6 ms·

A ‘Rebel’ Without a Ph.D (2014)

48 points by digital55 12y ago

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
cup 12y ago
The problem with his argument is that a certain set of circumstances (i.e. a world war) allowed him to enter his position without the PhD. I'm fairly confident in saying the challenge to become a professor at a respectable university in a stem field without a PhD makes it for all intents and purposes impossible. So while the PhD system is deeply flawed, unless he can provide an alternative then theres not much to discuss.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  >So while the PhD system is deeply flawed, unless he can provide an alternative then there's not much to discuss. Ok, how about a much simpler system of research apprenticeship? An apprentice is paid a low but livable salary, possibly with tuition remission for any necessary coursework, and probably with TA/RA duties as we have now. There are no grades and no qualifying exams. Instead, the apprentice must simply produce three publishable (ie: either published, or judged by their committee to be publishable) research papers within the committee's set time limit. Once they have accomplished this, the apprentice is promoted to be a professional researcher, given a proper professional salary and allowed to submit work as they please without an advisor's co-authorship. This actually captures most of what we believe, deep-down, that PhD's are actually for, but without the bureaucracy and indignity of treating apprentice researchers as "students" who need their school's approval more than they need to do good work.
  - chrisseaton 12y ago
    That's exactly what a PhD already is - a research apprenticeship. They already get a low but liveable salary without having to pay tuition. I don't think many PhDs do TA/RA duties - they're too busy researching. PhD students don't have grades or qualifying exams, and three publishable research papers is what most PhD students achieve anyway. The thesis is just these papers written up into one continuous piece and submitted to the people who will become their peers.
    - _delirium 12y ago
      > They already get a low but liveable salary without having to pay tuition. I don't think many PhDs do TA/RA duties Varies a lot by country. In the U.S., most PhD students do TA/RA duties, because that's the main funding mechanism. It's rare for universities to give direct funding for an entire PhD, though some do fund students' first year directly. A smallish number of students also get multi-year fellowships, either from the university or from an external source like the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program. The common case, though, is that each semester they're hired as either a TA or RA. In the best case, the student's advisor has a grant precisely aligned with their thesis topic, and the student is hired as an RA on that grant, in which case they're being paid more or less just to do their PhD. If they're less lucky, they have to work on a grant-funded project that's more tangential to their thesis, and then essentially have a side job. On the professor's side this system is also a pretty big source of stress, because every semester there's a question of where your students are going to be funded from the next semester. Have to bring in enough grants to hire most as RAs (ideally on projects that lead to progress on their theses), rotate some into TA positions if there aren't enough grants to pay everyone as an RA this semester, etc. In a different form RAships are also becoming common here in Denmark, though they weren't traditionally. PhD students are all hired into a 3-year salaried contract, but increasingly those contracts are funded by European Union projects, and a student hired into a PhD position funded from that source will typically have project-related responsibilities in addition to their thesis.
    - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
      Where are you coming from? I've seen two systems for running postgrad degrees, and neither work as you describe. >They already get a low but liveable salary without having to pay tuition. I don't think many PhDs do TA/RA duties - they're too busy researching. In most places I've seen, PhD students are the primary source of TA/RA labor. If we're lucky, we get a base stipend and TA/RA adds to it. >PhD students don't have grades or qualifying exams I've never seen a PhD program with no coursework, no qualifying exams, and no grade requirements for either. Could you show me where such an arcadian academic track exists? >and three publishable research papers is what most PhD students achieve anyway That was my point, yes.
  - anouk_anca 12y ago
    > the apprentice must simply produce three publishable research papers within the committee's set time limit One big issue with the current PhD system is reliance on published articles to determine a student's worth, which transforms academia into a paper-churning factory. In your scenario, having a set time limit combined with the low pay will still make candidates rush to publish papers, perpetuating the current issues. Ideally, I would prefer a system like in the Netherlands, where PhD students are considered employees of the university, and get paid close to median wage, and get contributions to a retirement plan. It's a demanding job, and should be paid as such. I would also like to see the recommended period for finishing a PhD extended to 7-10 years, ideally spent in 2 or more research institutions. Funding might be a concern, and universities might have to reduce the number of accepted students, but it's worth it if it reduces the current pressure to constantly publish. The process of scientific publishing itself needs to be revamped, to encourage publishing of failed hypotheses, or replication of old experiments.
