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."

Comments

So say the biologists

[sixthousand]

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?

Re:So say the biologists

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to be pedantic, "woe is me".

Re:So say the biologists

[wed128]

It's probably more like "Woe is me", unless the article is written by Keanu Reeves...

Re:So say the biologists

[eggoeater]

My wife has a PhD in Entomology. I have friends with advanced degrees in technology. She suffered WAY more than they did. She had to take and extra year (total of five for the PhD) to complete her research and dissertation.


While I think the OP is correct, the real story here isn't getting the degree, it's the lack of funds to do anything with that degree. If you're a tenure-track researcher, you typically spend most of your time writing grant applications begging for money as opposed to doing real research. BTW, my wife is now a writer; she no longer does any research.

Re:So say the biologists

[Missing.Matter]

5 years was considered extra? Did she have a master's first? The minimum at my school is 5 years for a Computer Engineering Ph.D. without a master's.

Re:So say the biologists

[rolfwind]

I think the real story is how the advanced education system is utterly failing America. It's a giant, expensive colossus that suck young people into debt and then, when they do get out, many of them don't even go into the profession they trained for. This all smacks to me of a racket. Now, after 12+ (add kindergarten) of education, the college industry sold this country into the premise that you aren't good enough to work a decent job. That you need at least 4+ years at an expensive school that may or may not even tangentially train you for your eventual profession, to even break into the workforce. It reminds me of the DeBeers diamond racket and how they attack the (American) consumer with psychological ads until the general public builds up an emotional and mental picture, wholly inaccurate, of the meaning, rarity, and value of diamonds wholly self-serving to that industry.

The college industry is the same. It's fine for some professions, and liberal arts may be grand for some people to pursue. But now it's branching everywhere. They even convinced cooks in some places to take forms of college and for a ton of money and with mostly theory and a lot less practical experience. Truthfully, I like the German system much better. For many hands on jobs there, you get an apprenticeship, you take a few weeks of classes (theory) each "semester" and then more weeks of practical on-the-job training. You don't pay, you get paid (a small amount, maybe room and board).

I think it would be way better for most people to get some work after high school and find out what they like doing, and be offered by their employers training courses that can eventually be credited towards a degree (if we really stay addicted to this paper fetish).

But with Khan Academy showing education doesn't need to be exclusive, labor intensive on part of the teacher, or expensive, why do I have a feeling that we'll keep throwing kids into college right after high school, at ever increasing prices, for a dubious return when they get an iota of real-world experience and decide they'd much rather do something else?

Re:So say the biologists

[haystor]

I think the complaint is that PhD's in biology are getting trained for the specific task of a not just their field, but whatever their advisors happen to be working with. So upon completion they are only prepared to work in a very narrow subsection of academic biology. They've been encouraged to avoid such skills as writing, math and programming in favor of cranking out data. Skills which would help them win jobs where they could then do the research they've trained for.

On what would seem like the extreme other end from their experience, I'm working on a graduate degree in statistics. I feel like everything is opening up to me. While it is certainly math heavy, it is all about using math to communicate effectively. Skills that transfer to any number of areas.

If I have one regret from education it would be neglecting writing as I pursued math/sciences. In college I viewed it as something to be endured. Ever since going to work though, I value writing more and more.

Re:So say the biologists

[eggoeater]

Yes, she already had a masters in the same subject.

Re:So say the biologists

[paiute]

I think the complaint is that PhD's in biology are getting trained for the specific task of a not just their field, but whatever their advisors happen to be working with.

As I remarked to my advisor a couple of years into graduate school: "You wouldn't train a medical doctor this way."

Re:So say the biologists

[Antisyzygy]

They should only be cut-throat within reason. Come on, just because someone doesn't walk all over someone else or schmooze for funding doesn't mean they don't have valuable contributions to make to science. Its sort of like high school or the finance industry, the most socially adept and willing to stab people in the back get the most favorable treatment. Frankly, its kind of BS but such is human nature.

Re:So say the biologists

[Mr. Mikey]

"Aren't most graduate programs cutthroat and demanding? More importantly, shouldn't they be?"

Why, exactly, should graduate programs be "cutthroat"? What is gained by doing things that way, as opposed to what is lost?

I've seen graduate programs which used students as the fodder for generating papers and industry funding, and if the student got an education out of the deal, well, that was nice. I have no respect for programs that don't make the development of their students a priority.

Re:So say the biologists

[Tokolosh]

One attends college for an education, not training.

Re:So say the biologists

[Quiet_Desperation]

Although "whoa is me" is valid, but only when spoken by Mr. Ed.

Re:So say the biologists

[VolciMaster]

5 years was considered extra? Did she have a master's first? The minimum at my school is 5 years for a Computer Engineering Ph.D. without a master's.

I've known several people who completed their PhD in 3 years after their Bachelor's degree is finished.

Re:So say the biologists

[Xest]

Possibly, but there's also some truth to the idea that Physics follows Maths, Chemistry follows Physics, Biology follows Chemistry, then things like Anthropology follows Biology and so on, with the point being that the further you move away from maths, the more specialised and less generically applicable your skills become.

So because of this there may well be some truth in what she says- those trained in Biology may well indeed find it harder to find work if they can't work specifically in their chosen field, whilst those who did a degree in say Maths can go find a job in finance, computing, engineering, or any number of other fields because their skillset is just that much more applicable to so many different fields.

I'm not sure this means we should really feel sorry for the biologists though- it's the choice you make. I did maths and found it quite hard going, and have in recent years taken up biology courses in my spare time with a focus on plants and I find it far easier to learn than I ever found maths, and certainly than I ever found physics or chemistry. I'd argue the reduced employment prospects are simply the price you pay in taking the slightly easier, and hence possibly often less stressful and more enjoyable subject. Of course that's just my personal experience, others may vary, but there you go.

