[HN Gopher] Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees
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Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees
Author : rntn
Score : 84 points
Date : 2025-02-13 14:53 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| WhatsName wrote:
| Blaming "High living costs" is like blaming the victim of a theft
| for carrying something of value in the first place.
|
| Come on use the words that are actually plaguing PhD programs,
| exploitation of cheap labor and minimum pay for working endless
| hours
| nh23423fefe wrote:
| "entering into a work contract is theft"
|
| what's plaguing phd programs is the lack of value for attaining
| a phd. the labor is cheap because it isn't valuable. the hours
| are endless because the output is low. victim mentality infects
| everything
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| > it isn't valuable
|
| Science is the quintessential example of high-value work with
| poor value-capture characteristics, and is often used in econ
| classes as an example of where the "captured value = value"
| approximation breaks down.
| kome wrote:
| it's a huge waste of life time, family life and money; but it can
| be fun if you are a no-life, or a Billy no-mates
|
| on the other side, you see the world, you travel payed by the
| taxpayers and you meet curious people. and, of course, it might
| be intellectually fulfilling.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| The simple answer is they have low market value and aren't a good
| investment for anyone - the student or the nation. Yes we need
| some researchers but not as many as we train.
| spamizbad wrote:
| They have a high market value outside of academia. Inside
| academia though they are all underpaid and overworked, and the
| modern version of "tenure" might carry prestige but it doesn't
| carry the privilege it once did.
| krisbolton wrote:
| I think it is valuable to the nation, some subjects are
| arguably more or less valuable, but its about talent at a macro
| level. If a nation doesn't invest in talent through PhD
| funding, talented people can and do go elsewhere, work in a
| diferent economy, contribute to a different society.
|
| Obviously, that's only one avenue for talent. Some talented
| people never do a PhD, they may create start-ups etc instead.
| But its about fostering an ecosystem to develop and retain
| talent.
| rhines wrote:
| I think there is some inherent value to PhDs in general. Even
| the ones commonly looked down upon as frivolous here, even the
| ones with little to no economic benefit.
|
| The value is that obtaining a PhD involves deep research into
| something beyond what anyone else has done. Even if it's a
| topic that you don't think is important, even if it's a topic
| that no one thinks is important, I think there is still value
| to exploring that boundary of what we know and testing the
| limits of our understanding.
|
| So many people spend their lives consuming rather than
| creating, doing the same things over and over again every day,
| maybe producing lots of economic value but not doing anything
| novel or interesting to anyone. A PhD forces you to do
| something different.
|
| Of course you can do novel things and do deep research without
| doing a PhD, a PhD is just a certificate to prove you did it. I
| value the process equally regardless of the result of the
| research or the setting it's done in. And I don't discredit the
| value of work that isn't novel either - there's also a lot of
| value to the routines that make the world function day to day.
| I just think that in a world where most of us will never get a
| chance to spend years becoming a true expert on something
| obscure and novel, that encouraging more people to take that
| opportunity and explore that niche is worthwhile.
| asabjorn wrote:
| If you are high skill enough to do a PhD in anything meaningful,
| why enter into an open-ended low-paid work contract with a
| professor with no definite end-date on when the PhD is granted?
| An american has even less incentive, as the reward of a work
| permit is not on the other side.
|
| Only reason should be that you want to be a professor, research
| can be done in private companies without this license. 95% of a
| PhD is worth as much as 0%.
| novia wrote:
| Often private companies list a PhD as a requirement for
| research roles
| rs186 wrote:
| There are very few of such roles. Of course PhD is often an
| advantage when it comes to job application and promotion, but
| outside very specific roles (think about OpenAI looking for a
| PhD in LLMs, or Intel looking for a PhD in certain
| engineering fields), it's more often a nice-to-have.
| taurknaut wrote:
| Tenured teaching positions are also in freefall right now.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> why enter into an open-ended low-paid work contract with a
| professor with no definite end-date on when the PhD is
| granted?_
|
| This is less of a problem than you might imagine. While no
| school will _guarantee_ to give you a degree regardless of your
| performance, it 's pretty close. They don't offer the limited
| funded spots to anyone they don't think can make it.
|
| The real compromises are that people go into their PhD thinking
| they're going to cure cancer and become a professor at Harvard,
| and come out of it having made a 5% improvement to a model for
| predicting the risk of one particular complication following
| treatment for one particular type of cancer, knowing that
| becoming a professor at Podunk College would take another
| decade of work. Or the decide to quit once they discover the
| reality of it.
|
| The under-paid indefinite purgatory period is called the
| _postdoc_.
| jcarrano wrote:
| In my rather limited experience, private research was way more
| productive and enjoyable and I was able to do it and get things
| working without a PhD. In fact, during my short stay a iRobot I
| was quite surprised to find that none of the PhD's there could
| help me with what I was doing or provide guidance.
|
| Later I worked with PhDs and PhD candidates in a university
| setting. What shocked me the most was the narrowness of their
| knowledge and their lack of consideration for practical
| matters.
|
| I'd rather let the market judge my work than an academic
| committee.
| _hark wrote:
| Maybe a correction is needed. Academia has become so gamified.
| It's supposed to be about ideas, truth, beauty. Too many are in
| it for the prestige, which has ironically made it less
| prestigious.
|
| Very few true eccentrics left.
| rhines wrote:
| I can't speak for other fields, but this does seem true of
| computer science. I worked in a university lab for a couple
| years and knew many PhD students, and most of them were most
| interested in leveraging the PhD to make more money in
| industry.
|
| I think the issue, should that be an issue, is in industry
| setting unrealistic requirements for education. There certainly
| are some jobs where the work is true research and a PhD can be
| a good indication of experience in that, but a great many PhD-
| locked careers are not really so research oriented. Requiring a
| PhD to demonstrate expertise in something that makes up 10% of
| a job is excessive and creates this system where people do 4-5
| year PhD programs just to check off a box for the resume
| filter.
| glial wrote:
| > industry setting unrealistic requirements for education
|
| This sounds like a market dynamic to me. If it were difficult
| to find qualified candidates, requirements would be lowered.
|
| Just leaving this here...