    - dagw 12y ago
      I would also like to see the recommended period for finishing a PhD extended to 7-10 years, ideally spent in 2 or more research institutions. That's basically describes a PhD plus a postdoc today. Which is essentially the minimum requirement for kicking off an academic career. I completely agree that PhD students should be full employees and get paid basically the median wage of a first job in the relevant field.
    - pcrh 12y ago
      >I would also like to see the recommended period for finishing a PhD extended to 7-10 years That is way too long. A PhD should only be long enough as is required for the average competent person to demonstrate their competence in research. Adding extra bells and whistles, more requirements, etc, does not improve their abilities and only prolongs the apprenticeship to the advantage of their supervisors.
      - anouk_anca 12y ago
        A PhD is not so much an apprenticeship though, its goal should be to bring a novel contribution to the state of the art in the field. The current system does not need more requirements, but it does need more time and freedom for PhD students to develop truly novel ideas, and not fall prey to the "publish or perish" mentality that is so pervasive in academic culture. Dependence on supervisors can be sorted out with proper labour contracts.
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  Many famous computer scientists lack PhDs, some of them are professors; this was completely possible in the 70s/80s when a PhD wasn't required (nor were there enough of them). Today it is probably much harder, though I know some really good researchers who only have masters (not even in CS).
  - hessenwolf 12y ago
    Expect a sweep of middle-aged professors doing PhDs with their mates supervising and examining.
    - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
      No, why would they bother? Once you are famous/established, no one cares what your credentials are...the PhD only gets the foot in door, and is a useless piece of paper otherwise beyond what you learnt while getting it (disclosure: a PhD whose piece of paper helped him get his foot in the door of a research lab).
      - hessenwolf 12y ago
        It happened at my university (and I did some moonlighting contracting statistical analyses for some). The salary rules changed to motivate them.
      - dagw 12y ago
        Many universities have rules limiting pay and promotion opportunities to people without PhDs.
        seanmcdirmid 12y ago
        Maybe at the low end, but definitely not at the high end. As long as they can easily get a position at CMU or Stanford, the university isn't going to low ball them on pay.
        12y ago
- MaysonL 12y ago
  I'm fairly confident in saying the challenge to become a professor at a respectable university in a stem field without a PhD makes it for all intents and purposes impossible. See Edward Fredkin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Fredkin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Fredkin for a counter example
  - cup 12y ago
    Let me clarify: I mean now. As in a student who is currently performing their undergraduate studies. Do they honestly have a hope of an academic career without postgraduate qualifications?
- xamuel 12y ago
  >to become a professor at a respectable university in a stem field without a PhD This is silly. It's like saying, "to become a programmer at a respectable software company without a computer". Becoming a professor is about doing research. Getting a PhD is about doing research. If you're actually good enough to do the research, the PhD is a formality. Heck, if your research is genuinely groundbreaking, (not just pushing the envelope another predictable inch), surely you can pick and choose which school will fill out the paperwork to give you a degree for it. Certainly, it's by far the least of the STEM job candidate's worries with the current job market. If you are making the common mistake of confusing "professor" for "lecturer", it's already routine for PhD dropouts to lecture low-level undergrad courses, at least it was at my school.
baddspellar 12y ago
As long as "Percent faculty with terminal degree in their field" is an evaluation criterion for ranking school quality (I took those exact words from the US News and World Report rankings criteria), there is little chance that non-PhD holders will be able to become tenured faculty at research universities going forward. Let's not fool ourselves. Schools work towards higher rankings, as they are rewarded for doing so.
- goodcanadian 12y ago
  Sure, but when only 4% of PhDs ever get a faculty position, there is a huge pool of underemployed PhDs to choose from. Why would an institution ever consider someone without regardless of rankings?
