Reimagining the PhD

by imartin2k • 7 years ago

211 104 7 years ago

Athas3• 7 years ago

A PhD is not required to do research, nor does research necessarily lead to a PhD. A PhD is ultimately like any other degree: a school programme where, at the end, some instituting is staking part of its reputation on giving the world a promise that you have some minimum competence in some field. Anything you learn in school, you can in principle learn on your own. (I have a PhD myself and I encourage everyone who has the opportunity to undergo formal schooling, but I'm well aware that not everybody wants to.)

There is one part of the article that is a bit confusing:

I was also told by one professor that it’d be “expected” for me to join faculty full-time after getting a PhD, which made me uncomfortable, because I knew I didn’t want to work in academia long-term.

Maybe some context is missing, but I'm a bit incredulous that anyone would believe this statement. A professor may train dozens of PhDs over his career, and if all were expected to join faculty, then the resulting exponential growth would cause the working population to be pretty much entirely university faculty.

keithwhor• 7 years ago

Maybe some context on my end is missing — but isn’t the last paragraph basically describing the current problem with academia? That’s exactly what people are being trained for, there is just not enough demand for PIs / Professors so bright-eyed optimistic researchers end up getting left up sh*t creek without a paddle after four to six years.

Athas3• 7 years ago

Can't speak for everyone, but for my PhD I was trained for doing research. What else would it be? That kind of research is (presumably) also useful in R&D positions in industry, and I certainly see most of the PhD graduates here eagerly hired by companies with advanced products. Actually, what I was not directly trained for is exactly what you need only in academia: writing grants, managing small teams, supervising students, and so on.

_Wintermute• 7 years ago

I think it depends on the field, I did my PhD in a biotech/drug-discovery lab where there was absolutely no expectation to continue in academia, in fact a post-doc in academia was viewed as pretty much the last option.

brazzy• 7 years ago

The problem is multifacted, but it's not the case that PhD students are trained to become professors. They are trained to become researchers. The problem is also not generally that PhD grads believe they will become professors and are completely lost when that does not happen - in many fields, a PhD gives you perfectly good job opportunities outside academia, in some it is almost mandatory.

The problems are:

* People who do become professors have spent years training to become good researchers, and very little (if any) time training to become good teachers. They're kind of expected to be pick it up along the way, which may or may not work well.

* Some people in academia still insist on the traditional idea that university should teach academic research and nothing else, and resist including anything that aims to better prepare students (and especially PhD students) for working in industry jobs, even though the vast majority of them will.

* There are some fields where there really are few job prospects outside academia, and logically those fields should have very few PhD students, or at least make it very clear to students that they need to have a Plan B that is really more Plan A. But Professors need PhD and postdoc students as cheap, qualified labor. Some unscrupulous professors try to attract students by giving them an unrealistic view of their prospects in academia. They probably don't even think they're lying: see the previous point. This kind of thing is probably most common in fields like literature which combine bad job prospects with being very popular.

query16• 7 years ago

I agree, this isn’t true (especially in CS!). During my PhD, students in my cohort frequently had opportunities to talk to (and work with) people in industry. It’s not as disconnected as it may seem.

musicale• 7 years ago

Precisely - that would be an unsustainable pyramid.

The supply of Ph.D. graduates is much larger than the number of faculty job openings, which can attract hundreds of applicants for a single position. Winning the faculty lottery is extremely unlikely.

romwell4• 7 years ago

And nevertheless, plenty of faculty preach the belief that if you don't stay in academia, you are a failure.

At least that's the case in mathematics. People who leave academia are spoken of as if they are dead, which might as well be the case: most stop doing mathematics, attending conferences, keep connections with peers, etc.

This attitude has only began to change in the last decade.

arethuza4• 7 years ago

A lot of industries are like that though, "up or out" being the usual description - not everyone in law becomes a partner at a decent firm but there is no shortage of lawyers.

arkano4• 7 years ago

I agree with everything, but

Anything you learn in school, you can in principle learn on your own.

I think this statement is lacking some truth. We can rewrite it as:

Anything you learn in school, you can in principle learn on your own, but it can take significantly more time and there's no guarantee of consistency (compared to someone learning with a teacher).
some instituting is staking part of its reputation on giving the world a promise that you have some minimum competence in some field.