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction
| tomrod wrote:
| Fantastic thought. Though I think economic signaling theory
| shows the bottoms-up motivator.
|
| Certainly in the US, the GI Bill lead to a decreased value
| for high school diplomas for the median graduate. This
| doesn't mean it wasn't the right idea for the time, just
| that it's caused a lot of crowding out. I feel like the
| Elite Overproduction is a good post hoc descriptive theory
| but missing the why.
| derbOac wrote:
| Overproduction is relative to the system under
| consideration. If you set up a system in a certain way,
| almost all labor can be overproduced.
|
| To take an extreme rhetorical example: if slavery is
| allowed, human capitol becomes ridiculously cheap and you
| can say labor is overproduced.
| soared wrote:
| Academia is not about truth or beauty and never was.
| ashton314 wrote:
| You're wrong. It is for a good chunk of the academics I know,
| and they are the most delightful people to hang out with.
| tomrod wrote:
| > Academia is not about truth or beauty and never was.
|
| I feel this idea is tired--like a 1978 Ford Pinto banged up
| and running on worn out re-treads. Will it go somewhere?
| Maybe, but not too far, not comfortably, and unlikely to end
| up where you want it.
|
| Academia started as medicine, math, theology, and philosophy,
| if memory serves, and has given us so much of the basic
| research that leads to the applied technologies we have
| today.
|
| The incentive structures get weird, certainly, like resources
| on the Serengeti.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| Oh please, when has Academia not been about prestige?
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Academia is about whatever the academics want it to be.
|
| Personally, I think it's a system for "experiments": projects
| that mostly produce negligible real-world impact, but
| occasionally lead to major advances ("breakthroughs"). Whereas
| industry focuses on projects that are likely to succeed, and
| industry research focuses on projects that are less likely but
| not as risky as academia permits.
|
| In that respect, I agree there's an issue with prestige. I
| think it's largely because of "publish or perish": academics
| aren't risky because they have to publish 'quality' papers, and
| papers on rejected hypothesis aren't published and/or
| considered 'quality'; and those who still take risks, don't end
| up as powerful or get as many students, as those who "play the
| game". Some people also say it's because academics naturally
| have high egos, but I disagree, because if anything, a high ego
| would make someone _more_ likely to take risks (and focus on
| "ideas, truth, beauty" which 'only a genius can understand', vs
| boring practical results that anyone can produce).
|
| Ironically, industry has somewhat recently created
| breakthroughs via venture capitalists (like YC), who fund many
| risky projects expecting only a couple to succeed (because they
| also expect the returns from the couple successful projects to
| recoup the losses from all the failed ones). But nowadays, it
| seems even VCs are avoiding experiments, focusing mainly on AI
| (which is arguably an experiment, but even if so, a single one;
| "couple successes recoup many failures" doesn't work if most of
| the projects will all succeed or fail together).
|
| I think the problematic current software development industry
| is the result of too many safe and short-term projects and not
| enough risky and long-term experiments, which isn't an uncommon
| view. But, I guess a more uncommon view, I think that means we
| need _more_ academics.
| derbOac wrote:
| I don't disagree with you really, although the reasons for that
| are complicated.
|
| Everyone wants the benefits of research but no one wants to pay
| for it, and slowly over the last three or four decades
| administrations have pushed researchers into these Faustian
| bargains that have led to the system have today. A lot of what
| we have is a pyramid scheme, but that pyramid scheme exists in
| part because people somewhere along the legislator-funder-
| administrative chain decided that is what would be rewarded.
| Once it started and was encouraged it snowballed.
|
| All of it is made worse by governments that don't seem to
| understand the problems or implications of their decisions.
| Anti-immigration laws (not talking about the US here actually
| necessarily) hurts enrollment, which has downstream effects
| even though that immigration is bringing in net income. Yes,
| indirect costs are gamified sometimes, and there should be some
| accountability system put in place with researcher protections
| (the original point of tenure), but no, that doesn't mean just
| cutting indirect costs down to some unsustainable level that
| doesn't reflect real costs.
|
| Also to be fair there's a lot of this gamification and false
| prestige that happens all over the US and world economy, we
| just don't like to admit it. I think it's one of the defining
| problems of our time probably.
| Empact wrote:
| Distinctions only hold esteem over time if they are worthy of it.
| The last two PhD's that crossed my feed had dissertations on "The
| Architecture of Whiteness"
| https://x.com/garrett_rhianna/status/1889609612367700377
|
| And "The Politics of Smell"
| https://x.com/drallylouks/status/1868782615324770561
|
| If the PhD is losing its lustre, it's because the Universities
| took the shine off.
| croissants wrote:
| > If the PhD is losing its lustre, it's because the
| Universities took the shine off
|
| Also, circulating particularly weird dissertations for the
| express purpose of angering people has gotten a lot more
| rewarding
| Empact wrote:
| "Pay no attention to that canary, this coal mine is perfectly
| fine"
| bowsamic wrote:
| The canaries you posted are thriving
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| That Politics of Smell thesis is actually pretty great, I'm
| sorry you couldn't get past the title. Frankly, dragging Dr.
| Louks, who's already explained her thesis and how it was
| written after it blew up in certain online circles, tells me
| you didn't actually think that deeply on what she was trying to
| say. Probably means that the Architecture of Whiteness paper is
| worth a look, though, so thanks for the unintentional
| recommendation.
| Empact wrote:
| What did you learn from the Politics of Smell thesis?
| lthornberry wrote:
| The fact that you don't understand something is not evidence
| that it's not valuable.
| Empact wrote:
| What didn't I understand? What of value is contained in those
| theses?
| sophacles wrote:
| You're the one claiming no value - what about those theses
| makes you think they have no value?
|
| What rebuttal to the works do you have?
|
| Many seemingly useless theses turn out to be prescient and
| valuable decades or even centuries later. What evidence
| exists to suggest these won't have long term value?
| bowsamic wrote:
| I'm really confused at how you don't see value in such theses
| blululu wrote:
| The article cites a trend without providing any real facts or
| information for understanding the topic. I.E. which field are
| seeing growth and which are seeing contraction. It's a bunch of
| vague guesses at the cause like 'cost of living' without ever to
| find and present any facts that could validate whether such
| hypotheses are actually true. Consider the most common phd is in
| education, we could easily see a decline in doctors of education
| and not realize that chemistry phds rose 4%. The effect of the
| change are very different in this scenario than 4% reduction in
| fundamental research.