I should note that I don't mean this to be taken out of context by the biologists out there- I'm not saying biology is easy easy, it's still a STEM subject and IMHO they are inherently much more tricky subjects than pretty much all non-STEM subjects, but of the STEM subjects I certainly believe that biology is one of the easier choices - take it and you'll still have much more work and have to be much smarter than many of the non-STEM subjects require, but you'll still be getting it easier than say, the physicists, and mathematicians for example. You've still got to be smarter than what, 80% of people who do the non-STEM degrees, so I'm certainly not saying biologists aren't smart people or any such thing. Interestingly though a pattern I notice with many top biologists is that they're often quite adept in subjects like maths anyway, which is probably what gives them the edge in the first place.

Re:So say the biologists

[haystor]

That being the complaint. They PhD's in biology are being trained not educated. They are being trained for one narrow subsection of the field in whatever it is they are currently researching. They are not being educated in the variety of skills necessary to replicate the environment required to continue in their field.

And the whole argument about education vs vocational training doesn't imply that education should avoid anything which might be useful.

Part of the problem is that they are training 10 people for academia for every position that comes open. If these people were being educated instead, they could take their skills to a wide variety of positions. Instead they are all being trained as though they were going to enter the tenure track, something which is just not possible.

Re:So say the biologists

[mikael]

Sometimes it will go up as much as 8 years. The first couple of years, you get to do more or less what you like - research whatever areas you like. 3rd year, you do the experients your supervisor asks you to do. 4th year, you start writing up and repeat experiments as necessary, 5th year the thesis is submitted. Even without any actual text content, the title pages, introduction, acknowledgements, table of contents, appendices take up 40 pages. The remaining 80 pages are the actual content (20 pages - literature survey, 20 pages experiment, 10 pages results, 10 pages conclusions).

Though, things can go wrong without getting you fired. Instead, they will just drag out one or more of these stages several years. Do too much work - outshine an international ex-student, enter someone else's research field by mistake.

Re:So say the biologists

[mikael]

There's the same problem in the UK . The main problem is that PhD students are cheap (15K tax-free stipend a year). Research assistants only need MSc degrees or good BSc degrees, while a research associate or research fellowship is a bit more pricy (25K-35K). Each PhD in biology is based on studying particular gene or interaction of genes. Mostly the research concludes, there is no interaction, so there is nothing further more to study. Next PhD student please...

Re:So say the biologists

[Jesus_666]

I think that "Whoa Is Me" would be the perfect name for his autobiography...

Re:So say the biologists

[HornWumpus]

Cut throat implies very competitive.

What would be the alternative? All inclusive?

Would you like your degree to be grouped with education? That's what happens when everybody that shows up gets a degree. Fast forward ten years and nobody will have any respect for the degree.

Re:So say the biologists

[Jesus_666]

It doesn't have to be ludicrously expensive. When I look at my university we have 200 EUR/semester for administrative stuff (including a 40 EUR train/bus/tram ticket that gets you halfway across North Germany for free for the entire semester) plus 500 EUR/semester for state-mandated tuition (that's been suspended for years due to the local tuition law being unconstitutional). Let's add books - the mandatory of which in my CS course amounted to about 200 EUR spread out over nine semesters. That's fairly affordable.

Of course you still have living costs etc. but then again you can always request a BAFöG* grant, which manifests as a monthly payment calculated based on the projected income of you and your parents. The nice thing is that you only have to pay back half of it (less if you graduate fast and with good grades), you never have to pay back more than 10.000 EUR and you have a grace period after graduating.

It's pretty hard to really get yourself in financial trouble through studying in Germany. Of course you can attend a ludicrously expensive university if you want but we have plenty of reputable universities normal people can afford. American universities being financial black holes for the students is not an issue with academia in general.


* BAFöG = Bundesausbildungsförderungsgesetz = Federal Law for the Promotion of Education

Re:So say the biologists

[TofuDog]

Most graduate programs provide training that has some role in industry. There is no for-profit sector that investigates evolutionary theory or applies said theory to conserving biodiversity. I work for a government agency, in a job that was highly competitive to get, but I'm ready to compete for even lower pay as biology professor, where I may better use my talents as a Ph.D. for research, and (mostly) teaching.

Re:So say the biologists

[gstoddart]

I think the complaint is that PhD's in biology are getting trained for the specific task of a not just their field, but whatever their advisors happen to be working with. So upon completion they are only prepared to work in a very narrow subsection of academic biology.

Well, I think a lot of people have had that complaint about PhDs for quite some time ... in a lot of fields of study the only thing you can do with a PhD is academia.

And, by the time you get there, you're (on paper) grossly over-qualified to do anything else, and (in practice) grossly under-qualified to do anything else.

There's just a lot of disciplines for which a PhD is a purely academic endeavor, with limited use to industry. There might be some applicability to government for some disciplines in terms of policy or something.

They've been encouraged to avoid such skills as writing, math and programming in favor of cranking out data. Skills which would help them win jobs where they could then do the research they've trained for.

So, they're highly trained, specialist lab assistants with no marketable skills? That sounds quite sad, really.

Re:So say the biologists

[mldi]

You are ignoring a few things.

First, the US public school system is horrible. So yes, if I were hiring somebody it'd be at least partially reassuring that they did more than the bare minimum (high school grad or GED). It doesn't necessarily measure how smart or skilled you are, but it gives me something to start with. Many high school grads can barely put 2+2 together, even though they got B's in H.S. Our education system exists solely to push people through, whether they earned it or not. Once you fix that, then I could agree with your argument more.

There's very few people I know with degrees that are actually swimming in their education debt (1 person). There's a handful I know that went into careers they didn't go to school for, and for some of those it was their choice to do that. I know ZERO people who actually regret getting their degree because of debt. That speaks volumes to me.

You're also ignoring the fact that there's tons of "higher" education options in the US. You can go 4 years to a college if you want a bachelors, but you don't have to. Lots of in-demand technical jobs are hiring 2-year associate degree students, where many of them got their education from a cheap community college or something equivalent. There's tons of very specific programs too that are very cheap that can be done in even less time, you can do alongside a job, and will catapult you ahead of where you are now while giving you some sense of direction in your career. Many of these also mix classes with hands-on training. It doesn't take 4 years of college to become a licensed plumber for example (which earns a very decent living). You can argue the quality of said educations all you want, but if it gets you a better job or fulfills a goal, then it works just fine.

If you can't find something that fits you and your wallet, you aren't looking in the right places.