shas3 12y ago
Freeman Dyson was still publishing top quality articles at 88. http://www.pnas.org/content/109/26/10409.full.pdf+html http://www.pnas.org/content/109/26/10409.full.pdf+html
arca_vorago 12y ago
What I think this boils down to is our cultures unhealthy focus on authority. One of my favorite classes I took at uni was advanced English rhetoric, and the teacher explained that overall most people tend to have a handful of mechanisms with which they establish their credibility with the reader, in particular with establishment of authority. "I have my Ph.D in X, therefore I am knowledge about subject X." The problem is that I see this taken to the extreme in all kinds of arguments, to the point that I would almost rather not know anything about the author or his/her authority because it colors my judgement of the material itself. Give me your facts and data and opinions and let me evaluate them for myself without having to rest on your laurels. This also applies to government and diplomatic, and high level business actions. Currently the modus operandi seems to be that people in power say, "I've been in this industry for Y years, and have worked with P, I'm the expert and you should listen to me. Oh and all this has to be done in secret, because the public wouldn't understand it anyway." I call bullshit on that constantly. Honestly, just try it, the next time you read a published scientific paper or any material of any weight or note, keep an eye on how much time and space is wasted on people establishing their "authority".
- noobiemcfoob 12y ago
  The problem though is that if you eliminate the markers of credentials any field of information gets flooded with many people who don't have the requisite knowledge to be talking about said field in the first place. While you could make the argument that any investigation into this bogus research would reveal that the person is unreliable, in reality, doing such an investigation is incredibly time consuming. It's much more efficient to take a Ph.D or any other specific credential as a filter and make the general assumption that someone with that credential is more likely to be correct and have valid research. Yeah, that assumption can and has been way wrong in the past, but I would argue that the valid/invalid ratio compared against the time needed to fully investigate every bit of research any person puts out is much preferred.
jimrandomh 12y ago
"Oh, yes. I’m very proud of not having a Ph.D. I think the Ph.D. system is an abomination. It was invented as a system for educating German professors in the 19th century, and it works well under those conditions. It’s good for a very small number of people who are going to spend their lives being professors. But it has become now a kind of union card that you have to have in order to have a job, whether it’s being a professor or other things, and it’s quite inappropriate for that. It forces people to waste years and years of their lives sort of pretending to do research for which they’re not at all well-suited. In the end, they have this piece of paper which says they’re qualified, but it really doesn’t mean anything. The Ph.D. takes far too long and discourages women from becoming scientists, which I consider a great tragedy. So I have opposed it all my life without any success at all." I completely agree. And I would add that it's a filter that selects status-seekers over truth-seekers, who have no reason to tolerate it.
- noobiemcfoob 12y ago
  While, broadly speaking, these arguments against the Ph.D system can be valid, that has more to do with individual institutions watering down the true meaning of a Ph.D. This is a flaw with the implementation, not the system itself. But this is also why a Ph.D from MIT or others carries a much bigger weight than a Ph.D from University of <No one has heard of this place>. Those institutions are trusted to only hand Ph.D's to those who have earned them.
  - physPop 12y ago
    > Those institutions are trusted to only hand Ph.D's to those who have earned them. I disagree. Even MIT and the highfalutin Ivey's have a lot of mediocre grad students to keep the cogs of the research machine running. This is especially true in the biomedical field because of the cheap labor supply of grad students - vs - the cost of highly trained lab techs. All of these students pass and earn PhDs. Inside your own little field in academia you are judged by your peers on both your work as well as who you work with, not where you sit or the stamp on the letterhead. Sadly, outside of our small fields we have very poor (if any) tools to assess researchers, and thus fall back on regular consumer judgements: brand recognition, familiarity and advertising.
peter303 12y ago
Always been a couple of prominent MIT faculty without PhDs, like the founder of the MIT computer lab and the current head of the Media Lab.
peter303 12y ago
In some cases a PhD is formality. In many PhD programs you have to publish the equivalent of three peer-reviewed paper in your specialty. Getting these papers published knows you are doing something important and original and know the system. Sometimes these papers are just stapled together into a the thesis with a forward. Rebel types may forgo the title even though the meet all the qualifications.

