8 ms·
Knowledge-based society, my ass
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- YuriNiyazov 1y agoEx-iron curtain, amirite?
- GrayShade 1y agoYes, Warsaw pact country.
- nice_byte 1y agoRomania, judging from the blog URL. But this type of PhD experience feels like the norm in most of eastern-european/ex-soviet countries. In mine, getting a PhD was one of the ways to get out of compulsory military service. Both profs and students knew that, of course. So real research is very scarce. Other small details, like worshipping titles and putting out a spread for the PhD commission also feel familiar. Ironically, the only one of my university friends who I'd regard as "actual PhD material" ended up _not_ finishing their PhD in 3yrs time (I surmise because they picked a topic they _actually_ thought worthy) and went to serve in the army.
- fuzz_junket 1y agoFunny, I was just thinking how much this reminded me of Stanisław Lem's "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub". Must have been one hell of a vibe in Iron Curtain bureaucracies.
- tbrownaw 1y ago[flagged]
- abhisek 1y agoKudos to you for writing such a long ordeal in a humorous manner or at least that’s what I felt while reading it. On topic, it’s probably another example of why scaling a system is so hard. Especially when it comes to tasks that require deep thinking. I can’t help but notice the government policy of sponsoring mass PhDs in the hope of raising a knowledge based society is itself changing the definition of knowledge here.
- molteanu 1y agoYes, fifteen years after the fact, during which time my mind constantly bombards me with, "Why did I happen? Did I do something wrong? It was not fair! I did my best!" and such, I can't help it but write in in a humorous manner, otherwise it's hard to put it behind you and forget about it. On the second point, yes the total number of PhD graduates for a similar time period was 12.000 (official Government numbers) so this was a doubling of PhD's just like that, out of the blue. No wonder it was chaotic. There was also enormous political pressure regarding "the Government is incompetent as it cannot absorb what is basically free EU money". So, ok, they've absorbed it, sort of. I think you are right. Reading the online articles and official documentation from that period, which is really scarce (there is no such program available on the EU official website, for example, or I wasn't able to find it), it feels like this was a big experiment, the success of which is not mentioned in the news either. What I could find is that it was part of the Lisbon Strategy [1], also mentioned in the official documents published by the Government. From the linked wikipedia article: "Its aim was to make the EU the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion, by 2010. It was set out by the European Council in Lisbon in March 2000. By 2010, most of its goals were not achieved. It was succeeded by the Europe 2020 strategy." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisbon_Strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisbon_Strategy
- intended 1y agoFor what its, worth, given your situation, and given the circumstances, you did what could be done. As a fun question, what would you do now, to do what you did, but better?
- soco 1y agoThey just continued the same way of working they had already before. I went through a similar stunt around the end of the 90s (yes also Romania) but I called it quits after half a year. Sometimes I regret it, but sometimes I'm aware that either I or the group would have exploded had I stayed more. I respect your resilience.
- ggm 1y agoA friend who completed their PhD went from "he is the best professor, I am so glad he is my supervisor" to "he is the worst supervisor, I am wondering how I can get the university to transfer me" to "he is the best professor, he helped me get a job after I graduated" Which I think is a fairly normal rollercoaster ride. I never got my PhD, my first day as a lowly research assistant in a university in central london (which shall remain nameless) I was given a professorial suite to camp in, and I remained there for 3 months, imposing furniture and a giant oak table and all. Another staffer used to sleep on the floor and park his bicycle there. Eventually I was evicted and sent to the top floor, an ex-statistics research unit teaching room, like army Barracks, where I and a fellow research assistant opened a cupboard to find the 10 Brunsviga calculators left over from a mechanical actuarial risk calculation exercise the department did for money up until the advent of electronic computers. Their entire previous 5 years work was completed in under 1 days run of the machine code on the new University of London computer in the early 60s. Oh, the Joys.
- csours 1y agoI wonder what the ratio of good:bad professors is. Someone should write a list of "Power Gradients Considered Harmful", eg Crew/Cockpit Resource Management
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jiggawatts 1y ago> "You know C++?" I ask enthusiastically, as I am looking to become a software engineer myself at this point. "I don't," she informs me, "but there's enough time until Monday to learn it." Suddenly, everything about my professor's bizarre lack of development skills in my computer science course makes sense.
