Computer Science PhD trends

http://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/42007984829/computer-science-phd-trends

by gandalfgeek • 13 years ago

108 57 13 years ago

blog.vivekhaldar.com

siculars• 13 years ago

Hear, hear on point 3. The fact that our immigration policy is so screwed that we actively disuade PhD candidates from staying here in the USA is an absolute disgrace. Taking into account that in most cases those PhD candidates are fully funded by taxpayer dollars, one might think policymakers are actively taking money from foreign nations to maintain the status quo.

eshvk6• 13 years ago

I am not convinced it is incredibly hard for a tech PhD student who has done quality research from a good school to stay in the U.S. There are two options currently:

1. EB-1: A visa given to an alien of extraordinary ability. The requirements for this are complex but a person with a decent lawyer should be able to navigate them provided the person has access to enough people in academia and industry who vouch that this person is of extraordinary ability.

2. EB-2: Employment sponsorship. Both academic institutions and industry have a standard practice of sponsoring people who have done any form of grad. school to a path that involves a green card.

Now, sure, 1) has overly bizarre documentation requirements (like for example requiring that one print out every paper that one has written and send it to USCIS) and 2) takes way too long for people born in India and China. This of course requires reform in a fair manner that takes into account other constraints like making sure that immigration doesn't become top heavy from two nations.

The sequoia capital article talks about foreign born students getting ejected. Do we have any quantitative data on how many of them are really being ejected? ( Acquiring a H1B visa to work in the United States is not hard. When, I (a foreign born student) graduated and applied for an H1B visa, it took ten days for it to get approved. ) Have there been surveys done on people who have voluntarily left for personal reasons vs. people who left because of this issue?

seanmcdirmid• 13 years ago

I have never known an international grad student, even if they do not finish the program, to be forced back after. Actually, I don't know anyone that actually did went back without getting a green card first.

luser001• 13 years ago

You can do EB-1, EB-2 only if you first acquire a H-1B visa. Wrt which you wrote: "Acquiring a H1B visa to work in the United States is not hard. When, I (a foreign born student) graduated and applied for an H1B visa, it took ten days for it to get approved."

Actually, the difficulty varies from year to year and from company to company and from subfield to subfield. So yes, people do suffer from the status quo.

Just throwing this info here in the interest of completeness.

geebee• 13 years ago

I have a different perspective on point 3.

Before getting into it, I'll say that I agree on policy. It is pretty dumb to send CS PhD recipients from reputable universities home, or force them to go through the idiocy of temporary work visas with dual intent to remain in the us. It makes more sense to just grant residency.

I just have a very, very different opinion about the rest of this.

First, I think that PhD programs in the sciences are generally a poor return on investment relative to other options (the professional degrees, in particular). Here's a link to a RAND study that concludes that the American allergy to STEM PhD's is rational and market-driven.

http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html

My guess would be that PhDs in CS are a better investment than science degrees in the aggregate. However, PhD degrees in CS still have sky high attrition rates and time to completion compared to the professions, and salary and employment prospects long term for top students who could attend elite law, medical, business, or other professional schools are still better than what is offered by PhD programs.

In short, I think that any "shortage", to the extent that it exists, is market driven and rational. PhD programs need to face a reckoning, and they need to change. The RAND study makes some good suggestions, but PhD programs won't change if they can position themselves as gatekeepers to US residency. They'll just wave goodbye to the Americans who already have residency and don't have to go through this bullshit, and continue their abuse of students who have fewer legal options to reside here.

This brings me to my next disagreement - that PhD students make up the costs of their scholarship "to some extent." I think this is a vast understatement. Talented PhD students in STEM fields are profit centers for universities. The work product of a 5th year PhD student in a biochemistry lab vastly exceeds the minor stipend this student is paid. This is why PhD programs like to string out their students. It's a big reason for why they won't move to the professional model (advocated by the RAND study).