Yes, and part of this process is having your work peer-reviewed as novel by active researchers in the field of interest (and getting advice/corrections from them along the way to the finish). I see this as an integral part of the process.

m0zg2• 7 years ago

> it can take significantly more time

It can also take significantly less time. I'm not sure the traditional lecture in front of a blackboard approach is relevant nowadays.

> there's no guarantee of consistency

There's no guarantee of that in any case.

I think the main value of the PhD is being in general proximity to, and collaborating with people interested in the same field. I'm not sure, however, if college is strictly speaking necessary for that in the third decade of the 21st century.

pingyong2• 7 years ago

Anything you learn in school, you can in principle learn on your own, but it can take significantly more time and there's no guarantee of consistency (compared to someone learning with a teacher).

So, honest question, did you guys really learn anything directly from a teacher? I've gone through high school (obviously) and university but everything I've learned has been at home by reading about it (or simply practicing to become fast enough). The lectures tended to only touch the absolute basic concepts, and the actual learning you had to do at home. Maybe it had to do with the lectures being in giant halls with little to no interaction with the prof in most cases, and that probably changes if you're doing a PhD (or just go to a different university), but even during high school I pretty much never learned anything of note directly from a teacher. So if anything, it would have been significantly faster and more efficient for me to just get a list of topics to learn instead of sitting in class.

As for consistency, my friends from a different university learned in some cases completely different things. If we compare strictly what was discussed in class or required to pass tests, there would be surprisingly little overlap. (And neither overlapped very much with actual programming.) Even courses with essentially the same topic would often differ greatly in content, as the professor usually decided which particular things to focus on. Which is completely fine I mean you can't go in-depth into everything, but this notion of consistency is kind of funny to me when the same degree from different universities (sometimes even the same university just a few years apart with different professors) can mean completely different skill sets. And then of course if your have a CS degree and want to work as a developer, from my experience you have to learn the actual programming pretty much 95% on your own anyway, as most courses focus on purely theoretical topics, and programming simply requires a lot of practice.

bigred1002• 7 years ago

I can’t imagine any circumstance other than a Ph.D program where someone spends 5+ years studying in depth some tiny area of science and practicing research. And without doing that I’m having trouble believing almost anyone will do serious research. There are a few people who did it but to me that is extraordinarily unlikely.

superhuzza• 7 years ago

Agreed, those people are few and far between. Even if your job is fairly stable, you'll more likely work 'around' a problem more than a deep dive into a very specific problem.

minkzilla2• 7 years ago

Unless it is your job. There are plenty of research jobs depending on your field.

bailefunk• 7 years ago

I have a PhD too, and I felt I was expected to join academia after finishing my PhD. My supervisor treats me a bit like a "wasted talent" for getting a job in industry. Professors get reputation points when students become professors, in addition to expanding their influence in the field, as junior professors will still seek them for advice and will occupy strategic positions in academia. Some of my friends have told me they feel the same, and know a PhD student who is being discouraged from applying to teaching positions when she finishes, even though she feels that's her calling. There's a sense that teaching positions in academia are even lesser than a research position in industry.

bitL• 7 years ago

MS is the new BS and PhD is the new MS in the eyes of employers. You need a PhD or even a combo with MBA for certain jobs that used to require just MS these days.

jessriedel• 7 years ago

A PhD is ultimately like any other degree: a school programme where, at the end, some instituting is staking part of its reputation on giving the world a promise that you have some minimum competence in some field. Anything you learn in school, you can in principle learn on your own.

No, this neglects perhaps the most important aspect of a PhD: it is an apprenticeship with a professional researcher. Learning through apprenticeship is the most ancient and still often most effective methods of learning complicated skills. It is reasonable to dispute the value of accreditation from a university -- that's a practical question, and indeed strict university accreditation is relatively modern -- but it's not reasonable to think that anything you can learn in "school" can be learned on your own.

PeterisP2• 7 years ago

As far as I see, PhD isn't really about studying or schooling - unlike all the previous school programmes, it's essentially an "apprentice researcher" job, where you work on research (possibly studying whatever you need for it), you get given some supervision by a more experienced researcher and once you demonstrate that you're capable of independent research by doing some and writing it up, you get a degree certificate. And it's not necessarily about some institution staking its reputation on it, the main evaluation of your research would be by external peer reviewers looking at your publications, not by your institution alone.