| searine wrote:
| Despite the typical tech-bro anti-intellectual comments on this
| thread. As the article states. It's the money. People need to be
| able to support themselves.
|
| PhDs are important because they train specialists by giving them
| the time and space needed to develop that expertise (something
| not usually available at corporate gigs). The work you do during
| a PhD has value, much more value than the stipend is worth.
| Taxpayer dollars spent on these stipends have a huge ROI because
| they are investing in future expertise. These PhD students are
| trading their cheap labor for agency over their work. However,
| the deal has been stagnating and stipends are not keeping up with
| inflation. Stipends can be low, but they need to support the
| students living needs.
|
| The job market is always a bit tougher on specialists, because of
| that focused expertise. However, an excess of PhDs is a net
| benefit for society. Most won't become professors, they will
| filter back into the workplace and bring cutting-edge knowledge
| either directly to their expertise in industrial settings, or
| laterally to new fields.
| Gimpei wrote:
| Is a glut of English and Comparative Literature PhDs really
| that big of a benefit? Those skills are not transferable to
| anything. I think it's a crime the way liberal arts departments
| admit way more students than could ever hope to find a job in
| Academia. I say this as someone who loves literature and is sad
| to see these departments shrink. But it isn't fair to the
| students to put them through so much pain when you know there
| is nothing for them at the end of the tunnel.
| searine wrote:
| >According to data from the Survey of Earned Doctorates
| (SED), around 1,600 English and Literature PhDs are awarded
| annually in the United States. Total PhDs awarded annually in
| all categories : 57,862
|
| It is a very small field that is being used as a straw-man
| for all PhDs. I don't know what benefit those 1,600 may
| produce, but I'd rather them have that expertise and use it
| for our country than have them leave the US for better
| opportunities elsewhere. Because they will leave.
| some_random wrote:
| The benefit is intangible and honestly if they didn't have
| the opportunity to pursue a PhD they wouldn't leave the
| country. They would do what the 99% of people like them who
| are unable to pursue a PhD in their chosen topic do, work
| another job and publish a smaller body of work in a less
| prestigious setting. The fact of the matter is that those
| are not the 1,600 people who have the ability to earn a PhD
| in English or Literature, it's the ones who's interests and
| personal profile afforded them the opportunity.
|
| Now to be clear, I'm not saying that this work is
| unimportant. Intangible benefits are (despite the name)
| very real and do benefit the nation. It's just a much more
| complicated than engineering PhDs making stronger forms of
| concrete or whatever.
| searine wrote:
| >if they didn't have the opportunity to pursue a PhD they
| wouldn't leave the country
|
| How do you think the US got so many international
| students?
| some_random wrote:
| Incentive structures, mostly.
| lthornberry wrote:
| The glut is primarily a function of the fact that
| universities have decided that it's fine to have most of
| their courses taught by poorly-paid adjuncts. That is,
| actually, a bad thing. If we returned to having tenure-track
| faculty do a substantial majority of teaching, most people
| who get humanities degrees would get jobs in the end.
| buzzardbait wrote:
| In the early 2000s those liberal arts departments went as far
| as Southeast Asia to recruit international students who paid
| a lot more than domestic students, especially at the time.
| One of their outreach programs in Myanmar is called the Pre-
| Collegiate Program, whose website claims to promote critical
| reasoning among young people.
|
| Except I actually spoke to several of them who said that they
| were heavily groomed into joining the liberal arts
| departments. Not one of them went into engineering or the
| sciences. One student said during the program she was told
| she "must" choose the liberal arts. Another described how he
| was sweet talked by a philosophy professor into becoming a
| philosophy major, despite having followed a science-based
| curriculum in high school and little-to-no education in the
| arts (back then they had to specialize in either but not both
| in high school).
|
| So when you said "crime" I thought "funny you should say
| that". It might not be criminal but there was definitely some
| creepy stuff going on.
| Onawa wrote:
| Not quite sure what you're talking about. The majority of
| PhDs awarded in the US were science and engineering (S&E)
| degrees. The number of non S&E PhDs has held steady since
| about 1973 [1].
|
| It's also never been a 1:1 ratio of PhD recipients ending up
| in academia. I will agree that many universities overinflate
| job prospects post-graduation, but students should also be
| doing their own market research before entering into such a
| long process.
|
| [1] https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf25300/report/u-s-doctorate-
| awa...
| some_random wrote:
| Academia doesn't have a monopoly on intellectualism, and in
| fact "tech bros" tend to emphasize the reason and rationalism
| that typically defines intellectualism.
| lthornberry wrote:
| This is Dunning-Kruger in sentence form.
| some_random wrote:
| Oh sorry I'm a tech bro and don't know what that means, can
| you please tell me oh exalted professor?
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Isn't calling someone a tech-bro itself just anti-
| intellectualism blended with sexism?
| comrade1234 wrote:
| Credit Suisse here in Switzerland used to only hire PhDs for
| programming positions. It didn't matter what the PhD was in -
| they'd train you how to program.
|
| Note: credit Suisse collapsed a few years ago and now no longer
| exists.
| mp05 wrote:
| > Credit Suisse here in Switzerland used to only hire PhDs for
| programming positions. It didn't matter what the PhD was in -
| they'd train you how to program.
|
| > Note: credit Suisse collapsed a few years ago and now no
| longer exists.
|
| So you're saying that was a sound strategy on their part
| damiante wrote:
| Correlation does not imply causation (but it does stare at it
| from across the room and suggestively waggle its eyebrows)
| vvpan wrote:
| Renaissance Technologies is a very successful hedge fund that
| almost exclusively hires PhD's to do the coding, no matter what
| field.
| WorkerBee28474 wrote:
| I believe RenTech only hires from highly numerical fields.
| E.g. math, physics, compsci.
|
| They also employ <100 PhDs. The entire company is small.
| Might not be worth mentioning as an employed because the
| chance of getting in is miniscule.