48 points by digital55 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

cup 12y ago

The problem with his argument is that a certain set of circumstances (i.e. a world war) allowed him to enter his position without the PhD. I'm fairly confident in saying the challenge to become a professor at a respectable university in a stem field without a PhD makes it for all intents and purposes impossible. So while the PhD system is deeply flawed, unless he can provide an alternative then theres not much to discuss.

eli_gottlieb 12y ago
>So while the PhD system is deeply flawed, unless he can provide an alternative then there's not much to discuss. Ok, how about a much simpler system of research apprenticeship? An apprentice is paid a low but livable salary, possibly with tuition remission for any necessary coursework, and probably with TA/RA duties as we have now. There are no grades and no qualifying exams. Instead, the apprentice must simply produce three publishable (ie: either published, or judged by their committee to be publishable) research papers within the committee's set time limit. Once they have accomplished this, the apprentice is promoted to be a professional researcher, given a proper professional salary and allowed to submit work as they please without an advisor's co-authorship. This actually captures most of what we believe, deep-down, that PhD's are actually for, but without the bureaucracy and indignity of treating apprentice researchers as "students" who need their school's approval more than they need to do good work.
- chrisseaton 12y ago
  That's exactly what a PhD already is - a research apprenticeship. They already get a low but liveable salary without having to pay tuition. I don't think many PhDs do TA/RA duties - they're too busy researching. PhD students don't have grades or qualifying exams, and three publishable research papers is what most PhD students achieve anyway. The thesis is just these papers written up into one continuous piece and submitted to the people who will become their peers.
  - _delirium 12y ago
    > They already get a low but liveable salary without having to pay tuition. I don't think many PhDs do TA/RA duties Varies a lot by country. In the U.S., most PhD students do TA/RA duties, because that's the main funding mechanism. It's rare for universities to give direct funding for an entire PhD, though some do fund students' first year directly. A smallish number of students also get multi-year fellowships, either from the university or from an external source like the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program. The common case, though, is that each semester they're hired as either a TA or RA. In the best case, the student's advisor has a grant precisely aligned with their thesis topic, and the student is hired as an RA on that grant, in which case they're being paid more or less just to do their PhD. If they're less lucky, they have to work on a grant-funded project that's more tangential to their thesis, and then essentially have a side job. On the professor's side this system is also a pretty big source of stress, because every semester there's a question of where your students are going to be funded from the next semester. Have to bring in enough grants to hire most as RAs (ideally on projects that lead to progress on their theses), rotate some into TA positions if there aren't enough grants to pay everyone as an RA this semester, etc. In a different form RAships are also becoming common here in Denmark, though they weren't traditionally. PhD students are all hired into a 3-year salaried contract, but increasingly those contracts are funded by European Union projects, and a student hired into a PhD position funded from that source will typically have project-related responsibilities in addition to their thesis.
  - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
    Where are you coming from? I've seen two systems for running postgrad degrees, and neither work as you describe. >They already get a low but liveable salary without having to pay tuition. I don't think many PhDs do TA/RA duties - they're too busy researching. In most places I've seen, PhD students are the primary source of TA/RA labor. If we're lucky, we get a base stipend and TA/RA adds to it. >PhD students don't have grades or qualifying exams I've never seen a PhD program with no coursework, no qualifying exams, and no grade requirements for either. Could you show me where such an arcadian academic track exists? >and three publishable research papers is what most PhD students achieve anyway That was my point, yes.
- anouk_anca 12y ago
