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Which Grad Students Are the Most Miserable?
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Jessica Palmer has an interesting post about the miseries of STEM [science, technology, engineering, and math] graduate students and makes the case that of all grad programs, those in biology are particularly miserable. One basic problem stems from too many biology Ph.D.s and not enough funding, leading to an immensely cutthroat environment that is psychologically damaging to boot. But the main problem is that most of the skills you learn in biology, especially biomedical sciences are only useful in the biomedical sciences and that most grad students don't learn enough 'generalist' skills, such as high level math or serious programming skills, to have other career alternatives if academia doesn't work out. 'A decade ago, sequencing was a Ph.D. activity, or at least, an activity supervised very closely by a Ph.D.,' writes Mike the Mad Biologist."
All of them. Get a real job.
Given that the article is written by a biologist (Jessica Palmer), and referencing another biologist (Mike the Mad), I can't help but feel like this is a "whoa is me" take on the subject. Aren't most graduate programs cutthroat and demanding? More importantly, shouldn't they be?
that bio majors are just failed pre-med or chemistry majors.
I feel very strongly about this.
Throughout my career (I have a PhD in Chemistry) I found the preparation in maths of Biology majors absolutely abysmal.
Fact is, the way I understand it, biology (and medicine, for that matter), is not an exact science and individuating a direct cause effect is close to impossible.
It all relies on statistics, and showing that a certain treatment has a higher probability of causing a certain beneficial effect (or reducing a side effect).
Then why in the world don't medical doctors and biology majors receive a STRONG education in math and statistics? Is it because the large majority of them are women, thus the whole "ooohh math is hard, there Barbie, go back to the kitchen" comes into play?
I find this a shame, it makes me dispute every finding in medical and biology science.
For further information, see Ben Goldacre's work.
Q:
A: Probably the ones who post questions to Ask Slashdot?
I would have to say out of all the different fields of study, liberal arts are probably the most miserable(though of course for pretty much everyone grad school is a choice....)
Like, in TFA's view, biological sciences grad students, Liberal Arts grad students are incredibly cut throat. There is very little funding, I would argue significantly less per student than in any of the sciences(many don't get stipends), and literally dozens of PhD candidates for every one professorship. And the grads have an even more difficult time finding employment outside academia. If you think only knowing biological sciences is unmarketable, try knowing a ton about modern German literary theory and not much else of note.
Monstar L
Oh no. A former biology graduate student applies her scientific training to conclude that - surprise - biology graduate students have it worser than anyone.
You want worse? See the link in my sig. Those poor bastards had to deal with the usual academic incompetence as well as malevolent ghosts and the occasional fatal explosion.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I did mine in physics, the wife in Biochem. The real issue I saw with the biology program is that you were unable to publish or graduate with a null result. You do a valid experiment, which could have shown something, but it turns out biology simply doesn't work that way, and so your experiment simply confirms what is currently known and shows nothing particularly new (but done in a new way, so it could have.) Sorry, you don't graduate. So people seem to either fake it (here is a 2 sigma result, might be valid, will need more study, yay I graduate) or they flush out, and in either way nowhere does the result get published so the same experiment will get done 10 more times other places. There seems to be not as much respect for the scientific process, only respect for novel results, which results in bad science and bad scientists.
I knew a girl at college called Sophie, top-end-of-genius smart and attractive to boot, very shy, got a PhD in Biochemistry if I recall correctly.
I spotted her about a fortnight ago pricing up merchandise in a local sweet shop. Maybe she chose that, I don't know, but either way it's a terrible, terrible waste of a brilliant mind.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Throughout my career (I have a PhD in Chemistry) I found the preparation in maths of Biology majors absolutely abysmal.
To make it worse, it seems to me that *every* college course today is very weak in computer programming. The college graduates I meet seem to rely entirely on excel spreadsheets, with a very few "hard" sciences majors knowing a little bit of matlab.
Computers have become the universal tool, but no one is able to explore their capabilities, recent graduates are like illiterate peasants in a library.
A good analogy is to compare software development with leadership. A leader is someone who gets people to do what cannot be done by a person alone. A programmer is someone who gets computers to do what cannot be done by humans. In an age when automation replaces workers, software developers are the leaders. Too bad university students cannot see this simple analogy.
Wow! That's awful. Bad for the students and bad for the field in general. How much wasted effort happens in disparate labs with people retrying things that someone else already learned isn't right, but left the data in the bottom drawer of a file cabinet?
My advisor actually had me go looking for "bottom drawer" experiments when I did my first lit review (fortunately, my specialty is narrow enough that I can pretty much call everyone who is likely to have ever done that work in an afternoon). And she explicitly told me I didn't need a positive finding on my dissertation to defend it successfully.
There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
The foibles that the author points out as evidence that the graduate students in biology are most miserable, are in fact the characteristics of weak graduate
students in almost any field.
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Isn't this the universal problem with Ph.D. education now? You go to school for years to learn as much as you can about a very narrow corner of a specialist field, hoping to get a job when you're done. Ideally, that job would be non-postdoc research or teaching in that particular small area. It's not a shocker that you are incredibly well trained for your field but poorly equipped for the world of work.
If we're faced with fewer and fewer professor slots, but keep putting grad students into the system, we'll have the same supply-and-demand problem the legal profession is now having. Google it -- new lawyers are having serious trouble paying back huge student loans with crap jobs simply because a lot of the legal jobs don't exist anymore or are done in India.
I'd say that the most miserable grad students are the former grad students. The real world is a much more miserable place than grad school.
