'Nature' Explores Why So Many Postgrads Have Bad Mental Health (nature.com) 172
An anonymous reader writes:
This week Nature tweeted that the rates of depression and anxiety reported by postgraduate students were six times higher than in the general population -- and received more than 1,200 retweets and received 170 replies. "This is not a one dimensional problem. Financial burden, hostile academia, red tape, tough job market, no proper career guidance. Take your pick," read one response. "Maybe being told day in, day out that the work you spend 10+ hrs a day, 6-7 days a week on isn't good enough," said another.
The science magazine takes this as more proof that "there is a problem among young scientists. Too many have mental-health difficulties, and too many say that the demands of the role are partly to blame. Neither issue gets the attention it deserves." They're now gathering stories from postgraduates about mental-health issues, and vowing to give the issue more coverage. "There is a problem with the culture in science, and it is one that loads an increasing burden on the shoulders of younger generations. The evidence suggests that they are feeling the effects. (Among the tweets, one proposed solution to improving the PhD is to 'treat it like professional training instead of indentured servitude with no hope of a career at the end?'.)"
The science magazine takes this as more proof that "there is a problem among young scientists. Too many have mental-health difficulties, and too many say that the demands of the role are partly to blame. Neither issue gets the attention it deserves." They're now gathering stories from postgraduates about mental-health issues, and vowing to give the issue more coverage. "There is a problem with the culture in science, and it is one that loads an increasing burden on the shoulders of younger generations. The evidence suggests that they are feeling the effects. (Among the tweets, one proposed solution to improving the PhD is to 'treat it like professional training instead of indentured servitude with no hope of a career at the end?'.)"
PhD is short for (Score:5, Funny)
Permanent head Damage. Been there, bashed my head against the proverbial brick wall, was never the same after.
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Piled Higher Deeper is one of my favourite web comics. I read through the whole thing while I was working on my masters.
My last year and a half in the program, I'd go to work, then go to a coffee shop with my laptop, and either program and work on my thesis for a few hours, drink a beer, go home, sleep and repeat. When I was in embedded, I was there a lot of Saturdays too since most of the nice equipment was in the lab.
With all of that, I still prefer it to the "real world." I've been trying to get back in
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All the other old PhD jokes get 'funny'. This one always hits too close to home, gets 'Flamebait'
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Patiently Hoping for a Degree
Protein Has Degraded
Paid Half of what I Deserve
Parents Have Doubts
ect....
I did not know there is T-shirt:
https://teespring.com/shop/phd... [teespring.com]
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Patriotism?
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I planned the death of many a teacher, some in great detail with my classmates. Nobody ever actually got hurt, but plans were made.
Assholes can't 'turn it off'. They live with an asshole every minute of every day, self punishing.
overthinking (Score:3)
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The Big (Financial) Crunch started in the 1970s (Score:4, Insightful)
Here is an explanation from 1994 by Dr. David Goodstein of Caltech, who testified to Congress on this back then, whose "The Big Crunch" essay concludes: https://www.its.caltech.edu/~d... [caltech.edu]
"Let me finish by summarizing what I've been trying to tell you. We stand at an historic juncture in the history of science. The long era of exponential expansion ended decades ago, but we have not yet reconciled ourselves to that fact. The present social structure of science, by which I mean institutions, education, funding, publications and so on all evolved during the period of exponential expansion, before The Big Crunch. They are not suited to the unknown future we face. Today's scientific leaders, in the universities, government, industry and the scientific societies are mostly people who came of age during the golden era, 1950 - 1970. I am myself part of that generation. We think those were normal times and expect them to return. But we are wrong. Nothing like it will ever happen again. It is by no means certain that science will even survive, much less flourish, in the difficult times we face. Before it can survive, those of us who have gained so much from the era of scientific elites and scientific illiterates must learn to face reality, and admit that those days are gone forever."
And see also "Disciplined Minds" from 2000 about some other consequences: http://disciplinedminds.tripod... [tripod.com] "In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline." The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy. Schmidt details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker and to pursue one's own social vision in today's corporate society."