In short, I hold opposing positions here, depending on which perspective I take. Yes, PhD graduates from STEM programs should be granted residency, it's nuts to send them home or force them to jump through hoops. No, PhD programs should not, under any circumstances, hold the power to grant residency to international students. They will abuse this - they already do.

phalina• 13 years ago

What do the other 46% do?

msellout• 13 years ago

Depending on how he's defined industry, I suppose the only things left are post-doc and non-tenured lecturer.

mmc• 13 years ago

The source material is pretty accessible - mostly just tables of data: http://cra.org/uploads/documents/resources/taulbee/CRA_Taulb...

So 23.9% are in other parts of academic computer science, mostly Postdocs. another 3.6% go to positions (unspecified) in other academic departments.

His 47% is "North American, Non-Academic, Industry". It doesn't break down research vs. development jobs, which is probably smart.

Another interesting thing is that it's broken down (Table D4) by specialty - so for instance, two PhDs in HCI left the US from the 2010-2011 class, and the specialties with the highest percentage leaving the country after graduating were "Information Systems" and "Networks".

michael_miller• 13 years ago

It's always good to keep things in perspective. Many of my friends in the liberal arts are doing PhDs with the same (or less) 7% tenure track position rate. The difference is that they don't have the choice to go into industry afterward. Our "worst case scenario" of going to work for Google for $150k-$200k is a dream for most PhD candidates.

galactus• 13 years ago

I'm pretty sure working for google for 200K is NOT the worst case scenario for a computer science PhD.

tjr• 13 years ago

http://philip.greenspun.com/humor/mcdonalds-joke

greenyoda• 13 years ago

Indeed. Your prospects are probably significantly worse if you have a PhD in theoretical computer science and are not very good at programming. Google may not have much use for someone whose thesis was about proving that some historically interesting but practically useless problem is NP-complete.

drd• 13 years ago

To get those positions such as your example of Google you don’t even need a PhD. A master would do it as long as you are graduated from one of those famous Californian Universities. Apparently the graduates of those Universities are celebrities. Of course with a good connection you can do it too.

Moreover, don’t believe those numbers. It is just buzz. If Google pays you 200K, it is not for your PhD, neither for your genius research. It is only about business.

jseliger• 13 years ago

>The difference is that they don't have the choice to go into industry afterward.

I'm doing this (a PhD in English), but I wouldn't have started if I weren't able to work in my family's consulting business at the same time. Most of my peers in grad school appear to be afraid of the real world and/or diligently putting their head in the sand; now I sent prospective grad students here: http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-kno... and to similar literature on why academia in the liberal arts is an incredibly bad investment.

kayoone• 13 years ago

Even your worst case scenario in IT is pretty unheard of anywhere else in the world. In Germany, no engineer (in an engineering position) will earn more than 150K USD before he is 30. I bet the percentile who will ever reach that in an engineering position is really really small. (love to be proven differently!) Dont think its much different in the UK/France or anywhere else in Europe. So yeah, its always good to keep things in perspective :)

fusiongyro• 13 years ago

Well, console yourself knowing that 100K of that will go to renting a studio apartment. :)

redwood• 13 years ago

To clarify: the average Google offer to new Phds is not between 150 and 200k... it's more likely between 100 and 150k.

efnysien• 13 years ago

As a Junior at University right now, this article speaks quite positively about the benefits of doing a PhD.

1) Even if you get a PhD and aren't shining at your field (read gulped into tenure track positions at a top 10 CS program) you're not confined to becoming a professor at a state school. This is a legitimate fear, and one of the things that has always made me frightened of pursuing a PhD.

2) Even if I end up outside of Academia, I'll likely bear little to no fiscal loss. The work will most probably be more interesting than the work I'd be doing had I not done a PhD. The job-ceiling will also be significantly higher, or non-existant.

