14 ms·

Why do older grad students become bitter?

lapcat 4y ago
I found myself nodding in agreement, as this all sounds very familiar to me as a former graduate student (except the final "applications of science" section, because I was in philosophy).
rwalle 4y ago
> A decent STEM PhD student stipend in the US is about $40k. I don't know where that number comes from. In most universities you'd be looking at $20k-lower 30k, sometimes less. In fact, in public schools, salaries for teaching assistants/research assistants are public data and people can look them up.
- jhbadger 4y ago
  It depends on how you want to compute the stipend. Many stipends are officially $50K or more but that's because they include the tuition (which is kind of silly as most PhD students aren't really students in the traditional sense beyond the first year or two, but still officially have to pay tuition). But yes, students are unlikely to see more than lower $30K as actual pay as the tuition is generally taken out automatically.
  - FooBarBizBazz 4y ago
    To expand on this, IIRC postdocs cost professors about the same, but have double the salary, only because the school isn't taking the "tuition" cut. Of course, the incoming grant money to pay for the postdoc is still "taxed" at 50% by the university. So the lowly PhD student is probably only seeing 25% of what they're costing the government.
- lmwnshn 4y ago
  (for CS) You can find more numbers from Jeff Huang's Computer Science Open Data, which posts verified stipends: [0] [0] https://jeffhuang.com/computer-science-open-data/#verified-computer-science-phd-stipends https://jeffhuang.com/computer-science-open-data/#verified-c...
- michaelt 4y ago
  Yes - here in the UK a typical STEM PhD stipend is £17,668 [1] or $21,400 It's tax-free, and you don't have to pay any tuition fees - but it's nowhere near $40k. [1] https://www.ukri.org/what-we-offer/developing-people-and-skills/find-studentships-and-doctoral-training/changes-to-the-minimum-stipend-from-1-october-2022/ https://www.ukri.org/what-we-offer/developing-people-and-ski...
  - Symbiote 4y ago
    Britain really undervalues PhD students. PhD students at the University of Copenhagen earn 36,000DKK/month, which after taxes works out to around £34,000 or $40,000 per year. They are considered normal employees with a pension, holiday etc. German PhD salaries seem only slightly lower, but taxes and living costs are also lower, so it's probably similar or slightly better. https://uniavisen.dk/en/salaries-at-the-university-of-copenhagen-2022/ https://uniavisen.dk/en/salaries-at-the-university-of-copenh... https://academicpositions.com/career-advice/phd-postdoc-and-professor-salaries-in-germany https://academicpositions.com/career-advice/phd-postdoc-and-...
- lambdaloop 4y ago
  That's true, I meant to write that it's on the upper end. I think my current stipend is about $36k for a neuroscience PhD in Seattle. I've updated it to this: > A "good" STEM PhD student stipend in the US is about $35k. Note that many schools pay below this.
BiteCode_dev 4y ago
They... don't ? I don't know where the person is studying, but it's not a general phenomenon. I have still students around me, and the number of years don't seem to make them more or less bitters.
- arethuza 4y ago
  A long time since I was a Research Associate at a UK university (salaried short term contract) and trying to finish a PhD and I remember someone from outside of academia describing me as "hyper cynical" - that was after 5 years or so. I left, co-founded a startup and never regretted leaving academia. Edit: That comment didn't make me leave but it does rather reflect my state of mind at the time - which was pretty bitter....
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  5 of my friends did a phd, 4 of them had a clinically diagnosed depression during phd
- loa_in_ 4y ago
  If you're in a teaching position and students' evaluation depends on you remember that you won't see all that much genuine interactions, as many will try to appear at their best
- Balgair 4y ago
  To add to the anecdata, it is very much a general thing. Most grad students I've encountered were pretty bitter by year 3/4.
bowsamic 4y ago
I’m just waiting for my depressing postdoc to end so I can take the money and then im out of here. Have hated every moment of it, considered suicide multiple times, etc. Very bad
- staunton 4y ago
  You considered suicide but not quitting? You're still waiting for your contract to end? I don't understand.
  - bowsamic 4y ago
    It’s guaranteed money for the next year and a half and I’m basically totally isolated with no expectations of me actually doing anything. In addition, I will be forced to leave the country if I quit. Therefore it makes no sense to quit. Also there is not anything else I want to do. I would not be less suicidal if I quit
    - DoctorDabadedoo 4y ago
      I know it never seems like the right time to do anything else than moving forward, but please seek help.
      - bowsamic 4y ago
        I am on the waiting list for therapy for a year. They told me it would be a year. I rang a couple weeks ago and they told me it would be another year. Help is not available. God knows I’ve tried EDIT: Why downvote? What am I supposed to do?...I'm so tired
        orff 4y ago
        let me guess - it's in Germany.
        bowsamic 4y ago
ac130kz 4y ago
I feel like most people have to evaluate their chances to bail out once in a while, as they get lost in their path. It prevents hours, days and years of useless anxiety for the weaker of us.
goodcanadian 4y ago
Only 15% of postdocs end up being tenure-track faculty. And what percentage of PhD graduates get postdoctoral positions? I saw a statistic somewhere (sorry, no source at the moment) that showed something like 2% of PhDs actually making it to a faculty position.
