Which Grad Students Are the Most Miserable? 332
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Jessica Palmer has an interesting post about the miseries of STEM [science, technology, engineering, and math] graduate students and makes the case that of all grad programs, those in biology are particularly miserable. One basic problem stems from too many biology Ph.D.s and not enough funding, leading to an immensely cutthroat environment that is psychologically damaging to boot. But the main problem is that most of the skills you learn in biology, especially biomedical sciences are only useful in the biomedical sciences and that most grad students don't learn enough 'generalist' skills, such as high level math or serious programming skills, to have other career alternatives if academia doesn't work out. 'A decade ago, sequencing was a Ph.D. activity, or at least, an activity supervised very closely by a Ph.D.,' writes Mike the Mad Biologist."
How about learning some statistics? (Score:5, Interesting)
Throughout my career (I have a PhD in Chemistry) I found the preparation in maths of Biology majors absolutely abysmal.
Fact is, the way I understand it, biology (and medicine, for that matter), is not an exact science and individuating a direct cause effect is close to impossible.
It all relies on statistics, and showing that a certain treatment has a higher probability of causing a certain beneficial effect (or reducing a side effect).
Then why in the world don't medical doctors and biology majors receive a STRONG education in math and statistics? Is it because the large majority of them are women, thus the whole "ooohh math is hard, there Barbie, go back to the kitchen" comes into play?
I find this a shame, it makes me dispute every finding in medical and biology science.
For further information, see Ben Goldacre's work.
And software development? (Score:4, Insightful)
Throughout my career (I have a PhD in Chemistry) I found the preparation in maths of Biology majors absolutely abysmal.
To make it worse, it seems to me that *every* college course today is very weak in computer programming. The college graduates I meet seem to rely entirely on excel spreadsheets, with a very few "hard" sciences majors knowing a little bit of matlab.
Computers have become the universal tool, but no one is able to explore their capabilities, recent graduates are like illiterate peasants in a library.
A good analogy is to compare software development with leadership. A leader is someone who gets people to do what cannot be done by a person alone. A programmer is someone who gets computers to do what cannot be done by humans. In an age when automation replaces workers, software developers are the leaders. Too bad university students cannot see this simple analogy.
Re:And software development? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And software development? (Score:5, Interesting)
>>Computers have become the universal tool, but no one is able to explore their capabilities, recent graduates are like illiterate peasants in a library.
To be fair, betting on ignorance is always a safe bet, no matter what subject or area of our society you're talking about. Nobody** knows history, math, computer programming, religion, physics, etc. at a very good level these days.
That said, there's a lot of smart people in every field. Some of the best math people I met were bioengineering professors at UCSD, at least or especially in their areas of expertise. I was fortunate enough to be partnered on my master's thesis project with an AMES guy who was a pretty decent programmer and had a good knowledge of math, but unfortunately the AMES program at the time (early 2000s) was still using FORTRAN. So we had fun getting our code to interoperate, but at least he was competent enough that if I told him how I was formatting my output, he'd have it all read in and analyzed by the next day.
By contrast, two of the stupidest people I've ever had to work with were at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. It was at the time of the internet boom, so they were having trouble finding competent programmers, so they hired these biology PhDs instead. Their sum output of work in the two years I spent there was half-constructing a web page (that didn't work) and a lot of snarky emails to my professor about how I should be using whatever trendy thing they'd read about somewhere. Because I wasn't using XML or whatever internally in our project, you know, that was the only reason they couldn't get any work done.
(**Approximately.)
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Re:And software development? (Score:5, Interesting)
My 53 year old uncle is a senior professor (or whatever they call a full professor in North America) in geotechnical engineering. I've heard him lament how kids these days don't know how to do programming, since there are so many pre-made tools that ALMOST do what you need. Amazing to hear a white haired old chap complaining about my generation and its poor computer literacy, usually that is the one exception that they give us credit for. Apparently his PhD students all come running to him to do basic programming for them. Programming of course is on his IBM monstrosity that cost $100K and who's only practical difference from a high-end Xeon is that it runs a visually identical version of AIX and runs an input-compatible version of his Fortran 70 compiler and graphics package as he used in "the good old days"... turns out that old people are just like that.
