and 'Doctoral Training Partnerships' (DTPs) which look like a compromise between the US and EU models (with typically one year of coursework preceding the research phase). CDTs can be joint programs between multiple universities, with students commuting to other institutions to take classes. CDTs and DTPs are are offered alongside regular PhD programs in the UK (the latter will look more like the EU model in most cases and more like the US model in some). Other countries and regions will often have a similar mix of US- and EU-style training programs. Add to this various lesser known types of doctoral programs like part-time PhDs, professional doctorates, DBAs (Business Doctorates in the US), 'PhD by Publication' in the UK, PhDs that are primarily based at non-university research labs like CERN, Max-Planck-Institutes,... and you will see that the term 'PhD' or 'Doctorate' can refer to vastly different types of academic programs, lasting anywhere from 2 to 8 years, being based at one or multiple or no university, with coursework being anything from absent to equivalent to a 2-year Master's program, funding being provided by a professor, a university, a foundation, a government, a corporation or not at all, having one or multiple supervisors, administering letter, numeric or no grades at all, requiring substantial teaching to none at all,... There is really no point in talking about 'PhD training' or its shortcomings without clarifying which of those countless different types of programs you mean. The premise of the article seems to be that there exists a uniform model of PhD training that emerged in the 19th century and hasn't been reformed since, which simply doesn't stand up to closer inspection. [0] https://www.ecn-berlin.de/mental-health/the-mental-health-crisis-in-academi.html https://www.ecn-berlin.de/mental-health/the-mental-health-cr... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_Process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_Process
etiam 4y ago
I don't think I can see an actual argument in this. Could it be summarized as approximately 'The current PhD system has good points but it's several decades old, you learn from someone who actually knows the stuff in practice, and politicians don't want to spend enough for it despite lionizing the economic value of the outcomes'? I fail to see the problems beyond the obvious, and while there are obvious problems, people with agendas published under titles like "Towards a Global Core Value System in Doctoral Education" seem uniquely qualified to aggravate them. If anyone is to muck around with one of the core arrangements for real scientific research (on a global scale, no less) they had better be very clear about the distinctions between "changed" and "actually improved".
Balgair 4y ago
Bit of an aside: Most people in PhD programs misunderstand the actual objectives (I sure did). They assume that the academic environment is just like the undergraduate one they have come out of. That is false. To better understand the new rules that they are operating under, I suggest looking to 'literature'. The two best examples that I have found to illustrate the real 'rules' are: 1) The Horatio Hornblower series. It follows the career of a noble, poor, yet educated British naval officer during the Napoleonic Wars. It follows Horatio from midshipman to Admiral. 2) The Sharpe series. Also set during the Napoleonic Wars, this series follows the Army instead of the Navy. You read of the career of an orphaned son of a whore commoner who is elevated to officer rank. Much conflict with the inherited nobility and chafing occurs with the commoner protagonist. It is quickly discovered by the protagonists of both series that to survive at officer rank, the lives and interests of the enlisted must be second to the demands of career. Much deeper discussions about this occur in both series. The key for a PhD student is to observe the fighting and jockeying of the officers between each other over career. These dynamics, even through fictional books, are identical to the fights of academics even today. How the protagonists deal with these challenges should be a lesson to any PhD student in their own careers.
awesomeMilou 4y ago
This thread is the most entertaining thing I've read in a while. So many PhD's showing off how their education traumatized them.

45 points by NalNezumi 4y ago

jseliger 4y ago

It also needed reform 20 and 10 years ago, but it does now as well.

082349872349872 4y ago
at least until the next Sputnik moment, when supporting PhDs will suddenly become much more popular once again...

neodypsis 4y ago

Will PhD training eventually scale to allow for more people to participate in research?