- lambdaloop 4y ago
  As I was told, pretty much any PhD graduate can get a postdoc somewhere. PhD -> postdoc transition is really about whether you want to stay in academia at all. From my rough impressions, maybe about 10% of the grad students I know are thinking of doing a postdoc, which would be 10% * 15% = 1.5% of PhDs making it to faculty. That roughly matches the statistic you have. I think the 15% of postdocs becoming faculty statistic really sticks with me, because these are already preselected for wanting to become faculty and even within that pool, only 15% can make it. It's quite demoralizing.
singeezie 4y ago
Burnout + Isolation + Financial burden + Career uncertainty + Unrealistic expectations = disillusioned old phd student
glass3 4y ago
>Only 15% of postdocs end up being tenure-track faculty. It's strange that the most intelligent people don't overcome that limit. There are billions of people on earth who could benefit from education to become more productive. A share of that gain could pay for many more 'tenure-tracks', they just wouldn't be called like that.
- martopix 4y ago
  Being a professor is much, much more about research than about education. You don't normally become a professor because you're good at teaching, nor because you love teaching (or maybe you do, but not only that). This is a bit sad actually, as I am an odd case of an academic that thinks teaching is much more important and even interesting than research. It's changing a bit in that positions that are research-only or teaching-only are starting to appear.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  It's just purely about the numbers. A professor, in a 50-year career, can produce 100 PhDs from a large research group. At steady state, those 100 PhDs are competing for one professorship slot. Even "unproductive" professors can produce 20 PhDs.
- wongarsu 4y ago
  I know this heavily depends on the location, but at our university most professors weren't there to teach students. Giving lectures was more like the price of entry, something that has to be done to keep the machine alive. Their actual job and passion was doing research, publishing highly-cited papers, going to conferences, and furthering their and by extension their university's reputation. It might be different if being a grad student was about giving awesome lectures, but usually it's about doing awesome research; and those that are best at doing and publishing research then get tenure-track.
VLM 4y ago
I think the psychological aspect of first failure and injustice is rough on grad students. Hypercompetitive to get into a good enough BS program to get into a MS program yet unlike post-BS tracks like med school, 98% aren't getting that job in academia and will fail out. Its a pyramid with a very pointy top, much like college football usually doesn't lead to a NFL career. Meanwhile the "failures" who were not smart enough to get into a good grad program are making incredible salaries etc. 98% of them when they don't get that tenure track professorship "Hey I listened to advice, obeyed, played the game of education, played it VERY hard, put in incredible hours, won top positions, now where's my reward I was promised?" (I get this emotional response originally from my favorite server at Dennys who did a K12 education degree, busted her butt, got a top half of her class place, back then they were overproducing ed degrees to such an incredible extent she never got a teaching job, came home with her student loans to the same server job she had at Dennys when she was in high school. If you're going to try to climb a job pyramid where most people don't make it to the top, don't take out loans to do it... Anyway she sounded a lot like some MSCS students and grads I've met while programming.)
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  But if you don't take out loans, you almost certainly guarantee failure to reach the top of the pyramid. So we're stuck with two bad choices. Either people take a risk on loans, or the academic pyramid becomes populated with only those with burnable wealth.
  - MereInterest 4y ago
    As a society, we have a third option: fund education as a public good.
    - colonelpopcorn 4y ago
      I feel like the third option should be: not conflating credentials with education or ability. Education is a funded public good, I won't say well funded, but funded nonetheless. Credentials are not a well funded public good, and shouldn't be in my opinion.
jvvw 4y ago
As somebody from the UK, six years feels such a long time. Our PhDs are usually three years, although there's more specialisation earlier on at the undergraduate levels, and people might have done masters first, so you are launched straight into research pretty much when you start. You generally have four years from the start to submit your thesis and three years of funding, although I don't know if that has changed at all since I did mine. I knew two years into my PhD that it wasn't what I wanted to do - I did see it to the end as I was concerned how it would look on my CV if I quit (not sure if that was a good decision or not, but I think I am glad I did finish it!). But I think it'd have been really hard if it had been four more years rather than just another one or two.
- MereInterest 4y ago
  In the US, PhD programs will usually be combined with the Masters, and will start with ~2 years of coursework. This can cause no end of communication issues when discussing how far one is along a PhD.
  - jvvw 4y ago
    Can you leave with a Masters after two years then? I was vaguely aware that Grad School in the US wasn't quite equivalent to here. I went straight from my undergraduate to my PhD, but I guess because of the earlier specialisation that the second half of my undergraduate was vaguely similar to a Masters in the US say.