A PhD is not required to do research, but research is (or should be) required to get a PhD, and research done outside an university program would generally be sufficient to get a PhD - there are paths to get a PhD degree mostly based on existing publications or based on a 'monograph' such as the research-based book that the OP has written. Learning and schooling alone, on the other hand, is not sufficient for a proper PhD; if you've learned everything that's known and published on some topic, that's not enough, you need to make at least some novel contribution.

avaku• 7 years ago

> not everybody wants to

not everybody has an opportunity to

abdullahkhalids3• 7 years ago

I have a PhD. A PhD is just a certification that you have depth and breadth around a topic at an expert level. An expert of a topic is someone who has the skills and knowledge to evaluate someone else's work on the topic, and who can themselves do novel work on that topic or nearby.

As with all certifications from dog-training to fighter jet pilot, PhD certifications have both false positives and false negatives. Meaning, it is entirely possible to get expert levels on a topic without getting the PhD certificate. But the reason people insist that you get a PhD is because they don't want to get into the whole argument of whether you really are an expert. Otherwise, there is no reason to get a PhD. If you can convince people that you are indeed an expert without the PhD certificate, good for you. If not, sucks to be you.

ronilan• 7 years ago

If you can convince people that you are indeed an expert without the PhD certificate, good for you. If not, sucks to be you.

Dude, chill, you can just be an expert on a subject without giving a damn about what other people think. It’s an option. Give it a try

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pm90• 7 years ago

It really sucks to be an expert but then not be able to get others to take your expertise seriously. We can do a lot of things on our own, but we're all social beings who do need to interact with others around us.

It does really suck to be an expert but then be ignored or shunned by the people you consider your peers.

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4k05• 7 years ago

Exactly! But that was the point made, right? Regardless of your credentials you should be able to convince people that you are an expert in a field. If you can prove your expertise only through credentials and not actual expert knowledge that is the "false positive" mentioned in the comment.

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hmwhy• 7 years ago

I think the OP is pretty chill and doesn't mean that having a PhD is equivalent to being technically superior (see the following quote).

... Meaning, it is entirely possible to get expert levels on a topic without getting the PhD certificate.

If I'm not mistaken, for the part that you quoted, the OP is pointing out that there are many people who assess whether or not you are an expert they are looking for base on just a piece of paper, regardless of whether or not your skills in that area is that expected of an expert.

When you are looking for a job, whether you give a damn or not doesn't matter, it's whether or not the interviewer gives a damn that matters—and I feel that most of them don't.

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abdullahkhalids3• 7 years ago

As others have pointed out, I 100% agree with not giving a damn at an emotional level what other people think. I also think that proving how good you are is an essential part of getting a job, or being a intellectual leader etc.

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diffeomorphism• 7 years ago

It also shows that you had the persistence and self-motivation to work hard on a big project for multiple years and are able to learn a new topic to mastery and further.

Sure, you are then also the world's leading expert on <extremely narrow topic of your thesis>, but most of all a PhD shows that you are able to do research.

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quietbritishjim• 7 years ago

A PhD is just a certification that you have depth and breadth around a topic at an expert level.

I have a PhD (in pure mathematics), and I disagree with this statement. It does not explicitly include the words "knowledge" or "learning" but I they're implied by "depth and breadth". But a masters is sufficient to show that you are capable of learning a lot of existing knowledge (and have actually done so).

The key distinction about a PhD, in my mind at least, is that it is a certification that you are capable of inventing new knowledge.

Generally, yes, you need to have learnt a lot of existing knowledge to do that but it is not strictly required and in any case certainly not the point.

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abdullahkhalids3• 7 years ago

In a way I agree with what you are saying, that the differential new skills that a PhD provides over a Masters is the ability to invent new knowledge and/or assess the claimed new knowledge of others. But, to get a PhD, you have to get a Masters first (or do Masters equivalent work in the first 2 years of your PhD program).

In effect, once someone has a PhD certificate, they can throw away their Masters certificate, since the PhD certificate guarantees that they also have sufficient breadth of knowledge + new-knowledge-invention skills.

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jamessb• 7 years ago

I disagree with both of you: having "learnt a lot of existing knowledge" is explicitly required; and the PhD does not just certify "depth and breadth" of knowledge - it also certifies that you have made an original contribution to knowledge.

The General Regulations for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy [1] at the University of Oxford require the examiner's report to confirm that:

"1. the student possesses a good general knowledge of the particular field of learning within which the subject of the thesis falls;

2. the student has made a significant and substantial contribution in the particular field of learning within which the subject of the thesis falls;

3. the thesis is presented in a lucid and scholarly manner;

4. in their opinion the thesis merits the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy;

5. the student has presented a satisfactory abstract of the thesis."