As a professional 3d game engine programmer with multiple published titles, it is a little bit embarrassing when he is going on about the Delauny triangulation algorithm he hacked up back in '95 or whenever and I suddenly realise it's better than what I used a few weeks ago with the benefit of the Internet, at that point I just agree and pretend that I use a similar algorithm all the time. Main point of contention is when he interrupts my anecdotes about writing in c with some disparaging remarks about recursion and how I should use an array as a stack in a for loop to make program flow clear or some archaic bollocks, God help me if he ever sees what I do with python.
Problem is, you force an scientist or engineer to use FORTRAN or MATLAB and you will get code written with hate. He may make good calculation or publish useful papers in his field, but he'll end up a cranky old bastard complaining about how PGPLOT does not look like it did on the faculty mainframe in '87, that is about as un-hacker as they come. Matlab is obviously designed by someone who hates computers and FORTRAN was designed BEFORE the compiler was invented, meaning it was never meant to be used as what we would call a programming language. Engineers/Scientists love this stuff just to be rude to us, because every successfully executed program written in this spaghetti is a huge fuck-you to 40 years of software research.
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It's terrible in engineering. I know so many fellow engineers who have little or very atrophied coding skills. They sit around creating these gigantic, clunky spreadsheets to solve problems that a small program could do so much more efficiently. I survived a bloody round of layoffs early in my career because I could do all the firmware and external control software for the hardware I designed, so I was considered way more valuable than a hardware only or software only person.
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Re:And software development? (Score:4, Insightful)
First off, Computer Science is not a "programming" degree. In fact good programming skill doesn't come from a class, but from real practical experience (hopefully with a good mentor).
That being said, I agree. I think there a large number of CS majors (and even MIS majors which is the "applied physisist" to the CS "theoretical physisist") who graduate with no clue as to how to actually develop a software system (developing includes a lot more than programming).
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Ha! I run into that. They create these ungodly complicated things in Matlab, and then act baffled when I tell them the biggest FPGA in the world contains about 1/100 the number of gates they need to implement it.
Then I come up with some silly kludge developed on a white board that does the same thing in about 50 lines of VHDL. Oh, that baffles them. ;-)
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I'm a computer science grad currently doing a taught postgrad in bioinformatics and I can only agree.
Even in the course specifically about stats, coding and math the programmings, stats and math is pretty weak.
we cover basic regression in stats which is probably the most solid bit of the course.
the math I mostly covered in first year computer science.
The only thing I can say about the coding is that it's even more basic than first year coding in comp sci.
There's no actual computer science covered th
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Completely agree. Teaching biologists some proper statistics means they can do so much more. They suddenly can go out of the laboratory, and interpret their own results. Their publications would make more sense. They can plan their own experiments (yes, you need statistics to see what you can measure best to reduce uncertainty the quickest)... They may eventually even be taken serious by other scientists and engineers.
But please do not translate 'generalist' into 'management' or 'economics' or something. Th
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My wife is hoping to finish with her PhD from Northwestern (in Chicago and Evanston) this summer in microbiology. While she admits that she tolerates math, she is competent with it (if not a little rusty). However, I did find this interesting with the program that she is in, and how it differed from my own experience in grad school. Her university's curriculum was done in a way such that there was little flexibility on what courses she could take. I do not recall any course of higher
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How about even more general? (public presenting..) (Score:2)
I'd say, reading the F* article, the even more general skills will be useful: public presentation, speaking, teaching, communicating ideas. As the writer says, you have to communicate your great ideas if you want a job / funding / etc. Start with those generalist skills and work outwards. Though I accept it's not in the interest of the PhD system to necessarily spend time teaching students these skills, getting research results, getting the thesis written, and getting published are the key indicators of su
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Why do we are about these things? We'll just outsource to the fine peoples of India and China!