Re:So say the biologists

[CtownNighrider]

That's a lot different than American university. I'm a high school junior and plan on going to a school with a sticker price around 40k-60k per year. Nobody actually pays that because of federal aid and scholarships but I wouldn't at all be surprised if I graduate with 80k in debt.

Re:So say the biologists

[jc42]

Yeah; when I read that "whoa is me", I immediately thought it was a variant of "stop me if you've heard this one". ;-)

How about learning some statistics?

[Jack Malmostoso]

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.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[HungryHobo]

I'm a computer science grad currently doing a taught postgrad in bioinformatics and I can only agree.

Even in the course specifically about stats, coding and math the programmings, stats and math is pretty weak.

we cover basic regression in stats which is probably the most solid bit of the course.
the math I mostly covered in first year computer science.

  The only thing I can say about the coding is that it's even more basic than first year coding in comp sci.

There's no actual computer science covered though, even the basics like estimating time complexity at a glance or basic datastructures.

I'm the only comp sci, everyone else in the course is biology and with 2 exceptions have never coded before in their lives.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[captainpanic]

Completely agree. Teaching biologists some proper statistics means they can do so much more. They suddenly can go out of the laboratory, and interpret their own results. Their publications would make more sense. They can plan their own experiments (yes, you need statistics to see what you can measure best to reduce uncertainty the quickest)... They may eventually even be taken serious by other scientists and engineers.

But please do not translate 'generalist' into 'management' or 'economics' or something. They can remain nerds...

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[stewbee]

Wow, generalize much?

My wife is hoping to finish with her PhD from Northwestern (in Chicago and Evanston) this summer in microbiology. While she admits that she tolerates math, she is competent with it (if not a little rusty). However, I did find this interesting with the program that she is in, and how it differed from my own experience in grad school. Her university's curriculum was done in a way such that there was little flexibility on what courses she could take. I do not recall any course of higher math/statistics being offered or required. Additionally, they are only in class for the first two years. Everything after that is lab work. I am not sure she could take another class after this period if she wanted. The question I think here is whether the university is catering to the students (I hope not) by not making them take it, or if it was offered as an elective would they even be able to fill the class.

I am not arguing that statistics wouldn't be helpful. In fact I agree that there should be more. I think I have even heard of my wife complaining about the validity of some papers' statistical analysis. I just took point that generalizing scientists, and then females as being bad at math, which is just wrong.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[Cryect]

I will say Bioengineering programs are much better as a result for R&D into biology. There is still push back as the changing of the guard is occurring with research guided by engineering methodology slowly gaining ground over almost random testing of traditional biology. Check out systems biology, where you need a strong background in math and computer science to create complex models to use your research results and guide your further research. Note, I was a PhD student in a MolBio program till I dropped out (classes were somewhat depressing how it was really the same stuff as undergrad but slightly more detailed) and eventually moved into programming for the game industry. Anyways need all the basic headway of traditional biology to have the rich amount of data that allows system biology to work.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[Edge00]

I have my B.A in biology and my M.S. in microbiology. I see a lot of people here saying biology majors don't understand enough math, but from my perspective I can't figure out where it would fit into the curriculum. For my bachelor's I had a semester of calculus and a semester of statistics. What many people don't realize is a biology major is typically 1 or 2 courses away from a minor in chemistry, I personally had 5 semesters of chemistry. A couple of semesters of physics are typically required also. This is all before you even start to add in general studies courses and then core course work which covers everything from ecology, evolution, microbiology, cell biology, molecular biology, anatomy and physiology, and biochemistry just to name a few. From my experience many biologists are weak in microbiology and ecology because those course are often skipped. How can you argue for more math when the breadth of the biological disciplines aren't even covered.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[Jeppe Salvesen]

Why do we are about these things? We'll just outsource to the fine peoples of India and China!

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[raddan]

I second this, but I am not a biology grad-- I'm a CompSci grad. My undergraduate statistics courses were laughably easy, and in both cases, the profs mysteriously liked to do powerpoints in the DARK. The first class was at 7:30AM. The second at 6:00PM. Not good for retention.

When I came to grad school, I was suddenly thrown into very advanced mathematics. It was assumed that I knew things like graphical models, differential equations, and mathematical logic. I did not. I am now spending my evenings correcting these deficits.

If I had any advice for future grad students, in any science or technology field, it is this: spend a year after your undergrad time just preparing for graduate school. Study advanced math. Take the time to focus on doing well on the GRE. Get some lab experience if you can. Get some practical experience if you can. I put myself through my undergrad while working full time, and my schedule needed to be coordinated with my wife's career, so I did not have the luxury of doing this. But you should. You really should.

That said, even the most prepared grad student will feel unprepared when they get here. I don't know a single person who feels they have adequate knowledge. My friends who were mathematics majors bemoan the fact that their programming skills are so poor (and tell me that I am fortunate to have been a lifelong programmer), but I envy their exposure to things like abstract algebra, advanced statistics, and formal proofs. Having to devise and stick to a plan of self-education is the name of the game. I'm glad that I realized this from the start, but grad school is not easy, and only you can educate yourself.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[dogmatixpsych]

Medical doctors don't receive a background in math and statistics because most MDs do not do research. An MD is a clinical (professional) degree, unlike a PhD. A math and statistics would help but frankly, most would never use it.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[Skuto]

Very rarely do they understand what they are doing, they just throw some numbers into SPSS and hope the right answer comes out. Today's xkcd seems appropriate: http://xkcd.com/882/

They probably do know what they're doing: getting publishable results. They're just optimizing their situation. Who cares if it's just wrong (because of lack of multiple-test adjustment)? They're encouraged to publish (i.e. get past peer review), not to be right.

The conclusions are worthless? Well, I never had the impression much people in academia cared. In the fields I'm familiar with, most of the published improvements are good for the trashcan. There ain't a good enough feedback loop between publishing useful results and getting funding, I guess.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[Antisyzygy]

I don't think it has anything to do with women. However, I do think that biology majors need to have at least two full years of statistics and math education above trigonometry to even be allowed to get a bachelor of science degree. Linear algebra, probability, statistics and regressions come into mind as useful topics. They also should be forced to take at least a three course sequence in programming topics, such as one course of matlab/R and two courses in CS like Intro to CS and Data Structures. Nowadays you get mathematicians and statisticians getting into mathematical or statistical biology because biology majors are so ill prepared for the math they need to do their research.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[ShakaUVM]

>>Study advanced math. Take the time to focus on doing well on the GRE.