Similarly, the regulations from the University of Cambridge [2] require both that "a candidate wishing to proceed to the Ph.D. Degree under these regulations shall be required to give proof of a significant contribution to scholarship" and that their oral examination will cover "the general field of knowledge within which it falls" (not just the thesis itself).

[1] https://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/examregs/2014-15/grftdodoctofphil...

[2] http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/univ/so/2019/chapter07-section13....

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thomasahle• 7 years ago

Cambridge awarded Aubrey de Grey a PhD in biology based on his book on the mitochondrial theory of aging.

Both Cambridge and Oxford will consider works of their former undergraduates for PhD's, and arrange formal defences.

This seems like an entirely fair system. Some people end up doing real research without having participated in a PhD program, and it seems natural to then let them defend that as a thesis.

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ISL• 7 years ago

That is very cool -- I've not seen that done before, but done right, it is a wonderful idea.

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dewy• 7 years ago

And Martin Kleppman got his PhD based in part on Designing Data Intensive Applications.

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kwhitefoot• 7 years ago

As far as I can tell a European, and more specifically UK, PhD is a rather different animal than a US PhD. Much shorter elapsed time for a start.

I suspect that most people commenting are assuming that the system they are most familiar with is universal, including the author of the article.

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knzhou• 7 years ago

It's funny how experiences can differ so much -- academia really varies a lot. There's all this talk about what a PhD really means as a credential, while I've never thought about it that way.

In my corner of physics, a PhD just doesn't work as a credential: it cannot be used to impress anybody in industry because my field has no near-term applications. What matters is the PhD process, a period of relatively stable funding where you can focus on learning and research without interruption. Some people even fight their advisors to get their PhD degree later, because it marks the end of that stable period and the start of the rat race for postdoc and faculty positions.

In other words, the value of the PhD is entirely in the space it gives you to think about something you love. Bickering over who deserves the title of PhD seems to miss the point.

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mnky9800n• 7 years ago

even this can lead to problems. i entered my phd after working in the field for several years as a research scientist. because of my experience i have been put in charge of internships, advising many masters students, organizing workshops, etc. all on top of the research im supposed to spend my time doing. this is all okay i suppose, because i've been able to be a very productive phd in addition to everything else ive done. but my phd compatriots have a lot more time in their days to pursue their interests in comparison to me. i hate it when people say a person is "too old" to do a phd, but I think there is a place where you may be too experienced and it would be better to do a phd in another field you find fascinating but have no experience in.

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aspaceman• 7 years ago

This is extremely different. From what I've heard, physics and mathematics are much better at shielding their students from a lot of the bad stuff in academia till later. Which is good in some ways and bad in others I suppose.

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stared3• 7 years ago

I think this thing is the key:

"As an independent researcher, you don’t have those constraints, so you can focus on creating whatever artifacts you think will best reach your target audience (which might also mean academic papers, by the way!). I was mildly afraid of GitHub when I started, but I learned that open source developers use GitHub repositories for discussions, so I published some of my work that way. (A few other examples I like: Nicky Case publishes her ideas as games, and Michael Nielsen and Andy Matuschak are writing about quantum computing in an interactive readable format designed to improve retention.)"

We can redefine progress. Current academia is conservative, at least when it comes to what counts as work and progress, what as a distraction (sadly, almost all didactics and outreach counts as "distraction" for researchers).

Personally, after (kind of) leaving academia, I can focus much more on various media that wouldn't be recognized.

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moralestapia• 7 years ago

I know the author is well intended and in the end it's her opinion after all. But many of the points she raises are naive when viewed from the point of view of someone who is inside academia. Someone going through a PhD could write a wildly different opinion. In the end it's opinions all the way down, but if you want to "re-imagine" this whole thing you need to start with a much broader vision.

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graycat• 7 years ago

At least one famous research university states that (1) a Ph.D. requires the student to write a dissertation; (2) a dissertation is an original contribution to knowledge worthy of publication; (3) the dissertation will be judged by a committee with the chair and the majority outside of the student's department; (4) there is no coursework requirement for a Ph.D. Individual departments may have additional requirements, e.g., qualifying exams.

More generally a common statement of work being worthy of publication is that it be "new, correct, and significant".

