Some time ago, a former student of mine went to a national scientific conference. After returning, over lunch she said to me that she learned two things.
Do not, under any circumstances, do a Ph.D. This was basically advice and the underlying message she got across the board. Nobody should do a Ph.D., because the number of people getting jobs that need a Ph.D. was, according to some estimates she heard at the meeting, 10%.
PIs are horrible people. Didn’t matter what the career stage was. Every grad student and post-doc was unhappy with their supervisor.
I hear this and think... holy crap. How has this all gone so wrong?
The irony is that a student smart enough to pick up on that message and actually act on it is the kind of clear sighted careful thinker the academy needs.
ReplyDelete"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteThe irony is that a student smart enough to pick up on that message and actually act on it is the kind of clear sighted careful thinker the academy needs."
Yes :)
Also perhaps: "Didn’t matter what the career stage was. Every grad student and post-doc was unhappy with their supervisor"
Perhaps Ph.D.-students should try and read, and listen to, and find sources that are useful themselves, without any help from their supervisors. Given the state of science today, and the above statement that grad students were unhappy with their supervisor, this may be an alternative way to go through your Ph.D-process: just do it yourself !
I find it interesting that this post was tweeted all over the place, and people link to it, and clearly it struck a chord...but there are so few comments. I wonder if it's because there's very little to refute. :/
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to know that there were enough people at the conference who were willing to be frank with this student. I work at a university research institute in Australia chock full of grad students from all over the world, and I wonder where they'll work when they get done with their degrees. The situation is no better in the US, and even China seems to feel that it is producing too many PhD's. Due to funding cuts and higher/longer faculty retention, there simply aren't positions to take all these bright young folks; but universities are businesses these days and are sure not going to pass up the money if you can fork it over. Their responsibility to the student and to society seems to have gone out the window in a race to chase money and global rankings.
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