These two things don't really go well together.

The GRE goes up to, what, algebra?

I didn't even bother looking at the GRE before I took it and got a perfect score on the math section. Literally, the first question was: "x + 7 = 13. Solve for x." ...and it didn't get any harder after that. A perfect score was only something like 95th percentile for computer science majors. That's how ridiculously easy it is - 5% of people get perfect scores on it.

The logic problem section was also pretty easy. I missed one question from misclicking an answer, but the stupid computerized test systems won't let you go back to change an answer.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[cyberkine]

The widespread innumeracy among biomedical scientists is what allowed me to survive in grad school. With a basic knowledge of statistics you can make a small fortune (in grad school terms) crunching other people's data and making pretty charts and graphs. Not that I'm any kind of super math genius, but in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[Antisyzygy]

Or... just take the math courses as an undergraduate. Its much more beneficial to you then since it will look good if you give your transcript to potential graduate departments and it you can also get it satisfy electives in your discipline usually by talking to your advisor. I started out as a computer engineering major, and people told me that it would be a good idea to take higher math as electives. I ended up switching to math in the end but my point is that I had math courses satisfying computer engineering electives.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[Antisyzygy]

Then your department is a good department. Many out there are not. Just recently my university created a Biomathematics and Biostatistics program that is sponsored by both the mathematics department and biology department to fill in gaps in the biology departments course offerings.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[Antisyzygy]

When your doctor tells you they "will pray for you" rather than offer treatments you kind of wish they would have taken more science and math in college.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[dogmatixpsych]

I don't disagree; I was just pointing out that most MDs don't do research even if they are partakers of research. One problem comes in fitting science and math into their medical education. There just isn't time - there are too many medical courses to take. It would be great to do during a residency though (if it was in lieu of some clinical responsibilities).

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[zoroaster37]

That's all well and good, but your curriculum has left no room for the chemistry that will also be needed to understand the biology. Not to mention a complete course covering the range of biological topics. The fact is, most undergraduate level biology types will not be using math or statistics very much, but they will need to understand basic chemistry, and they certainly should have an understanding of ecology, evolution, genetics, and microbiology at a basic level (whatever their specialization). So which do we choose? Something that would be undeniably helpful in dealing with the world, but that wouldn't be all that useful in a biology career, or something that is critical to a well-rounded understanding of the field. It's like saying a CS major should have a good understanding of economics because it's a major application of their field, and then cutting a year out of the math curriculum to fit it in.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[Quiet_Desperation]

The logic problem section was also pretty easy.

I went into that test sweating bullets. I had bought the Barron's guide to prepare, and the logic problem examples were enormous. One was the type where you have a line of chairs and you need to sit people in them according to a huge list of rules. I did them all, but they were taking 20 minutes each! One had 15 slots and 20 rules. WTF?

Then I got to the test, and the actual problems there were a shadow of what was in the guide. Took a minute or two for each one. All I can figure is that Barron's put the complicated ones in the guide to get you really good at the type of problem, and to make the actual test appear easy.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[Skuto]

I just took point that generalizing scientists, and then females as being bad at math, which is just wrong.

Of course. The parent post's impression that woman are bad at math must have been a bad joke. I'm going to generalize from my countries data (which I'd expect to apply to most of Europe and the US), but pure mathematics has one of the largest populations of female students (about 33%) of any hard science.

I don't have the data on how many graduate, but clearly, those that start don't seem to think math is "too hard".

It's a line of study where a geek has an actual chance of landing a girlfriend!

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[hey!]

When I came to grad school, I was suddenly thrown into very advanced mathematics...

Oh, that's the combination of intellectual machismo and lousy organization. The reason so many people find themselves going overnight from "you don't need to know that yet," to "you haven't learned that yet?" is because nobody bothered to figure out when a certain piece of math needed to be taught, and nobody much relishes making things easier for people who follow them, even if its the sensible thing to do.

What this produces is PhDs who've managed to academically survive the ordeal of being unprepared in mathematics, but without necessarily gaining much understanding of the math they use every day.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[wfolta]

I was also a CS major, and I did in fact take Diff Eq and Partial Diff Eq, and I'd have to say that other than recognizing the symbols I haven't really retained much... or needed it. On the other hand, I did poorly in Probability & Statistics -- pretty counter-intuitive stuff in many ways -- and I've been painfully whacked by that deficit multiple times in graduate studies. I finally feel like I'm getting it, but much of what I know now is self-taught so I have blind spots in my knowledge that will still embarrass me.

In fact, I'm using statistics more and more, and wish I'd been a statistician. Of course, if I were a statistician, I'd say that so much of advanced statistics is MCMC and other techniques require programming to be tractable, not just running single commands in R.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[Antisyzygy]

Engineers seem to fit most of that, i.e. chemistry I and II, physics I - III , plus advanced mathematics (differential equations, linear algebra and many times an elective or two like partial differential equations) in 4 years. Actually, many end up having to take 5 because you have 17 credit semesters. Biology majors could fit it in if they wanted to. Were talking maybe 9 credits extra of math and 6-9 of computer science. Even an intro to CS and a scientific software class and then linear algebra, mathematical modeling, and a combined statistics/probability course would be better than nothing. Watering down science degrees is not a good thing to do, its supposed to be hard.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[stewbee]

It's a line of study where a geek has an actual chance of landing a girlfriend!

This is true. When my wife first started grad school, she had many single female friends. And me being an engineer, had many single male friends. I did try to get some of my friends introduced to her friends since it can be difficult meeting people after college.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[ColdWetDog]

An enormous problem in Biology these days is that it's all encompassing. It is Math, Physics, Chemistry and Systematics and Ecology and this and that. Can't have everything. That said, most biological research these days requires more than a passing knowledge of statistics. Certainly the medical field would be better off if they tossed every active researcher out of the lab for a year and into an undergrad statistics course. Then made passing the course a requirement for getting back into the lab.