Good research universities insist that their new assistant professors be actively publishing. Since not all of those professors have much success publishing, there do tend to be openings.

In some fields, people with good publication records can find jobs.

Some of what helps for a career as a professor: (i) Have teaching well enough organized that can do well teaching large, popular sections -- this teaching productivity helps the finances of the university. (ii) Be able to get research grants -- this also helps the finances of the university. (iii) Get a reputation as a leader in a popular field and, thus, contribute to the reputation of the university, which helps the university get gifts and, thus, also helps the finances of the university. (iv) Be successful at producing Ph.D. students that get good jobs. (v) Do well serving on committees. (vi) Don't be mean to students. (vii) Avoid politics and hanky panky.

For the OP, she (a) is finishing a book and (b) has been successful getting research grants. If the book can be judged to have content that is "new, correct, and significant", then she will have met the requirement "an original contribution to knowledge worthy of publication". In that case she may be well on her way to a Ph.D. in some good research universities.

There is an example: In the field of computational complexity in computer science, an algorithm that has polynomial time complexity is regarded as a good algorithm. This definition was from J. Edmonds. IIRC he had been a graduate student at the University of Maryland, left for a job, and published his research on network flows. The story is that, then, some of his former professors at the University of Maryland approached him and suggested, essentially, that if he took his papers, put them in a stack, and put a staple in the upper left corner, then they would accept that stack as his dissertation and grant him a Ph.D.

So, the story in the OP is not a fully new or strange as a way to get a Ph.D.

Colleges and universities like their professors to have Ph.D. degrees if only because that helps with accreditation.

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physicsyogi• 7 years ago

if he took his papers, put them in a stack, and put a staple in the upper left corner, then they would accept that stack as his dissertation

When I was finishing my PhD, my advisor pulled out his dissertation to show me what it looked like. It was literally his papers sandwiched between the covers.

(Edit: formatting)

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trentlott• 7 years ago

Yeah, that's kinda how it works.

If you're lucky you publish 2 - 3 papers in your PhD career along a similar topic. Stick those in and coheretize them with an introduction and a conclusion.

Those whose fields are less productive or who are in groups which don't publish very much will have a harder time getting their final bit written...but it isn't exactly supposed to be easy.

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TheYellowKing• 7 years ago

I tried getting a PHD but it was just too much, the lecturers weren't friendly, there was little return value. Of course, I went for PhD of contemporary philosophy, but I expected way more. Philosophers just hate each other because they're close minded and believe only in themselves.

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salty_biscuits• 7 years ago

My favorite story about researchers getting by without phds is about Lars Onsager, quoted from his Wikipedia article

At Yale, an embarrassing situation occurred: he had been hired as a postdoctoral fellow, but it was discovered that he had never received a Ph.D. While he had submitted an outline of his work in reciprocal relations to the Norwegian Institute of Technology, they had decided it was too incomplete to qualify as a doctoral dissertation. He was told that he could submit one of his published papers to the Yale faculty as a dissertation, but insisted on doing a new research project instead. His dissertation, entitled, "Solutions of the Mathieu equation of period 4 pi and certain related functions", was beyond the comprehension of the chemistry and physics faculty, and only when some members of the mathematics department, including the chairman, insisted that the work was good enough that they would grant the doctorate if the chemistry department would not, was he granted a Ph.D. in chemistry in 1935.

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jillesvangurp• 7 years ago

A PhD. simply is recognition from an accredited institution for research work you have done. It used to be quite common for people to get one towards the end of their careers: you'd work your entire life as e.g. a teacher and then write a dissertation on your learnings.

Albert Einstein was not even working for a university when he developed his general theory of relativity. That only happened after he published some ground breaking papers while working as a patent examiner (1905). The university where he studied a few years earlier wasted no time awarding him a Ph. D. for that.

The point is that a Ph. D. does not have to be a prep school for wannabe researchers where after a few years some committee decides that you've done at least the bare minimum but an acknowledgement that somebody is a researcher by their peers for work they've done. Many universities have honory doctorates for this but focus too much on nurturing their own students to a PhD. instead of reaching out to their former students and looking at what they have done.

E.g John Carmack dropped out of college but his work in 3D algorithms and moving that field forward technically is undeniable and I can't really think of many people more capable of speaking on that topic authoritatively. I could imagine that being worthy of a PhD. Likewise there are many others that busy themselves with OSS work, standardization, ground breaking algorithms, etc. that are producing lots of written work, patents, standards, etc. that are recognized authorities in their fields that don't have PhDs.