------- Mark
I can imagine that that could become a difficult cycle to break out of. A dissertation is required to be original research, of course, and if everyone knows that tons and tons of things have been tried, gotten a null result, and ignored, then any null result is always going to be suspected of not being original...
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
At least, that is what I tell myself as I am looking at starting the 7th year of my PhD.
Although really, anyone who finishes a biological PhD and can't find a job outside of academia either made a very questionable decision on what exactly to study, or isn't trying very hard. When the US economy was overall tanking, many bioscience companies were - and still are - doing quite well. A former colleague of mine (PhD from the lab I am currently in) had no trouble getting the job he wanted in industry when he finished here, and that is not the least bit unusual in the area I am in.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The accepted wisdom when I was in school was that the biology students were less collegial because they were all competing against each other to get into medicine. I don't know if there is any truth to this but, if they weren't working cooperatively with their peers (as we did in Engineeering & Computer Science), then I can imagine that this would lead to a more miserable school experience.
when it actually isn't one, at all. you need to have a hardy maths head and logic to do any good in it, this was obvious about a century ago but now because everyone has to get to go to university to study what they want it's no longer so and it's increasingly sold as non-technical field, with soft values, caring and all that. like with doctors it used to be that they got to be doctors because they had high level of knowledge in chemistry and biology, good maths heads and good social skills, in other words some uber-men.
not everyone can be a staff member for the bbc sitting in africa watching some gorillas. there's not enough gorillas you see..
many of them would probably have been more happy as nurses or midwifes. but in some places it's actually harder to get to study those than biology(because nurses and midwifes directly work with people who need help).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I work in the bio department at a major Texas university, and in my experience, Biologist are by far one of the most narrow minded groups in academia. They always overshoot. PhD Comics 8/15/2008 is my life!
Although it has its problems, it's about as "generalist" as you can get. I get to program (for simulation, equipment control, and data analysis), do math, make electronics, layout parts in CAD, work in a machine shop, do nano-fabrication in a clean room, etc. Heck, I've done most of those things in the past week alone. I like that for the same reason I liked the project based engineering classes available as an undergrad. However, I'm guessing that many of the engineers who took those classes are now sitting in front of a computer doing just one thing...
... If they can't find work after finishing a PhD.
A PhD project should be - at the least - based on funded research of a PI. It should also be vetted by a committee to ensure it is of adequate caliber for the degree. The results should be tracked and reviewed along the way, and presented in a relevant framework.
If the student finishes and cannot place their work in a relevant context, or has work that has no relevant context, then the people who were supposed to have advised that student have failed. There are plenty of post-doc opportunities available right now for qualified PhDs.
On the other hand, going from post-doc to junior faculty (if that is what the individual wants) is a different challenge.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
If you believe that people should get a real job instead of an education then you've got a country of predominantly labourers and factory line workers. A dangerous route to take in a time when low skilled jobs can get outsourced to somewhere cheaper very easily. I don't think it's a simple binary get a job/or/get an education. You really want all your graduate students to leave education? you want no graduate level education in your country? Who are your entrepreneurs going to turn to when they need somebody to do the research to develop their new product? (Maybe the French, who came up with the word 'entrepreneur'?)
I am assuming you like the idea of *some* education for your nation's people as you are posting in words and can read.
First of all, grad school is hard, no matter what. It's supposed to be. Secondly, it's unpredictable. At least in experimental science there is an element of luck. While you make an (hopefully) educated and intelligent hypothesis and you test it, being right or wrong doesn't necessarily reflect your brilliance. I think that's where a lot of the misery comes from for STEM graduate students. You can work incredibly hard and get nowhere, and it may well have nothing to do with your abilities as a scientist.
As for job prospects, news flash: It's not easy for anyone to get a job right now. Having a PhD can be a huge advantage, no matter what field it's in, it's just time to think outside the box. As a biologist I do not have a plethora of computer or maths skills, but so what? I have been taught to think critically. I know that my strengths lie in writing and editing, things that I have learned to do well IN GRAD SCHOOL. I am doing everything I can when not in lab to work on these skills, and get as much experience as possible to make myself employable when I graduate. Unless you want a tenure-track position, and really REALLY want it, then figure out where your strengths lie, work on them, and then find a way to combine them with your graduate work.
(I just previewed this comment and as I don't have an account it says posted by "anonymous coward". This website is kinda vicious...I'm happy to ID myself: www.katiephd.com)
1 - Started grad School (MSc)
2 - Dropped out (or better, was 'invited' to drop out by my supervisor)
3 - Never looked back
This: http://xkcd.com/664/ doesn't exist
In reality Academia will go: "this isn't in my research area so I don't care", "you didn't prove the linearity of the solution", "not enough citations in your paper"
Corporate will go somewhere like the comic, but they may also be happy with you cause you solved a problem that was delaying the schedule,
no one could solve or it had a bad impact on the product (happened to me, and it got me 'karma points'
Academia: Too much work, not enough pay. And as the article mentions, it's problems and solutions that don't apply somewhere else (even though mine was in Wireless communication)
Most of the people that kept going are earning less than me and/or at a previous stage at their careers.
Granted, my supervisor was 'inexperienced' to say the least.
Really, I'm glad I got a job instead of pursuing an academic career. Where I can work with what interests me,
people can use your work, there's less sucking up, less BS and at least I get payed.
Also this: http://www.phdcomics.com/
how long until
/hug
As it is currently practiced, biology science at the phd level is a ponzi scheme. /. should easily see this is an exponential growth type of situation: you start with x professors, they graduate y students/year, who in turn become professors.....like most exp growth situations, the crash comes suddenly.