Or Philip Greenspun from 2006: http://philip.greenspun.com/ca... [greenspun.com]
"This is how things are likely to go for the smartest kid you sat next to in college. He got into Stanford for graduate school. He got a postdoc at MIT. His experiment worked out and he was therefore fortunate to land a job at University of California, Irvine. But at the end of the day, his research wasn't quite interesting or topical enough that the university wanted to commit to paying him a salary for the rest of his life. He is now 44 years old, with a family to feed, and looking for job with a "second rate has-been" label on his forehead. Why then, does anyone think that science is a sufficiently good career that people should debate who is privileged enough to work at it? Sample bias."
Or the Village Voice from 2004 about how it is even worse in the humanities than sci/tech grad school:
https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]
"Here's an exciting career opportunity you won't see in the classified ads. For the first six to 10 years, it pays less than $20,000 and demands superhuman levels of commitment in a Dickensian environment. Forget about marriage, a mortgage, or even Thanksgiving dinners, as the focus of your entire life narrows to the production, to exacting specifications, of a 300-page document le
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Why indeed (Score:4, Insightful)
Six-figure school debt, PTSD from having a PhD advisor who hates you, only job prospects are adjunct positions for sub-minimum wage or research assistant, both without benefits. Parents who expect you to be on top of the world now that you have a PhD. Plus, you've spent the last 4-6 years in a library studying and haven't seen the sun since you started your Masters.
Do you really have to figure out why post-docs have depression?
Re: Why indeed (Score:2, Interesting)
The physics field I went into had stipends for grad school, so no one I know came out with debt. And except for a hand full that stayed in academia, they all came out of school straight into six figure jobs. Yet and informal survey of a couple dozen people in similar situation shows sky high depression rates, and some are probably still hiding that they have depression. Financial burden certainly can make thigs worse, but there are problems people have even if given bucket loads of money. Can't just be pinn
Re:Why indeed (Score:5, Informative)
You've left out some of the real charms of the current era.
Profs claim scientific objectivity reinforces 'whiteness' [campusreform.org]
Professor Claims Math, Algebra And Geometry Promote ‘White Privilege’ [dailycaller.com]
The Appalling Protests at Evergreen State College [weeklystandard.com]
All-women's college asks profs not to call students 'women' [campusreform.org]
Professor notes men are taller than women on average, SJWs storm out angrily [hotair.com]
Americans who practice yoga 'contribute to white supremacy', claims Michigan State University professor [independent.co.uk]
Conservatives, Libertarians Are ‘on the Autistic Spectrum,’ Says Duke Professor [pjmedia.com]
Victimhood Culture Only Getting Worse, Professor Warns [pjmedia.com]
Professor: Small Chairs in Preschools Are Sexist, ‘Problematic,’ and ‘Disempowering’ [nationalreview.com]
Prof creates checklist for detecting white supremacy [campusreform.org]
Believing in meritocracy, promoting a "collegial" environment, and even deciding “to stay out of all of this ‘identity politics’” are all forms of tacit white supremacy, she claims.
She Carried A Garrotte! [theamerica...vative.com]
I blogged yesterday about a mob trying to shut down Jordan B. Peterson and others at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, and wondered aloud, “Where are there police?!” Well, turns out one of the SJWs was arrested after breaking the glass . .
Officials say officers searched her backpack and found a weapon — a metal wire with handles commonly known as a garrotte.”
I could go on, there are so many stones unturned [quillette.com].
Meritocracy ? (Score:2)
Having finished my Ph.D. about 15 years ago, I remember how it was to work in a theoretical field that was described as "safely outside the reach of experiment". Statements were true or false depending on _who_ made them, not the content of the statement. Each person was judged by a different standard.Those who were known from the start to have the right connections were helped while the others were set up to fail. And the Ph.D. advisors waited until the very end before picking up a fight, when the student
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Well, it' a right to bear arms, not merely a right to bear firearms. Now be a good little automato
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BTW, I fully recognize that this took place in Canada, but your philosophy [slashdot.org] is not geographically limited, now is it?