    - lapcat 4y ago
      Yes, granting a Masters after the completion of required coursework is commonplace on the way to a PhD, regardless of whether you leave or stay in the program.
    - MereInterest 4y ago
      Yes, but there isn't that much of a point to it. For fields where the terminal degree is a Masters (e.g. Master of Fine Arts, Master of Business Administration), there's usually some jobs that will require them. For fields where the terminal degrees is a PhD (e.g. STEM fields), there isn't much you can do with a Masters that you couldn't have done with a Bachelors.
sam_goody 4y ago
1. If you put a sixth grader in second grade, they wont be happy because they are doing a lot less than they should and could be doing. I think this feeling applies for sixth year students, that know they could be starting a real job or building a family. 2. Academia is built on the the theoretical. Learning is cool, and theories are nice, and colleges are full of kids that don't bear the responsibility of their actions. But most people eventually get the nagging and uncomfortable suspicion that the world that they are being sold doesn't quite match up to reality. A feeling associated with bitterness, cynicism, and denial. OT> IMO, this one reason why academia is so strongly leftist. Socialism and Communism are theoretically utopian, but can never work in the real world. Ditto to monetary theory (if it was so reliable, the profs would all be rich and retired), and liberalism (unfortunately, since I really buy into the theory), and other agendas that are popular on campus.
- lapcat 4y ago
  Why in the world did you think it was a good idea to turn this into a partisan political debate?
  - sam_goody 4y ago
    As someone who straddles the fence, trying to get as much theoretical utopia into the messy world we live in as possible, I don't see it as "for" and against", nor as a partisan debate. I'm a former professor, and my colleagues agreed with the description above, just disagreed how much utopia can be shoehorned in. As far as explaining dissatisfaction of a sixth year, there is something of the dawning of reality in it, and I think both sides of the political spectrum can agree to that. If you think I should edit the comment, I will.
- dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
  Good observations....
- justaburner 4y ago
  Do you think the fundamental problem lies within the idea of utopia?
mkl95 4y ago
> When I entered grad school, I noticed that the older grad students just seemed... oddly bitter? The 6th years were living in a different world from us 1st years > You may need to move on for the sake of your life, but your experiments aren't working and the committee says you need one more paper to graduate. It's really hard to balance this, especially combined with the lack of money. > Only 15% of postdocs end up being tenure-track faculty From an engineer's point of view, working for 6 years at some organization with no significant professional growth sounds dystopian. I can't picture why someone with above average work ethic and very likely intelligence would put themselves through that. Downvote me as much as you want, but there is something seriously wrong in a society that tolerates these schemes.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > Downvote me as much as you want Protip: This kind of comment almost always becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. "Please don't comment about the voting on comments." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- michaelt 4y ago
  > From an engineer's point of view, working for 6 years at some organization with no significant professional growth sounds dystopian. To be fair, they do give you a masters degree after 2 years and a doctorate after 6, and expect you to spend loads of your time developing your knowledge. That's some of the most measurable and transferable professional development out there. The problem is you get paid a pittance.
- kcplate 4y ago
  > something seriously wrong in a society that tolerates these schemes “Society” isn’t tolerating it, it’s the grad students that are tolerating it. Society doesn’t know and wouldn’t care if they did. Your general point is spot on. Why put yourself through that?
Polonium86 4y ago
But… Does it become better after leaving academia? I am just done with my PhD and will leave for industry in 1 month. Even having finished my PhD, I can’t see light at the end of the tunnel. Suggestions?
martopix 4y ago
overwork, bad salaries, competition, bad relationship with supervisors are often mentioned but I think this is not the whole picture. I would focus more on research itself. Research can be really shitty. It's extremely open ended, so you may be a brilliant student with exams, but feel clueless about what to do when there is no clear problem and no clear solution. Science is now extremely incremental compared to 50 years ago, meaning that you work on a tiny problem and you only try to take it forward by epsilon. This is different from the idea we often have of science as "eureka!" and revolutionary changes of paradigm. Most of our time we only aim to publish some paper on something, and move on, even without fully believing in what we're trying hard to convince reviewers of. Which is a horrible feeling. All this causes one clear phenomenon: lack of motivation. Motivation is essential for any hard job. But it's very very hard to keep motivation high, let's be honest, on working like crazy on some project that ends up in a paper that probably almost nobody will ever read. I don't ever want to do that again. And it's not about the salary, or my boss, or working long hours (I don't).
- Schroedingers2c 4y ago