Research is $, and mostly - almost entirely- paid for by the Fed Gov't either directly thru the NIH/NSF/DARPA, or indirectly via tax welfare for the wealthy (aka tax code, such as the koch brothers giving MIT 100 million for a cancer center.
Most funding is via the "principal investigator" route: the funding agency identifies an *individual* who gets the money and is responsible for it; normally this is a faculty member at a university
Biology is also labor intensive; experiments take a lot of hands on time.
the way it works, professors have slave labor - graduate students, who , relative to their hours and training, are paid peanuts (they are also totally dependent on their professors letter of recomendation for a job)
The carrot is that after you graduate, you get your own faculty position.
anyone on
the clearest evidence of this is that every 20 years or so, the leading PhD nobel laureates go to congress and say, OMG, we have a crisis in funding: there are more PhDs then grant money. And congress, not wanting to see re elections ads with "voted against funding for cancer", obligingly ponies up more money. the last cycle was under clinton; the budget for the NIH, which is the bulk of funding, was doubled
when this happens, all of the Universitys go out and build huge new research buildings, and hire lots of new profs, cause NIH funding is a profit center for the university (or at least the CEO of the university, since university presidents are now paid like ceos, their salary is tied to total university budgets, so simply to hike their own salary, a univ pres will get a huge new RnD building built to increase unive revenues by 100 MM a year....)
call me cynical, but that is life
for those of you who have some familiarity with the system, the postdoc was invented in the 60s, to deal with the 1st glut of phds, and it was for 2 years.... think about that
Biology is one of the few disciplines in which you can apply an existing procedure and earn an advanced degree. Pick a species, pick a fashionable question, apply that question to that species, gather your data, publish and graduate. I think that tends to insulate some of them from "the real world" a little longer than most fields.
Also, the study of a discipline tends to be a walk through it's history. The core of biology is still observational and descriptive - statistical analysis and mathematical modeling only came along later, so it's a field where some students feel blindsided by a bit of a bait-and-switch. A student in biology is absorbing enormous quantities of factual data and context and then, fairly late in their education, there is a switch to a more mathematical framework.
At least this was my qualitative analysis of biologists in the wild - I admit I didn't do any catch-and-release banding or a proper t-test on my hypothesis in the preparation of this post.
Now if you want to talk about students not prepared to deal with the real world, biologists have nothing on mathematicians. Biologists are at least are encouraged to talk to each other. In mathematics you quickly learn that it is likely only five people in the world will understand your idea. Three of them will be borderline autistic and a fourth carries live grenades in his jacket.
I'd say, reading the F* article, the even more general skills will be useful: public presentation, speaking, teaching, communicating ideas. As the writer says, you have to communicate your great ideas if you want a job / funding / etc. Start with those generalist skills and work outwards. Though I accept it's not in the interest of the PhD system to necessarily spend time teaching students these skills, getting research results, getting the thesis written, and getting published are the key indicators of success. But learning a few networking skills might help the students get jobs afterwards...
"Which grads students are the most miserable?"
That's easy. Unemployed ones.
I have a degree in Microbiology, a Masters in Biochemistry and Ph.D in Biotechnology. I am also in Malaysia and a University academic staff. Here in Malaysia, the hard sciences and engineering faculties get the lion share of government funding, fairly or not. Those of us in the life sciences feel that we are a privileged lot compared to the social sciences and are grateful for it. Our graduates generally get good jobs and a significant percentage secure research-related jobs in the many semi-government research bodies or universities. Many also become school teachers or lecturers or join the industry. Regarding maths and stats, remember, that to us, it is just another tool in the toolbox. We are not interested in the nitty gritty of the maths, only on the usability and validity of it for our purposes. There are of course situations where the maths become supremely important like in bioinformatics but we are content with collaborating with the maths and stats Professors. So, this bleak picture painted in the article might be true in the US, but not necessarily in the rest of the world.
I got a PhD in biochemistry 7 years ago. I'm now back in IT working as a sysadmin. If I didn't have that previous computer experience, I would be doing day labor right now. I am not kidding.
Building a better ribosome since 1997
The most miserable grad students are the ones who do their PhD expecting to learn 'generalized skills' to prepare them for industry jobs.
I got a PhD in biochemistry 7 years ago. I'm now back in IT working as a sysadmin. If I didn't have that previous computer experience, I would be doing day labor right now. I am not kidding.
I don't really understand how you can't get a job as a biochemist. I recently got a PhD in physics, and the academia career doesn't look like it's happening for me--not a problem, I thought, industry is always an option. The thing is, science industry these days means either a) semiconductor physics or b) biochemistry....these are basically the only R&D/laboratory type jobs that are hiring.
If I were doing it all over again, and I knew my academic career issues would happen in this field (due to choice of advisor, not actual field of study), I would have thought long and hard about going into chemistry/biochemistry or engineering instead of physics.
I did a MSc & PhD in Biochemical Engineering about 15 years ago and now very happily work in IT. I do occasionally have to dip into my Bio skills for specific clients, but your qualifications don't define what you can do. Qualifications certainly act as evidence and examples of what you are capable of, but sometimes you just need to think abit broader about what you want to do and build a case as to why you can do it, if it is outside of your academic history.
I think it's time to get rid of the closed book tests and move to a group or by your self project so you don't have some who knows what they are doing but is bad at tests can fail and so you don't some one who has no idea but can cram for a test can pass.
Also in real world you don't do busy work just to do but in college that leads to people buying essays (for papers in class that are not part of there major) just so they have the time to do some real class work.
totally agree. I would add language skills to it. ... ;)
Basic language skills such as the difference between "there" and "their", "our" and "are" is very often missing.