As a semi-related question - does anyone with a background in the area know if it's easier to get accepted into a top-10 CS program having been born and raised in the States? GPA, research experience and my school's 'ranking' is a non-issue - I'm just curious if residency in the United States ever affects PhD committees in regards to admission.

xijuan• 13 years ago

I can't tell about the top-10 CS programs. I can only tell you my experiences. I live in Canada and I study in another field. When I contacted my potential supervisor, she asked if I am Canadian citizen. The reason why she wanted to accept a student who is Canadian citizen is that many fellowship or grants are only given to Canadian citizens doing research in Canada. What I am saying here is that if your citizenship affects your chance of acceptance, it will be due to funding issues like this. But if the school you are applying is private school, it may not be a problem because they don't receive a lot of private funding I believe. I think when it comes down accepting graduate students, your potential supervisor's decision is the most important. I don't know about every program and every school. But in my school, when a professor accepts a student, he/she will sign a form saying that he/she will provide this student financially for at least five years. Therefore, standing from the professor's point of view, he/she really wants to accept a very smart student who can help him/her make great progress in the research and at the same time, receive enough funding to be able to support him/herself. I hope it helps.

rm9992• 13 years ago

>this article speaks quite positively about the benefits of doing a PhD.

That's not at all what I got out of it. I read that phds provide no material advantage and that they're really tough (in every way, including from a psychological standpoint).

>you're not confined to becoming a professor at a state school. This is a legitimate fear, and one of the things that has always made me frightened of pursuing a PhD.

Confined? Most people don't have this choice. Fear? This a dream of a large % of phd graduates. I'd add one thing that the article doesn't mention: graduate school is far less of a meritocracy than people outside realize. There are so many levels of luck involved, including finding a good advisor, department politics, finding a good project, not having your research 'scooped', funding, etc. These things are correlated with intelligence/ability, but a large number of smart people fail grad school for reasons beyond their control, and a significant % of the people who succeed were blessed with amazing luck. It's the smart and accomplished undergrads (which I take it you are) who have the most to lose.

>I'll likely bear little to no fiscal loss.

Consider the opportunity cost. Here are some reasonable numbers: a masters costs 25K, a phd pays out 150K over six years, and in the five years of working the masters makes 500K. By the time the phd is out of school the masters student is 325K ahead of the phd student, and his work experience/career is probably further (meaning his salary will probably be at least as high). Also, the masters student lived more comfortably in those five years.

> The work will most probably be more interesting than the work I'd be doing had I not done a PhD.

I have seen very few industry jobs that require a phd, and I work in a field dominated by phds. The exception is industry research, which is great but isn't open to most phds. Most phds don't be doing anything resembling their research two years out of grad school.

I don't mean to make a phd sound totally crappy. There's a lot you can get out of it, it teaches you how to think and organize projects in a way that's hard to find outside grad school. You'll meet smart, motivated people. You'll be able to interact with professors as almost-peers. But consider a research-oriented masters, it's what I did and I consider it a happy medium.

kd0amg2• 13 years ago

Confined? Most people don't have this choice. Fear? This a dream of a large % of phd graduates.

I don't think GP meant it as "stuck as an assistant professor at UT Austin" -- more like "choosing between becoming an adjunct professor at University of Nowhere-You've-Ever-Heard-Of and not having a job."

dbecker2• 13 years ago

> a phd pays out 150K over six years

I'm not a CS PhD, but I'd be astounded if they pay tuition.

I knew PhD students in a variety of fields when I was doing mine, and everyone received money from the University rather than paying tuition.

You're point about opportunity cost stands though.

javert9• 13 years ago

To give a counterpoint, as a current CS PhD student...

If you measure how much money someone will make in the next 10 years from the point they decide whether to pursue a PhD or not, yes, you are correct, the ones who do not pursue one will have lots more money.

However, you can live a middle class lifestyle while gettings a PhD (OK, maybe "lower middle class" here, but still very comfortably, if you don't have dependents to support) and also after getting a PhD, which is the same result as if you didn't pursue the PhD.

To me, that is more relevant than a raw amount of money.

I care what class I'm in, i.e., (a) starving; (b) poor; (c) middle class; (d) rich. I don't really care _within_ those categories.