Re:How about learning some statistics? (Score:5, Interesting)
When I came to grad school, I was suddenly thrown into very advanced mathematics. It was assumed that I knew things like graphical models, differential equations, and mathematical logic. I did not. I am now spending my evenings correcting these deficits.
If I had any advice for future grad students, in any science or technology field, it is this: spend a year after your undergrad time just preparing for graduate school. Study advanced math. Take the time to focus on doing well on the GRE. Get some lab experience if you can. Get some practical experience if you can. I put myself through my undergrad while working full time, and my schedule needed to be coordinated with my wife's career, so I did not have the luxury of doing this. But you should. You really should.
That said, even the most prepared grad student will feel unprepared when they get here. I don't know a single person who feels they have adequate knowledge. My friends who were mathematics majors bemoan the fact that their programming skills are so poor (and tell me that I am fortunate to have been a lifelong programmer), but I envy their exposure to things like abstract algebra, advanced statistics, and formal proofs. Having to devise and stick to a plan of self-education is the name of the game. I'm glad that I realized this from the start, but grad school is not easy, and only you can educate yourself.
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>>Study advanced math. Take the time to focus on doing well on the GRE.
These two things don't really go well together.
The GRE goes up to, what, algebra?
I didn't even bother looking at the GRE before I took it and got a perfect score on the math section. Literally, the first question was: "x + 7 = 13. Solve for x." ...and it didn't get any harder after that. A perfect score was only something like 95th percentile for computer science majors. That's how ridiculously easy it is - 5% of people get perfect
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Re:How about learning some statistics? (Score:4, Interesting)
Very rarely do they understand what they are doing, they just throw some numbers into SPSS and hope the right answer comes out. Today's xkcd seems appropriate: http://xkcd.com/882/ [xkcd.com]
They probably do know what they're doing: getting publishable results. They're just optimizing their situation. Who cares if it's just wrong (because of lack of multiple-test adjustment)? They're encouraged to publish (i.e. get past peer review), not to be right.
The conclusions are worthless? Well, I never had the impression much people in academia cared. In the fields I'm familiar with, most of the published improvements are good for the trashcan. There ain't a good enough feedback loop between publishing useful results and getting funding, I guess.
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And the winners are.... (Score:3)
Q:
A: Probably the ones who post questions to Ask Slashdot?
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So that would be IT students then?
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So that would be IT students then?
Specific: IT students who are stuck in their basement.
Re:And the winners are.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously, though, Jessica seems to be living in a well-insulated bubble and doesn't seem to realize that competition is burgeoning everywhere, in every occupation; even janitors are miserable. This small planet is now crowded with SEVEN BILLION self-serving mouths with attached gonads... and thanks to said gonads this dynamic will only get worse (until the agriculture system implodes). Of course those who aren't at the pinnacle of the economic food chain would be less miserable if those at the top weren't quite so effective at concentrating natural resources and wealth. Part of the misery is because we're overdue for another revolt to kick the money-changers outta the temples and topple those dancing with their flags at the top of the hill. From a strictly Darwinian point of view, though, the competition serves a valuable purpose, thinning the herd and favoring those with the best sets of mutations.
So, do we choose to compete with each other in the best Darwinian tradition, and be miserable doing it, or do we cooperate Borg-like to benefit the whole species? We seem to be evolving slowly toward the latter, but not fast enough to stem the misery.
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Well said.
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Really? People in the service sector can be happy, as there are 7 billion potential customers.
People doing research *should* be happy, as while their research may not be the best in the world (due to all the competition), it can touch 7 billion lives. But I guess a lot of researchers suck at math.
Sounds like liberal arts grad students (Score:5, Informative)
Like, in TFA's view, biological sciences grad students, Liberal Arts grad students are incredibly cut throat. There is very little funding, I would argue significantly less per student than in any of the sciences(many don't get stipends), and literally dozens of PhD candidates for every one professorship. And the grads have an even more difficult time finding employment outside academia. If you think only knowing biological sciences is unmarketable, try knowing a ton about modern German literary theory and not much else of note.