Too bad, because without this, engineers, any engineer, can only go for the technical jobs, and not the marketing, sales, management jobs that pay far more
If you find an English mistake in my post, i have an excuse, English is not my native language
If you believe that people should get a real job instead of an education then you've got a country of predominantly labourers and factory line workers.
But what do you think of people getting decades of education in things that they cannot then use ? I won't beat on liberal art majors, but look at the example of biology here: it's certainly hard to study but most of those PhDs will end up waiting tables anyway. I know a PhD in biology who took 10 years to find a job in the field and after a year he was so disgusted by the work conditions and miserable salary that he's now a wine seller ! Don't you think he wasted 15 years of his life ?
Non-Linux Penguins ?
I don't doubt this is particularly true in biology, since there are so many students pursuing that, but just wanted to say it's also true in geology which is my field.
My thesis research resulted in a negative result. It's not absolute - it wouldn't be outright lying to say more study could reveal something I missed - but it's certain enough that it makes doing anything with it (e.g. publishing) practically impossible. It was incredibly disheartening, and I got no encouragement from anyone regarding what to do about it.
I'm not willing to lie or embellish, and as a result, I'm stuck with no future in academia, and an impossible job market where this failed research prevents me from getting a job.
me
factor 966971: 966971
Oh, shit, wait...sorry, I read that as "Which Grad Students _Make Us_ the Most Miserable?"
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
My PhD is in Biomedical Engineering and I went through similar stuff with funding and skill building as the author, so I don't think it's only limited to the Biologists. I think all types of PhD students have their own unique brand of suffering, with suffering itself being the common denominator.
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http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1056 /. + PhD comics + work is a wicked combination. :P
will avoid looking for more
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
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I don't get the complaint that the Biology PhD students didn't learn computer programming or high level math. Entering a Biology PhD program, joining a particular PI's lab, and (frequently) the nature of the research project are all choices made by the PhD student. So guess what - If a PhD student CHOOSES a lab/project that does not implement programming or math, then she won't be taught much of it by her PI or program. Now, complaining about poor pay, long hours, and poor job prospects seem much more legitimate. The people who go on in academia to have their own labs do not do it for the money. Typically, they do it because they love research.
If you believe that people should get a real job instead of an education then you've got a country of predominantly labourers and factory line workers. A dangerous route to take in a time when low skilled jobs can get outsourced to somewhere cheaper very easily.
If a person has a 4 year Bachelors degree in Engineering, for example, and their job gets outsourced, can't find work in a down economy, never learned any other marketable skills, etc etc etc - Wouldn't people in that boat have been better off becoming a Plumber? How about an Electrician? Carpenter? Mechanic?
I tell you what, engineering, science, manufacturing, all those things can to some extent be outsourced to other countries - and have done, but... If someone's toilet is overflowing and they can't stop the geyser of crap - No-one from India is going to come by and fix it for them. At $65 to show up, $75 per hour, don't you think that the licensed plumber with 20 years experience and a good reputation sleeps soundly at night? Academia might look down on a lowly plumber - but who is more often desperately needed?
The traditional trades cannot be outsourced, even some of the new ones - You might get your router and switch from China, but they don't install it and configure it for you - A hands-on networking guy is also a "Trade" that can command high hourly rates and cannot be outsourced either.
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
Stupid. There are as many different majors in biology as in the entire B.Sci degree. Got honors in molecular bio/genetics or microbio? No way you will have any problem finding a job. On the other hand, majoring in zoology or marine biology? Well, you might have to look a bit harder....
That's easy: the ones that aren't getting laid!
So yes, the STEM students probably qualify for that honor.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I'm rather taken aback that the writer would consider "serious programming" a generalist skill. There is a reason why computer science/engineering is a degree in its own right and teaching students in other disciplines "serious programming" skills would simply mean they learn less about the field they are attempting to become experts in. Would you rather the person researching new cancer drugs knows how to program the Game of Life?
For those interested, the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship results have been posted, and biology by far got the most awards (almost 25%). Below are the awards per field mentioned on the application. source
593 Life Sciences
524 Engineering
197 Social Sciences
158 Chemistry
134 Psychology
113 Comp/IS/Eng
100 Physics and Astronomy
80 Mathematical Sciences
78 Geosciences
23 STEM Education and Learning Research
1 Baccalaureate
And within Engineering:
83 Engineering - Mechanical
79 Engineering - Biomedical
68 Engineering - Chemical
59 Engineering - Bioengineering
52 Engineering - Materials
51 Engineering - Electrical and Electronic
33 Engineering - Environmental
32 Engineering - Civil
28 Engineering - Aeronautical and Aerospace
7 Engineering - Energy
6 STEM Education and Learning Research - Engineering Education
6 Engineering - Industrial
6 Engineering - Computer Engineering
4 Engineering - Agricultural
3 Engineering - Nuclear
3 Engineering - Engineering Science
2 Engineering - Systems Engineering
2 Engineering - Engineering Mechanics
2 Comp/IS/Eng - Software Engineering
1 Engineering - other (specify) - Water Resources Engineering
1 Engineering - other (specify) - Pedagogy, Design Methodology
1 Engineering - other (specify) - Operations Research - Industrial Engineering. Economic Risk Analysis
1 Engineering - other (specify) - Information Warfare System Engineering
1 Engineering - other (specify) - Architectural Engineering
1 Engineering - Ocean
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
Seriously, nobody gets hazed like med students do. They'll do surgery on 2 hours sleep.