- donatj 1y agoMy dad got a job laying out circuit boards for Control Data in the 1980s on a Friday, knowing nothing about it. Spent the weekend in the library and started Monday morning.
- firesteelrain 1y agoFake it until you make it
- thot_experiment 1y agoidk, if you have a decent grasp of the fundamentals you can get up to speed these days in pretty much whatever language/sub discipline with a couple days of hard study with LLMs i made the transition from embedded C to low level tensor wrangling in about a week, it takes some work but it's definitely doable, of course i'm not an expert but it's enough time to go pretty deep, i went from "yeah i've run ollama" to optimizing inference code to get research papers to run on consumer hardware if the task is to get up to speed on C++ enough to teach undergrads and you're a reasonably competent academic programmer who gives at least half a shit about the task at hand a weekend is plenty
- benrbray 1y agoI'm sorry, but your reply suggests an incredible disdain for both technical expertise and for educators. There is value in depth&breadth of knowledge, and it takes great skill to craft a good curriculum. From a US perspective, students paying $50,000+ per year in tuition deserve better than an overworked PI who has crammed C++ over the weekend.
- _gmax0 1y agoWhile traveling by car during one of his many overseas travels, Professor Milton Friedman spotted scores of road builders moving earth with shovels instead of modern machinery. When he asked why powerful equipment wasn’t used instead of so many laborers, his host told him it was to keep employment high in the construction industry. If they used tractors or modern road building equipment, fewer people would have jobs was his host’s logic. “Then instead of shovels, why don’t you give them spoons and create even more jobs?” Friedman inquired.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mitthrowaway2 1y agoWhich country was that?
- nobodywillobsrv 1y agoRomania?
- Duwensatzaj 1y agohttps://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/10/spoons-shovels/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/10/spoons-shovels/ suggests it’s a made-up story based on an earlier explicitly fictional story.
- yMEyUyNE1 1y agoAlbert Einstein: 'Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.'
- bigomega 1y agoThis was very painful to read. Thanks for sharing. It hits a nerve to hear someone say, "I start to develop a faint feeling that I sleep better at night when I play along and nod approvingly to things I don't actually agree with instead of being pigheaded." Look what they've made us do.
- 20after4 1y agoIt seems to me that instilling conformity and obedience to authority are the true purpose higher education. (Also, tolerance and acceptance when faced with many arbitrary roadblocks.)
- attila-lendvai 1y ago...of institutionalized schooling in general, from kindergarten to higher ed.
- walterbell 1y ago> conformity and obedience to authority are the true purpose higher education In times of surplus/peace, perhaps. In times of competition/conflict, results are needed.
- 20after4 1y agoSeems to me that obedience is emphasized even more during war/conflict.
- walterbell 1y agoWar/conflict requires loyalty and competence, not performative obedience. https://www.jstor.org/stable/382389 https://www.jstor.org/stable/382389 > The French engineering schools which were developed immediately after the French Revolution were sui generis in the field of education. Their astonishing success caused them to become known as the grandes écoles of Paris. They included the Ecole Polytechnique, the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées, the Ecole des Mines, and the Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manu-factures. It was these schools that set the tone and the fundamental pattern of engineering education in the United States as it is known today.
- fud101 1y agoI don't have much of an interest in the topic but this writing was top notch.
- firefoxd 1y agoOh I thoroughly enjoyed this post. We were the friends and family attending my cousin defending his thesis. He spent half his time title-ing, naming, and thanking Professors, chairs, heads, and what not. When it was all over, I asked him why did you name them all? He answered, "because they like the sound of their name."
- CalRobert 1y agoThose who can, do…
- jmye 1y agoThose who can’t make shitty, sneering jokes in a desperate attempt to be vaguely interesting/clever via repeating middle school memes?
- CalRobert 1y agoTrue, but I also found my professors to be ridiculously incompetent and unprofessional (and perhaps unethical considering that at least one wanted me to work for free) compared to the people I’ve worked with.
- begueradj 1y agoWhat you describe is the traditional power game within universities to which narcissism, absence of empathy and sadism are added.
- spiderfarmer 1y agoThis was a depressing read. Now I desperately need some examples of Phd candidates who had a great time and managed to do well from a scientific point of view. To restore my faith in humanity.