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And the grads have an even more difficult time finding employment outside academia
Why? Where do you think all those managers, salespeople, business consultants, etc come from? A liberal arts degree is the easiest first step to an MBA.
Of course, a PhD in liberal arts may be overkill, but a masters is great in your resume. It shows you have a flexible mind, can think outside the box, have appreciation for diversity, or whatever is the current trend in positive qualifications for a manager.
The only way a liberal arts graduate could feel miserable is if he actually enjoys his field of study.
Re:Sounds like liberal arts grad students (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sounds like liberal arts grad students (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, sounds like only in America (Score:2)
I have a degree in Microbiology, a Masters in Biochemistry and Ph.D in Biotechnology. I am also in Malaysia and a University academic staff. Here in Malaysia, the hard sciences and engineering faculties get the lion share of government funding, fairly or not. Those of us in the life sciences feel that we are a privileged lot compared to the social sciences and are grateful for it. Our graduates generally get good jobs and a significant percentage secure research-related jobs in the many semi-government rese
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This is an important distinction -- why does the wealthiest country in the history of the world (today's US) have "miserable" scholars? Public funding is crucial in determining what (and even whether) scientific research is undertaken. The current political environment in the United States, which sees the debate between Democrats and Republicans reduced to how much public spending to cut, is generally hostile to research funding. This will inevitably lead to a decrease in the number of people who pursue Ph.
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Yep, it's definitely not true in the rest of the world. I'm from the US and went to grad school in the US, but spent a lot of time at a university in Thailand while doing research there, and got some insight into how their upper education system works. It was very much like your description of Malaysia (no surprise).
I envied the Thai grad students, and I'm seriously considering going there for a PhD. It seemed like a much more sane place than US universities, the main reason being that it isn't a cutthroat
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Re:Sounds like liberal arts grad students (Score:5, Interesting)
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Speaking of "hunched over a desk." I have a friend who did get a job outside of academia doing biomed research. She left that job and went on disability from the abysmal ergonomics at her lab. I think she's a manager of the print shop at Staples now.
Navel-gazing (Score:2)
Oh no. A former biology graduate student applies her scientific training to conclude that - surprise - biology graduate students have it worser than anyone.
You want worse? See the link in my sig. Those poor bastards had to deal with the usual academic incompetence as well as malevolent ghosts and the occasional fatal explosion.
current environment in biology causes bad science (Score:5, Interesting)
I did mine in physics, the wife in Biochem. The real issue I saw with the biology program is that you were unable to publish or graduate with a null result. You do a valid experiment, which could have shown something, but it turns out biology simply doesn't work that way, and so your experiment simply confirms what is currently known and shows nothing particularly new (but done in a new way, so it could have.) Sorry, you don't graduate. So people seem to either fake it (here is a 2 sigma result, might be valid, will need more study, yay I graduate) or they flush out, and in either way nowhere does the result get published so the same experiment will get done 10 more times other places. There seems to be not as much respect for the scientific process, only respect for novel results, which results in bad science and bad scientists.
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Wow! That's awful. Bad for the students and bad for the field in general. How much wasted effort happens in di
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I don't doubt this is particularly true in biology, since there are so many students pursuing that, but just wanted to say it's also true in geology which is my field.
My thesis research resulted in a negative result. It's not absolute - it wouldn't be outright lying to say more study could reveal something I missed - but it's certain enough that it makes doing anything with it (e.g. publishing) practically impossible. It was incredibly disheartening, and I got no encouragement from anyone regarding what to
Sad state of affairs (Score:2)
I spotted her about a fortnight ago pricing up merchandise in a local sweet shop. Maybe she chose that, I don't know, but either way it's a terrible, terrible waste of a brilliant mind.
Re:Sad state of affairs (Score:5, Insightful)
The trouble is, right now there's a surplus of top-end-of-genius smart people with PhDs.