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Re:Why indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
No. I did my doctorate almost that long ago, and it was not the same. I went to a "hard" grad school, but I was still smoking weed and getting laid occasionally. Plus, I graduated without a dime of debt thanks to being a TA and I got a tenure track gig within a year of graduation. Stuff like that is super rare in academia today. The whole game has changed. I hit the tail end of the gravy train.
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Society definitely has its dysfunctional aspects. Don't depend on anything you don't have to. Timing is overly important, because so many of our leaders are loudmouth morons who, among many other flaws such as thinking they're so smart, suck at planning, and will screw up and alternate the economy between boom and bust. Schools were begging for STEM professors during the tech boom of the 1990s. Sadly for me, I graduated with my PhD in 2001, during the Dot-Com Crash.
Especially do not depend overly on a
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So the study "proves" you'd have to be crazy to do postgraduate academics? Or at least with some tendencies that way...
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I suspect what's going on is most people's mistaken approach to sunk costs [wikipedia.org]. Post-grads h
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Yes. When I was in school I was depressed because of my lack of social life. Not that it was much better immediately afterwards, but at least I eventually got a girl friend, and, much later, a wife.
Perhaps the people most likely to throw themselves into PhD studies are those without a social life?
Re:Why indeed (Score:5, Informative)
There's a bit of a difference. College athletes succeed or fail in undergrad, and it's probably fairly obvious who's who after the first couple of years. While they're there, they're forced to attend classes in something else.
Grad students have gone through four years of undergrad, usually four to eight years of grad school to get a PhD, then as much postdoc as they care to do before they give up. They're not 21 year old jocks who can take their accounting degree, put on a suit and get an entry level job somewhere. They're mid to late thirties, the best in the world at something, and facing the prospect of going and competing with those 21 year olds for entry level jobs.
This would seem to indicate an oversupply of PhD's (Score:5, Insightful)
If the work conditions are terrible, and the success rate (presumably landing a tenure-track position) is so low, it would seem to me that the only ethical course of action is to make PhD programs *much* harder to get into, and to discourage students who are considering that career path.
Unfortunately, this may be directly opposed to the interests of the university.
Should we assume that 22 year-olds are not capable of getting the information they need to make rational decisions and intervene with legislation?
Personally, I'd be fine with requiring universities to find out and disclose the percentage of post-graduates who attain a faculty position (and perhaps their salary) within 10 years of their PhD. The cost of acquiring this information would be minuscule compared to years lost by people pursuing an ultimately futile career (who we would hope would be dissuaded once they understand reality).
It might be devastating for science (lots of work by high quality, low paid post-grads lost), but the ethics are clear.
Re:This would seem to indicate an oversupply of Ph (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I'd be fine with requiring universities to find out and disclose the percentage of post-graduates who attain a faculty position (and perhaps their salary) within 10 years of their PhD
They already do this (not out of legislation, but out of honesty), and have been doing it since way back in 1989 when I was applying for grad school. And the professional societies keep detailed statistics, publishing them regularly. Although please do note that "faculty position" might not be the best metric for success: physics PhDs who go to work as data scientists out-earn their peers in academia by a lot.
Why do people do it? Because they've been at the head of their class up till that point so are confident. really really love what they're doing, and so persist in spite of the odds. Not so different than your average minor league pro athlete. Wonder what the mental health of those guys is like?
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really really love what they're doing
This is why I dedicated my life to science, and why I received my PhD. After that, my career has been quite hard and at times quite painful. At the moment I am at a turning point in my life, and am unsure if it was all worth it. I had lots of fun doing research, but now the sacrifices are getting too much.
I still haven't figured out which way to turn. I have to say, I am quite bitter and disappointed with at least a part of academia. But I did spend several years working in the industry before returning to
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Wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
This is one of the reasons minimum wage laws exist and need strict enforcement. It's also one of the reasons academia is heavily subsidized. These people will do really, really useful work if you let them. Or they'll get ground into dust if you let the suits have their way.