jonathanstrange 4y ago
That's a strange question because academia is totally overrun with people looking for postdoc positions. I've served in committees and issued calls. There are dozens to hundreds of candidates for every postdoc position, and at least half of them (usually most of them) are so qualified that they could even count as overqualified. It's painful to write the rejection letters, sometimes I even had to include a personal remark to emphasize that it was an extremely close call and that their application and CV were flawless.
- neodypsis 4y ago
  Perhaps you are from a top institution, so, naturally, you'll get a lot of high-quality applications; which in turn influences your perspective. But in the grand scheme of things, the total number of PhD students must be very limited. There's certainly more demand than supply for such training. If there's an over supply of overqualified postdocs, maybe they could help train new PhDs?
  - jonathanstrange 4y ago
    > If there's an over supply of overqualified postdocs, maybe they could help train new PhDs? Why? That would merely increase the number of unemployed postdocs. There are already too many people with a PhD, not too few.
    - neodypsis 4y ago
      Not necessarily. Not all PhD holders want to become postdocs. Why restrict supply artificially?
- dagw 4y ago
  There are dozens to hundreds of candidates for every postdoc position Are you at a University people will recognise the name of (perhaps even internationally)? I have a friend at a small department at a smaller university and his department sometimes struggles to even get 2 or 3 actually qualified candidates to their postdoc applications.

Penyngton 4y ago

The problem is that universities, at least in my experience here in the UK, are just getting more bureaucratised and less committed to pure (non-corporate/"enterprise") research. I don't trust them to reform anything and actually improve it.

neodypsis 4y ago
I think it is crazy that master's programs in the UK can be just one year long.
- Penyngton 4y ago
  Yes, my own MSc dissertation was very rushed and of low quality, unfortunately...
  - neodypsis 4y ago
    That can also happen in two-year long programs as well, especially in those that allow you for less than a semester from proposal to defense. I can certainly perceive a scaling issue in academia. Will MOOC-style initiatives be able to solve this problem in the future?
    - Penyngton 4y ago
      > That can also happen in two-year long programs as well, especially in those that allow you for less than a semester from proposal to defense. I can imagine that. My own programme had two terms with exams in January and May/June, then the dissertation from June till September and it was a nightmare! > I can certainly perceive a scaling issue in academia. Will MOOC-style initiatives be able to solve this problem in the future? If I were running a university, I'd definitely move the large early undergrad courses to MOOCs to free up lecturers time for more advanced/specialised courses and direct supervision of students. It seems crazy to me that there are thousands of basic algorithms, calculus, etc courses being taught across the world by people who could use their time a lot more productively teaching the more specialised knowledge they have acquired through their research.

musicale 4y ago

Is there really an army of suckers who are rushing to waste years of their lives on doctoral degrees and the associated lengthy, underpaid indentures? The statistics would seem to say so. Or perhaps this is the natural progression of the research (especially academic research) pyramid scheme? Are we going to up the degree requirements for everything? High school to college diploma, bachelor's to master's, master's to doctorate, doctorate to ???

neodypsis 4y ago
A PhD degree in a relevant subject area (think STEM) can be a door-opener in industry, not just academia. Many interesting jobs are reserved for PhD holders, or at least, are more readily available for them.
- musicale 4y ago
  It can serve as a meal ticket in certain fields, yes. Should it? I'm not entirely sure. The opportunity cost is certainly high. In less fortunate areas you can be consigned to a permanent adjunct or postdoctoral purgatory.
  - neodypsis 4y ago
    Very true, the opportunity cost can be very high. There's always the risk of pursuing a wrong research path. At some point I've considered that a second master's in a complementary field could make more sense than a PhD.
- DocTomoe 4y ago
  Beware, though, because in other fields - particularly in STEM - a PHD may actually lower your job prospects. "You're overqualified" gets old really fast if no one offers jobs that align with your proficiency level.
  - neodypsis 4y ago
    Do you see this happening in CS? I've seen positions where they don't care if you have formal training or not, then why would being a PhD holder hinder your chances?

lamchob 4y ago

The question is, do we really need a PhD reform? Or should we restructure the academic process to enable more people to pariticipate without going through the ardous process of writing a thesis? I have a PhD and work in an industrial research environment, with 50/50 PhD and non-PhD colleagues. There is no difference in quality of work and output. So maybe universities should be less discriminatory against non-PhD research fellows.