I know you wouldn't think so walking down the street, but the simple fact is that for every tenure-track position there are about 12 PhDs with useful published work capable of doing the job and doing it well, and even more for adjunct and other non-tenure track positions. The same sort of imbalance exists for research positions. The effect of this is that a lot of younger would-be scientists are working as part-time lab techs, or going into other fields, or trying to survive as part-time adjunct faculty, and the wages of those sorts of positions are steadily dropping. Also, many universities have been trying to save cash by avoiding giving anybody any sort of chance at tenure, leaving would-be academics basically no chance of making it.
And yes, that's a terrible waste of a lot of brilliant minds, but it's totally consistent with what's been going on in the US for the last 30 years.
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miserable grad student != miserable career (Score:3)
Although really, anyone who finishes a biological PhD and can't find a job outside of academia either made a very questionable decision on what exactly to study, or isn't trying very hard. When the US economy was overall tanking, many bioscience companies were - and still are - doing quite well. A former colleague of mine (PhD from the lab I am currently in) had no trouble getting the job he wanted in industry when he finished here, and that is not the least bit unusual in the area I am in.
The reason 25 years ago was... (Score:2)
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25 years ago "working together" was cheating, and would be cause for expulsion. It's only now that those in my generation that were brought up that way are in positions of power that we see how stupid that was.
I am not kidding - if you were to so much as ask advice from a fellow student on a critical assignment you could be expelled. Cooperation, unless strictly supervised, was not allowed. The sort of informal peer review that goes on today was unheard of.
Is it any wonder that those who got PhDs then no
College is slow to be like the real work place (Score:2)
I think it's time to get rid of the closed book tests and move to a group or by your self project so you don't have some who knows what they are doing but is bad at tests can fail and so you don't some one who has no idea but can cram for a test can pass.
Also in real world you don't do busy work just to do but in college that leads to people buying essays (for papers in class that are not part of there major) just so they have the time to do some real class work.
selling it as a soft-values field.. (Score:2)
when it actually isn't one, at all. you need to have a hardy maths head and logic to do any good in it, this was obvious about a century ago but now because everyone has to get to go to university to study what they want it's no longer so and it's increasingly sold as non-technical field, with soft values, caring and all that. like with doctors it used to be that they got to be doctors because they had high level of knowledge in chemistry and biology, good maths heads and good social skills, in other words
"Generalism" is why I like experimental physics (Score:2)
Although it has its problems, it's about as "generalist" as you can get. I get to program (for simulation, equipment control, and data analysis), do math, make electronics, layout parts in CAD, work in a machine shop, do nano-fabrication in a clean room, etc. Heck, I've done most of those things in the past week alone. I like that for the same reason I liked the project based engineering classes available as an undergrad. However, I'm guessing that many of the engineers who took those classes are now sittin
The Student is not the only Failure... (Score:2)
A PhD project should be - at the least - based on funded research of a PI. It should also be vetted by a committee to ensure it is of adequate caliber for the degree. The results should be tracked and reviewed along the way, and presented in a relevant framework.
If the student finishes and cannot place their work in a relevant context, or has work that has no relevant context, then the people who were supposed to have advised that student have failed.
Really?! (Score:3)
1 - Started grad School (MSc)
2 - Dropped out (or better, was 'invited' to drop out by my supervisor)
3 - Never looked back
This: http://xkcd.com/664/ [xkcd.com] doesn't exist
In reality Academia will go: "this isn't in my research area so I don't care", "you didn't prove the linearity of the solution", "not enough citations in your paper"
Corporate will go somewhere like the comic, but they may also be happy with you cause you solved a problem that was delaying the schedule,
no one could solve or it had a bad impact on the product (happened to me, and it got me 'karma points'
Academia: Too much work, not enough pay. And as the article mentions, it's problems and solutions that don't apply somewhere else (even though mine was in Wireless communication)
Most of the people that kept going are earning less than me and/or at a previous stage at their careers.
Granted, my supervisor was 'inexperienced' to say the least.