  As a final year PhD student I wholeheartedly agree with this. That alone makes it very rough to keep up the high level of motivation. And then add the other quirks of academia on top of that.
  - Balgair 4y ago
    Could you elucidate the other quirks for us? I'd be interested to know your experiences. Sorry if this comes off as gruff, I honestly do want to hear.
    - Schroedingers2c 4y ago
      - Nepotism - A high proportion of people from privileged backgrounds - The academic publishing process (although this has gotten better over the years with more open access). But in traditional, and usually more "esteemed" journals, you pay to submit your work (want it open access? Please pay 9500€! That is no joke, this is Nature's open access fee.), you peer-review others' papers for free ("service to the academic community"), and then you pay to read articles (or your university does). The journals profit. With insane margins. - It happens that you discuss the same problem, in the same way, saying almost the same sentences many times over the span of months/years. The feeling of running in circles is very common and I find it exhausting. - Senior people can hold an extreme level of power over the careers of more junior people. You're so specialised that it can happen that there are just like 5 other places on the world where your kind of research happens. You don't want to move away, but still want tenure? You're at the complete mercy of your group leader. - Being almost expected to move around every 1-3 years as a postdoc when you're in your late 20s / early 30s. This can be very enriching and you see the world and meet many diverse people, but can also be very isolating and depressing depending on your personality and how well your location fits you. And is very rough on relationships.
mnky9800n 4y ago
For what it's worth, you don't have to do a PhD where you making starvation wages. There are plenty of well paying PhD programs in Scandinavian countries, The Netherlands, etc. During my PhD in Norway I made approx. 55k USD before taxes. This paid for a flat by myself, traveling on holidays to my home country, etc.
maegul 4y ago
Another factor I’ve wondered in both myself and others: those who choose to be grad students often do so because of irrational unresolved issues or dissatisfactions with life. Grad work doesn’t help with these issues at all, only adds more problems or compounds them, and leaves you with a good amount of bitterness that you might not even understand. Increased age or progress increases the chance that these unresolved issues are manifesting or compounding. For me, I was looking for things in academia that just weren’t there, and I was too dumb to know what I was really looking for.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > those who choose to be grad students often do so because of irrational unresolved issues or dissatisfactions with life Citation very much needed.
- Schroedingers2c 4y ago
  I don't know if there is any data on this (I would be really interested!), but anecdotally I would agree. I see high avoidant/anxious/ADHD traits in many colleagues and fellow researchers. In my field certainly way above average levels of the general population. And I myself am a bit guilty of becoming so competitive and entering grad school partially because of unresolved issues.
goethes_kind 4y ago
There is one aspect that was not touched on, which I find to be quite cruel to be honest. There is an obsession with forcing academics to move around. If you do your undergrad in one university, then you should pack your bags and move to another country to do your Ph.d at another university and then do it again for all your Post. docs. (I am not sure if this is more of an EU thing or if it is a worldwide phenomenon). Abandoning your entire life and moving to another country is hard and it takes a huge toll on your mental well being, especially as you start approaching your 30s. And it just plain makes life harder, when the circumstances are hard enough already. And all of this for what specific benefit exactly? This aspect is so ingrained that, for example I see job ads, where they say, "to be eligible you should not have spent the last x years studying or working in this country". In fact let me quote: • Must not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Germany for more than 1 year out of the last 3 years. This is in line with standard mobility criteria for a standard Doctoral Training Network. And then a couple of lines below they boast about a family-friendly environment, and how they prioritize disadvantaged individuals, without a hint of irony. It is neither family-friendly nor a suitable position for disadvantaged individuals if you force them to move away from their support networks to a foreign country.
- lambdaloop 4y ago
  Yes absolutely this! This is 100% a thing in the US as well. Moving around between undergrad and PhD has wrecked my social life. Many of the students in my program are not doing a postdoc because they don't want to move out of Seattle. And I mean, why should they? In the US, the only places where you could reasonably stay in the same place and switch institutions are LA (and surrounding area), Boston, and New York. Anywhere else you're switching states and potentially leaving friends, family, and loved ones behind. It's really hard.
frankreyes 4y ago
If you have a Facebook account you can see memes about grad school life in the "High Impact PhD memes" page. Relatable
giardini 4y ago
Possibly b/c of the first graph at "Career Guide for Engineers and Computer Scientists" https://philip.greenspun.com/careers/ https://philip.greenspun.com/careers/?
lambdaloop 4y ago
Oh this is wild, I didn't expect this to make it anywhere outside of my little site. Thanks for dropping in!