| currymj wrote:
| their collapse didn't have anything to do with computer systems
| failing though.
|
| they just spent a period of about 10 years making sure they
| were involved in every major financial scandal due to poor
| judgment.
| jszymborski wrote:
| As is typical on HN, most comments are about how PhDs are of
| little value or how academia is not what it once was, whereas the
| article is about how the challenges of getting a degree (rising
| living costs, slumping stipends) are causing fewer enrollments.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > how PhDs are of little value
|
| I see this as being the same as
|
| > the article is about how the challenges of getting a degree
| (rising living costs, slumping stipends) are causing fewer
| enrollments.
|
| Also, as far as I know, this dynamic was true at least 20 years
| ago, when I graduated. You either did a hard science PhD and
| hoped to get in at a top finance/pharmaceutical/tech firm, or
| you toiled away as an adjunct professor for low wages with the
| hope of achieving a unicorn tenured position.
|
| Which is why most doctoral candidates were hopeful immigrants
| on student visas, and people who had work authorization mostly
| opted for joining the workforce.
| jszymborski wrote:
| Even if we define "value" strictly in monetary terms (which
| is a deeply bleak outlook, but nevertheless) PhDs can be at
| once of great value and also out of reach for those without
| the access to the debt instruments required to pay for it.
|
| Of course, much like life has value outside of the monetary,
| PhDs are a great way to enrich your life if you don't have to
| financially bury yourself in debt. Notably, this is the case
| for people who have the good fortune of being born in places
| with low tuition, like much of Europe and Canada. I pay $4K
| in tuition and make, after tax, not much less than I was
| making as a junior machine learning dev.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I meant value as in not being able to achieve other life
| goals due to the pursuit of a PhD, of which many could be
| due to insufficient funds due to prospects of low pay and
| high volatility.
| pjc50 wrote:
| If the PhD had more value, people would be more willing to go
| further into debt for it. Like the rest of higher education.
| jszymborski wrote:
| If the PhD had _increasing_ value it would offset its
| _increasing_ cost. Furthermore, not everything is linear over
| every range. There's only so much debt you can put yourself
| into and there's only so much ROI education can promise.
| atrettel wrote:
| Almost nobody pays for a PhD. I didn't pay for mine. This
| isn't like student debt for undergraduate degrees, though I
| think the argument about the "opportunity cost" of getting a
| PhD has merit.
| jlarocco wrote:
| As a software engineer, a PhD doesn't seem worth it.
|
| It's a lot of work and time, and most companies don't
| particularly need PhDs. Maybe a PhD gets a boost in pay starting
| out, but 5 years of experience cancels out most of the benefit. I
| suppose PhDs can get a shortcut into Prinicple or Senior roles,
| so there's some tangible benefit.
|
| On the other hand, if a company is hiring PhDs and doing
| research, I feel those jobs are most likely to get cut if
| business is going poorly.
| belval wrote:
| > I suppose PhDs can get a shortcut into Prinicple or Senior
| roles, so there's some tangible benefit.
|
| I don't think that's a thing. Some government job will use a
| pay scale that varies based on your education level, but fast-
| tracking someone in software engineering because they got a PhD
| seems questionable seeing as the skillset does not really
| overlap.
|
| It's a different thing for corporate research labs, where
| usually you need a masters for entry-level and PhD for the
| level above.
| mateo411 wrote:
| > Maybe a PhD gets a boost in pay starting out
|
| My sense is you might get paid when you start what an
| undergraduate makes after one year and a pay raise.
|
| Your career will probably develop faster than the person who
| started working after undergrad. Your ceiling is likely hire.
|
| I don't have a PhD, but this is what I've observed.
| nluken wrote:
| A PhD isn't like a MBA which is meant mostly for the credential
| and associated pay bump. It's a research degree that you get if
| you want to work in academia or in a private research lab. If
| you're evaluating it purely by its economic value, of course
| it's not going to make sense, but that assessment misses why
| people pursue these degrees in the first place.
| romesmoke wrote:
| There are countless pragmatic reasons to avoid a PhD, and no
| doubt both the article and other commenters will bring them up.
| The most constructive thing _I_ can do is share a personal
| perspective.
|
| I am 30 years old. I am working through my last few months as a
| computer engineering PhD student. Eventually, it went good. Not
| _great_ (the world gives zero f*cks about my work, nobody has
| offered me a job yet), but not hellish either (didn 't quit,
| still mostly sane, learned a ton of stuff that I never had the
| guts or prudence to delve into as an undergraduate, and most
| importantly, I decided I _like_ computers).
|
| Now my background is anything but academic: none of my parents
| finished high school, people from my village consider me either
| batshit crazy or a genius. I mean, I was _thrown_ into the PhD
| archipelago by life itself, rather unconsciously. I just knew
| that "corporate IT" wasn't my thing, and as for the cool
| computing jobs, I wasn't _their_ thing. Again, I spent my years
| as an ECE undergraduate burying my insecurities instead of
| building my future. To understand the degree of mental
| fragmentation I was under, I had _never_ made the connection
| between my digital design courses and my operating systems
| courses (all of this is the story of the computer, stupid, it 's
| in the title of your degree for God's sake!).... Anyways.
|
| It took me six years to get to today. I am another person now.
| The PhD (well, and the pandemic, and all that followed) crushed
| all of my assumptions about the world, myself, the meaning of
| life. There's no way to put it in the condensed form that an HN
| comment requires without sounding naive, but I'm telling you the
| truth. Being forced to survive an alien landscape can make you
| whole again. It made me.
|
| At the end of the day, talking sh*t about hard stuff is sooo
| easy. You could replace any polemic against a PhD with one
| against starting a family, or a company, or in any way rejecting
| "safety" for the potential of leaving your own mark on the world.
| Being _you_. Like that poem by Robert Frost, these things make
| all the difference.
| daft_pink wrote:
| Another great thing about PhD programs is you generally don't
| end them with 6 figures in college debt from the degree. As
| long as you get the PhD in something that gives you a
| marketable skill, it's not going to hurt too much vs all the
| MBAs and Lawyers I know with a ton of debt and just marginally
| increased career choices.
| DanielHB wrote:
| You are discarding opportunity cost in your assessment.