- frizlab 1y agoMy brother defended a thesis that actually made sense and had the means to do it though he did not write his story. (Caveat: I did not understand his subject. Caveat 2: Professor was his (and thus my) uncle.)
- JR1427 1y agoI had a pretty good time! My supervisor was supportive, but fairly hands-off. I learned a lot, published pretty well, and mostly enjoyed it!
- jeff-hykin 1y agoThey exist, I work with some of them. Its just unfortunate that they're the exception.
- moktonar 1y agoIn what country did these facts happen?
- titanomachy 1y agoThe name on the byline is Romanian, which sounds about right given what my Romanian friends have told me about their country.
- benrbray 1y agoEastern Europe it looks like, but this story is remarkably similar to my experience as a graduate student / technical staff at public research institutions in both the United States and Japan.
- molteanu 1y agoI don't wanna name and blame the country, and I didn't do it in the article as I don't think it matters that much, but the other replies are correct in their assumption, is all I can say.
- isaacremuant 1y agoGood instincts. It's not relevant and anyone who has seen state or academia up close in different countries knows that, no matter if people from some countries may want to pretend it's "these other countries".
- jongjong 1y agoWhat we have is an ignorance-based society. The more blind-spots you have, the higher you rise. The higher your rise, the easier it is to maintain your blind-spots because nobody will dare question your worldview. Even those few who do, they're a nobody, so what could they possibly know about anything? Surely, it's only the people on top who have a bird's eye view of the big data, who know what's going on... Everyone else is like an ant following breadcrumbs laid out in front of them. What is there to learn about the real world that you cannot see from above?
- nobodywillobsrv 1y agoThe writing style is really good. Having gone through a non-terrible PhD that still shared elements of this, it captures the essence so well, even with some technical detail. Even the admin assistant shenanigans brings back memories to similar events in my days long ago in some other institution. So enjoyable.
- canucker2016 1y agoI was getting a Terry Pratchett-like-modern-day-Discworld vibe while reading the post (and Office Space film/Douglas Adams-Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference when reading about the office location).
- o_nate 1y agoReally beautiful writing. Like a prose poem. Definitely going to bookmark this blog.
- bitwize 1y agoI was bracing for the bit where Professor pokes his head into the tiny office and says "Hey Mihai, what's happening. We're gonna have to move some more of these boxes in here, so if you could just push your desk back there, against that back wall to make some room, that would be terrific. Thanks."
- udev4096 1y agoYet another example of how academics serve no purpose in real life. Yes, there have been ground breaking innovations and discoveries from academic folks but that's likely 10% of the good ones. Rest is just pure misery, like the one OP describes
- trymas 1y agoYou definition fits a lot of fields. > Yet another example of how <startups/stock brokers/etc> serve no purpose in real life. Yes, there have been ground breaking innovations and discoveries from <startups/stock brokers/etc> folks but that's likely 10% of the good ones. Rest is just pure misery, like the one OP describes
- sebstefan 1y agoI have the same take about the atmosphere. 80% of it is stuff I can't breathe... I'm thinking of removing it
- praptak 1y agoMy experience from the academia is that there just isn't enough research topics. It wasn't as bad as in this article but I can't imagine how bad it would be if somebody dumped hundreds of millions of EUR into it to mass produce PhDs.
- Havoc 1y agoThat prof sounds like a real asshole Most of the ones I encountered generally treated students who actually tried reasonably well
- dash2 1y agoThe broad lesson here: If you want to do a PhD, DO NOT limit yourself to your home country. Many countries simply are not capable of properly training researchers. The US can. China mostly can by now, I expect. Northern Europe can, to some degree, in some fields. Elsewhere, you are at risk of wasting important years of your life. Trump might end US dominance, but the general point that academia is international and entire countries can simply not have a functioning pipeline for new researchers.
- jajko 1y ago> Northern Europe can, to some degree, in some fields. Europe can etc. FTFY. And since with such decision one frequently sort of selects where they will reside afterwards (ie by finding partner and settling down), its also about choosing a society one wants to grow older and potentially raise kids in. We all have our preferences but me personally I would never choose US for such, even when disregarding current admin excesses (which in some form are not going away, its the new norm and don't hold your breath for next election cycle).
