The PhD Problem: "Talk of a ‘higher education bubble’ may not be idle chatter”

http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/01/07/the_phd_problem.php

by cwan • 16 years ago

96 78 16 years ago

pipeline.corante.com

vyrotek• 16 years ago

"What happens when you take a degree whose main use is teaching other people who are taking degrees?"

I once had a philosophy professor admit this in class. He basically told everyone not to even bother with a degree in philosophy because they would only end up competing for the same teaching jobs.

brudgers• 16 years ago

On the other hand, YC is the product of a philosophy major.

bryanh• 16 years ago

Bubble spotting is extremely difficult, but all the same, I have a hard time people will continue to pay the increasing costs for any degree that will be worth less and less over time (as the labor pool is inundated with people with identical degrees).

I am wondering where the "wall of rationality" is for education costs, and will we stop at that wall (efficient markets prevail) or go past that wall (into a bubble)?

klbarry• 16 years ago

Note: I don't have a PhD, this is just based on the article and other things I have read.

It seems to me that this article goes around the two main, most obvious aspects of a PhD;

1) Improve yourself (smarter, better critical thinking, etc) 2) Appearing more valuable to others (Getting grants, getting hired)

So the question is, does it fulfill these goals, and if it doesn't, do prospective applicants realize it?

Certainly there are better uses for your time if you want to appear more valuable to others (work experience), and there might be better ways to improve yourself for the same time and money.

If the average applicant realizes this, but proceeds anyway, then it's not a bubble, as there must be other factors at play when they think about the value of their degree. If they don't, then there is a bubble that will burst when the information becomes more plain.

mayank2• 16 years ago

In my experience, the PhD does makes you smarter in a sort of trial by fire. I haven't met a single (math/CS) PhD student who wasn't intimidated by the magnitude of their research field when they started, or seriously intimidated by the math in a seminal research paper in their area, but came out with a mastery of the subject (which is not to say that there aren't any crap PhDs -- there are). At the very, very least, if you finish your PhD diligently, or even get close to finishing it, you will develop a confidence that you can in fact chip away at the most abstract and difficult problems, and usually come up with a good solution, while building on the efforts of much smarter people. At a very practical CS/algorithmic level, a lot more will seem possible, and you'll reinvent the wheel a lot less.

I've often seen very smart people in CS/ML who didn't have a PhD. However, they sometimes also lack the body of knowledge in advanced algorithms or statistics that comes from 5-6 years of monk-like reading and chipping away at immense intellectual problems that have been tackled by some of the smartest people in the world.

So if you don't mind 5-6 years of near-poverty, intensely difficult problems, a possible lack of interest from your advisor (thankfully not in my case), peer-review rejections that sometimes seem arbitrary and disheartening, and can take 3 months to come around each time, large minds and frequently larger egos, intense orgasmic breakthrough eureka moments that come from spending months or years working on a problem, self-learning some truly amazing things, and drinking discount "St. Remy" brandy instead of Remy Martin, then by all means go in for a PhD -- you'll come out sharper if you make it.

javert2• 16 years ago

And you can actually get paid a decent stipend (e.g. not be near-poverty) as a grad student in computer science.

tybris• 16 years ago

I think this point is often missed. I always compare a PhD to professional athletics for the mind. You need to have the same kind of dedication, constant training, ability to deal with failure, good coaching, spartan lifestyle, etc. I never even realized you could exhaust or even cause injuries to your brains by mere thought before I did a PhD. The final goal is to train your mind to compete at a global level, hopefully doing something useful for humanity in the process. You'll come out being able to pierce through complex systems, where others are merely applying tricks.

ebiester5• 16 years ago

From what I see in the social sciences (my partner is pursuing his Ph.D in one), I see:

1) To make a permanent addition to the canon of human knowledge.

2) To have a job where you read a lot of interesting things and contribute to that field.

gcb• 16 years ago

Where are the openings for 2?

ebiester5• 16 years ago

I am not a PhD student, but my partner is one (non-science) and I watch this academia issue. You have a lot of people who are really smart but are not math and science oriented. These are people very good at one thing: reading a lot and thinking a lot and writing. Other than law (and we have too many of those, too) what's the best economic use for these people?

loganfrederick• 16 years ago

Quick response with a couple ideas that popped to mind: Journalist? Political analysts?

Given more thought, I'm sure I could come up with more. There's definitely value in critical thinking. Whether PhD programs are the most economically efficient way to use their skills is something I don't know.

ebiester5• 16 years ago

Political analysts are often trained by political science.

Journalism and freelance writing are both places many end up, but both are also fields where there is more supply than demand.