  > the apprentice must simply produce three publishable research papers within the committee's set time limit One big issue with the current PhD system is reliance on published articles to determine a student's worth, which transforms academia into a paper-churning factory. In your scenario, having a set time limit combined with the low pay will still make candidates rush to publish papers, perpetuating the current issues. Ideally, I would prefer a system like in the Netherlands, where PhD students are considered employees of the university, and get paid close to median wage, and get contributions to a retirement plan. It's a demanding job, and should be paid as such. I would also like to see the recommended period for finishing a PhD extended to 7-10 years, ideally spent in 2 or more research institutions. Funding might be a concern, and universities might have to reduce the number of accepted students, but it's worth it if it reduces the current pressure to constantly publish. The process of scientific publishing itself needs to be revamped, to encourage publishing of failed hypotheses, or replication of old experiments.
  - dagw 12y ago
    I would also like to see the recommended period for finishing a PhD extended to 7-10 years, ideally spent in 2 or more research institutions. That's basically describes a PhD plus a postdoc today. Which is essentially the minimum requirement for kicking off an academic career. I completely agree that PhD students should be full employees and get paid basically the median wage of a first job in the relevant field.
  - pcrh 12y ago
    >I would also like to see the recommended period for finishing a PhD extended to 7-10 years That is way too long. A PhD should only be long enough as is required for the average competent person to demonstrate their competence in research. Adding extra bells and whistles, more requirements, etc, does not improve their abilities and only prolongs the apprenticeship to the advantage of their supervisors.
    - anouk_anca 12y ago
      A PhD is not so much an apprenticeship though, its goal should be to bring a novel contribution to the state of the art in the field. The current system does not need more requirements, but it does need more time and freedom for PhD students to develop truly novel ideas, and not fall prey to the "publish or perish" mentality that is so pervasive in academic culture. Dependence on supervisors can be sorted out with proper labour contracts.
seanmcdirmid 12y ago
Many famous computer scientists lack PhDs, some of them are professors; this was completely possible in the 70s/80s when a PhD wasn't required (nor were there enough of them). Today it is probably much harder, though I know some really good researchers who only have masters (not even in CS).
- hessenwolf 12y ago
  Expect a sweep of middle-aged professors doing PhDs with their mates supervising and examining.
  - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
    No, why would they bother? Once you are famous/established, no one cares what your credentials are...the PhD only gets the foot in door, and is a useless piece of paper otherwise beyond what you learnt while getting it (disclosure: a PhD whose piece of paper helped him get his foot in the door of a research lab).
    - hessenwolf 12y ago
      It happened at my university (and I did some moonlighting contracting statistical analyses for some). The salary rules changed to motivate them.
    - dagw 12y ago
      Many universities have rules limiting pay and promotion opportunities to people without PhDs.
      - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
        Maybe at the low end, but definitely not at the high end. As long as they can easily get a position at CMU or Stanford, the university isn't going to low ball them on pay.
        12y ago
MaysonL 12y ago
I'm fairly confident in saying the challenge to become a professor at a respectable university in a stem field without a PhD makes it for all intents and purposes impossible. See Edward Fredkin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Fredkin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Fredkin for a counter example
- cup 12y ago
  Let me clarify: I mean now. As in a student who is currently performing their undergraduate studies. Do they honestly have a hope of an academic career without postgraduate qualifications?
xamuel 12y ago
>to become a professor at a respectable university in a stem field without a PhD This is silly. It's like saying, "to become a programmer at a respectable software company without a computer". Becoming a professor is about doing research. Getting a PhD is about doing research. If you're actually good enough to do the research, the PhD is a formality. Heck, if your research is genuinely groundbreaking, (not just pushing the envelope another predictable inch), surely you can pick and choose which school will fill out the paperwork to give you a degree for it. Certainly, it's by far the least of the STEM job candidate's worries with the current job market. If you are making the common mistake of confusing "professor" for "lecturer", it's already routine for PhD dropouts to lecture low-level undergrad courses, at least it was at my school.