But all of those fields can take years to get even generalist appreciation of. It's really hard to cram all of that into a 4 or 5 year program and do the heavy lifting of lab work or research.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[Huckabees]

Did you go to college with a widely accredited Computer Science program? I was under the impression that Discrete Math, Mid-level Calculus, Linear Algebra, and a course in Algorithmic Analysis and proofs were standard fare for a Computer Science undergrad. At least that's how it was in my school.

Some colleges gear themselves far more towards practical knowledge for working professionals looking to change their career paths. I could see someone easily coming out of one of these degree programs with a CS degree without any advanced math but these students typically aren't on the path for a life in academia.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[ColdWetDog]

Actually, I think (as an MD) that reasonably advanced statistics should be required of any physician. Researcher or no. The vast majority of medical 'research' is utter crap because few people can get past a Student's T test. Since the research animals are complicated and poorly characterized (humans) you tend to look for results in a fog of competing processes and you are typically looking and underpowered studies. Then you end up reading typically overbroad, over confident 'results' sections. Even now, the big granting agencies are funding long term, expensive trials which are set up to be statistically underpowered or imbalanced.

You have to be able to look at a study and get a feeling for it's strengths and weaknesses before incorporating it into clinical practice. Can't do that unless you have some idea of statistics. I sure wish my understanding was better.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[eijnuhs]

I am a new CompSci graduate student too. I knew at around my senior years as undergraduate that if I wanted to do graduate studies, I would need more mathematics than whatever was required for my undergraduate program. However, it was too late for me as I need compsci courses rather than math courses for graduation requirements. Its possible at the junior years in undergraduate, most students has no idea they would need those advanced mathematics or statistics for graduate studies. Later when they realised it, it could be too late for some of them like in my case. I tried picking up things on my own but its rather difficult if there are other commitments like course assignments, work and etc. Undergraduate programs do not prepare students for graduate program specifically. Therefore, for those who has decided to do graduate studies, it would be great if the institution to allow them to make changes to their degree on the fly to allow them to take the courses that would be useful. For example, if I decided in my 3rd year I wanted to do graduate studies in Machine Learning, I could tailor my course towards more statistics courses rather than the standard CompSci fare and still able to graduate without delays. Learning is such a great opportunity in life, how nice it would be if its not bogged down by regulations, grades etc. Everyone probability takes different amount of time to master a skill, the goal of learning should be mastering the skills and not getting an 'A' in the course. I would support a scheme that every graduates will finally master something rather than 'know just enough' for an 'A' grade. Mastery depends on the time the student willing to afford.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[turkeyfish]

That mathematicians and computer scientists are becoming useful participants in larger biological questions and training in biology is a good thing. A major impediment, however, is that those with some familiarity with these disciplines too often fail to recognize is that MOST realistic biological problems are extremely hard, when placed into the context of mathematical modeling. Realistic modeling requires in general the ability to effectively solve partial differential equations of hundreds or perhaps tens of thousands or millions of simultaneous variables, without anyone really having a clear conception of just what variables may prove to be the most important or even how they might be identified as distinct before such a model is constructed. The algorithms required are quite often NP complete and there is seldom reason to expect that exact answers can be found even if one has a specific realistic model in hand.

When one is working with millions of organisms each of which may have millions of base pairs in their DNA, the number of permutations that might shift the representation of a given problem into an ill-conditioned system, defective systems of equations, or toward algorithmic intractability without warning is not only enormous, but largely not-computable, except for the grossest of simplifications. The notion that the current state of CS and mathematical statistics provides a paradigm for biologists to solve all their conceptual and computations problems is both laughable and remarkably naive.
In general the leading edge of biology is not rocket science. It is far more complicated than rocket science. For example, just trying to establish the phylogeny of a small group of organisms say 500 in number will require identification one out of more possible permutations than their are electrons in the know universe. To make matters worse, routine statistical methods are not appropriate for comparisons across organisms, because the slight changes between combinations of base-pairs that ultimately encode for a particular behavior, physiology, function, or structure are not independent of one another and can not be independently sampled, but are instead a product of phylogeny and evolutionary events that took place in the past that are not amenable to direct testing. To make matters worse, the results of such computations often involve outcomes that may mean the difference between life or death of both individuals as well as entire ecosystems that can not be reversed engineered because of the sheer number of co-evolutionary and interrelated events.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[turkeyfish]

Your comment makes the questionable assumption that there is actually some science or math that could be taught to say cure you of AIDS or other currently untreatable disease. Just as in other sciences, there are many things that are simply not yet known.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[turkeyfish]

One of the very first lessons biologists learn is that life in general involves highly interconnected macromolecular systems, each of which is itself highly complicated.

The best mathematicians from Archimedes to Zarski tend to cut their teeth on problems involving a few variables and structures with the expectation, but unproven assertion, that more complicated systems can be viewed as direct extensions. Biologists must confront the sad and confusing reality that to study life in a realistic way, one must concern themselves with the results of complexity involving tens of thousands if not hundreds of millions of variables. Biologists have no choice but to confront this "all encompassing" morass of myriads and myriads of dependent and independent variables as best they can. To make matters worse because biological systems evolve through time, most statistical problems need to account for both simultaneous spatial and temporal autocorrelation and must be solved within the context of considerably stochasticity that is not entirely random. Although mathematicians and statisticians can suggest simplifying assumptions, say noting the dominance or primary eigenvalues, they are just that, assumptions until demonstrated otherwise.

Consequently, to say that biologists are poorly trained to cope with the mathematical challenges that confront them, doesn't really say much. So is everyone else.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[kubernet3s]

It is certainly true that bio sciences tend to attract people with a skill set that doesn't include math. I'd question whether this makes it more attractive as a discpline to women, but given the stigma associated with female mathematical competence it might be true that women in some way are more likely to develop as non-mathematical scientists

Unfortunately, scientists seems to be divided down the middle, in a line which ends up travelling right through chemistry. Organic and other synthetic chemists, shading into biochemists and molecular biologists, tend to be quite math shy, whereas physical chemists and chemical physicists tend to enjoy and excel at math. There is a joke at my school that the rivalry between the p.chemists and the orgo chemists is based on the fact that p. chemists all did badly in orgo, and orgo chemists all did badly in p. chem. It is not hard to imagine a person who doesn't like math tracking themselves into a discpline like the biomedical field.