| drawkward wrote:
| Their assessment seems to be talking about the debt load,
| in which case, the opportunity cost isnt especially
| relevant.
| fhars wrote:
| The counter party to your opportunity costs doesn't send
| collection agencies, though.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| $250k in savings in six years is doable with a salary of
| $125k after undergrad.
| jltsiren wrote:
| But can you still get $125k directly after undergrad? How
| many employers are willing to pay 2x the median wage to
| someone with no experience and no demonstrated skills,
| simply because they went to a school? To someone who is
| likely to make a net negative contribution until they
| learn how things work and require less guidance? To
| someone who is at a high risk of taking another job after
| a couple of years?
|
| It's more common that entry-level jobs in highly paid
| fields start at close to the median wage. Salaries can
| rise rapidly once you have demonstrated your worth. But
| unless there is a talent shortage in your field, it
| doesn't make sense to pay much for an unknown quantity.
| garciasn wrote:
| FAANG or some company in a high-rent area where you could
| most definitely not save that kind of money, as far as I
| know.
|
| And, I love how making $125K is some sort of great
| salary. I live in MN and while it's above the median HHI
| for the state, it's by no means a comfortable enough wage
| to save that kind of money unless your housing is covered
| by family or something.
|
| Here in the MSP metro, you're looking at $2500/mo for
| rent + utils or $3500/mo for mortgage + utils for what's
| a pretty average living arrangement. Unless you're making
| $200K+ you're definitely not saving shit.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Using paycheckcity.com, I see that a $125K gross salary
| is $7360 a month in MN. If you max out your 401K, that's
| still $5988 a month.
|
| The median household income in Minneapolis is around $77K
| and they are somehow surviving.
| parpfish wrote:
| If you're doing a PhD in anything other than the highly
| paid field of "computer stuff", the opportunity costs
| look much, much different.
|
| When I did my PhD, I was making roughly the same money as
| all of my friends (none of whom were in tech) except I
| had waaay more freedom and job satisfaction.
|
| If your other opportunities are things like a school
| teacher or generic "office job", a PhD program doesn't
| really have an opportunity cost penalty
| epicureanideal wrote:
| Unrealistic unless you're talking about eating beans and
| rice, and sharing an apartment with a few other people
| for all six years. Remember taxes, etc.
| daft_pink wrote:
| Maybe, but if you compare paying 30-50k per year plus
| living expenses for an average masters program for 2-3
| years and then paying student loans for a really long time
| because you couldn't afford it in the first place vs paying
| no tuition and getting a $30k-40k stipend for 4-5 years.
| The advantage of a year or two of additional work isn't as
| great as you think, when you subtract out tuition and the
| stipend they give you during the PhD and compare the pay
| differential and job prospects when you finish.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Poetic. I can't do anything else but say you could have passed
| this off as my experience as well. It changed my life so much
| for the better.
| ckrapu wrote:
| > Being forced to survive an alien landscape can make you whole
| again.
|
| I can't agree more. My sister died at the hardest point of my
| PhD and I buried myself in my work for nearly every waking
| second for years, confident that at least I was doing it for
| myself. I couldn't have done that if I were working a normal
| job.
| dakiol wrote:
| I would do a PhD if they paid me enough. I don't mind if I cannot
| find a job that pays well with a PhD (I actually don't need a PhD
| for that); I would do the PhD because I like doing research. What
| would bother me is to spent ~4-5 years without a decent income.
| The scholarships here in western europe are just too low, and I
| cannot justify not working for private companies in favor or
| pursuing a PhD during ~4-5 years
| dgacmu wrote:
| Prior to the new administration I would have pointed out that
| US CS and engineering Ph.D.s are generally paid with a stipend
| that's "just enough to live on".
|
| There's even a website: https://csstipendrankings.org/
|
| I disagree a little with their cost of living calculations -
| they're off in both directions for areas I know reasonably
| well. Most Ph.D. students can live for something under the MIT
| living wage calculations if they choose -- transportation costs
| are overstated for most places (e.g., CMU students get a free
| regional bus pass; MIT students get subsidized transit passes,
| etc.). Often the medical costs are subsidized as well -- we
| cover the full cost of (individual) health insurance for Ph.D.
| students.
|
| You're not going to be banking much, but in CS, it's OK at many
| institutions, particularly when you factor in summer internship
| income.
| Palomides wrote:
| I get what you're saying, but "in some places, in some
| disciplines, you could be at a livable level of poverty" is
| not a very persuasive point
| dgacmu wrote:
| Grad school is a money loser in CS for people from the US.
| There's no argument. But I did end up having my net worth
| increase over the course of it, and it was a fantastic
| experience. In Boston, even - a pretty HCOL area. And in
| the end, being "rich but less rich than my FAANG friends"
| isn't the worst outcome. :)
| naniwaduni wrote:
| The MIT "living wage" figures are, to put it lightly, utterly
| deranged; more a statement of the purveyors's ideal of a
| first-world standard of living than a reflection of reality.
| If they are to be believed, then evidently grad students--or
| really like, half the population??--must not be alive.
|
| As maligned as the poverty lines are--and they _do_ have
| plenty of shortcomings--they are still a far closer
| approximation of "the true cost of living in a modern
| economy" than this drivel.
|
| +No, really, go compare the "living wage" figures
| (https://livingwage.mit.edu/) with AMI stats (https://ami-
| lookup-tool.fanniemae.com/).
| nemomarx wrote:
| generally "living wage" in these contexts also covers like,
| a house and being able to take care of dependents + maybe a
| partner?
|
| Which is generally above poverty levels right
| submain wrote:
| I love doing research. I published a minor unimportant paper in
| undergrad and had a blast doing it.
|
| Then at graduation I was offered a well paid job in the
| industry. Decided to pursue it as opposed to spending 5-6 more
| years in academia looking for grants.
|
| Would love to go back and get a PhD, but the economics just
| don't make sense for me. For now, it's a retirement plan.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Aren't grad school students just another form of visa-
| indentured labor by now?
| currymj wrote:
| consider Switzerland. PhD salary is around the range of 80k
| CHF. It's not bad at all.