I happen to have done a PhD. the more conventional way (i.e. straight after my Msc.). Since getting my PhD. 16 years ago, I've gradually moved away from doing research. At this point, I've not published anything in ten years and would definitely not call myself a researcher. I can't deny a certain level of impostors syndrome. I'm certainly no Albert Einstein.

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k__• 7 years ago

Isn't it also a bit more strictly defined in angelo saxon countries?

I had the impression, in Germany it's "research some stuff" and you are basically left on your own. Other countries had a real program, that was like a master program just more research related.

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bonoboTP• 7 years ago

Exactly. In Germany there is no "grad school" or "grad students". You get hired directly by a prof to work in their department as a researcher/research assistant ("scientific employee/colleague") and indeed "research some stuff", work on industry collaboration projects, supervise student theses and so on. If you can publish a few papers about that stuff at relevant places, you can write it up and defend your thesis.

There's no "program" to speak of, no bureaucratic application procedure, no handholding.

But the differences start even earlier: in Germany even bachelor and master students are supposed to be rather responsible individual adults, than in Anglo countries. For example it's largely up to students to attend lectures or not, there's little homework, little to do during the semester. You can decide to take or drop courses deep into the semester, then take exams. If you prefer to work during most of the semester and cram everything into the exam period, it's up to you. The opposite is called "verschult" ("schoolized") and has pejorative connotations.

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Gatsky• 7 years ago

This isn’t reimaganing, this is about increasing the number of people with PhDs, which is surely a step in the wrong direction. PhDs are an incredibly wasteful endeavour, consuming huge amounts of time and human spirit for unclear benefits, under circumstances that invite exploitation.

In case you can’t tell, I’m currently trying to finish my dissertation.

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turk73• 7 years ago

Love the citations at the end of the blog article.

Getting a PhD was a waste for me, but I loved it anyways. It's been a liability for my career and it cost me ~5 years of income. I am older than my managers, and just a misfit overall.

Why did I leave academia? Well, there was this recession you see...but that was just the first part of the problem. A huge issue was how long it takes to get hired anywhere unless you're some top notch Harvard guy, it sucks, especially when you're broke. Then there was the realization that I could immediately see 2X the income just being a software engineer with evenings and weekends to myself pretty much.

Once I did the math, my academic career was immediately over. Broke, mentally exhausted, five years behind in income, not politically aligned with typical far left policies, sick of the campus lifestyle (beer, no parking, broken glass, property crime).

For me, it was called "growing up" to leave academia. I loved writing papers and articles and was getting into books, but it just didn't pencil out as a career goes. I think only independently wealthy or perhaps the really elite Ivy League types should even bother.

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huherto• 7 years ago

It seems to me that there was a time that a lot of the Software Engineering work was contributed by Universities. Operating Systems, Databases, Compilers, Networks, etc. Examples that come to my mind are UCSD Pascal, Unix Berkley, Ingres at Berkley, Kermit Project at Columbia. I don't see that any more. You should be able to get a PHD by designing and implementing a state of the art piece of software. Even google was started as part of a research project I think.

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playing_colours5• 7 years ago

Is there a way to get PhD in Mathematics for a working individual, without leaving the job?

Suppose, I have a solid dedication, can allocate time for studying at home (20-30 hrs / week), have passion and brains for research.

1. Are there any universities that support distance PhD in Pure Maths? Also, I can visit a university regularly (a few times a year).

2. Or is there a way to do research somehow independently from a university (for my maths I do not need Hadron Collider), but have a mentor, reviewer (I can pay for their service)? Or work collaboratively within a group? Can such research, if it is on the level of PhD, allow some institution (Cambridge?) give me a PhD degree, as a rule not an exceptional case?

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pacbard• 7 years ago

There is much more to a PhD than research output. The unwritten curriculum of a PhD program is to introduce the student to the field of research through apprenticeship. For example, you hear people talk more about who your dissertation advisor was than what your dissertation was about. Writing a dissertation requires more than just "brains". It's about building relationships with professors that serve on the committee, learning how to manage feedback, and navigate the other aspects of academic life. If publications is all it matters, universities would just give out degrees based on published papers alone but few institutions do (at least in the US. I don't know how it works in the EU).