I found myself nodding in agreement, as this all sounds very familiar to me as a former graduate student (except the final "applications of science" section, because I was in philosophy).

rwalle 4y ago

> A decent STEM PhD student stipend in the US is about $40k. I don't know where that number comes from. In most universities you'd be looking at $20k-lower 30k, sometimes less. In fact, in public schools, salaries for teaching assistants/research assistants are public data and people can look them up.

jhbadger 4y ago
It depends on how you want to compute the stipend. Many stipends are officially $50K or more but that's because they include the tuition (which is kind of silly as most PhD students aren't really students in the traditional sense beyond the first year or two, but still officially have to pay tuition). But yes, students are unlikely to see more than lower $30K as actual pay as the tuition is generally taken out automatically.
- FooBarBizBazz 4y ago
  To expand on this, IIRC postdocs cost professors about the same, but have double the salary, only because the school isn't taking the "tuition" cut. Of course, the incoming grant money to pay for the postdoc is still "taxed" at 50% by the university. So the lowly PhD student is probably only seeing 25% of what they're costing the government.
lmwnshn 4y ago
(for CS) You can find more numbers from Jeff Huang's Computer Science Open Data, which posts verified stipends: [0] [0] https://jeffhuang.com/computer-science-open-data/#verified-computer-science-phd-stipends https://jeffhuang.com/computer-science-open-data/#verified-c...
michaelt 4y ago
Yes - here in the UK a typical STEM PhD stipend is £17,668 [1] or $21,400 It's tax-free, and you don't have to pay any tuition fees - but it's nowhere near $40k. [1] https://www.ukri.org/what-we-offer/developing-people-and-skills/find-studentships-and-doctoral-training/changes-to-the-minimum-stipend-from-1-october-2022/ https://www.ukri.org/what-we-offer/developing-people-and-ski...
- Symbiote 4y ago
  Britain really undervalues PhD students. PhD students at the University of Copenhagen earn 36,000DKK/month, which after taxes works out to around £34,000 or $40,000 per year. They are considered normal employees with a pension, holiday etc. German PhD salaries seem only slightly lower, but taxes and living costs are also lower, so it's probably similar or slightly better. https://uniavisen.dk/en/salaries-at-the-university-of-copenhagen-2022/ https://uniavisen.dk/en/salaries-at-the-university-of-copenh... https://academicpositions.com/career-advice/phd-postdoc-and-professor-salaries-in-germany https://academicpositions.com/career-advice/phd-postdoc-and-...
lambdaloop 4y ago
That's true, I meant to write that it's on the upper end. I think my current stipend is about $36k for a neuroscience PhD in Seattle. I've updated it to this: > A "good" STEM PhD student stipend in the US is about $35k. Note that many schools pay below this.

BiteCode_dev 4y ago

They... don't ? I don't know where the person is studying, but it's not a general phenomenon. I have still students around me, and the number of years don't seem to make them more or less bitters.

arethuza 4y ago
A long time since I was a Research Associate at a UK university (salaried short term contract) and trying to finish a PhD and I remember someone from outside of academia describing me as "hyper cynical" - that was after 5 years or so. I left, co-founded a startup and never regretted leaving academia. Edit: That comment didn't make me leave but it does rather reflect my state of mind at the time - which was pretty bitter....
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
5 of my friends did a phd, 4 of them had a clinically diagnosed depression during phd
loa_in_ 4y ago
If you're in a teaching position and students' evaluation depends on you remember that you won't see all that much genuine interactions, as many will try to appear at their best
Balgair 4y ago
To add to the anecdata, it is very much a general thing. Most grad students I've encountered were pretty bitter by year 3/4.

bowsamic 4y ago

I’m just waiting for my depressing postdoc to end so I can take the money and then im out of here. Have hated every moment of it, considered suicide multiple times, etc. Very bad

staunton 4y ago
You considered suicide but not quitting? You're still waiting for your contract to end? I don't understand.
- bowsamic 4y ago
  It’s guaranteed money for the next year and a half and I’m basically totally isolated with no expectations of me actually doing anything. In addition, I will be forced to leave the country if I quit. Therefore it makes no sense to quit. Also there is not anything else I want to do. I would not be less suicidal if I quit
  - DoctorDabadedoo 4y ago
    I know it never seems like the right time to do anything else than moving forward, but please seek help.
    - bowsamic 4y ago
      I am on the waiting list for therapy for a year. They told me it would be a year. I rang a couple weeks ago and they told me it would be another year. Help is not available. God knows I’ve tried EDIT: Why downvote? What am I supposed to do?...I'm so tired
      - orff 4y ago
        let me guess - it's in Germany.
        bowsamic 4y ago

ac130kz 4y ago

I feel like most people have to evaluate their chances to bail out once in a while, as they get lost in their path. It prevents hours, days and years of useless anxiety for the weaker of us.