And what is this about a dearth of funding? More money is allocated to the biomedical and health sector than any other branch of research.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[stewbee]

And what is this about a dearth of funding? More money is allocated to the biomedical and health sector than any other branch of research.

While I can't confirm that they are the most funded, it certainly depends on what you are researching. Again, I use my wife as my anecdotal evidence. She is currently studying Legionella, which is a mere bacteria which if you are old or are immuno-compromised could cause you to develop Legionairs disease that is a type of respiratory disease. You may occasionally hear about this on your local news, but it doesn't get much press. Compare this to other things such as AIDS, Alzheimer's, cancer, etc, which are more "sexy" research topics. If you are researching those topics, where there is a more immediate need/desire for drugs and/or cures, then you will be well funded. If you are doing research on other bacteria/viruses, then it may be tougher to get funding.

But hey! I don't make the system, and my wife doesn't care for it either. I would classify what my wife as doing is general science improvement, which may not have an immediate benefit, but will improve the body of research on general topics that could be applied to more specific topics, such as those that I mentioned above. But I don't think that this is unique to just her field. I would say general research is down across all fields and not just in biomedical research. I think I just heard in the last few months that the NSF was getting some of its budget cut.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[TofuDog]

Firstly, please separate the professional fields (i.e., medical doctor) from science. They are apples and oranges. Biology research is extremely competitive, and the intelligence and quantitative abilities of grad students at top schools is impressive. Every good graduate program emphasizes statistics. In my biology MS program, I took classes in sampling design (something I've found physical scientists, like my Ph.D. astrophysicist girlfriend, terrible at), ANOVA, and multivariate statistics. All of these required a proficiency in "coding" in the SAS stats. package. As a Ph.D. student, I've taken classes in non-parametric stats., and population modeling, learning basic programming in "R" in the process, and developing skills and scripting abilities in GIS and remote sensing packages. The majority of grad students I know develop proficiency in SQL, VBA, or some other language, like Python for ArcGIS (or all of the above). That said, I am not a programmer, and don't compete with the Quants on Wall St., but have many specialized skills that are used in population biology. There aren't a whole lot of for-profit ventures hiring people to test evolutionary theories or conserve species.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[aaronb1138]

I have a close friend doing research in the biology / cancer area while working on her masters at the moment. It's quite clear that a firmer grasp of math would be of great detriment to the entirety of the field of biology research. The underlying mechanism for getting published is to keep running different pre-fab statistics models against a data set until you find "something" you can call meaningful. Pharmacology and biology right now is statistical alchemy. No self respecting mathematician can stand behind the interpretations drawn on results. Luckily, the mathematicians don't see the interpretations made by the presiding PhD. Oddly enough, this makes the math majors in the field (biostat majors and mathematics majors with minors in biology) both highly desirable, but feared as being cave dwellers much like IT folk used to be treated. They are slightly more surly than the angst ridden IT admin though.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[izomiac]

Biology and math are different skill sets. A typical biology major can "easily" memorize the Krebs Cycle, but cannot grasp physics to save their life (or have a realistic chance of getting the grades to get into medical school, hence why a lot of premeds drop the course a time or two). IMHO, it's tremendously important as understanding physiology and biostats is crucial, whereas stuff like the rate limiting step of glycolysis can be google'd in about five seconds. (I.e. used to be important before internet access was ubiquitous.)

The problem is that biology and medicine are fields with the culture that rewards should be linearly related to effort. Everyone's smart, so the person with the best grades must have worked the hardest, or at least that's how the Type A's who dominate the field seem to rationalize it. With conceptual fields, you can study the material for dozens of hours and if you still don't get it, you'll fail the test, whereas someone who gets it in lecture might not need to study at all. Biology majors have enough pre-meds that any conceptual question that a pre-med gets wrong, but still doesn't understand, will be argued. Professors have followed the path of least resistance until, now, virtually every question can be traced to a direct quote from the notes or lecture powerpoint. It's simple regurgitation of information, and that's why it's such a big transition for medical students when they start applying knowledge in the clinical years.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[sulfur]

GRE may be somewhat challenging because you may not have enough time to solve all the problems. When you're 25 and you are presented with a bunch of problems that you last saw in 8th grade, it takes some time to put your brain into "thinking as an 8th grader" mode.

The good news is that most decent places don't care much about GRE, and only use it as the lowest threshold to weed out obviously hopeless applicants.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[ShakaUVM]

>>GRE may be somewhat challenging because you may not have enough time to solve all the problems.

The GRE may be somewhat challenging because the test-takers might get bored doing basic maths for an hour, but that's about it. You don't need to put your brain into "think like an 8th grader" mode to solve "x+y = 6. x = 5. What is Y?"

It honestly felt much easier than the SAT math section. The GRE verbal section seemed harder, though.

Re:How about learning some statistics?

[zoroaster37]

Yes, and biology majors tend to take 2 years of chemistry, a year of physics (watered down, yes, but it's still a year of courses), plus a year of applied statistics. Many times they even take an elective like experimental design or biochemistry. In other words, different degrees have different requirements. Some of the math/cs you describe is most definitely valuable to biology people, but at the graduate level. Undergraduates in biology have chosen to specialize, and thus it takes time and additional study (i.e., graduate work) to be able to delve into more detailed or peripheral topics.

Re:Short answer

[Anonymous Coward]

All of them. Get a real job.

That saddens me. They're no artists, street performers, or entrepreneurs with really hair brained ideas.

In America, we're taught that the more education you get the better. We're taught that we should follow our passions and ever thing will be great.

Sadly, that's not true for 99% of us.

And the winners are....

[macraig]

Q:

Which Grad Students Are the Most Miserable?

A: Probably the ones who post questions to Ask Slashdot?

Re:And the winners are....

[mwvdlee]

So that would be IT students then?

Re:And the winners are....

[captainpanic]

So that would be IT students then?