Umalu• 16 years ago

I think if you're smart and you've earned a PhD from a good program, you've proven you have the ability to dig deep into a subject and figure it out and move the ball forward a bit. This is an economically valuable skill that should be broadly transferable into many fields, even those far afield from your PhD studies. I think the problem arises for PhDs when they refuse to leave their narrow field of specialty. A lucky few can continue to specialize in academia, but for the rest the real world requires them to get a lot more general and interdisciplinary in order to succeed, something I fear a lot of them are unwilling to do. Hence our glut of unhappy PhDs. This is not a new problem.

flacon• 16 years ago

"I think the problem arises for PhDs when they refuse to leave their narrow field of specialty"

Amen, we have a friend who spent 12 years getting a PhD in Russian History only to get out and face no job prospects. Depressingly, every year he gets ready for the one History Job fair that happens in January, flies down there and presents himself at interviews. 3 years later he still actually believes that he has a chance at getting a job after being out of the game a while. He has no sense to pivot, no sense that maybe he needs to find a new calling in life and utilize his skills in another fashion.

Contrastingly, we knew another PhD in Chemistry from Cornell. He got out and hated academia, but still loved teaching. He decided to teach chem and physics at some fancy prep high school and is doing well for himself.

To me these people need to understand that if they can't find their place quickly to scale that pyramid need to find a more general use for their skills.

There's perseverance and then theres a false sense of hope.

Retric• 16 years ago

The problem is not finding work for people with a PhD it's wasting the money handing out PhD's to people who don't end up 95% of what they learned in there subjects. The USSR, before it's collapse, had an extremely educated populace. However, while pumping up the numbers of "highly educated people" looks good on paper it did not fit their economy.

To put it simply much of the time higher education is consumption not investment. Overspending on anything be it Roads, Medicine, the military, or Education is simply wasteful. And not just for the teaching staff your taking a large number of talented young people and keeping them fully engaging in the workforce for an extended period of time.

cdavid2• 16 years ago

Exactly: it is very wrong to think PhD are useless because you won't use what you did during your PhD. This is stupid on two accounts: even if you do an academic career, what you did during your PhD is rarely what you will do later, and PhD teaches you many other things.

I only realized it afterwards, but many people are simply incapable of working by themselves without being given precise instruction: PhD teaches you that in some way (of course, there is a selection bias). It also trains you to communicate to other, which is a very valuable skill. You are also used to being criticized on somehow objective criterion: few people are able to take critics in any other way than personal. Finally, you almost always learn tenacity.

For me, saying that PhD is a bubble because there are few academics positions is like saying being an entrepreneur is a bubble because so few people become very rich. Even failure teach you a lot (where failure would be defined as not becoming an academic in the PhD case).

DenisM2• 16 years ago

>Other than law (and we have too many of those, too)

What's wrong with the lawyer profession? Last I checked good corporate lawyers make $300-$500/hour. My inexpensive corporate attorney is somewhere around $250/hour I think. Good divorce laywers are impossible to find, and the ones that are there are spoiled they can afford not to return their clients calls for days and days.

There appears to be a serious shortage of those types of lawyers, and it's exactly good fit for the kind of people you described.

DenisM2• 16 years ago

Well, maybe I was wrong after all:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/01/you-know...

nostrademons• 16 years ago

Consultancies.

sfard• 16 years ago

Best economic use you ask? Well the whole point of the Economist article is that in most academic fields there's an incredible oversupply of PhDs. What's the use of a 1,000 houses in a town of 100 people?

Here's the source of the problem as I see it. The PhDs I know are largely risk intolerant and stay in academia because it's a comfortable way to pursue their passion. They're used to asking for permission and people evaluating them along very specific guidelines. When they enter the real or corporate world, they're used to this attitude of asking for permission to do things. They expect universities or corporations to find a use for their talent instead of architecting one themselves.

So what is their economic use? They need to figure that out. One solution would be to design a system that prepares them better for a world that's a lot more dynamic than their specific area of expertise might be.

kd0amg• 16 years ago

What's the use of a 1,000 houses in a town of 100 people?

I don't think we gain much by assuming that a person with a PhD is only good for one thing when trying to find another use for them.

ebiester5• 16 years ago

Let me rephrase: What are the best economic uses for highly intelligent, non-technical people, who are very good at sitting down, reading, and synthesizing information from a variety of sources? Most of the jobs that would be suggested are ones like law and journalism, both of whom are highly competitive as well. It's estimated that fewer than 400 people make a living off of fiction, and non-fiction in most cases is a field owned by academics.

