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The entire system of modern "research" and PhDs strikes me as an unsuccessful attempt to mass-produce the kind of scientific thinkers that made our modern world
by crucini 13y ago
The entire system of modern "research" and PhDs strikes me as an unsuccessful attempt to mass-produce the kind of scientific thinkers that made our modern world.
PhDs are basically people who occupied the "student" role as long as they could. Based on my experience, they often lack the fundamentals to make use of their education. They are not clever enough, curious enough or brave enough.
We have expensively overeducated an ordinary person in the hope of producing a Newton or Galileo.
No doubt there are many exceptions, but I have noticed this tendency.
- oijaf888 13y agoYou feel that a 4 year degree is enough depth and background to learn all of the details of most technical fields to contribute original research to them? To me that seems unlikely and if someone could pick all of that up then they would already be in the Newton category and probably bypass the PhD process altogether.
- doktrin 13y agoI think it's important to note that neither Einstein, Newton nor Galileo were geniuses in a vacuum. They all stood on the shoulders of prior discoveries, and were well educated by the standards of their time. In general, I think we tend to be a little quick to hero worship. Either way, there's certainly enough room in the scientific community for researchers who are diligent, meticulous and contribute to small measurable improvements in the state of the art. Moreover, given the increased complexity involved in actually pushing the state of the art in just about any field - I'm not exactly sure what an alternative higher-educational model would or should look like.