| leecarraher wrote:
| From my experience, there has been a noticeable decline in PhD
| positions available within academia, likely due to tenure and
| career longevity, and reduced retirement benefits. As a result,
| many PhDs are forced into the private sector. However, many
| organizations have removed middle management layers, making merit
| based advancement less likely, and instead time becomes the
| dominating factor.
|
| So given the choice between longer tenure or further education,
| where education is only marginally effective and time is
| dominant, the clear choice is to start a career as soon as
| possible. Which is something i wish i would have understood
| during my studies.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| As someone with a phd and is a professor at a community college,
| with the current governmental chaos there's no way I would
| recommend anyone starting a phd in the USA. In addition to the
| poor pay (and I was in the department of communication and I
| distinctly remember fellow grad students in stem complaining
| about their pay... which was literally double mine), there is
| also the fact that no one knows what is going to happen with
| funding. In my case, not only is there the federal government,
| but I live in a state with a republican supermajority so I have
| zero optimism about future prospects of higher education here.
| I'm just hoping I can hang on until retirement in a 15 years or
| so.
| morelandjs wrote:
| The smartest people I've ever worked with to date were from
| physics grad school. Still remember the time my coworker was
| doing code profiling, decided he was unhappy that the exponential
| function from the standard library was too slow, and decided to
| write a Taylor series approximation that gave him the precision
| he needed and cut the run time in half. He also learned C++ in a
| weekend and was vastly better at it by the end of that weekend
| than most people I've met in industry. And these were just every
| day occurrences that made it a thrill to go to work. Working with
| talented people is a drug.
|
| Some tips for younger people considering it: get involved in
| undergraduate research, apply to fellowships, shop for an advisor
| with a good reputation, start anticipating and preparing for an
| industry transition early, travel, date, and enjoy life!
| BeetleB wrote:
| I don't want to take away from his brilliance, but generally
| Taylor approximations perform far worse than the standard
| library implementations. It's also the first tool of choice for
| physicists, so who knows ...?
|
| My guess, though, is that if he improved the performance, he
| used some other wizardry (Chebyshev or something similar).
| whatshisface wrote:
| Sometimes what you need is less precision, much faster.
| Carmack's famous inverse square root falls into this
| category.
|
| If anything it's a lesson that the definition of brilliance
| is being in the wrong place at the wrong time... ;-)
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I think Carmack credits someone else as the origin -
| possibly some magazine entry.
|
| These days I think the reciprocal square root intrinsic is
| the fastest where precision is not that important.
|
| I think there was a bit twiddling hack for pop count which
| was consistently faster than the equivalent cpu intrinsic
| due to some weird pipelining effect, so sometimes it is
| possible to beat the compilers and intrinsics with clever
| hacks.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| Carmack denied writing it, and if WP is to be believed, he
| didn't.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_inverse_square_root
| dingnuts wrote:
| Honestly the whole story sounds like a tall tale to me.
|
| > He also learned C++ in a weekend and was vastly better at
| it by the end of that weekend than most people I've met in
| industry
|
| I doubt this. Really, really doubt this. Sure, geniuses
| exist, but I don't buy it.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Having seen physicists code, I REALLY doubt this.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Bah! Let's go invert the matrix!
| null_shift wrote:
| If he already knew how to code in other object oriented
| languages, and was really just learning C++ syntax over the
| weekend, it's not as much of a stretch.
| cudgy wrote:
| C++ is one of the most flexible and unopinionated
| languages you could ever encounter.
|
| The idea that someone who knows a high-level object-
| oriented language could translate that to immediate
| success in low-level C++ syntax at a level higher than
| the experts that developed the libraries over a weekend
| is frankly fantastical.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| > the experts that developed the libraries over a weekend
| is frankly fantastical.
|
| this is not synonymous with "most [C++ programmers] in
| industry"
|
| The claim was the person learned it better than most
| people in industry, not most people writing the libraries
| upon which the industry is based
|
| EDIT: Also we don't technically know when this happened.
| If this story is from the 1990s, it's a lot more likely,
| because think of how many shitty C++ programmers there
| were back then since we didn't have all the language
| options we do now. It was still _the_ language taught in
| schools, for example. Then it was Java and Python and JS
| etc. But back then, Jonny Mackintosh was writing bad C++
| out of uni.
| seanwilson wrote:
| There's something to say here about getting the paid opportunity
| to spend _several years_ thinking deeply about a problem without
| distraction. You 'll make more money working at a startup or big
| tech churning out features each sprint, but usually you'd be very
| lucky to get a day or two to explore tangential ideas before the
| next project deadline in comparison.
|
| Some people aren't optimizing for money so it's not best to
| compare on those terms.
| axus wrote:
| The article mentions Australia, Japan, Brazil and the United
| Kingdom. Were there any counter-examples where the cost of living
| was supported and PhDs were doing well? I did not register to
| continue the article.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/3ZtAs
| codingwagie wrote:
| Phds are a scheme for immigration
| greenchair wrote:
| and stealing secrets for their home country
| janalsncm wrote:
| I considered a PhD in machine learning. It's mostly downsides.
| Granted, most fields are not like this but:
|
| 1) The field moves too fast to focus on a single thing for 4
| years. A lot of people were devastated when ChatGPT essentially
| solved their NLP tasks.
|
| 2) Cutting edge NLP/vision research is being done in industrial
| labs as much as universities. And industry will probably outgun
| you with equipment (GPUs) and high quality data.
|
| 3) Pay sucks. You can make 3-5x working in industry. The
| opportunity cost could be a half million dollars.
|
| 4) You can get a lot out of a Masters in half the time or less.
| marklar423 wrote:
| What sort of benefits come from getting a Masters? Everyone I
| talk to seems to say a Masters in CompSci is useless, and that
| you may as well do a PhD instead.
| vkou wrote:
| > What sort of benefits come from getting a Masters
|
| Google will hire you to work on moving protobufs around as an
| L4, instead of an L3.
| seangrogg wrote:
| This cuts so much deeper than it has any right to.
| roland35 wrote:
| I believe a masters has helped me stand out as a candidate at
| least. Plus, I learned a great deal about computer
| engineering! The fundamentals have come in handy.