Further, most auxiliary careers, such as political analysts, draw from academia.

So, if this is your top talent, you only have a few options, and other than law, academia actually is one of your best chances to use your top talent.

It's a bit like athletics in this society. If you are very strong and very fast, you have a very limited amount of economically viable options for you. The NBA is a long, long shot, but if you are 6'9 and fast, and that is your primary talent, what do you do?

hnhg• 16 years ago

Maybe your observation holds true for the majority, but in my case my PhD taught me how to be self-reliant, work autonomously, plan ahead and cope with a high workload. Now that I've switched to industry, I've found these qualities are serving me extremely well.

However, I've tried motivating some former colleagues to make the switch and they just won't so maybe you have a point. But I would refrain from stereotyping.

light3• 16 years ago

Write novels or do something related to history?

redthrowaway3• 16 years ago

Think tanks, if the degree is at all applicable.

Tichy• 16 years ago

Serving hot dogs and fries?

gyardley• 16 years ago

I left a PhD program in history and ended up working at a series of startups. Eventually, I founded one.

My cohort at school, on average, was smarter and harder-working than I was - I'm sure they could do exactly the same thing, if they wanted to. Or, for that matter, they could do anything else they wanted.

The issue isn't that there's no economic use for these people. The issue is that there's (close to) no economic use for what they really, really, really want to do.

slee029• 16 years ago

I think that "one thing" you identify is one of the most important abilities in determining business success. Those who refined their ability to properly communicate, think critically, and analyze problems have built a transferable skill set that cannot afford to be learned at the workplace. So in my opinion, they've got plenty of options. You could easily go the business consulting route where they specifically look for people with those traits and eventually have them specialize in some field. From there you could easily transfer to any industry job you specialize in for a comfortable living. The more ambitious could use those skills to build a startup and surround themselves with the right mix of a math or science backgrounds to create a business.

WalterBright• 16 years ago

When I was at Caltech, a number of students were interested in Astronomy and majored in it. They were well aware, though, that the chances of getting a job in Astronomy were exceedingly small. So they did the sensible thing - double majored. One was AY and was for fun, the other they expected to be able to get a job in.

alanpca• 16 years ago

This may be true of the Liberal Arts types of degrees, but where do you think the engineering fields stand?

Engineers and computer science PhD students don't typically have to rely on landing a professorship, as there are companies that hire the same individuals.

But, this definitely gives me something to think about as I start my MSc next week.

larsberg• 16 years ago

Further, at least in Computer Science, most of my fellow PhD students came in explicitly not interested in professor jobs. They just wanted the freedom to work on larger problems (in a research lab or at the higher levels in a company) that a PhD affords.

Now in my fourth year, I can say that there are very few of us who are even planning to do the tenure-track academic job hunt. More than there are jobs available (in the US), of course.

redthrowaway3• 16 years ago

I think CS is somewhat unique. Most of my professors got their MS, worked for a decade or two, then went back for their PhD and taught from there. In a way, it's great: most of my professors have fairly extensive real-world experience. Last semester my SENG prof was sick, so he got one of the CS profs to come in and talk to us about industry for a day. Here's a guy who was a software architect for some fairly large companies talking about his fuckups, and the stupid things he learned in school that he had to unlearn in the real world. I find having that kind of experience on tap to be eminently useful.

ajdecon• 16 years ago

It depends heavily on exactly which engineering field you're talking about, and what kinds of jobs. Engineering PhDs in non-computing fields (ie materials, mechanical, bio-, etc) are often faced with the dilemma of being overqualified for most of the jobs which may be hiring at any given time.

Most engineering jobs don't require anything like the research abilities in a PhD, and the candidate with a B.S. is a lot cheaper. R&D departments are a different story, but there are only so many R&D jobs to go around--especially if you're subject to any location or personal-relationship constraints.

mmaunder• 16 years ago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymsHLkB8u3s#t=3m24s

kijinbear2• 16 years ago

There would be a lot more academic jobs for Ph.D.s if colleges and universities hired as many professors as undergrads need. Unfortunately, this would cost a lot of money, so we're left with undergrads suffering gigantic classes and doctorates suffering joblessness.

javert2• 16 years ago

How many professors do undergrads "need"? I think we need to revamp the system to focus more on self-learning, and decrease the emphasis on lectures.