Really, I'm glad I got a job instead of pursuing an academic career. Where I can work with what interests me,
people can use your work, there's less sucking up, less BS and at least I get payed.
Also this: http://www.phdcomics.com/ [phdcomics.com]
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I guess it may be specific to computer science, which is not my field, and perhaps I'm just reading into it differently than intended, but I think you might have missed part of the point of the comic. The academic in the comic will take the result and turn it into papers and grad student theses - for other people, with the professor's name attached. The guy who wrote the original code may be credited but is incidental to the other people who will be involved. Too much work, not enough pay, is exactly right!
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PhD biologists replies (Score:5, Insightful)
Research is $, and mostly - almost entirely- paid for by the Fed Gov't either directly thru the NIH/NSF/DARPA, or indirectly via tax welfare for the wealthy (aka tax code, such as the koch brothers giving MIT 100 million for a cancer center.
Most funding is via the "principal investigator" route: the funding agency identifies an *individual* who gets the money and is responsible for it; normally this is a faculty member at a university
Biology is also labor intensive; experiments take a lot of hands on time.
the way it works, professors have slave labor - graduate students, who , relative to their hours and training, are paid peanuts (they are also totally dependent on their professors letter of recomendation for a job)
The carrot is that after you graduate, you get your own faculty position.
anyone on
the clearest evidence of this is that every 20 years or so, the leading PhD nobel laureates go to congress and say, OMG, we have a crisis in funding: there are more PhDs then grant money. And congress, not wanting to see re elections ads with "voted against funding for cancer", obligingly ponies up more money. the last cycle was under clinton; the budget for the NIH, which is the bulk of funding, was doubled
when this happens, all of the Universitys go out and build huge new research buildings, and hire lots of new profs, cause NIH funding is a profit center for the university (or at least the CEO of the university, since university presidents are now paid like ceos, their salary is tied to total university budgets, so simply to hike their own salary, a univ pres will get a huge new RnD building built to increase unive revenues by 100 MM a year....)
call me cynical, but that is life
for those of you who have some familiarity with the system, the postdoc was invented in the 60s, to deal with the 1st glut of phds, and it was for 2 years.... think about that
Re:PhD biologists replies (Score:4, Interesting)
The nature of the beast (Score:5, Informative)
Biology is one of the few disciplines in which you can apply an existing procedure and earn an advanced degree. Pick a species, pick a fashionable question, apply that question to that species, gather your data, publish and graduate. I think that tends to insulate some of them from "the real world" a little longer than most fields.
Also, the study of a discipline tends to be a walk through it's history. The core of biology is still observational and descriptive - statistical analysis and mathematical modeling only came along later, so it's a field where some students feel blindsided by a bit of a bait-and-switch. A student in biology is absorbing enormous quantities of factual data and context and then, fairly late in their education, there is a switch to a more mathematical framework.
At least this was my qualitative analysis of biologists in the wild - I admit I didn't do any catch-and-release banding or a proper t-test on my hypothesis in the preparation of this post.
Now if you want to talk about students not prepared to deal with the real world, biologists have nothing on mathematicians. Biologists are at least are encouraged to talk to each other. In mathematics you quickly learn that it is likely only five people in the world will understand your idea. Three of them will be borderline autistic and a fourth carries live grenades in his jacket.
That's easy (Score:2)
"Which grads students are the most miserable?"
That's easy. Unemployed ones.
PhD in Biochemistry = no job (Score:4, Interesting)
I got a PhD in biochemistry 7 years ago. I'm now back in IT working as a sysadmin. If I didn't have that previous computer experience, I would be doing day labor right now. I am not kidding.
The ones who don't belong (Score:2)
I'd say that it's the MBAs. (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, shit, wait...sorry, I read that as "Which Grad Students _Make Us_ the Most Miserable?"
Which grad students are the most miserable? (Score:3)
So yes, the STEM students probably qualify for that honor.
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Just to be pedantic, "woe is me" [phrases.org.uk].