Clearly that system needs to change, but they'd be lucky to have the problems that somebody who runs lab bench tests all day long does.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I would guess that ones that took out huge loans, and can't find a job in what the schooled in, so are forced to take lesser paying jobs, flipping burgers or something to survive.
Be seeing you...
The title should probably make the distinction between masters and PhD students. Either way, I can't help but feel like the question is better left unasked. The vast majority of the PhD students I've worked with (myself included) have had a lot of hard times in their program. And there's a vocal subset of those that seem to almost compete in terms of who feels the most victimized. That's not to say that the system is fine; there are significant issues in the US PhD system. But if you posed this question to PhD students over drinks, you probably wouldn't get a meaningful answer. There isn't really an easy way to compare the issues in biology to computational chemistry to theoretical computer science to applied computer science.
Then why in the world don't medical doctors and biology majors receive a STRONG education in math and statistics?
So they can reinvent calculus: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8137688
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: In Tai's Model, the total area under a curve is computed by dividing the area under the curve between two designated values on the X-axis (abscissas) into small segments (rectangles and triangles) whose areas can be accurately calculated from their respective geometrical formulas. The total sum of these individual areas thus represents the total area under the curve. Validity of the model is established by comparing total areas obtained from this model to these same areas obtained from graphic method (less than +/- 0.4%). Other formulas widely applied by researchers under- or overestimated total area under a metabolic curve by a great margin.
RESULTS: Tai's model proves to be able to 1) determine total area under a curve with precision; 2) calculate area with varied shapes that may or may not intercept on one or both X/Y axes; 3) estimate total area under a curve plotted against varied time intervals (abscissas), whereas other formulas only allow the same time interval; and 4) compare total areas of metabolic curves produced by different studies.
The post was about graduate students. They already have about 16 years of education before they decide to become grad students.
Now, I'm sure there's a need for a small minority of people to achieve 20+ years of formal education. But if there are so many that it's becoming "cutthroat", there's a good chance that many of those people shouldn't be there.
However, many people can use their 12-16 years (or perhaps even less) of formal education, combine that with a career and a lot of informal education, and still produce great value for society.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
Yup. And that is how you get to be an economic colony. I think you Americans fought a war to avoid that once, didn't you?
That is a good point. I heard on NPR that, although national unemployment hovers around 10%, it is more like 25-30% for those who only have a high school diploma. The odds of still having a job because you have an undergrad degree are worth every penny in my book.
I make close to 6 figures and don't use my undergrad degree at all. Shocking, I know. Not really. I imagine MOST people are doing something in their 40s that they didn't study in college.
The poor ones.
The rich kids riding on daddy's and Mommies money are happy as clams, the grad students holding down 2 jobs doing classwork in the miniscule spare time they have along with the classload and wading in $190,000 in debt are the ones that are miserable as hell.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Back to the article - the author says students need to learn generalisable skills. I think we're in agreement here - university students should learn some specific skills, but also transferable skills. My first degree was in library studies: I was a librarian for a few years then changed career. But I'd learnt how to be a dogged and thorough researcher, so I could move to another field as I could hunt down knowledge in any domain and make use of it, and also I'd learnt about communicating with people and doing presentations (and dealing with nutty teenagers) so I ended up doing educational research in schools.
Not shocking that you make close to 6 figures without a degree, I noted "predominately" not "all" - but a report in the UK came out today to say UK Grad earnings are higher than non-grads, and generally non-grads will be earning a median of 17K (GBP) compared to 29K (GBP) by grads. A degree, it suggests, leads to higher earnings generally. Of course some people will be earning more or less than that. But I'd maybe question whether all non-grads in your country are earning "close to six figures".
Although I too remember the trials and tribulations of being a biology grad student and in general agree that University administrators are by and large a pathetic lot, this is a gross oversimplification of the problem facing the biological sciences and a highly self-centric viewpoint. The real problem is that the vast majority of the electorate (and humanity in general) is illiterate when it comes to biology and the environment. The problem is that society is not utilizing what biology has taught mankind about its place in and its accumulative effects on the planetary ecosystem. Consequently, it is easy for those in exploitative industries, short-sighted politicians who will happily give away what little environment is left to stay in power, and those against "big government" (ie civilization) to dupe people into not recognizing the urgent need to construct a science based economy that will not further erode what little of the carrying capacity of the environment that is still left. People in general do not realize how perilously close to future extinction humans are moving as they ignore biological realities in their search for cash and personal gratification. For example, they read stories of the Fukushima catastrophe, and believe those who tell them that release of radiation 1.7 million times baseline levels will have no effect on them and hence can be ignored when they eat their salmon and oysters, just as the effects of the Deepwater Horizion spill in the Gulf of Mexico can likely be readily forgotten as can the accumulative effects of the myriad other small knicks and cuts to world ecosystems that are daily inflicted by what we call our "economy". Hence, they see no need to invest in either protecting the environment upon which they depend or developing ultimately ecologically sustainable alternative industries to power the economy. Too many erroneously think the big guy in the sky will come down and save them, just in the knick of time because there is some entirely irrational and unfounded reason to do so. They also fail to see that by the time they figure this out the dynamics of world ecosystems and the constraints imposed by genetics will make it too late for them to do anything about it (eg. by the time ocean pH drops enough as a result of increased atmospheric CO2 no technological fix will save marine biodiversity and hence future breaths, not to mention 1/3 of all protein consumed by humanity).