Specific: IT students who are stuck in their basement.

Re:And the winners are....

[macraig]

Seriously, though, Jessica seems to be living in a well-insulated bubble and doesn't seem to realize that competition is burgeoning everywhere, in every occupation; even janitors are miserable. This small planet is now crowded with SEVEN BILLION self-serving mouths with attached gonads... and thanks to said gonads this dynamic will only get worse (until the agriculture system implodes). Of course those who aren't at the pinnacle of the economic food chain would be less miserable if those at the top weren't quite so effective at concentrating natural resources and wealth. Part of the misery is because we're overdue for another revolt to kick the money-changers outta the temples and topple those dancing with their flags at the top of the hill. From a strictly Darwinian point of view, though, the competition serves a valuable purpose, thinning the herd and favoring those with the best sets of mutations.

So, do we choose to compete with each other in the best Darwinian tradition, and be miserable doing it, or do we cooperate Borg-like to benefit the whole species? We seem to be evolving slowly toward the latter, but not fast enough to stem the misery.

Re:And the winners are....

[mhackarbie]

Well said.

Re:And the winners are....

[wisty]

Really? People in the service sector can be happy, as there are 7 billion potential customers.

People doing research *should* be happy, as while their research may not be the best in the world (due to all the competition), it can touch 7 billion lives. But I guess a lot of researchers suck at math.

Re:And the winners are....

[MalleusEBHC]

As a counterpoint, I'm doing my Masters in CS right now and work as a software developer. Jobs in my field are plentiful even if you're just moderately competent, and there are great options if you're above average. Of all the STEM fields, CS has some of the best job prospects, and it's no coincidence that I find most people in my program are happy with their situation. So yes, I could totally see how Bio majors are miserable when they compare their brutal race for tenure to CS grad students who come out of school with six figure jobs.

Re:And the winners are....

[macraig]

It didn't stop my ranting because that's only half the equation. Falling birthrates in "developed" countries are offset by birthrates in the rest of the not-so-lucky world, and also by new immigrants with strong cultural bias toward large families (now unnecessary in their new environment). When the United States was agrarian there was a strong cultural bias to large families; my great-great-grandparents attempted no less than 14 offspring. Fortunately not all of them lived, because the family didn't even remain in agriculture.

Sounds like liberal arts grad students

[antifoidulus]

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.

Re:Sounds like liberal arts grad students

[mangu]

And the grads have an even more difficult time finding employment outside academia

Why? Where do you think all those managers, salespeople, business consultants, etc come from? A liberal arts degree is the easiest first step to an MBA.

Of course, a PhD in liberal arts may be overkill, but a masters is great in your resume. It shows you have a flexible mind, can think outside the box, have appreciation for diversity, or whatever is the current trend in positive qualifications for a manager.

The only way a liberal arts graduate could feel miserable is if he actually enjoys his field of study...

Re:Sounds like liberal arts grad students

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sorry Mangu but you have no clue what you're talking about. I'm at a top 10 law school and that is known for placing 100% of its grads by graduation. We still have 35 (out of class of 170) unemployed students and they've spent the past 6 months applying for nonlegal jobs. MBAs/JDs/and LA Masters are useless.

Re:Sounds like liberal arts grad students

[arb phd slp]

Speaking of "hunched over a desk." I have a friend who did get a job outside of academia doing biomed research. She left that job and went on disability from the abysmal ergonomics at her lab. I think she's a manager of the print shop at Staples now.

Re:Sounds like liberal arts grad students

[Antisyzygy]

Well, you could probably be a German translator if you could read German books.

Re:Sounds like liberal arts grad students

[Antisyzygy]

I totally disagree. If we are talking about liberal studies, its the biggest joke degree on the planet. Thinking outside the box requires you actually bothered to take science and math courses along with your art and others. Scientific research is where the majority of outside-the-box thinking is even occurring right now.

Re:Sounds like liberal arts grad students

[tastiles]

You mean humanities not "liberal arts".

As a professor in physics at a liberal arts college, you mean "humanities" not liberal arts. Liberal arts ultimately refers to the seven subjects taught at colleges in the Middle Ages and includes literature, languages, philosophy, history, mathematics, and science. Liberal arts is the idea that students should be well-rounded and not prepared for any one vocation. It is the exact opposite of what you mean. Please stop using the wrong term.

http://www.liberalarts.wabash.edu/storage/Defining_Liberal_Education.pdf

Re:Sounds like liberal arts grad students

[w_dragon]

An MBA is useful if you have a couple decades experience in a field and want to jump into senior management. It's useless if it's just paired with an undergrad degree and no experience.

Re:Sounds like liberal arts grad students

[supercrisp]

Dozens of applicants for professorships? I've applied for teaching/generalist English professorships in the last year for which there have been 500-800 applicants. No kidding. Those are extreme cases, but most searches, even in specialist areas, are netting at least 150 applications. I think that, right now, any humanities field is a bad bet. In my current department, we've lost about 4 tenure-track lines, and we're having a hard time gaining them back, and these are core areas: early modern British lit, composition, and ESL. It's worse for art history, especially given the teaching expectations. And then the people in German and other languages are seeing entire programs of study wiped out of existence. I don't want to play "who's more miserable?" because there's enough misery going around for everyone to get a share. But the humanities are really suffering for employment now because of the trend toward nontenured, lower-paying teaching roles and the fact that most programs don't have external funding. Whether that equates to more misery or not, I don't know. But it's tough, almost impossible, to get a job paying a living wage, and I don't advise pursuing graduate study in the humanities at this time.

Re:Sounds like liberal arts grad students

[supercrisp]

For what it's worth to this discussion, a liberal arts master's is very easy to obtain. It's just two years of relatively simple work, no matter the field. IF anyone is willing to gamble on graduate study in the liberal arts, a master's is a relatively small risk in terms of time-to-degree (earning time lost) and tuition cost. The doctorate, which tends to take significantly longer than 5 years, is a much bigger gamble (7 is becoming typical). Frankly I think a large part of our problem is expanded access to graduate degrees. The market has become diluted. Factor in the decreasing demand because of changes in employment practices at universities, and the problem is even more depressing. Graduate students and nontenure faculty are teaching the courses that were once taught by tenure-line faculty. Humanities education is being treated like a business, as a growth industry, which in some respects it is, and as a place where personnel cost-cutting can take place, which it can, because it can "cannibalize" its future by treating young graduates as short-term, high-labor employees to be burned-out and discarded. The long-term impact of this is likely to be negative for the field in terms of pursuit of knowledge and possibly in terms of the value of the educations offered.