As you point out, sometimes enrolling in a PhD gives you access to a well-equipped lab that is necessary to do the work. Most research in the physical sciences requires that kind of set up. I am in the social sciences so it's not a lab science. I could have written the papers I am writing in my garage but I don't think that the experience would have been the same as being a PhD student.

By the way, at least in the US, there are a lot of research staff that works on research projects and publishes without having completed a PhD program. They probably have more knowledge than some PhD in the same field.

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j7ake• 7 years ago

In general academia is competitive and productivity matters. You are evaluated relative to other academics at similar stages of their career.

Finding a good mentor will be tough if you cannot commit full time. Advisors basically have to decide which students Will have their limited time for mentoring.

So you’re competing with full time students who often have no family and willing to work every waking hour of their life.

I think going part time route will depend on how much more productive you think you can be compared to other PhD students.

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stared3• 7 years ago

And what is your motivation?

If you want to learn mathematics, you don't need to have PhD. If you want to go through the academic career line, you need to dedicate much more than part-time-job equivalent.

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playing_colours5• 7 years ago

1. I want to work in industry in research departments and deep tech products. For most positions, having deep knowledge will not be enough and PhD grade is expected: to pass the filter.

2. I want to explore some topics in depth, contribute, and get regular feedback, mentorship - basically, have an advisor.

I do not want to stay in university, fight for places there, I do not need grants - I want accredited expertise that can open some doors.

It seems like there are quite a lot of people in similar situations, and despite all the progress in online education, increasing academic requirements from many employees, requirements for life long learning our advanced education system cannot support different paths to accredited degrees and research.

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pxhb• 7 years ago

In my opinion no to both question (at least for US universities). It is not too uncommon however to have some alternative arrangement once you are well into your PhD, however. For example, some students will consult part time while doing a PhD, or spend the time writing the thesis in a different country.

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egyptiankarim• 7 years ago

A PhD is intended to demonstrate that a person is capable of pursuing a course of research within a field of study, and has a mastery of the existing knowledge and pertinent skills/methodologies.

Unfortunately, in some fields, the PhD has sadly become a form of lazy gatekeeping, and reimagining the PhD in those cases may just be a matter of waiting for the old guard to step down.

In some other fields, the PhD is probably ripe for reimagining, but "independence" might not be the right lens through which to think about it. For example, it would be exceedingly difficult for a would-be physicist to independently build a large hadron collider to do their research with. The institutions that make those sorts of resources even possible are inherently large/complex, and in those cases the PhD is a less sad and lazy form of gatekeeping (i.e., you need to do a set of progressively more complex stuff under the tutelage of someone more experienced before we let you touch all of our big expensive things).

In yet some other fields, which may be younger, have less of an established orthodoxy, and lower overhead to participate in (e.g., the economic/anthropological open source software type work the author does), it seems totally reasonable that a person could develop and demonstrate their knowledge, skills, and abilities on their own and without a formal course of study. In such fields, the concept of the PhD doesn't seem as ready for reimagining as it does retirement.

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anticensor• 7 years ago

Yes, a Doctorate of Arts in Software Development would be more appropriate.

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parsimo20102• 7 years ago

As a PhD candidate right now, after having spent seven years with an M.S. and doing "independent learning" and thinking that it was giving me the same growth- I can tell you right now that it isn't the same. This may vary for different fields of study, and it may vary for different people, but I think my experience will hold true for most people.

Spending time doing independent learning, even if you have given yourself some structure, misses some of the important things you get in a PhD program. Your advisor guides you, but they also challenge you. They hold you accountable. Some people may be able to challenge themselves, but most people don't have the necessary experience to know the difference between a "cool hack" and novel research. Your advisor has more experience and can tell you what is worth pursuing. Plus, to complete a PhD you have to do all the requirements- even the stuff you don't like. A self-structured independent study program is probably going to be light on the stuff that you don't find fun.

There are a lot of downsides to doing a PhD, and I'm not saying that it's for everyone. Independent study is fine. But I'm going to look skeptically at anyone who thinks their own independent study program is the equivalent of a PhD. I would probably be less skeptical if their independent study resulted in publishing a few peer-reviewed journal articles. The title of PhD doesn't just signal that you are capable of learning, it's also a signal that you can work within the current research environment, have your work accepted by other experts in the field, and in general just do a bunch of "intangibles" that aren't signaled by you working on your own.

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poplarstand• 7 years ago

You seem to have had a very successful PhD experience. You write approvingly of your advisor, acknowledge the ways in which the program benefited you, and have respect for peer-reviewed literature.