Not all PhD's go into academia, although a large part of what is left of science funding is as you note funded by the government (you should have also included a host of other disciplines FDA/NOAA/FBI/USDA/pieces of former USFWS, etc.). The government is the "profit center" for Universities, just as it is for nearly every corporation in the US as it is the largest customer either directly or indirectly, so take it out and you take out the economy as a prolonged government "shutdown" will demonstrate. Although this is lost on those eager to return to the ideologies of the 4th and 5th centuries, it is a fact nonetheless. The major problem is that in the rush to glorify "privatization", corporate captains are not taking the government's place regarding research on the long term biological effects of their own operations, since they erroneously believe that such problems are really going to effect only those of those living next to the sewer pipe and not them and that spending such monies dents the short-term quarterly profit and loss statements.
It is not all surprising that biologists are at the bleeding edge, since other scientific disciplines are more readily seen as quick routes to more technology and greater profit and are not seen within the larger context of human ecology. Of course, in the long run when the air is unfit to breath, toxicity so high that human reproduction becomes impossible, or the waters and soils too polluted or too hot or too dry to grow anything edible, etc. the latest cool algorithm or internet craze will largely be irrelevant. I would agree that biologists in
My 53 year old uncle is a senior professor... his IBM monstrosity that cost $100K... an input-compatible version of his Fortran 70 compiler... an array as a stack in a for loop to make program flow clear... the faculty mainframe in '87... FORTRAN was designed BEFORE the compiler was invented... a huge fuck-you to 40 years of software research...
LMFAO!!!
You go, Uncle Professor Dude - you go girl!!!
Abso-fscking-lutely hilarious!!!
Man, I haven't chuckled that hard in a while...
My degree is in physics, by the way, and the reason I'm not working in that field is entirely due to how miserable I knew I'd be pursuing a degree higher than a bachelor's. That was miserable enough, thanks.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Biology PhD student compalins that her graduate program is the most miserable. News?
And for those whining about statistics, perhaps the article could have used a few to back up her claims?
Being too general can also be a handicap.
You wouldn't hire a Philosopher without additional training to do anything besides navel gazing.
Math is only slightly less general. Math majors fall on their faces when the subject matter falls outside their scope. Say accounting or business issues.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I am quite surprised-- in the biology/ microbiology/ field sciences--- my experience is that a M.Sci degree "not working" - I thought was rather expected. At least in the sense of in the sense that some cool new hotness failed to be found. the goal is, did you fail to find it in the proper manner: )
You are learning a methology, and also getting in-depth experience in at least a branch of a field for the first time. Of course it mainly fails.
Master's are the new bachelor's.
Also, someone may be offered a fellowship, which is free money (around 12 -15 K per year) + tuition waiver for doing grad school, while comes with no or little obligation. That sure beats some entry IT work at $35K/year.
During grad school consider doing language or business courses in the summer. That way you will have another tool of trade to begin with.
New Economic Perspectives
I'm just starting on a PhD track in Immunology. Besides being in a high risk group for over-specialization-induced depression, it seems very practical to gain a little programming/computer science experience (undergrad supplied me with only a single semester of C++). I'd especially like to have more capability with NCBI databases, protein folding software, and statistics, but just some basic programming skills could be start. Any advice on how to do this on a limited budget and sporadic free time? Interested in recommendations for programming languages, tutorials or online classes, and helpful existing software.
Did you marry her? Should post a little bit more detail here if not xD.
New Economic Perspectives
Taking UNNECESSARY risk, however, will doom you to failure.
Managing and migrating proper risk is the key.
New Economic Perspectives
as perry mason used to say, non responsive, witness is directed to answer the question
if you have X professors who generate Y graduates per year, and a fraction Y/n become professors, producing graduates students at a rate Ygen2/year and those students become professors producing grad students at ....
it is a ponzi scheme, pure and simple.
PhD level lab work is highly specialized, super $$ training; all that BS about general problem solving is just that, bs, you can do that a lot easier otherways.
I didn't read all about how stupid the avg person is, but let me leave you with a simple fact:
in the 1930s, the majority of PhDs and professors in Germany, at the time the most educated and sophisticated scientists in the world, supported Herr Hitler...
as to biology being on the leading edge....1st, huge sums gointo a narrow, narrow part of biology, molecular/cancer, cause, as i said, no pol wants to be against cancer. 2nd, scientific disciplines have good and bad periods; it has been a great 50 years for molecular biology;
The over-issuing of diplomas or lack of strictness of the PhD program is what causing the whole problem. Tons of candidates, very few jobs.
New Economic Perspectives
I don't doubt this is particularly true in biology, since there are so many students pursuing that, but just wanted to say it's also true in geology which is my field.
This and the parent post leave me flabbergasted.
I worked for almost a decade in pure physics, and NEVER produced a positive result. I know people who have worked their ENTIRE CAREERS in pure physics and never produced a positive result. It was watching a talk by one of those guys--who had done basically the same experiment with more an more refinements for nearly thirty years, continually pushing up the limit on the lifetime of a decay we were almost certain happened but that no one had ever seen--that I decided to leave for greener pastures, because I wasn't finding null results all that gratifying.
I would go so far as to say that a field where certain results are not publishable is not a science. Science is the displine of publically testing ideas by systematic observation and controlled experiment. If you can't publish tests that don't generate novel results, you can't do science.