| janalsncm wrote:
| A lot of job requirements that I see ask for Masters or PhD,
| so you're hitting the minimum requirement plus giving
| yourself a shot of having applicable work experience (read:
| doesn't write spaghetti code). That said, there's probably a
| huge selection bias due to my background.
| hk1337 wrote:
| I feel like the only places a doctorate is useful is in the
| research field or academics and generally neither actually pay
| that well for the doctorate to be worth it.
| vonneumannstan wrote:
| In STEM in particular the opportunity costs of a PhD are
| extremely high and with little payoff at the end. Even if you
| want to stay in academia, which is the only real reason to do a
| PhD now, there are far more PhDs graduating per year than open
| faculty positions. Many get stuck in Postdoc or adjunct hell for
| years and can never get a tenure track role.
| WalterBright wrote:
| There are many research jobs at Microsoft, Google, etc., that
| require a STEM PhD.
| ericmay wrote:
| True, but how competitive are those jobs to get? If one goes
| to a lesser-known university that has a PhD program and does
| related research are they getting an interview, or are these
| research jobs intended for specific university pipelines
| (Harvard, MIT, the usuals, etc.)?
| b3ing wrote:
| Exactly, they will be H-1B visa worker over someone with a
| PHD from a non-Ivy League/non-big-name college
| davidgay wrote:
| The interview process for a place like Microsoft Research
| is essentially the same as for a faculty position - give a
| talk on your research, spend the day talking to researchers
| about your research, their research, convince them you have
| an interesting research agenda. Have dinner with more
| researchers, for a notionally more relaxed discussion :)
| [Tried, failed ;)]
|
| As with university recruitment, this isn't a case of "you
| must come from specific pipelines", but of "you must have
| done interesting research, have an interesting plan". It's
| just that those two criteria are strongly correlated...
| ridiculous_leke wrote:
| Can't say for certain if they will be around 4-5 years down
| the line.
| sweeter wrote:
| Why pay an American worker 100k + benefits out of college
| when you can pay an H1B worker 60k for the same level of
| education and also have a massive amount of leverage over
| them?
| KPGv2 wrote:
| Because this is ostensibly illegal, and it would be nice if
| someone enforced the fucking law (H1Bs must be paid the
| market rate, and it's supposed to be enforced by the
| Department of Labor). But the entirety of US government
| apparati are geared toward helping big corps make money.
| It's just a question of which big corps (modern Democratic
| party is soooo captured by Big Tech).
|
| Of course, one of them _also_ supports fascism; I 'm not
| "both sides"ing.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| President Musk specifically said he wants to focus on
| getting more H1-B visa holders in the US
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/musk-vivek-
| ramaswamy-h1b-vi...
| KPGv2 wrote:
| I'm not surprised the richest man in the world will
| commit all manner of sin, because one more dollar might
| be the one to fill that gaping hole where his heart
| should be.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| > ostensibly illegal
|
| I think we're at the "so what are you going to do about
| it" phase where the courts and congress are going to tisk
| tisk at the most, because they don't want the deep
| pockets of Elon and Co to primary-them-out
| snailmailstare wrote:
| My impression is that there are prized PhD jobs that people
| go back to school in anticipation of and there are
| essentially non-PhD jobs that are filled by people who
| don't go back or H1B workers who have a PhD.
| vonneumannstan wrote:
| This is an incredibly small slice of roles available to CS
| PHDs and sometimes adjacent fields. Not really indicative of
| the larger STEM market and basically irrelevant to non STEM
| programs.
| icnexbe7 wrote:
| it's literally a pyramid scheme
| barrenko wrote:
| It's a luxury consumption good.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| A lot of people will point out the utility of a doctoral degree
| is low, but there's another angle.
|
| Men, specifically, are becoming less likely to enroll in Medical
| or Law school also. Women pick up the slack here but not in STEM
| doctoral degrees.
|
| I don't think men are less competitive. See how many are in tech
| and finance still. I think they just see academia as a place that
| isn't for them and are less likely to opt for more years in it
| than they need
| yodsanklai wrote:
| As usual, lot of PhD bashing in the comments. My experience was
| generally positive.
|
| The good things
|
| 1. I had mostly fun doing it. Being paid to learn things is
| great.
|
| 2. I got to work in different countries, and travel to many
| places
|
| 3. I was able to have more than one career. PhD + academia,
| before switching to industry. Gave me more perspectives.
|
| 4. I did learn a few things and skills (public speaking, I
| learned a lot of things while teaching too).
|
| The bad things
|
| 1. Opportunity cost. I could have earned more but, would have I
| had the same career with the PhD? hard to tell
|
| 2. A lot of what I learned is totally useless.
|
| 3. Doing a PhD was fun, being a professor wasn't. Boring
| administrative work, lots of bitterness among academics,
| unhealthy competition. (and I wasn't good enough).
|
| Overall, I would probably do the PhD again, but wouldn't go to
| academia. I find that working for a big corporation can be
| depressing/stressful. I'm glad I did other things in my life.
| parpfish wrote:
| I had a ton of fun in my PhD. It probably wasn't the best route
| if I was trying to maximize total lifetime earnings, but I'm
| happy with the route I took.
|
| In fact I liked it enough that I often joke that my retirement
| plan will be to get into another PhD program for the
| stipend/insurance and just do projects to help some junior prof
| get their career going
| nolamark wrote:
| I agree that it can be fun. I also devised a retirement plan
| as a graduate student, figuring out what sum of money I would
| need to live the rest of my life living the graduate student
| lifestyle without the hassle of being enrolled. Less than a
| decade after finishing my PhD I was able to walk away from my
| career into that lifestyle. Certainly not for everyone, but
| if it floats your boat, it is certainly an achievable plan.
| gyomu wrote:
| > my retirement plan will be to get into another PhD program
| for the stipend/insurance
|
| Imagine being a young ambitious student not getting placed
| into a PhD program because some old dude doing it for the
| benefits and the lolz took the spot.
| michaelrpeskin wrote:
| Regarding Opportunity Cost...
|
| For a long time, I felt stupid for getting my PhD during the
| buildup before the 08 bubble. I could have socked away a lot
| more money than my measly stipend. And afterwards, I always had
| decent jobs but not SV style salaries. That made me feel like
| it was all a bad decision.