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Fewer PhD students would be great for everyone... except unis themselves. My lab has an oversupply and, frankly, many of them are simply not suited to a PhD and will not get a job even after they've been force-fed enough to pass. We supervisors know it, our bosses know it, I suspect the students know it, and yet... if you want to keep your job you *must*, by uni dictate, supervise x students this year, then 1.1x next year, and so on. So here we all are.
It hurts the students. It hurts the quality of rese
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Only six times? (Score:1)
There is irrational depression and rational 'oh shit what the fuck have I done'.
Many recent grads are facing the end of 'the party', the realization that 'the party' has left them dumber then when they started college and denial of the both these facts.
If you have a * studies degree and your not depressed, see a shrink.
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Many recent grads are facing the end of 'the party', the realization that 'the party' has left them dumber then when they started college and denial of the both these facts.
You might want to get your shouder examined because you appear to have a huge chip on it.
If you have a * studies degree and your not depressed, see a shrink.
On the other hand, they probably left knowing the difference beteween "you're" and "your".
"10+ hrs a day, 6-7 days a week" (Score:1)
Sounds like they're just preparing them for the real world.
Re:"10+ hrs a day, 6-7 days a week" (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure there are jobs that require that level of education. Thoracic surgeon. Biomedical engineer. School superintendent.
Many leadership positions that theoretically open to people with only undergraduate degrees are easier for people with (the right) advanced degree to get: lead data scientist, chief engineer on a megaproject like a new airliner
There are also many areas that need high educated people that are making do with less than optimal personnel. There's a critical shortage of adolescent psychologists in every single state of the US; waiting times are so long that a kid in trouble can take years to find help.
The problem is nobody is trying to match up need with supply; we encourage people to pursue their interests and assume that this will somehow end up matching the kind of people we need.
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This is why people in the U.S. need to abandon the idea that university education is 'free' in other places or that student debt is a reasonable paradigm either.
In countries where higher education is fully subsidized not only is getting those positions hugely competitive, but the chance of finding a position in a field just because you are interested in it is small.
In the U.S. we need to get rid of student loan programs and move to competitive scholarships and grant aimed at fields we know we need positions
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And preparing them for their bosses to take credit for their work since in college their advisors did that.
But seriously, after working over thirty-five years in tech, I tell the kids to let their bosses take credit because that means their bosses will protect them to protect them as a valuable resource. Also, when their bosses move to other companies, they will be able to get a new job. Networking is how you succeed, and if you help higher-ups, they will want to help you.
Teach Them How To Use Linux (Score:2)
Culture (Score:2)
It’s the US. Are university people kind and generous and understanding? Are they warm and friendly? Are they reliable and trustworthy? Are they open and accepting? Are they good?
Spend your time around cold, mean, self-absorbed jerks year after year without a lot of good to balance it out and see if you end up with good mental health.
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It’s the US. Are university people kind and generous and understanding? Are they warm and friendly? Are they reliable and trustworthy? Are they open and accepting? Are they good?
I can't speak for every university in the US, but the university people I've met have largely been open and friendly, warm and generous, etc. Some are not.
Ever notice... (Score:2)
All Ph.Ds are Bald?
Must be a reason.
Get rid the loans that can't be discharged! (Score:2)
Get rid the loans that can't be discharged!
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Only lucrative degree seekers would get loans. Likely no loans at all for the first 2 years.
'Non-dischargeable' is the flip side of 'available'.
Not really a bad idea, but a non-starter politically. Implicit shutdown of half the nations liberal arts programs.
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Give the best of the best who can show they can study and want to study a full academic scholarship.
The rest of the students would be paying for their own education.
That would see only people who can study learning. Their full education covered by a scholarship.
People who are paying for their education get to enjoy the learning they are paying for.