goodcanadian 4y ago

Only 15% of postdocs end up being tenure-track faculty. And what percentage of PhD graduates get postdoctoral positions? I saw a statistic somewhere (sorry, no source at the moment) that showed something like 2% of PhDs actually making it to a faculty position.

lambdaloop 4y ago
As I was told, pretty much any PhD graduate can get a postdoc somewhere. PhD -> postdoc transition is really about whether you want to stay in academia at all. From my rough impressions, maybe about 10% of the grad students I know are thinking of doing a postdoc, which would be 10% * 15% = 1.5% of PhDs making it to faculty. That roughly matches the statistic you have. I think the 15% of postdocs becoming faculty statistic really sticks with me, because these are already preselected for wanting to become faculty and even within that pool, only 15% can make it. It's quite demoralizing.

singeezie 4y ago

Burnout + Isolation + Financial burden + Career uncertainty + Unrealistic expectations = disillusioned old phd student

glass3 4y ago

>Only 15% of postdocs end up being tenure-track faculty. It's strange that the most intelligent people don't overcome that limit. There are billions of people on earth who could benefit from education to become more productive. A share of that gain could pay for many more 'tenure-tracks', they just wouldn't be called like that.

martopix 4y ago
Being a professor is much, much more about research than about education. You don't normally become a professor because you're good at teaching, nor because you love teaching (or maybe you do, but not only that). This is a bit sad actually, as I am an odd case of an academic that thinks teaching is much more important and even interesting than research. It's changing a bit in that positions that are research-only or teaching-only are starting to appear.
pclmulqdq 4y ago
It's just purely about the numbers. A professor, in a 50-year career, can produce 100 PhDs from a large research group. At steady state, those 100 PhDs are competing for one professorship slot. Even "unproductive" professors can produce 20 PhDs.
wongarsu 4y ago
I know this heavily depends on the location, but at our university most professors weren't there to teach students. Giving lectures was more like the price of entry, something that has to be done to keep the machine alive. Their actual job and passion was doing research, publishing highly-cited papers, going to conferences, and furthering their and by extension their university's reputation. It might be different if being a grad student was about giving awesome lectures, but usually it's about doing awesome research; and those that are best at doing and publishing research then get tenure-track.

VLM 4y ago

I think the psychological aspect of first failure and injustice is rough on grad students. Hypercompetitive to get into a good enough BS program to get into a MS program yet unlike post-BS tracks like med school, 98% aren't getting that job in academia and will fail out. Its a pyramid with a very pointy top, much like college football usually doesn't lead to a NFL career. Meanwhile the "failures" who were not smart enough to get into a good grad program are making incredible salaries etc. 98% of them when they don't get that tenure track professorship "Hey I listened to advice, obeyed, played the game of education, played it VERY hard, put in incredible hours, won top positions, now where's my reward I was promised?" (I get this emotional response originally from my favorite server at Dennys who did a K12 education degree, busted her butt, got a top half of her class place, back then they were overproducing ed degrees to such an incredible extent she never got a teaching job, came home with her student loans to the same server job she had at Dennys when she was in high school. If you're going to try to climb a job pyramid where most people don't make it to the top, don't take out loans to do it... Anyway she sounded a lot like some MSCS students and grads I've met while programming.)

shadowgovt 4y ago
But if you don't take out loans, you almost certainly guarantee failure to reach the top of the pyramid. So we're stuck with two bad choices. Either people take a risk on loans, or the academic pyramid becomes populated with only those with burnable wealth.
- MereInterest 4y ago
  As a society, we have a third option: fund education as a public good.
  - colonelpopcorn 4y ago
    I feel like the third option should be: not conflating credentials with education or ability. Education is a funded public good, I won't say well funded, but funded nonetheless. Credentials are not a well funded public good, and shouldn't be in my opinion.

jvvw 4y ago

As somebody from the UK, six years feels such a long time. Our PhDs are usually three years, although there's more specialisation earlier on at the undergraduate levels, and people might have done masters first, so you are launched straight into research pretty much when you start. You generally have four years from the start to submit your thesis and three years of funding, although I don't know if that has changed at all since I did mine. I knew two years into my PhD that it wasn't what I wanted to do - I did see it to the end as I was concerned how it would look on my CV if I quit (not sure if that was a good decision or not, but I think I am glad I did finish it!). But I think it'd have been really hard if it had been four more years rather than just another one or two.