Re:So say the biologists (Score:5, Funny)
It's probably more like "Woe is me", unless the article is written by Keanu Reeves...
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Although "whoa is me" is valid, but only when spoken by Mr. Ed.
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While I think the OP is correct, the real story here isn't getting the degree, it's the lack of funds to do anything with that degree. If you're a tenure-track researcher, you typically spend most of your time writing grant applications begging for money as opposed to doing real re
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Re:So say the biologists (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the real story is how the advanced education system is utterly failing America. It's a giant, expensive colossus that suck young people into debt and then, when they do get out, many of them don't even go into the profession they trained for. This all smacks to me of a racket. Now, after 12+ (add kindergarten) of education, the college industry sold this country into the premise that you aren't good enough to work a decent job. That you need at least 4+ years at an expensive school that may or may not even tangentially train you for your eventual profession, to even break into the workforce. It reminds me of the DeBeers diamond racket and how they attack the (American) consumer with psychological ads until the general public builds up an emotional and mental picture, wholly inaccurate, of the meaning, rarity, and value of diamonds wholly self-serving to that industry.
The college industry is the same. It's fine for some professions, and liberal arts may be grand for some people to pursue. But now it's branching everywhere. They even convinced cooks in some places to take forms of college and for a ton of money and with mostly theory and a lot less practical experience. Truthfully, I like the German system much better. For many hands on jobs there, you get an apprenticeship, you take a few weeks of classes (theory) each "semester" and then more weeks of practical on-the-job training. You don't pay, you get paid (a small amount, maybe room and board).
I think it would be way better for most people to get some work after high school and find out what they like doing, and be offered by their employers training courses that can eventually be credited towards a degree (if we really stay addicted to this paper fetish).
But with Khan Academy showing education doesn't need to be exclusive, labor intensive on part of the teacher, or expensive, why do I have a feeling that we'll keep throwing kids into college right after high school, at ever increasing prices, for a dubious return when they get an iota of real-world experience and decide they'd much rather do something else?
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First, the US public school system is horrible. So yes, if I were hiring somebody it'd be at least partially reassuring that they did more than the bare minimum (high school grad or GED). It doesn't necessarily measure how smart or skilled you are, but it gives me something to start with. Many high school grads can barely put 2+2 together, even though they got B's in H.S. Our education system exists solely to push people through, whether they earned it or not. Once you fix t
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I think the complaint is that PhD's in biology are getting trained for the specific task of a not just their field, but whatever their advisors happen to be working with. So upon completion they are only prepared to work in a very narrow subsection of academic biology. They've been encouraged to avoid such skills as writing, math and programming in favor of cranking out data. Skills which would help them win jobs where they could then do the research they've trained for.
On what would seem like the extrem
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I think the complaint is that PhD's in biology are getting trained for the specific task of a not just their field, but whatever their advisors happen to be working with.
As I remarked to my advisor a couple of years into graduate school: "You wouldn't train a medical doctor this way."
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Why, exactly, should graduate programs be "cutthroat"? What is gained by doing things that way, as opposed to what is lost?
I've seen graduate programs which used students as the fodder for generating papers and industry funding, and if the student got an education out of the deal, well, that was nice. I have no respect for programs that don't make the development of their students a priority.
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Possibly, but there's also some truth to the idea that Physics follows Maths, Chemistry follows Physics, Biology follows Chemistry, then things like Anthropology follows Biology and so on, with the point being that the further you move away from maths, the more specialised and less generically applicable your skills become.
So because of this there may well be some truth in what she says- those trained in Biology may well indeed find it harder to find work if they can't work specifically in their chosen fiel
If you don't value education your country is stuck (Score:5, Insightful)
If you believe that people should get a real job instead of an education then you've got a country of predominantly labourers and factory line workers. A dangerous route to take in a time when low skilled jobs can get outsourced to somewhere cheaper very easily. I don't think it's a simple binary get a job/or/get an education. You really want all your graduate students to leave education? you want no graduate level education in your country? Who are your entrepreneurs going to turn to when they need somebody to do the research to develop their new product? (Maybe the French, who came up with the word 'entrepreneur'?)