No point in having a super expert physics researcher tenured professor who hates teaching and can't teach worth shit teaching a bunch of students, when he could be doing his research and the students could be watching a recorded lecture of the same material from someone who likes teaching, over the internet (e.g. MIT's online course offerings).

pyre• 16 years ago

Even if you're into self-learning, having more professors to give one-on-one time with students that need help/questions answered could be a good thing.

te_chris2• 16 years ago

But then how could the students watching the recorded video ask questions of the lecturer? There are many problems with the way higher education is delivered, but i doubt video is the answer. There needs to be some sort of recognition and employment position created within academic institutions that doesn't punish academics because they enjoy teaching. Video lessons are not really that solution when you consider that this issue (lack of effective teachers at tertiary level and lack of encouragement for academic staff to be good teachers) is one primarily born out of the greed of academic institutions.

hugh33• 16 years ago

No point in having a super expert physics researcher tenured professor who hates teaching and can't teach worth shit teaching a bunch of students

Some of the best physics professors I ever had were super expert physics researcher tenured professors who hated teaching. They weren't quite as good as the super experts who liked teaching, but they were better than the ones loved teaching but didn't have nearly enough knowledge to go far beyond the coursework. And certainly a lot better than a video of the same material.

dustinupdyke• 16 years ago

Is it truly so black and white that one might say those in the humanities do not go into "industrial jobs"?

ojbyrne2• 16 years ago

This diagram (which I found here) probably sums up the importance and the frustration of Ph.D. programs better than I can:

http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

I'm ABD, Management, for what its worth.

St-Clock2• 16 years ago

Although this is a good representation of a Ph.D. contribution, I don't think this is the point of the current debate. I would be perfectly happy to have made a dent in the knowledge circle and I think it would be worth the sacrifice, from a knowledge perspective. The problem is that you sacrifice a lot to make that dent and you often don't see the benefits (e.g., an interesting job). It's another story for the supervisor though...

Create2• 16 years ago

...yeah. Who gets to keep the profit from the new territory that the student has conquered, literally risking his life? Who gets to claim ownership (in grant reports)?

NIL8• 16 years ago

The U.S. Occupational Outlook projections seem to say the exact opposite:

http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos066.htm#outlook

I would like to see a breakdown of careers to compare which occupations actually benefit from a PhD and which would benefit from a mixture of postsecondary education and some other complimentary training.

joe_the_user• 16 years ago

Shimers college, a great books college, had a tuition of $21,000/year in 2009–2010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimer_College

"Classes are exclusively small seminars in which students discuss original source material rather than read textbooks." Shimers is also rated among the top liberal arts schools in the country.

IE, education involving more attention from teachers can be cheaper than what now the standard in college education. The large university today is essentially a racket which takes undergraduate tuition to pay for the capital expenses (building-booms) and then tells the undergraduates how lucky they are to be there.

rmorrison• 16 years ago

There's a similar problem with law.

While there are attorneys who get jobs at big law and make $150k+ starting, a significant percentage of students entering law school this year will not get a positive return on investment over the course of their career.

{The cost of the law degree} + {The opportunity cost of not working for three years} > {the increased salary that they'll make over the remainder of their career}

EDIT: There were a bunch of articles floating around about this over the past year, here's one: http://www.abanet.org/lsd/legaled/value.pdf, or more recently http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/business/09law.html?src=bu...

Eliezer• 16 years ago

This surprises me. Citation needed?

miloshasan2• 16 years ago

I would expect that an oversupply of lawyers would make them cheaper to hire and nicer to deal with. If we instead have a small group of lawyers that are expensive and unpleasant, while a lot of younger graduates cannot find jobs, I'd expect there must be some powerful artificial barriers of entry created by the group of insiders, though I have no idea what they could be...

dagw• 16 years ago

I'm guessing it's because when you are hiring a lawyer it often means that at best millions of dollars or your entire livelihood is at stake and, at worst, your freedom or literally your life is at stake. In those situations most people aren't in a mood to bargain-hunt or take a risk with an unknown and untested product, if they have an option.

aridiculous2• 16 years ago

To put it in perspective, there is now a line out the door of experienced lawyers for public defenders jobs.

A friend of mine is in the top 20% of a top 20 law school and is hoping to hear back from American Samoa and rural Georgia districts. No one in his third year classes have jobs. Law school is a horrifying investment if you're not in the top 30% or so at a top 5 school.

Non-dischargeable student debt is a nightmare.

barry-cotter• 16 years ago

Top 20 Law School is not a real category, in much the same way that top 5 CS grad school is not a real category. In both cases there is a sub group that may change their internal rankings but which are reliably above the others. In CS the top 4 are CMU, MIT, Berekeley and Stanford. The second tier are not playing in the same league.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_school_rankings_in_the_Unit...

miloshasan2• 16 years ago

The premise that Ph.D. degrees are supposed to be mainly training for academic careers is wrong, at least in technical/engineering fields.