I used to wonder why some physics journals would publish theoretical papers that were obviously out to lunch, and eventually concluded that the purpose was to stop others from going down the same path: if one person made a particular mistake, getting it published and refuted would save everyone else from going through the same cycle. The same is true for null results.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
I'm a PhD in biology. My adviser and I complain about this all the time. It's an all too common thing, and a terrible way to do science
The solution is simple, take some of the world-wide military budgets (tax all militaries, size of, # people doing research on bombs etc, # bullets etc, # companies developing bombs/supplying bombs etc, # dictators supported)...AND take some of this wasted money and put it into advanced nanotech/biotech research towwards solving the problems of aging and all diseases (as Kurzwiel says, our dna/rna systems are simply a representation of biological information machines and hence, we can develop advanced nanobot etc, biotechnologies that transform biology into an informational science, hence exploiting exponential growth curves). This huge undertaking will bring biology further into an informational/engineering science and can benefit from the employment of biologists, bio-pysiciscists, engineers of all stripes, mathematicians, programmers, doctors etc.,......just like the world-war ll massive projects like the manhattan bomb project, the decoding of the secret german codes project that gave us computer tech, the massive developement of aging biotech will transform the 21st century into a truly star-trek medical enviroment....did you know that there are almost 20 different methods of exstending life of mice that have been developed just by this time in the early 21st century??? For more info, see sites like www.kurzweilai.net www.fightaging.org www.mprize.org www.sens.org www.foresight.org also, see the Feb 22 Time magazine article "Immortal by 2045" that features Kurzweil and Aubrey de Grey The site www.fightaging.org has lots of links to other sites. The countries that develop advanced AI (artificical intellegence) and nanotech/biotech will make a lot of money selling the life-exstenstion tech to the rest of us, while countries that wage war will fall behind and be forced to by it from the former countries.
Turns out you're JUST A STUDENT, still (& that was this post I referred to above, http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1945994&cid=34862876 too).
"I'm a computer science grad currently doing a taught postgrad in bioinformatics" - by HungryHobo (1314109) on Wednesday April 06, @08:54AM (#35731740)
No wonder you ran, & didn't reply back - YOU'RE STILL ONLY A STUDENT NOOB!
Bottom-Line: You haven't done SQUAT by way of comparison to myself in the art & science of computing over time... hell, I was making the news WHILE YOU WERE STILL IN DIAPERS, 15++ yrs. ago onwards, and you had the NERVE to give ME shit, in the URL above? Please...
APK
P.S.=> I was wondering when I'd run back into you, & here you are... you had this coming - & it figures you acted like you did, and ran when I replied... you haven't done shit, and yet, you act the badass & give others guff here, trolling them & worse... well, guess what: You are just a noob, period, BOY! apk
In order to even begin to be competitive for a 5-8 year PhD in my field you need 2-4 years of Master's level work plus research and several languages. I'm working on a 2 year MA at Harvard, I have published 3 articles, will be competent in 5 languages requires for my field, will have research experience abroad, and I still won't be that competitive for a PhD. Welcome to the Humanities. You guys finish a PhD in like 5 years after a BA and then complain about not getting a job? You've got time to get a second PhD at the rate I can get one, maybe that would help you diversify your expertise?
It is very sad that people think in one dimension - single area of study will get them jobs.The world has become more complex and the knowledge growth is growing exponentially. So, one should have at least two areas (domains) of specialisation in which one of the domain must be in the hard science-maths area. People with multidisciplinary qualification always will find jobs and will solve more complex problems that have economic value. Also, if we start employing all these Ph.Ds in high schools to teach all the hard core subjects and pay them between 40K-60K if they become super teachers as done in Finland every one will be happy. Best students with best teachers will change the face of this USA. But with GOP wants to kill all the middle class and poor people, this will be only a dream.
Where the United States secretly deploys college-degrees as high-dollar job security for Americans like yourself that didn't know better.
I was doomed to a family-business so the younger kin could explore the world like yourself. I left the schooling scene around 10th grade, but technically I wasn't even there the 9th except for when Social Services (SS) forced my attendance into such a racially-charged environment that even tried to stretch me onto the same 7th-grade level education that I already completed back in the prior cheap private schooling.
What few realize is that there are Teachers that teach other people to become Teachers despite the Teachers doing the teaching having no prior experience in becoming a Teacher to raise more Teachers, except by a book from a corporation endorsed by the State because they payed the tax to do that kind of non-work. How does it feel to be in another artificial and otherwise fake industry?
I've been to 3 different industries, each of them collapsed when the State and all these f*cking educators wanted to teach people to invade each of my subjective industry. That's what I think of people like you and others: you tresspassed into an industry where you were not needed, you liquidated the value of existing labor, and you just didn't know betterr, but the Teachers come out on top because you now owe debts that they reaped in profit: you don't have the work experience in the industry you learned and thus you can't make work for yourself. Just think of how family farming feels ever since USDA started beating-up families particulary Amish for selling organic foods that give such quality of sustenance that the Pharmaceutical industry is trying hard to liquidate and destroy.
There's plenty of blame to go around, but you were raised to be their soldier to approach their enemy: and as you scaled the walls of the industry you were trained to enter deeceptively into, you failed and looked stupid in-front of everybody and everyone. I just think and wonder: what would the world be like if people worked by charity and necessity, where Teachers simply can't exist: families whose heritage stretches back thousands of Years. That's how it existed prior to the United States of America ever arriving on the scene: and those 48 bastard-child States have been ruining every country and every nation like a parasite: just look at them how every 10 miles of America is a mirror-image of stores importing slave-made goods from China and the same lifestyle of service industry. It's a series of mirrors reflecting back at another mirror: that's America, and you're in it forever because now you owe debts that can't be repaid without going through the next hurdle...ussury.
For context the above troll is pretty much Al "four touchdowns in one game" Bundy.
If you ever try to point out to him that "TCP do"esn't work like that" or something similar he'll stalk you forever as seen above and keep on repeating again and again and again and again how he is automatically right because you see he once wrote a screensaver!
and a few long gone articles in long gone PC magazine a decade or 2 ago!