MereInterest 4y ago
In the US, PhD programs will usually be combined with the Masters, and will start with ~2 years of coursework. This can cause no end of communication issues when discussing how far one is along a PhD.
- jvvw 4y ago
  Can you leave with a Masters after two years then? I was vaguely aware that Grad School in the US wasn't quite equivalent to here. I went straight from my undergraduate to my PhD, but I guess because of the earlier specialisation that the second half of my undergraduate was vaguely similar to a Masters in the US say.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    Yes, granting a Masters after the completion of required coursework is commonplace on the way to a PhD, regardless of whether you leave or stay in the program.
  - MereInterest 4y ago
    Yes, but there isn't that much of a point to it. For fields where the terminal degree is a Masters (e.g. Master of Fine Arts, Master of Business Administration), there's usually some jobs that will require them. For fields where the terminal degrees is a PhD (e.g. STEM fields), there isn't much you can do with a Masters that you couldn't have done with a Bachelors.

sam_goody 4y ago

1. If you put a sixth grader in second grade, they wont be happy because they are doing a lot less than they should and could be doing. I think this feeling applies for sixth year students, that know they could be starting a real job or building a family. 2. Academia is built on the the theoretical. Learning is cool, and theories are nice, and colleges are full of kids that don't bear the responsibility of their actions. But most people eventually get the nagging and uncomfortable suspicion that the world that they are being sold doesn't quite match up to reality. A feeling associated with bitterness, cynicism, and denial. OT> IMO, this one reason why academia is so strongly leftist. Socialism and Communism are theoretically utopian, but can never work in the real world. Ditto to monetary theory (if it was so reliable, the profs would all be rich and retired), and liberalism (unfortunately, since I really buy into the theory), and other agendas that are popular on campus.

lapcat 4y ago
Why in the world did you think it was a good idea to turn this into a partisan political debate?
- sam_goody 4y ago
  As someone who straddles the fence, trying to get as much theoretical utopia into the messy world we live in as possible, I don't see it as "for" and against", nor as a partisan debate. I'm a former professor, and my colleagues agreed with the description above, just disagreed how much utopia can be shoehorned in. As far as explaining dissatisfaction of a sixth year, there is something of the dawning of reality in it, and I think both sides of the political spectrum can agree to that. If you think I should edit the comment, I will.
dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
Good observations....
justaburner 4y ago
Do you think the fundamental problem lies within the idea of utopia?

mkl95 4y ago

> When I entered grad school, I noticed that the older grad students just seemed... oddly bitter? The 6th years were living in a different world from us 1st years > You may need to move on for the sake of your life, but your experiments aren't working and the committee says you need one more paper to graduate. It's really hard to balance this, especially combined with the lack of money. > Only 15% of postdocs end up being tenure-track faculty From an engineer's point of view, working for 6 years at some organization with no significant professional growth sounds dystopian. I can't picture why someone with above average work ethic and very likely intelligence would put themselves through that. Downvote me as much as you want, but there is something seriously wrong in a society that tolerates these schemes.

lapcat 4y ago
> Downvote me as much as you want Protip: This kind of comment almost always becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. "Please don't comment about the voting on comments." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
michaelt 4y ago
> From an engineer's point of view, working for 6 years at some organization with no significant professional growth sounds dystopian. To be fair, they do give you a masters degree after 2 years and a doctorate after 6, and expect you to spend loads of your time developing your knowledge. That's some of the most measurable and transferable professional development out there. The problem is you get paid a pittance.
kcplate 4y ago
> something seriously wrong in a society that tolerates these schemes “Society” isn’t tolerating it, it’s the grad students that are tolerating it. Society doesn’t know and wouldn’t care if they did. Your general point is spot on. Why put yourself through that?

Polonium86 4y ago

But… Does it become better after leaving academia? I am just done with my PhD and will leave for industry in 1 month. Even having finished my PhD, I can’t see light at the end of the tunnel. Suggestions?

martopix 4y ago

overwork, bad salaries, competition, bad relationship with supervisors are often mentioned but I think this is not the whole picture. I would focus more on research itself. Research can be really shitty. It's extremely open ended, so you may be a brilliant student with exams, but feel clueless about what to do when there is no clear problem and no clear solution. Science is now extremely incremental compared to 50 years ago, meaning that you work on a tiny problem and you only try to take it forward by epsilon. This is different from the idea we often have of science as "eureka!" and revolutionary changes of paradigm. Most of our time we only aim to publish some paper on something, and move on, even without fully believing in what we're trying hard to convince reviewers of. Which is a horrible feeling. All this causes one clear phenomenon: lack of motivation. Motivation is essential for any hard job. But it's very very hard to keep motivation high, let's be honest, on working like crazy on some project that ends up in a paper that probably almost nobody will ever read. I don't ever want to do that again. And it's not about the salary, or my boss, or working long hours (I don't).