It is very common for people to enter e.g. CS or EE programs with no intention of pursuing an academic career, and instead planning to find an industry job afterwards. Indeed, there were some people I met in grad school that left well-paying jobs at (say) Microsoft with the intention of getting a Ph.D. and going back to industry to work on more interesting stuff. As far as I know, they usually succeeded.

Does a Ph.D. increase your expected salary, if you get an industry job afterwards? Probably not enough to be worth it. Does it raise the level of problems you will be solving, and the quality of people you will be surrounded with? Absolutely.

yason• 16 years ago

The PhD issue sounds like it's about gaming a system: merely trying to maximize yields from hard studying, assuming that the degrees have, or ought to have, an intrinsic value, and that value had better be somehow reflected economically and on the job/career markets.

It's all talked about as if there was some absolute value of a PhD that works the same for everyone. That there was a thing that would unilaterally be a good choice for just anyone who only can take it and carry it out.

But, in reality, the world has a different world for everyone.

In the real world, the valuations of events and choices and lessons aren't apparent, until perhaps later. The valuations don't necessarily come in terms of mere financial survival, like getting a job or getting more money. It's all dependent on the time, the place, the person, and the circumstances leading to the choices made and the lessons learned from them.

For example, for one man it might be absolutely golden to first start a PhD, then end up flunking out, internalize some of the facts of his life, and finally end up doing something different, something that is him even if it's not highly regarded in the careerwise or otherwise, in how we like to define "success". Yet, for another man, starting a PhD, finishing it, getting a top job, building a top-notch career for ten years might, in the scope of his life, be the worst possible choice that merely helped him to spend 15 years avoiding ever being challenged in his life's weak spots.

The former man has gone somewhere, the latter man has gone nowhere. A PhD is can be perfect if you can channel your life, your self and your creativity through it. A PhD can be worthless if you just do it for the sake of the degree.

liedra• 16 years ago

There seems to be a lot of generalisation going on in these sorts of articles. The situation in the US might be bad for humanities doctorates but if you're going into academia there's almost no chance you'll be able to find a job near where you grew up. You have to have an open mind and be willing to travel or diversify by finding applications of your chosen subject. Then it's down to networking, building your portfolio (publications), and creating your own research projects (taking advantage of things like early career research grants). People who succeed in academia make their own way, they don't wait for things to be handed to them on a silver platter.

InclinedPlane• 16 years ago

I think it's pretty certain there's a higher education bubble.

Consider, most higher wage jobs require a college degree, sometimes any degree. Many people attending college are doing so merely to better their career prospects. Non-trade school colleges actually do not teach much, on average, more so for non-technical degrees. It's getting easier and easier to obtain financing for higher education.

Overall we have the classic elements of a bubble. People "investing" (attending college) because of market rather than personal valuations. People investing more casually than they otherwise would because of easy financing. When people stop making investing decisions based on personal judgment and begin making investing decisions blindly based on what they think the market is doing the result is a bubble. It seems pretty clear the same thing is happening in higher education.

Create2• 16 years ago

No it is not idle chatter: and to make matters worse, some attempts to cure the situation just make it worse. For PhD-s, at least.

The European Commission is making an experiment within its FP-s (i.e. FP6) to introduce an "alternative" training after a BSc or MSc (doesn't matter which really), called Early Stage Training (EST). It is supposed to alleviate the overproduction of devaluated PhD-s, by proposing a "new and improved" alternative.

EST-s get all the upsides of a PhD programme: they are scheduled to conferences in advance (i.e. ACEOLE in IEEE, CHEP etc.) and don't really get their papers rejected (their supervisors - and coauthors - tend to be on Editorial Boards). They also get full pension during the training, 500€/month for training expenses (conferences). At the end, they are not required to write a thesis, and would be formally expected to go to work in the industry.

But. Already having the credentials in research (i.e. conf. attendances etc. on CV) EST-s can more easily stay in public research institutions, and if they bother to apply a dissertator (i.e. paperclip) to their 2-3 proceedings paper (which they don't need to write anyway), they can "get downgrade too", by handing it in for a PhD certificate (which committee would refuse an application containing 2-3 peer reviewed papers in a field?) It is also good for the supervisors, because FP WP-s are good money, can be turned to career benefits without the downside of inflating their own scientific grade peer pool.

And the doctoral students can only watch this through (on conferences too) and are expected to suck it up. Invest several years (no pension, min. salary, min. publication budget etc.) to be advised to go to Vegas in the end.

The PhD Problem: "Talk of a ‘higher education bubble’ may not be idle chatter”

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