And threatens to sue malware scanners which include his Certainly-Isn't-Malware crapware in their definitions.
So anything he says cannot be wrong.
it's best to just nod and smile or you'll end up being stalked by him like he stalks me now.
I'm doing mine in CS, and the papers I enjoy reading the most are those that discuss alternatives / tradeoffs / unsuccessful directions that the authors attempted with their design. Sure, in order to be published your work has to show some improvement of the state of the art, but it is often more educational to read how people came up with a successful system rather than the result itself. I actually heard some professors claim that you should only write about what you did right because the reader would not be interested in the thought process or intermediate experiments you went through, and I find this claim completely false.
HungryHobo, the "ne'er-do-well" student w/ a big mouth, listen up, & take a read:
"For context the above troll is pretty much Al "four touchdowns in one game" Bundy." - by HungryHobo (1314109) on Thursday April 07, @07:12AM (#35742898)
See subject-line, because you're no more than a mere STUDENT & one who's never done a damned thing that was noted well by others/peers in publication etc./et al.
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"If you ever try to point out to him that "TCP do"esn't work like that" or something similar he'll stalk you forever as seen above and keep on repeating again and again and again and again how he is automatically right because you see he once wrote a screensaver!" - by HungryHobo (1314109) on Thursday April 07, @07:12AM (#35742898)
No specifics? You don't have any, so your "example"?? PURE b.s., student. Where have "the likes of YOU" (a nobody in the art & science of computing) EVER "corrected me", hmmm???
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"and a few long gone articles in long gone PC magazine a decade or 2 ago!" - by HungryHobo (1314109) on Thursday April 07, @07:12AM (#35742898)
LMAO - AND YOU'VE NEVER EVEN DONE SUCH A THING ONCE, not once... lol!
(By way of comparison to "the likes of you", a "ne'er-do'well", I've also done it a dozen times, & BEFORE YOU WERE OUT OF DIAPERS... books, magazines, newspapers, technical contests (MS Tech Ed), commercial software code to my credit, & more.)
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"So anything he says cannot be wrong." - by HungryHobo (1314109) on Thursday April 07, @07:12AM (#35742898)
Nothing up there is wrong @ all - it's merely the truth in response to your usual bullshit, lol!
APK
P.S.=>
"it's best to just nod and smile or you'll end up being stalked by him like he stalks me now." - by HungryHobo (1314109) on Thursday April 07, @07:12AM (#35742898)
For your trolling me, as I showed in the post of mine you replied to? LOL, no... not stalking you - just "re-trolling you" & showing everyone here, you "talk a big game", Mr. "Ne'er-Do-Well" student, but you haven't done squat (lol, especially considering you have all that schooling too, no less.. what a WASTE of your, or your parents', money)... apk
A former colleague of mine worked in population genetics/evolution. Most of his lab work consisted of a few hours of setting up fly matings and collections. The rest of his day he spent learning stats and programming. It seemed that his advisor understood the value of learning math and programming in order to do science right. Presently, my former colleague is doing extremely well in science. That said, he is also a brilliant guy and very hard working, and that, naturally, factors into his success.
In contrast, as a biomed grad student I was essentially chained to the bench. If I wasn't grinding out experiments for the entire time I'm there, then I wasn't doing my job. To make things worse, do to shortage of funds, or the attitude of "this is how I did it during my PhD", or "new techniques are scary" (or perhaps sadism) I was discouraged from investigating faster alternatives or methods to carry out my research. In part, I believe this was cost. Initial investment in hardware is expensive and using a tried and true cheaper but older method, seems to make more sense, except that when one considers that technique A takes three days, but technique B takes an afternoon. This does not ever seem to factor into the equation. So, instead of expediting the research,we are forced to do things "the old fashioned way" wasting our time, and ultimately money. On really busy days, I must say that I run on auto-pilot. I sit there grinding away at the bench listening to (science) podcasts or music. In the evenings I have to catch up on literature, work on my thesis or prepare presentations etc. Where is the time to learn anything new? At the lab, I honestly feel like a manual laborer. Don't think - just do.
At the end of the day I will have a middle of the road PhD and no competetive edge. Perhaps if I were more motivated or had more hours in the day, I could acquire some new skills. As it is, I am considering going back to school after my PhD to learn some useful skills like math and programming, perhaps to return to academia another day. We'll see.
In the purest Marxist analysis tradition I'd say the inner contradictions of our economic system have reached their full course and now we have an overproduction crisis.Simplisticly everybody can manufacture, fewer people can buy. Society is getting ready for the next step, which will happen in the current advanced capitalistic countries. Our current society is experiencing a wealth concentration process that is producing a polarization of society. The current system will little by little stop working for most people. All this is happening in the middle of the most technologically advanced society in the history of mankind (assuming Atlantis is a legend...). Lots of groups are showing that many things are not scarce anymore, that many things can really be had for free. The older economic order is resisting, but resistance is futile against the tides of history, the countries that will be making the most advances are the ones where their people and governments recognize this and organize so all this new energy in the people can be channeled ino the greater good of society. The same way capitalism widened the group of people that could influence their government, the new society will allow many more people to directly participate in government. In a way the government will be everybody, the official government more of a coordinating body of prestigious scientists and intellectuals clarifying the consequences of new developments to society. As an external observer of American society, the current political ideology of the conservative sector is fear-based and is going against the flow of history. The US will keep stagnating while Europe allied with Russia will be the new center of an advanced mankind. For the moment China and Japan are not ready, they have to many internal problems that they need to fix to continue their advancement, maybe at a later point.