I am assuming you like the idea of *some* education for your nation's people as you are posting in words and can read.
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If you believe that people should get a real job instead of an education then you've got a country of predominantly labourers and factory line workers.
But what do you think of people getting decades of education in things that they cannot then use ? I won't beat on liberal art majors, but look at the example of biology here: it's certainly hard to study but most of those PhDs will end up waiting tables anyway. I know a PhD in biology who took 10 years to find a job in the field and after a year he was so disgusted by the work conditions and miserable salary that he's now a wine seller ! Don't you think he wasted 15 years of his life ?
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I make close to 6 figures and don't use my undergrad degree at all. Shocking, I know. Not really. I imagine MOST people are doing something in their 40s that they didn't study in college.
Re:If you don't value education your country is st (Score:4, Interesting)
If you believe that people should get a real job instead of an education then you've got a country of predominantly labourers and factory line workers. A dangerous route to take in a time when low skilled jobs can get outsourced to somewhere cheaper very easily.
If a person has a 4 year Bachelors degree in Engineering, for example, and their job gets outsourced, can't find work in a down economy, never learned any other marketable skills, etc etc etc - Wouldn't people in that boat have been better off becoming a Plumber? How about an Electrician? Carpenter? Mechanic?
I tell you what, engineering, science, manufacturing, all those things can to some extent be outsourced to other countries - and have done, but... If someone's toilet is overflowing and they can't stop the geyser of crap - No-one from India is going to come by and fix it for them. At $65 to show up, $75 per hour, don't you think that the licensed plumber with 20 years experience and a good reputation sleeps soundly at night? Academia might look down on a lowly plumber - but who is more often desperately needed?
The traditional trades cannot be outsourced, even some of the new ones - You might get your router and switch from China, but they don't install it and configure it for you - A hands-on networking guy is also a "Trade" that can command high hourly rates and cannot be outsourced either.
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Shorter answer (Score:2)
me
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You're correct here in that while artists, street performers, and people getting advanced degrees in specialities without high demand are taking a risk doing things they love regardless of potential reward, only the grad students (and the crazier entrepreneurs) are paying tens of thousands of dollars to do it.
Re:Short answer (Score:5, Informative)
only the grad students (and the crazier entrepreneurs) are paying tens of thousands of dollars to do it.
Graduate students in most sciences are paid while they are in school. Some to teach, some to do research. Their tuition is also paid by the school if teaching or by grant if researching.
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Crawl out of your mothers basement already.
Education itself is just a tool, you still have to go out and take risks. The more tools you have available, the better your chances that you will be successful.
Get a grip.
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You seem to be lamenting that less-cerebral activities unfortunately pay more; perhaps many people are also thinking that the less-cerebral activities are more enjoyable.
For example - Heck, I'm a smart person myself, but I do enjoy a lot of lower-brow entertainment
(Conversely, perhaps serious academics are more of a miserable slog than they have to be?)
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Exactly. I really enjoy playing drums in weekend bands, but there's no income there, so I do it...wait for it....for fun. I play for beer and occasional cash. I would play for free if asked.
Therefore I have a real day job that has a salary and benefits. It's not nearly as fun as playing music, but it keeps my family insured and my bills paid.
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I agree. As well the schools often exasperated the problem with their marketing to new undergrads (College will give you the skills you need for a good career). Then when they get you in it is This is Education not a Job Training facility. And will only give you training for a career path of becoming a professor.
While a lot of the work should be on the student to choose their major and take classes that will direct them where they want to go in life, colleges environment makes often makes their students pa
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Are you nuts? Have you ever been to grad school? I worked in my field before going back to get a PhD and I found my normal job to be way better.
Research and academia may be insular, but it's plenty "real."
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the PhD link (Score:2)
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1056 [phdcomics.com] /. + PhD comics + work is a wicked combination. :P
will avoid looking for more