4 ms·

Taking the time to learn things in-depth is what L I F E school is for.

• scott_s 17y ago
  That's a nice feel-good statement, but grad school gives you an environment where you can spend all day researching what you're interested in. Most people can't do that at their jobs or they'll get fired.
  • psyklic 17y ago
    Yes, but you can also say that most people become experts at whatever their specific job is.
  • moron4hire 17y ago
    that sort of grad school is for people who need their hands held to learn things.
    • scott_s 17y ago
      You'll have to elaborate on that. When I'm not on an internship, I'm supported by NSF grants to do my research. The support isn't much, but it's enough to pay rent, groceries and a few other things. The general area of research I do is of interest to many companies in industry, but what I do specifically is usually not. Put another way, most companies would not pay me to do what I'm doing. Being a grad student gives me the freedom to spend 50-60 hours a week on research that I find interesting, but may not directly benefit anyone financially. This circumstance is unique to people in academia, some industry research labs, and people wealthy enough that they no longer need to work for a living.
    • psyklic 17y ago
      In some grad schools you're assigned projects, but at others you need to continually figure out even what problems need to be solved and which avenues of attack would likely yield the best results. This is much like what startups do, and in fact figuring out the important problems/attack strategies is much harder in my experience than performing the experiments themselves. I don't see how this is "hand holding", but perhaps the grad schools with assigned projects feel more like a normal job.