yodsanklai 4y ago
> I have a PhD and work in an industrial research environment, with 50/50 PhD and non-PhD colleagues. There is no difference in quality of work and output. So maybe universities should be less discriminatory against non-PhD research fellows. I don't disagree. But if we consider that researchers need to publish papers, requiring a PhD isn't not much different than requiring a bunch of publications (when you have 3-4 publications, basically you have a PhD thesis, just need to introduce context and glue everything together).
- akjssdk 4y ago
  To be fair, this is really field dependent. In the sciences this is (mostly) true, but in the humanities your output for your PhD is sometimes just your thesis. The problem is fundamentally that the PhD traject is geared towards an academic career, but there are not enough academic positions for all those PhD students, so they end up in industry. And there their skills don't really translate that well, as OP also says.
  - bob_theslob646 4y ago
    >The problem is fundamentally that the PhD traject is geared towards an academic career, but there are not enough academic positions for all those PhD students, so they end up in industry. And there their skills don't really translate that well, as OP also says. This is a gigantic problem and thank you for highlighting it. Imagine you're in the United States and you have a PhD but you're not a citizen here and you just invested a ton of time and effort but you have to go back home all because there's not a position in your field. It's absolutely nonsensical to think about how the United States justs pisses away talent.

madsbuch 4y ago

To be honest, we probably see an alternative to academia grow and disrupt it before we see academia reform itself – the academic institution is so old and has so much legacy at this point, that it is close to impossible. I am curious on how these new structures would look.

legerdemain 4y ago
Lambda School and other JavaScript web developer bootcamps have been very successfully disrupting the "traditional CS degree" as the only route to software engineering. Perhaps the thing to disrupt stale academia will be a wave of bootcamp PhD's coming out of Lambda University. In the short term, there may be a side effect of deflating the FAANG-style compensation, job stability, and perks of "tenured faculty." It seems obvious that there is an enormous benefit of a more mobile, agile, and adaptable academic workforce of folks who only contract to teach for a semester or two before dipping back into industry careers or trying out another institution (or maybe even working at multiple institutions at once to broaden their teaching and research skills!).
- watwut 4y ago
  The "traditional CS degree" was never the only route to software engineering. That claim is just not true, a self learning developers, the ones who went to entirely different field or the ones who dropped out were and are ridiculously common. By "different field" I mean both people who studied physics/math similar fields and psychology/sociology further away fields. And even now, people who came from bootcamps are rare compared to the above.
flanked-evergl 4y ago
hot take from someone in Europe: I have no degree and work as a software engineer. New masters graduates I have worked with still need a lot of guidance to do basic things: making pull requests, writing unit tests, structuring code, setting up CI and CD pipelines, network communication, IaC, cloud, microservices, parallelism and state management. Most of what they do know is of limited value. They don't seem to really grasp the fundamentals of computers very well, they maybe grasp some math, but nothing more than what they could have learnt in maybe 3 months or less, and the math is pretty useless if they don't have a feeling for how to apply it to something like a stateless microservice. I think in our industry having these people go directly to work internships would be much more valuable for them and society than what is currently happening. While I do think free education is good in principle, I am not very happy that my tax money is propping up this broken system.

jonathanstrange 4y ago

These experts in education unfortunately take one thing for granted, that PhDs need to be trained. I really don't think that's true and that there is any need for PhD training. At least, there shouldn't be any need. Here is the thing: The purpose of a PhD is to demonstrate the ability to conduct scientific research independently. When a student enters a PhD program, they should have all the prerequisites to do that. If not, the university has failed and the study program needs to be reformed. A PhD student needs to have the ability to conduct research and write a thesis, and they get more time for that than they will ever have again as a postdoc. In my opinion it's really that simple: Do the research and write your PhD thesis, and finish it in time. This "training" idea comes from the US, and the only effect of this in Europe I've seen so far is that unnecessary and off-topic PhD courses with point systems have been invented. At least in my area, these are completely useless and merely delay work on the PhD thesis. What they should do, however, is to stop the grade inflation and stop handing out a PhD to everyone, no matter how bad the thesis. That's the real problem, I've seen plenty of lazy, extremely low-effort theses, and every time the lazy PhD student passes the defense and gets the PhD. That devalues the PhD and the work of those who take it seriously. Please start to let at least the worst PhD students fail.

mnky9800n 4y ago
But PhD in USA doesn't require master level education but Europe does. That's a big difference. But actually I mostly agree with you. PhD should be focused on apprenticeship and nothing else.
- arethuza 4y ago
  The UK doesn't require a master's degree before doing a PhD - at least it didn't back in the 1980s/1990s....
- red-iron-pine 4y ago
  Many PhD programs in the US take ~5 years or more, and often hand out "boilerplate" Master's degrees in the process. Source: saw it happen a bunch at big state schools in California, and heard of similar things in VA, and NY schools.