baddspellar 12y ago

As long as "Percent faculty with terminal degree in their field" is an evaluation criterion for ranking school quality (I took those exact words from the US News and World Report rankings criteria), there is little chance that non-PhD holders will be able to become tenured faculty at research universities going forward. Let's not fool ourselves. Schools work towards higher rankings, as they are rewarded for doing so.

goodcanadian 12y ago
Sure, but when only 4% of PhDs ever get a faculty position, there is a huge pool of underemployed PhDs to choose from. Why would an institution ever consider someone without regardless of rankings?

shas3 12y ago

Freeman Dyson was still publishing top quality articles at 88. http://www.pnas.org/content/109/26/10409.full.pdf+html http://www.pnas.org/content/109/26/10409.full.pdf+html

arca_vorago 12y ago

What I think this boils down to is our cultures unhealthy focus on authority. One of my favorite classes I took at uni was advanced English rhetoric, and the teacher explained that overall most people tend to have a handful of mechanisms with which they establish their credibility with the reader, in particular with establishment of authority. "I have my Ph.D in X, therefore I am knowledge about subject X." The problem is that I see this taken to the extreme in all kinds of arguments, to the point that I would almost rather not know anything about the author or his/her authority because it colors my judgement of the material itself. Give me your facts and data and opinions and let me evaluate them for myself without having to rest on your laurels. This also applies to government and diplomatic, and high level business actions. Currently the modus operandi seems to be that people in power say, "I've been in this industry for Y years, and have worked with P, I'm the expert and you should listen to me. Oh and all this has to be done in secret, because the public wouldn't understand it anyway." I call bullshit on that constantly. Honestly, just try it, the next time you read a published scientific paper or any material of any weight or note, keep an eye on how much time and space is wasted on people establishing their "authority".

noobiemcfoob 12y ago
The problem though is that if you eliminate the markers of credentials any field of information gets flooded with many people who don't have the requisite knowledge to be talking about said field in the first place. While you could make the argument that any investigation into this bogus research would reveal that the person is unreliable, in reality, doing such an investigation is incredibly time consuming. It's much more efficient to take a Ph.D or any other specific credential as a filter and make the general assumption that someone with that credential is more likely to be correct and have valid research. Yeah, that assumption can and has been way wrong in the past, but I would argue that the valid/invalid ratio compared against the time needed to fully investigate every bit of research any person puts out is much preferred.

jimrandomh 12y ago

"Oh, yes. I’m very proud of not having a Ph.D. I think the Ph.D. system is an abomination. It was invented as a system for educating German professors in the 19th century, and it works well under those conditions. It’s good for a very small number of people who are going to spend their lives being professors. But it has become now a kind of union card that you have to have in order to have a job, whether it’s being a professor or other things, and it’s quite inappropriate for that. It forces people to waste years and years of their lives sort of pretending to do research for which they’re not at all well-suited. In the end, they have this piece of paper which says they’re qualified, but it really doesn’t mean anything. The Ph.D. takes far too long and discourages women from becoming scientists, which I consider a great tragedy. So I have opposed it all my life without any success at all." I completely agree. And I would add that it's a filter that selects status-seekers over truth-seekers, who have no reason to tolerate it.

noobiemcfoob 12y ago
While, broadly speaking, these arguments against the Ph.D system can be valid, that has more to do with individual institutions watering down the true meaning of a Ph.D. This is a flaw with the implementation, not the system itself. But this is also why a Ph.D from MIT or others carries a much bigger weight than a Ph.D from University of <No one has heard of this place>. Those institutions are trusted to only hand Ph.D's to those who have earned them.
- physPop 12y ago
  > Those institutions are trusted to only hand Ph.D's to those who have earned them. I disagree. Even MIT and the highfalutin Ivey's have a lot of mediocre grad students to keep the cogs of the research machine running. This is especially true in the biomedical field because of the cheap labor supply of grad students - vs - the cost of highly trained lab techs. All of these students pass and earn PhDs. Inside your own little field in academia you are judged by your peers on both your work as well as who you work with, not where you sit or the stamp on the letterhead. Sadly, outside of our small fields we have very poor (if any) tools to assess researchers, and thus fall back on regular consumer judgements: brand recognition, familiarity and advertising.

peter303 12y ago

Always been a couple of prominent MIT faculty without PhDs, like the founder of the MIT computer lab and the current head of the Media Lab.

peter303 12y ago

In some cases a PhD is formality. In many PhD programs you have to publish the equivalent of three peer-reviewed paper in your specialty. Getting these papers published knows you are doing something important and original and know the system. Sometimes these papers are just stapled together into a the thesis with a forward. Rebel types may forgo the title even though the meet all the qualifications.