That being said, I'm not sure that your experiences are typical. HN regularly has commenters and posters that have been disappointed by their forays in academia. One recent example was posted only two days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21740833

I imagine that a good PhD program is, by definition, likely to be beneficial. Probably above "independent learning" by leagues. However, it's worth considering what an average-case or worst-case PhD program looks like. Those may not compare as favorably to "independent learning".

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theamk• 7 years ago

The other link is about "philosophy PhD". This seems to be the big difference -- when I talk to non-CS PhD students, they often seem to have much harder time and worse conditions that CS ones.

My theory is because of all the opportunities. At least in CS, there is no problem in finding the job with "incomplete phd", and such jobs usually have a much higher salary than PhD stipend. This means that if you don't like PhD, you just leave -- and income increase associated with such action makes it really simple.

From what I understand, this is not the case for non-CS PhD specialties.

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joker3• 7 years ago

I had a terrible time in academia and I'll agree with everything that the OP wrote.

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parsimo20102• 7 years ago

Having talked to many PhDs, candidates, and students from other schools at conferences, I'd say that my experience is typical, at least for quantitative fields like math/stats/CS/engineering. Most of the horror stories that get thrown around the internet are from a vocal minority. You're far more likely to speak up if you had a bad experience and feel strongly about it. And it's not always the student's fault, but there are a lot of people that choose to do a PhD and drop out because they weren't a good fit. It's hard to tell the difference between a bad fit and a toxic program when you only hear one side of the story and can't ask their peers if they are exaggerating things to make themselves sound good.

Most PhD programs are small, and most advisors aren't famous academics. They are generally good people, but there are a few wackos (that's why it's important to have a few conversations before picking an advisor). The "typical" PhD is probably glad to be done, but isn't chomping at the bit for a second one. Nearly all will admit to stress during the program- with qualifying exams, comprehensive exams, and proposing/writing/defending a dissertation, you're bound to feel stress.

The jokes about being a "grad slave" are pretty common, but an advisor delaying a student's graduation because of the cheap labor is much less common. People claiming to be a grad slave to cover up their slow pace are probably more common. If a student actually has a strong case that a professor won't let them defend, then the word usually gets out and that professor will have a hard time finding more students (more reasons to have lots of conversations before choosing and advisor and committee).

And I definitely don't think that the peer review process is perfect, but it is more rigorous than publishing a blog post about something you learned. Not publishing isn't a deal breaker, but it's evidence of doing something. I trust the research skills of an M.S. that has a couple peer reviewed articles published more than an M.S. that has claimed to have done a self study program but has nothing to show for it.

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pnathan• 7 years ago

Strong agree. Also having a Masters, and also being a very serious independent learner, there is simply no equivalence. Similarities, but no equivalence.

Different pros, different cons, different approach, different result. Still get to learn interesting things, still wind up wandering through nifty spaces.

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commandlinefan• 7 years ago

This is a good defense of a college education in general (on a discussion board that questions the value of one pretty regularly).

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bohorqne• 7 years ago

This article reminds me of the book "How to get a PhD" by E. Phillips and D. Pugh.

A PhD program is a training process on how to become and independent researcher. * Just like the word "theory", the word "research" has different meanings in academic and non-academic settings. A research work in academia is an original contribution to a specific field that meets certain criteria of: writing and technical rigor, objectivity and completeness. It is the community of that field who judges your work on these criteria. * What constitutes a research question is a hard problem (you need to compute your cost of opportunity: time, complexity, resources and impact) that only comes with experience. Choose badly and you might end up empty-handed after many years of work. At the beginning you rely on your advisor for guidance on this but with time you begin to smell the low hanging fruits and proceed with certain "independence".

Regarding the article, it is not clear whether the OP made a comprehensive review on the relevant and related literature. Without that, no research question can even begin to be formulated. No research is completely isolated from what has been already done and it is the job of the student to identify where it "fits". If it is really a completely novel subject then I would strongly discourage the OP from working on it if she were to do it in the context of a PhD program, for her own good and sanity.

Of course, this is not to say that her work has no value (it might have even more value that what she could have done in academia) but that is not the point. It does not mean either that academics are the only people who can do research. It means that you cannot obtain a PhD without the guidance of someone who has gone through the process of obtaining a PhD and has many years of independent research experience.

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Reimagining the PhD

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