dsq 4y ago

There's a description for spending years in a tertiary degree: not needing a full time income, or having it come from somewhere else While I completely understand the sentiment and would also personally like that, the fact remains that to live for years untrammeled by the need for an economic relationship is something that is paid for by somebody. Should society be saddled with excessive taxes for academic welfare? Society pays for a lot of waste, so maybe it's unfair to single out academia. But it's a symptom of some kind of imbalance.

low_tech_love 4y ago

One thing that most people don't realize (or willingly try not to think about) is that every "higher education" level, all the way from the BSc to the last day of your PhD, is actually, first and foremost, a selection process. I have felt this ever since I got my first foot in my first BSc lecture, and the feeling has never left me. And I'm doing the exact same thing right now as an Associate Professor, both as a lecturer and as a supervisor. Most the talk and ideas we hear all the time about pedagogical skills, teaching methods, better techniques for supervision, etc. will fall to earth when push comes to shove: the truth is that the vast majority of higher education staff has no idea what they are doing when it comes to actually educating students. We do our best, we present our knowledge in the best way we can think of, and we are genuinely interested in students learning them, but the truth is that the knowledge of exactly what kind of education techniques work better or worse, is non-existent (for all practical matters). So, what happens is that, some students learn, others don't. Would they still have learned if we were using completely different teaching methods? Probably. Would they have learned even if we were not there? Maybe, but probably not. Because our real task (we as in, the staff), when you really get down to the basic core of what is happening in higher education, is to be there and give them a goal: if you want to have this certificate, if you want to be like me, and reach this milestone, you have to endure this, and pass these tests. I'll show you some things here and there in an arrangement that is probably as close to random as it is to not random, and well, you deal with it and find a way to pass the test. It doesn't really matter how you do it, how you find your motivation to keep on keeping on, what matters is that you survive this process and reach the end. And so is the selection process implemented.

seydor 4y ago
Maybe in a few american Ivy-league it's a selection process. For most of the world it's "who has the patience and perseverance to go through that ancient hierarcy". In the past 15-20 years academic success has become increasingly based on social standing , and there are many ways to hack that one
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  Hasn't it sort of always been that way though? Social standing is a huge force multiplier in almost every human endeavor.

tigerlily 4y ago

As universities are medieval institutions, it's apt that they run their education programs like a gauntlet.

concinds 4y ago

Excellent points have been raised in both the article and the comments (especially the reliance on a single advisor; that's trouble). But one thing that no one is addressing, is the fact that a much of the reproducibility crisis is caused by bad methodologies. Why are PhDs still misapplying statistical tools meant for normal distributions, by using them for power law distributions? That's endemic in the social sciences (see: economics, psychology). Why aren't universities giving all PhD students a proper background in stats & probability?

seydor 4y ago

The PhD is never going to be "updated" because it has never been updated throughout its history. It will be obsoleted Education is changing before our eyes. The world increasingly has all the material and resources to learn, customized and tailored to the ability of each student. There will soon be a tipping point where traditional school-based education becomes irrelevant, all-at-once

nicce 4y ago
> where traditional school-based education becomes irrelevant, all-at-once This is actually studied subject. Everyone needs general knowledge base before they even realise why they study at all. The whole point of university is to shape your thinking model. Even your movie experience will be downgraded. If you don't know Western fairytales, you will find Shrek movie unfunny.
- sambapa 4y ago
  I would rather have one anarchistic Leonardo da Vinci who doesn't give a fuck about Shrek than hordes of standarized, cookie-cutter groupthink people that find some capitalistic product funny.
eesmith 4y ago
> it has never been updated throughout its history As Wikipedia points out, "The doctorates in the higher faculties were quite different from the current PhD degree in that they were awarded for advanced scholarship, not original research. No dissertation or original work was required, only lengthy residency requirements and examinations." and "The doctorate of philosophy developed in Germany as the terminal teacher's credential." The modern system, with its focus on research training, is derived from Prussian educational reforms in the early 1800s, which then spread around the world.