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and the schools will have to cut the filler classes and trades schools will see an boost as well.
It takes balance (Score:2)
Not noted here is that like all things, academia requires moderation and balance.
The tradeoff for pursuing a micro-scale specialty in a specialty into a doctorate is that you're missing a balanced education, perspective, worldly experience, and the things that help an adult mature into adulthood as a tradeoff.
Being an academic isn't intrinsically harder than other fields - but it allows one to bypass a lot of peer bonding, and teamwork, and behavior that balances these issues.
PhD programs are built on a lie, and must reform (Score:2)
And on the personal side, marriage and children are the undiscovered count
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The lie is that a 22 year old kid fresh out of school can become an effective scientist by staying in school some more. This is false.
It's demonstraby true, since the majority of effective scientists have actually done this.
and more importantly, you have no idea what avenues of research are actually interesting to the world at large
Neither does the world at large. Your supervisor wil be some guide but ultimately open research is a scattershot approach. Much will come to nothing. Some wil make a huge diffe
Re: PhD programs are built on a lie, and must refo (Score:2)
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Attack the idea, not the man.
I attacked both the idea and you personally because you attacked first.
I'm telling you what I've seen in friends and colleagues who went the traditional route.
And I'm telling what I've seen in myself, friends and colegues.
As for history, for every one of yours that achieved greatness by age 27, there are hundreds who shuffled off into obscure mediocrity and would have done better not going to grad school.
The vast majority of people I know left academia to pursue well paid caree
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Nearly all of the people who go to school first and shuffle off to six figure salaries in industry are successful by the metric of being gainfully employed but not successful by the metric of becoming the next Feynman or Salk. That much should be uncontrove
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I think you're reading someone else's comments and responding to mine.
Nope. See, the thing is if you trash talk some group of people, one of them might be listening. So all your preciousness about "oooh you attacked meeeeee" falls flat since you were the one hurling out insults first.
Nearly all of the people who go to school first and shuffle off to six figure salaries in industry are successful by the metric of being gainfully employed but not successful by the metric of becoming the next Feynman or Salk.
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I never said you don't have a work ethic,
Oh you're right you said:
no wait, that's exactly what you said.
You really can't read.
This seems to be the standard excuse from right wingers. When your ideas are so bad that there is iterally no defense, all you're left with is "you didn't read it". Thing is that looks awfully silly when what you wr
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Huh, so you're pretty much denying what you wrote. Intetresting! You're acting like an unpaid idiot.
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I get it. You might have written it but you don't feel you meant it now. And facts are after all all about your feelings not the cold hard truth. Oh how you live up to your handle.
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Sentences should stand on their own reasonably well. In the case of that sentence, you supplied no context that would clarify its meaning as something other than the literal meaning. As a reader, I'm forced to the conclusion that you think going into grad school straight from the bachelor's doesn't develop an aim or a work ethic. If that's not what you think, please explain what you do think. We're willing to accept that you miswrote something. We all do that form time to time. However, you're doubli
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No you don't get it.
No I do get it. You either iswrote or said something stupid and instead of owning the mistake you're trying to pretend you never made it.
You seem to think sentences stand on their own,
Nothing else in your original post contradicts my interpretation.
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Maybe it is related to... (Score:2)
Hope your $60000 indoctrination was worth it. Now your mind is like a fruity jello mold at room temperature.
not training (Score:5, Insightful)
The key to understanding postgraduate work in science is that it is not training and not preparation for anything, it IS scientific work. For the vast majority of us in science, we do not continue in scientific work after academic graduate and postdoc work.
This is because of the economics of scientific work. 1) We heavily subsidize research (not a problem in itself, but the labor market and overall metrics end up set by the government). 2) We prioritize publication over any practical metric such as jobs, public interest, or economic impact. 3) We bid out this work to organizations that can maximize publications for minimal cost, allowing them to violate just about any labor law they'd like in the process.