As a sidenote, I think getting a PhD increases your likelihood of getting an otherwise unlikely outcome in the sense of career success/advancement, getting rich, etc. (unless you choose academia). I mean, over the course of your career, you could really leverage your PhD, or you could not. In theory (and probably in practice most of the time), it won't hurt to have one, career-wise.

bearmf3• 13 years ago

Opportunity cost is tricky. For a hypothetical masters graduate who is already working you have to factor increased spending (which definitely increases with income), probably much higher rent and other "advantages" of adult life. He might not even live more comfortably than a PhD student if he is in a place like NYC/SF and probably will not save much money.

javert9• 13 years ago

* I'm just curious if residency in the United States ever affects PhD committees in regards to admission. *

As a CS PhD student, I have asked this question before of professors on the admissions committee.

Once the applications come in, they sort them into 3 separate piles: US, India, and China. Each pile is evaluated separately, because they aren't comparable. e.g. grades and prof recommendations from the US matter a lot, whereas from China, it's hard to compare grades and prof recommendations are almost always fraudulent. (I don't know what differs about India.)

Then they accept the top ones from each pile, and try to overall choose the top students across all piles. So it's hard to compare "maybe accepts" from different piles, but they do their best.

I guess other countries (besides the big 3) get treated differently because they are more rare.

So, basically, the answer is no, being US based does not really help or hurt you.

I have heard that you have to be extremely good if you're Chinese, because if you're not, it's just too hard to compare you to people from the other piles reliably.

Obviously, this story is highly anecdotal. I'm sure other departments have other ways of handling the problem of compraring people from different educational systems.

kd0amg2• 13 years ago

Obviously, this story is highly anecdotal. I'm sure other departments have other ways of handling the problem of compraring people from different educational systems.

It feels like the main difference here is that the admissions committee looks for evidence of high/low English proficiency. There are also plenty of things other than grades to look at -- test scores, research experience, interests that match faculty here, etc.

hudibras3• 13 years ago

I'm always wary of claims of "reverse discrimination" but I honestly can't think of a reason that, all else being equal (important caveat), that a PhD program would pick an American over a foreign student. Seems like the foreigner would be more motivated, more likely to do whatever the advisor asks with no complaints, less likely to complain about the poor working conditions and pay of a grad student, and much less likely to say "screw this" and go to work for anybody.com (an option not available for the non-green-card-holding foreigner).

Speaking english is a certainly a plus, but it seems outweighed by all the other benefits to the advisors that a foreign student brings.

(Full disclosure: I'm an American who's going to apply next year to PhD programs.)

javert9• 13 years ago

you're not confined to becoming a professor at a state school. This is a legitimate fear

Most extremely smart academia-bound computer scientists consider that a dream, not a fear. Realize that many state schools are in the top bunch (e.g. 20 or 30) in the US. Unless by "state school" you mean "shitty state school." Like, "X State" where X is not actually a U.S. state (no offense, but those annoy me).

For a professor, the main difference in quality of the school you work at is the quality of your students. This matters a lot, research-wise, because most profs that do a lot of top-quality research farm it out to their grad students. e.g. with 8 good students, you can increase your productivity about 8x.

SagelyGuru• 13 years ago

Darn, those aliens have so many PhDs, no wonder they fly them saucers so well. UFO = Untyped+Functional+Objective

mailshanx• 13 years ago

Hahahaha! That has to be one of the wittiest comments i've read on HN. Thanks for making me laugh aloud!???

rodolphoarruda• 13 years ago

Does anyone know about similar content on Business PhD trends?

dbecker2• 13 years ago

For econ PhDs, there is http://cber.uark.edu/2011-12_New_PhD_Labor_Market_Survey_Rep...

willpearse• 13 years ago

Points 2 and 3 make no reference to previous years' data, so aren't really talking about trends. Point 1 ignores the (trend that they state) that there are more post-doc positions.

Post-docs are safer jobs, because you know what will happen at the end of them (you get kicked out and find another job). Fewer people going straight into tenure-track means fewer people spending years at an institution, not getting a job (because they lost the race) and starting elsewhere. Sounds very healthy to me!

Computer Science PhD trends

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