|
| But now that I'm approaching my 50s, I feel a bit differently.
| I traded variability for steady consistent growth. When SV lays
| of 80% of the work force and a bunch of people lose their jobs
| and their fancy SV salaries go to 0, I've luckily (knock on
| wood) never had that experience.
|
| I bet in the long run a person making SV salary right out of
| college and invests smartly will still out perform economically
| than a steady growth after a delay for the PhD. But mentally
| the lack of variability has been good for me. YMMV.
| fujinghg wrote:
| I was going to do a mathematics PhD years ago but I'll be honest
| and I'm not bashing the process or the outcome here.
|
| I literally just couldn't be bothered to put the effort in. It's
| not an insurmountable task but there were easier things that made
| me feel better. One of which inadvertently lead to a family.
| xyst wrote:
| Yup. Forget college or post-graduate degrees. This is no longer a
| meritocracy. We are in a grinding and grifting mindset. This is a
| jokers/jesters economy.
|
| Forget pricey degrees. Just start streaming, become controversial
| af, gain an audience of young followers, sell them on quasi-legal
| gambling platforms, rake in that cheddar.
|
| Or become a "political talking head" that doesn't contribute to
| the conversation but instead provokes audiences with click baity
| material.
|
| Or if you are traditionally attractive, start teasing the waters
| with "Just Chatting" streams and potentially switch up to selling
| OF subs. Nothing wrong with it, got to make that cheddar. Right?
|
| I'm calling it now. The alignment with neoliberal economic policy
| is the downfall of not just the United States but the end of
| capitalism itself.
| seydor wrote:
| Conversely, if you are doing a PhD, network with other
| scientists. Organize conferences and workshops, try again and
| again until you publish in a high impact journal, do minor
| contributions and insist on adding yourself to other people's
| papers, post on twitter and linkedin, talk to local newspapers,
| make yourself known. Apply for grants early , and add them to
| your CV so you get more grants later. It doesn't matter if your
| science is trivial or useless, you will have made it, get more
| grants, get invited to give talks, get to join committees and
| publish even more of the same. Bonus points if you belong in a
| protected minority. Academia has been gamified
| ATechGuy wrote:
| The choice is simple: work for next Nvidia or pursue academia?
| mkoubaa wrote:
| Please if you do get a PhD, don't feel bitter if you don't get
| paid much more than people without one after you graduate. This
| is a toxic mentality that (anecdotally) I find quite common in
| the computational sciences specifically.
| ckrapu wrote:
| The PhD is has become the de facto replacement for the advanced
| workforce training programs (apprenticeship, guilds, corporate
| talent development programs) that many civilizations used to use.
| For some fields, you really do need to bang your head against a
| small number of problems without anyone holding your hand before
| you become proficient.
|
| Not all PhD graduates get there; many just skate by because no
| one wants to fail them. They are an essential part of the modern
| labor force, though.
| ckrapu wrote:
| Anecdotally, a prestigious consulting firm (one of
| McKinsey/Bain/BCG) essentially stopped hiring MBAs and instead
| hired several friends from my PhD cohort despite the B-School
| ranking hire than most of our graduate programs.
|
| I've always wondered what signal they were acting on. Perhaps the
| value of the MBA has been watered down, or it was just too easy
| to game the admissions.
| jenny91 wrote:
| People seem to be getting stuck on the PhD opportunity cost piece
| for STEM. The matter of fact is that Americans don't do PhDs in
| STEM: if you look at the top schools and top departments, they
| are 70-90% international students. The PhD then is a phenomenal
| deal: by and large people are coming from places where FAANG jobs
| don't just fall on your lap at SF salaries. You get a free
| education in the US, and can jump straight into the job market as
| top-educated talent.
|
| Also I think from NSF stats STEM PhDs are on a slow and upward
| trend, unlike the countries mentioned in the article.
| avs733 wrote:
| Your numbers are way off...number of American citizen or
| permanent resident divided by number of doctorates awarded:
|
| 35,566 / 57862 = 61.5% (overall)
|
| 26,622 / 45,533 = 58.5% (stem PhDs)
|
| Survey of earned doctorates, national center for educational
| statistics, 2023 data...very useful, as are many of the data
| products the federal government collects, for however long this
| is up
|
| https://ncses.nsf.gov/surveys/earned-doctorates/2023#data
| seydor wrote:
| > Financial insecurity is also one of the chief concerns for
| doctoral students in Japan
|
| I question the premise that low pay caused this drop. PhD
| research was never about financial security , instead it pays in
| prestige and expertise of notoriously ramen-eating overworking
| geniuses. Prestige has certainly gone down since they became so
| commodified, and expertise can end with a Master's. Most PhDs are
| not even computer science and related fields (where the most
| interesting research roles are in companies).
|
| We should rethink the duration and archaic formulation of the
| doctoral programs. Our times are faster
| KPGv2 wrote:
| > PhD research was never about financial security
|
| You're looking at this wrong. PhD was _always_ about financial
| security for the vast majority of PhDs. You think all those
| Chinese and Korean etc. students are coming to study
| engineering to get invited to the good parties back home? No,
| they 're doing it because it provides financial security. Same
| for places all over the world. Europe, everywhere.
|
| It's basically upper and upper middle class white Americans who
| pursue PhDs for the social prestige, because they already have
| actual capital, so they're pursuing social capital. Everyone
| else does it for a combination of money and love for the
| subject matter.
| seydor wrote:
| i believe you re talking about financial secutiry after the
| Phd, not during
| KPGv2 wrote:
| Yes, I was.
|
| I suspect most PhD candidates who are considering a future
| career in academia are thinking about financial security
| after, not during. So if we're talking about why are there
| fewer PhD candidates...
| CJefferson wrote:
| One of the extra problems in the UK is that PhDs in STEM were
| massively centralised into "Doctoral Training Centers". It used
| to be whenever I applied for a grant I would add funding for a
| PhD. Now that's forbidden, and instead most universities have
| little PhD funding, and a few have far too much.
|
| This means most students don't get to be integrated into a
| research group, and many supervisors get very little funding for
| students as their university doesn't have the funding.
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