So "scientific research" is now defined as paper publishing. The people who "do" science are graduate students and postdocs, with a small number of other people directly involved. Once you're done with that stage of your career, either you're a professor, or your primary job is not "scientific research." Though we all tend to do a little publishing in industry and government, it's generally a very minor professional metric. PhDs entering industry have to play catch up on things like processional standards, the basic concepts of profitability, and the difference between technology and product.
Of course the people caught in the middle of this are doing poorly. They're in jobs that sound like a training position, but often there's no industry for them to train for. If there is an industry to train for, you're almost always better off taking a job right out of undergrad. The professors who manage our scientific workforce have no management training. The universities employing these folks are allowed to do things like charge them for the right to keep their job, and have special visas that ensure foreign labor can't leave the job. The "investors" in science (grant managers) have no actual metrics, oversight, or practical goals other than to maximize the churn of young scientists and papers through the system. So that's what we get.
As a young scientist, you can break out of this system. The key is to understand that virtually no one at a university is going to understand what you should be doing. Find one of the few companies making progress in a scientific field you like and ask someone there what to do. Oh, and do that before you apply to grad school.
An unmentioned reason (Score:3)
I know that grad-school can be rough. As other have mentioned, advisors can be a bit ornery. Part of the problem there is the same that occurs in the rest of the economy; no one really knows how to train a good manager. So professors, who might be a bit odd to start (see reason below), wind up working their oddness on grad-students...who might just graduate and become damaged professors themselves.
A bigger reason, I believe, is that academia is more forgiving than the business world. Oddness will get canned in the business world, and I don't mean the usual crap anti-people managers inflict on their subjects. Odd in the manner of barking mad....well, maybe not entirely barking, but certainly yipping a bit like a deranged poodle. The oddness gets intensified because academia rewards individual effort, not team effort. So little oddballs get to spend a lot of time with their own brains...watering and feeding their oddness until by time of graduation, they can become true nutjobs.
Another problem for science is there are few women. That means you have a lot of little boys who don't know what do with one when she tells you in precise terms what your "issues" are. So they get no female feedback, which doesn't give a rat's ass about their ego. Their ego gets to grow unchecked and finds expression in being mean little bastards to the people they can get away with running roughshod over.
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Anybody who starts grad school should understand the importance of their entire committee. If they go in blind and stupid, they have nobody to blame but themselves.
Outside science: Plenty of women, no fewer nutjobs and outsized egos. Hypothesis needs work.
"Simpsons Did It!" (Score:2)
easy answer (Score:1)
years of cultural marxist indoctrination.
Looking back, it's just like everything else in li (Score:3)
I got a Ph.d. a couple of years ago. Although it wasn't a perfect match (I hated reading and writing papers soooooo much) I still consider myself to be extremely lucky. My advisor was somebody that I have great respect to, who always treated the students with respect. Adequate funding so that I could roughly break even and still start a family. Met a lot of interesting people who I still have close contact with. Long work hours, but at least I had a choice not do work long hours, it wasn't like anybody was forcing me to do so.
The thing is, you really have to be aware of what you are jumping into. If you are applying without knowing who you are working with, what kind of research topic you need to handle, it is very possible that you are going to enter one of those abusive environments. Yes, track records help. For example, how long did people take to finish their degree, how many of them ended up dropping out, etc.
When I signed up, one of the big no-no indicators were to avoid research groups that had little or zero students from that university's undergrad students. If none of the students from the better informed group bothered applying, it usually means there is something wrong.
One last thing - even after starting, if you see something is wrong, run. Personally I dont think a degree is worth being abused for years anymore.
postgrads? (Score:2)
Do not forget about postsocs. Selling bodies for medical experiments or to willing perverts.
PhD students are privileged to be mentally ill (Score:2)
The privileged are far more likely to be diagnosed mentally ill. Being a PhD student is a prime indicator of privilege. To think those stuck in menial dead end jobs are not more likely to be mentally ill is merely not to properly consider the question.
Ignorance is bliss! (Score:1)
The only smart that is cool, is rich. Other smart and you're surrounded by stupid people that are hell bent on killing all of us.