Schroedingers2c 4y ago
As a final year PhD student I wholeheartedly agree with this. That alone makes it very rough to keep up the high level of motivation. And then add the other quirks of academia on top of that.
- Balgair 4y ago
  Could you elucidate the other quirks for us? I'd be interested to know your experiences. Sorry if this comes off as gruff, I honestly do want to hear.
  - Schroedingers2c 4y ago
    - Nepotism - A high proportion of people from privileged backgrounds - The academic publishing process (although this has gotten better over the years with more open access). But in traditional, and usually more "esteemed" journals, you pay to submit your work (want it open access? Please pay 9500€! That is no joke, this is Nature's open access fee.), you peer-review others' papers for free ("service to the academic community"), and then you pay to read articles (or your university does). The journals profit. With insane margins. - It happens that you discuss the same problem, in the same way, saying almost the same sentences many times over the span of months/years. The feeling of running in circles is very common and I find it exhausting. - Senior people can hold an extreme level of power over the careers of more junior people. You're so specialised that it can happen that there are just like 5 other places on the world where your kind of research happens. You don't want to move away, but still want tenure? You're at the complete mercy of your group leader. - Being almost expected to move around every 1-3 years as a postdoc when you're in your late 20s / early 30s. This can be very enriching and you see the world and meet many diverse people, but can also be very isolating and depressing depending on your personality and how well your location fits you. And is very rough on relationships.

mnky9800n 4y ago

For what it's worth, you don't have to do a PhD where you making starvation wages. There are plenty of well paying PhD programs in Scandinavian countries, The Netherlands, etc. During my PhD in Norway I made approx. 55k USD before taxes. This paid for a flat by myself, traveling on holidays to my home country, etc.

maegul 4y ago

Another factor I’ve wondered in both myself and others: those who choose to be grad students often do so because of irrational unresolved issues or dissatisfactions with life. Grad work doesn’t help with these issues at all, only adds more problems or compounds them, and leaves you with a good amount of bitterness that you might not even understand. Increased age or progress increases the chance that these unresolved issues are manifesting or compounding. For me, I was looking for things in academia that just weren’t there, and I was too dumb to know what I was really looking for.

lapcat 4y ago
> those who choose to be grad students often do so because of irrational unresolved issues or dissatisfactions with life Citation very much needed.
Schroedingers2c 4y ago
I don't know if there is any data on this (I would be really interested!), but anecdotally I would agree. I see high avoidant/anxious/ADHD traits in many colleagues and fellow researchers. In my field certainly way above average levels of the general population. And I myself am a bit guilty of becoming so competitive and entering grad school partially because of unresolved issues.

goethes_kind 4y ago

There is one aspect that was not touched on, which I find to be quite cruel to be honest. There is an obsession with forcing academics to move around. If you do your undergrad in one university, then you should pack your bags and move to another country to do your Ph.d at another university and then do it again for all your Post. docs. (I am not sure if this is more of an EU thing or if it is a worldwide phenomenon). Abandoning your entire life and moving to another country is hard and it takes a huge toll on your mental well being, especially as you start approaching your 30s. And it just plain makes life harder, when the circumstances are hard enough already. And all of this for what specific benefit exactly? This aspect is so ingrained that, for example I see job ads, where they say, "to be eligible you should not have spent the last x years studying or working in this country". In fact let me quote: • Must not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Germany for more than 1 year out of the last 3 years. This is in line with standard mobility criteria for a standard Doctoral Training Network. And then a couple of lines below they boast about a family-friendly environment, and how they prioritize disadvantaged individuals, without a hint of irony. It is neither family-friendly nor a suitable position for disadvantaged individuals if you force them to move away from their support networks to a foreign country.

lambdaloop 4y ago
Yes absolutely this! This is 100% a thing in the US as well. Moving around between undergrad and PhD has wrecked my social life. Many of the students in my program are not doing a postdoc because they don't want to move out of Seattle. And I mean, why should they? In the US, the only places where you could reasonably stay in the same place and switch institutions are LA (and surrounding area), Boston, and New York. Anywhere else you're switching states and potentially leaving friends, family, and loved ones behind. It's really hard.

frankreyes 4y ago

If you have a Facebook account you can see memes about grad school life in the "High Impact PhD memes" page. Relatable

giardini 4y ago

Possibly b/c of the first graph at "Career Guide for Engineers and Computer Scientists" https://philip.greenspun.com/careers/ https://philip.greenspun.com/careers/?

lambdaloop 4y ago

Oh this is wild, I didn't expect this to make it anywhere outside of my little site. Thanks for dropping in!