- dash2 1y agoThe OP is from Romania, and from my own experience too, I think you are mistaken. I would think very carefully before starting a PhD in many European countries. I'd also ask searching questions of the faculty, ("how many people do you graduate a year?" and "what % of your graduates go on to an academic job?") This applies to the UK and Germany, for example, not just Eastern Europe. There are certainly spots of excellence, but even among high quality UK universities, very often PhD training is on the "apprenticeship" model where you're just thrown into research without graduate-level courses. You can judge the result by looking at the proportion of US-trained staff in EU departments.
- timeon 1y agoI would not recommend US from now on if you are not from US.
- firesteelrain 1y ago
- prmph 1y agoWhich country is this? I read the whole thing but can't find any context as to which country and university is involved
- Freak_NL 1y agoRomania, if the author's current location is also where this ordeal took place. I just looked that up to be sure; the article itself has a very strong eastern Europe vibe to it. I was figuring it would be Bulgaria, Slovakia, or Romania initially.
- tiniuclx 1y agoLikely Romania based on the author's name & location.
- huem0n 1y agoEvery country. Swap out some insignificant details and its the story of my friend in the US, swap some more and its the story of a former boss from Germany.
- adyashakti 1y agothis reads like a chapter out a Kafka novel.
- lngnmn2 1y ago[dead]
- bawana 1y agoHow much of this account is realistic? If this is the writing of an educated young person. Imagine how despondent must the average young person be? And are we to presume this is the material that will help Ukraine? It seems the pendulum of the world has reached its opposite climax. There was a time when young students fought communism, sacrificed theiir lives for ideals (egged on by unfullfilled promises from the west - remember Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the 50s?). Now the enemy is not ideological but generational. The old guard seeing the base of the pyramid's numbers eroded, realize they dont have enough meat to do the work. So the old prey on the young - even making them dance for entertainment. But do not despair my Romanian friend, you are not alone. Millions of PhDs in America and the west are also in your shoes. Spending the best years of our lives in the service of our masters, publishing papers and writing grants, we were hoping for a 'career' of even a job. But now we see the world turned inside out. The budgets of the NSF and the NIH are being sacrificed and burned on the altar of a new 'reich'. There is a saying - 'idle hands are the devil's workshop'. Payback is a bitch.
- StefanBatory 1y ago> How much of this account is realistic? Not Romanian, but Polish - that account is eerily similar to the vast majority of technical PhD stories amongst my friends.
- jeff-hykin 1y ago> that account is eerily similar to the vast majority of technical PhD stories amongst my friends. As a PhD student in my 5th year at a tier-1 U.S. STEM research university, I know a good handful of exceptions, exceptions who are not "playing scientist". But, ...they are the exception. Sadly this story is painful, uncanny and downright spooky for how similar some of the details are to students I know too.
- rgavuliak 1y agoI had a slightly better experience on my PhD in Central-Eastern Europe. My supervisor - a politician with little academic results mostly cared about the formal part of my results. I used the PhD to get into a new field (statistics) just in time for me to get into Data Science as it started being cool. My papers weren't interesting, but I got to try things out on real data and report on them.
- djoldman 1y agoOn one hand, there is probably much value locked up in things we don't understand whose research is unlikely to be funded. On the other hand, humans are pretty terrible at organizing and planning projects without pressures like profit.
- psadauskas 1y agoThey're even worse at organizing and planning projects _with_ pressures like profit.
- NetOpWibby 1y agoMy goodness, what a colossal waste of time. My condolences OP!
- Rzor 1y agoPreserved by some unknown savior who probably shares the same value for it and doesn’t want it to vanish, but here’s the link anyway: https://archive.is/gAh4E https://archive.is/gAh4E
- Grum9 1y ago[dead]
- huem0n 1y ago> The only constant human presence in the whole building during the warm summer days is the cleaning lady. Hit a little too close to home with that one. Had to finish reading despite how painful a mirror can be. God does it make me wish something would change.
- lostmsu 1y agoReading this gives a bad feeling that the commonly accepted claim that modern science frontier is too large for a single person to grasp actually applies only to obscure depths of mathematics, physics, and maybe chemistry. Anything beyond that could well be 90%+ sham papers like the ones described in the article with the rest being relatively trivial to grok.