Self-selection (Score:3)
...Let's remember that this is a self-selected subset of people?
These are the folks who chose to remain (some would say hide) in academia while all their peers were venturing out into the world of maturity.
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"world of maturity"??!!!!
Having had professional jobs in corporate america with its nepotism, cronyism, internal politics and intrigue, feifdoms for more than a couple decades, I can assure you that realm has no more of it than typical college
Yes it does... (Score:1)
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Bad question, the logical question would be "how easily could you start a University vs. starting a corporate worth hundreds of millions."
If you want to compare starting a business with educational endeavor, it would be
"How easy is it to start an online school vs. starting some other kind of business."
In which case either is very doable.
The avantgarde isn't in academia anymore. (Score:3)
That's the simple truth. In our time academia is a few useful physicists, chemists, medical researchers and a few other folks surrounded by armies and armies of regular people who have only a very faint graps of what science actually means and got themselves a PhD for the social value an academic title has.
Meanwhile the avantgarde has long since left academia. That goes for technology (preaching to the choir here), that goes for measurable amounts of applicable science and that sure as hell goes for philosophy and art. If you find an artist who's an academic you can rest assured that his/her stuff is shite and that any second-grade graffiti sprayer or street-dancer will produce better art than they.
Apart from fundamental effing hard science such as the basic nature sciences and some engineering basics academia is a farce for people doing "sociology" or "gender studies" and expecting to earn truckloads of money once they graduate.
This all goes especially for the U.S. where universities often are businesses and not official institutions. But it isn't that much better in Europe, I can tell you that much.
Lovecraft (Score:3)
"Frankly, I cannot conceive how any thoughtful man can really be happy. There is really nothing in the universe to live for, and unless one can dismiss thought and speculation from his mind, he is liable to be engulfed by the very immensity of creation. It is vastly better that he should amuse himself with religion, or any other convenient palliative to reality which comes to hand."
â"H.P. Lovercraft in a letter to Kleiner, Cole, and Moe, October 1916
(as quoted in the H.P. Lovecraft facebook feed)
Society doesnâ(TM)t like outliers (Score:1)
Being too smart or too successful comes at a price. People tend to be driven to succeed by unrelenting standards, and clearly this has effect on their mental health. But equally, other people donâ(TM)t like those who are successful - it just reminds them of their own failures. As a result, outliers are punished most of the way through, by their peers, by their spouses, and of course by the law and legal system built to deal with a different kind of people.
The antidote is knowing this and being ready fo
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Not to mention the intellectual isolation that accompanies being smart.
It really becomes a challenge finding people you enjoy spending time with. What do you talk about? What common interests do you have? And forget about answering the "what do you do for a living" questions.
You're splitting the atom during the day and listening to talk about how you can bang sticks together nights and weekends.
Oversupply (Score:2)
One of the big drivers of uncertainty in the postgraduate job market is oversupply. The graduate schools admit too many students, so there is a glut of PhDs to fill a shrinking number of academic jobs. Schools like Stanford routinely hire three new PhDs when they anticipate one tenured opening, and let the three candidates fight it out before they make a decision in three or four years. This does not make for a collegial or healthy atmosphere. More of these students should be sent into the real world so
Pre-Requisitie (Score:1)
It is the same paradigm as Dr. Evil and his eight years of evil medical school.
Faculty Success Metric Flawed (Score:2)
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Seriously. Colleges have become cult indoc centers.
You go messing around in people's heads, feeding them rampant political bullshit instead of the actual knowledge they paid for, and it has consequences.
I can attest to this, having taught at university. I would start with a rousing chorus of "the people's flag", before launching into my lecture entitled "Distributed systems and the worker will rise". I think the best exam question I ever set was "Part A) Using Maxwell's equations, derive the equation for th
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The initial problems you experienced were completely predictable, comrade. The academicians and nomenklatura at your institution lacked the proper socio-political awareness and training. Of course such a state is intolerable if we are to build a sound foundation for the future! The situation is being addressed.