c7b 4y ago

The article feels more like a rant than a well-thought-out argument. It hardly says concretely what the problems with current PhD training are (it mentions a few problems in different places, but misses important ones like the ongoing mental health crisis in academia [0]), and it makes very few suggestions about what concretely should change to address them. The authors don't even say what they mean by 'PhD training', ignoring the vast heterogeneity in the structure and duration of doctoral education programs between countries, institutions and even between different programs in the same institution. In the US, PhD training typically consists of a coursework phase and a research phase, with a target duration of about 5 years. In the EU, a PhD has a target duration of 3 years, according to the European Qualifications Framework [1]. While some coursework will typically be demanded in EU PhDs, it would usually be more lightweight than the coursework in a 5-year US PhD. Some EU institutions will offer doctoral schools that mimic the US model, some institutions will actually offer multiple styles of doctorates in parallel programs (even for the same subject). The UK has 'Centres for Doctoral Training' (CDT) and 'Doctoral Training Partnerships' (DTPs) which look like a compromise between the US and EU models (with typically one year of coursework preceding the research phase). CDTs can be joint programs between multiple universities, with students commuting to other institutions to take classes. CDTs and DTPs are are offered alongside regular PhD programs in the UK (the latter will look more like the EU model in most cases and more like the US model in some). Other countries and regions will often have a similar mix of US- and EU-style training programs. Add to this various lesser known types of doctoral programs like part-time PhDs, professional doctorates, DBAs (Business Doctorates in the US), 'PhD by Publication' in the UK, PhDs that are primarily based at non-university research labs like CERN, Max-Planck-Institutes,... and you will see that the term 'PhD' or 'Doctorate' can refer to vastly different types of academic programs, lasting anywhere from 2 to 8 years, being based at one or multiple or no university, with coursework being anything from absent to equivalent to a 2-year Master's program, funding being provided by a professor, a university, a foundation, a government, a corporation or not at all, having one or multiple supervisors, administering letter, numeric or no grades at all, requiring substantial teaching to none at all,... There is really no point in talking about 'PhD training' or its shortcomings without clarifying which of those countless different types of programs you mean. The premise of the article seems to be that there exists a uniform model of PhD training that emerged in the 19th century and hasn't been reformed since, which simply doesn't stand up to closer inspection. [0] https://www.ecn-berlin.de/mental-health/the-mental-health-crisis-in-academi.html https://www.ecn-berlin.de/mental-health/the-mental-health-cr... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_Process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_Process

etiam 4y ago

I don't think I can see an actual argument in this. Could it be summarized as approximately 'The current PhD system has good points but it's several decades old, you learn from someone who actually knows the stuff in practice, and politicians don't want to spend enough for it despite lionizing the economic value of the outcomes'? I fail to see the problems beyond the obvious, and while there are obvious problems, people with agendas published under titles like "Towards a Global Core Value System in Doctoral Education" seem uniquely qualified to aggravate them. If anyone is to muck around with one of the core arrangements for real scientific research (on a global scale, no less) they had better be very clear about the distinctions between "changed" and "actually improved".

Balgair 4y ago

Bit of an aside: Most people in PhD programs misunderstand the actual objectives (I sure did). They assume that the academic environment is just like the undergraduate one they have come out of. That is false. To better understand the new rules that they are operating under, I suggest looking to 'literature'. The two best examples that I have found to illustrate the real 'rules' are: 1) The Horatio Hornblower series. It follows the career of a noble, poor, yet educated British naval officer during the Napoleonic Wars. It follows Horatio from midshipman to Admiral. 2) The Sharpe series. Also set during the Napoleonic Wars, this series follows the Army instead of the Navy. You read of the career of an orphaned son of a whore commoner who is elevated to officer rank. Much conflict with the inherited nobility and chafing occurs with the commoner protagonist. It is quickly discovered by the protagonists of both series that to survive at officer rank, the lives and interests of the enlisted must be second to the demands of career. Much deeper discussions about this occur in both series. The key for a PhD student is to observe the fighting and jockeying of the officers between each other over career. These dynamics, even through fictional books, are identical to the fights of academics even today. How the protagonists deal with these challenges should be a lesson to any PhD student in their own careers.

awesomeMilou 4y ago

This thread is the most entertaining thing I've read in a while. So many PhD's showing off how their education traumatized them.