Engineering Education: Social Engineering Rather than Actual Engineering [www.jamesgmartin.center]
Alas, the world we engineers envisioned as young students is not quite as simple and straightforward as we had wished because a phalanx of social justice warriors, ideologues, egalitarians, and opportunistic careerists has ensconced itself in America’s college and universities. The destruction they have caused in the humanities and social sciences has now reached to engineering.
One of the features of their growing power is the phenomenon of “engineering education” programs and schools. They have sought out the soft underbelly of engineering, where phrases such as “diversity” and “different perspectives” and “racial gaps” and “unfairness” and “unequal outcomes” make up the daily vocabulary. Instead of calculating engine horsepower or microchip power/size ratios or aerodynamic lift and drag, the engineering educationists focus on group representation, hurt feelings, and “microaggressions” in the profession.
An excellent example is the establishment at Purdue University (once informally called the “MIT of the Midwest”) of a whole School of Engineering Education. What is this school’s purpose? Its website tells us that it “envisions a more socially connected and scholarly engineering education. This implies that we radically rethink the boundaries of engineering and the purpose of engineering education.”
I have always thought my own education in engineering was as scholarly as possible. Once I became a professor, I never worried about how “socially connected” the education we provided at Michigan State for engineering students was. With trepidation, I read on to see if I was missing something important. I learned to my dismay that Purdue’s engineering education school rests on three bizarre pillars: “reimagining engineering and engineering education, creating field-shaping knowledge, and empowering agents of change.”
All academic fields shape knowledge and bring about change, but they don’t do that by “empowering” the agents of change. And what does “reimagining engineering” mean? The great aerodynamicist Theodore von Kármán said that “a scientist studies what is, while an engineer creates what never was.” In engineering, we apply scientific principles in the design and creation of new technologies for mankind’s use. It’s a creative process. Since engineering is basically creativity, how are we supposed to “reimagine creativity”? That makes no sense. . . .
The recently appointed dean of Purdue’s school, Dr. Donna Riley, has an ambitious agenda.
In her words (italics mine): “I seek to revise engineering curricula to be relevant to a fuller range of student experiences and career destinations, integrating concerns related to public policy, professional ethics, and social responsibility; de-centering Western civilization; and uncovering contributions of women and other underrepresented groups. We examine how technology influences and is influenced by globalization, capitalism, and colonialism. Gender is a key[theme][throughout] the course. We[examine] racist and colonialist projects in science.”
That starts off innocently enough, discussing the intersection of engineering with public policy and ethics, but then veers off the rails once Riley begins disparaging the free movement of capital, the role of Western civilization, and the nature of men, specifically “colonialist” white men. How can it improve the practice of engineering to bring in such diversions and distractions?
Riley’s purpose seems not to be how best to train new engineers but to let everyone know how bad engineers have been, how they continue to “oppress” women and persons of color, how much we need “diverse perspectives,” and how the “struggle” continues to level all distinctions and differences in society.
Loyalty Oaths Return with Faculty “Diversity Statements” [www.jamesgmartin.center]
Can you imagine how much easier the road you traveled
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The initial problems you experienced were completely predictable, comrade. The academicians and nomenklatura at your institution lacked the proper socio-political awareness and training. Of course such a state is intolerable if we are to build a sound foundation for the future! The situation is being addressed.
Da comrade. Since all bolts are made equal, we standardised on M3 nyon bolts through out. Any failure was deemed lack of loyalty.
True story.
Anyway I've no idea why you're quoting some random obscure b
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Anyway I've no idea why . . .
Obviously. A pity though, since it isn't that hard to understand.
I think you're spending far too much time cluching your pearls and complaining about how peope areusing their freeze peach all wrong.
Oooh! Aren't you precious!
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Obviously.
Indeed. There is no reason I should understand why you're quoting large chunks of irrelevant, poorly written bog posts.
Oooh! Aren't you precious!
More so than you, clearly.