Re:Sounds like liberal arts grad students

[rabun_bike]

MBAs are a dime a dozen but sometimes a foot note required to advance in management. In the 80's and early 90's they were in vogue. We have tons of MBAs here where I work and it doesn't mean a whole lot. I would say close to half of the MBAs I worth with have an additional masters in CS or EE and got the MBA because it was offered for free by the company. I have an ugrad in business, a masters is CIS, and working on my second masters in CS. I cannot overstate how much easier business classes are than most science classes (in general). That doesn't mean business classes are not helpful or worthwhile. It just means that if you try to equate difficult in course material to job pay that correlation generally doesn't hold. The Universities grind out so many MBAs in so many different forms (part-time MBA, on-line MBA, executive MBA, etc) it is kind of like a certificate course almost unless you get an MBA from Harvard. I am not saying that your don't learn anything from obtaining an MBA but don't expect your MBA to equal cash like the colleges try to market it - even if you get one from the ivy league as my wife did and her BioChem + MBA wasn't worth it. MBAs, JDs, and terminal Masters programs are revenue machines for a lot of universities. Higher education is a worthy goal but many get these degrees looking for a pay day and that may not always be the case. Now with the for-profits also involved in the diploma mill grind, the MBAs have lost even more weight.

Re:Sounds like liberal arts grad students

[SigmoidCurve]

Dude, let me clue you in here. Science *is* the box that everyone tells you to think outside of. Science teaches you a rigorous methodical approach to data collection and analysis; science is about hypothesis testing and repeatabillity of results. Scientists have to live in this box, otherwise they'd just be mad scientists. For inspired thinking, don't read Karl Popper, read some Hermann Hesse. That will blow your little scientific mind. Too bad that you would consider literature the biggest joke on the planet. Enjoy your sheltered life, bro.

Re:Sounds like liberal arts grad students

[Antisyzygy]

Said like a person that does not understand science. Spend some time actually understanding it, read some cutting edge scientific articles, and prepare to have your mind blown. Its amazing what people propose to solve problems. Just the depths of math that exist are completely outside the box, completely abstract, and beyond the realm of most human being's understanding. If I want to have some leisure time, I read literature. There's nothing wrong with even majoring in it, but any time you focus on metaphysical or philosophical things and forget about reality and logic you begin to form your own box. Thinking inside the box is just as easy if not easier for art majors that think "art is life".

Re:Sounds like liberal arts grad students

[drb226]

I bet it's more profitable to translate from PHB to Java.

Re:Sounds like liberal arts grad students

[Sheafification]

What you describe is not unsimiliar for sciences (my experience is with math). For any given position there are several hundred applicants, and most tenure-track positions with research as one of your responsiblities are very hard to get without a post-doc. There's some talk that the field is moving towards having two post-docs as a requirement to getting your foot in the door. That's three to six years of work after your PhD, with no guarantee that there will actually be any positions for you afterwards. Depending on your specialization in math, your knowledge may be non-transferrable to outside of academia (your general skills of abstraction, problem-solving, etc are useful of course, but you're pretty well versed in those by the end of grad school). That's not the most exciting path to undertake.

I know some graduating PhDs that have applied to about 150 schools this year with one or two phone interviews, no follow-up, as the response. Grad students that are only prepared for academia (even just teaching) are setup for a high chance of misery.

Re:Sounds like liberal arts grad students

[Xaositecte]

Obviously, both of you are living in different boxes, and hurling insults at each other like mad homeless people in an alley.

Re:Sounds like liberal arts grad students

[Xaositecte]

big bucks exist in translating for legal documents.

Re:Sounds like liberal arts grad students

[Antisyzygy]

I like music, fantasy, sci-fi, philosophy, video games, art, weightlifting, boating, and swimming. I also am a musician and sometimes write poetry. My point is to think outside the box you need to be well rounded, not solely focused on liberal arts or science. Im not the most well rounded individual, but Im not totally disregarding liberal arts altogether like he is waving science away as some kind of mind control that makes people into robots. Im just saying that liberal studies majors tend to have less science general education requirements than science majors have liberal studies general education requirements. So saying that scientists are inside the box thinkers because they don't study liberal topics is a farce. All you need to do is take some algebraic geometry or topology to really see how far outside the box mathematicians can get, and frequently scientists have other interests such as art or music as their primary hobby.

Re:Sounds like liberal arts grad students

[David Jao]

Dozens of applicants for professorships? I've applied for teaching/generalist English professorships in the last year for which there have been 500-800 applicants. No kidding. Those are extreme cases, but most searches, even in specialist areas, are netting at least 150 applications.

The GP said that the ratio of Ph.D candidates to positions was dozens to one, not that the ratio of applications to positions was dozens to one. The two numbers are not the same, unless each candidate applies to exactly one position on average.

In reality, each candidate applies to dozens of academic positions on average. (Some apply to hundreds, some apply to none; the average is probably on the order of a few dozen.) A few dozen people per position, multiplied by a few dozen applications per person, is entirely consistent with the range of 150-800 applicants per position.

You say that you are (applying to be) an English professor. I am a math professor. I have no sympathy for mathematicians who can't write. Writing is a big part of my research, and every individual on this planet is better off having rudimentary skill in communication. One can even reasonably argue that English in particular is the most important language worldwide. But, by the same token, I also consider foundational math, like English, to be a basic skill that every individual needs. Those who lack mathematics skills are bound to make the same kind of mistake that you displayed.

Re:Sounds like liberal arts grad students

[jwhitener]

Did you have to take any appreciable amounts of philosophy, art, anthro/socio ? I'm guess you didn't, because I agree with mangu, but not just for MBA or management. I feel that I was much more creative and a much better problem solver, right out of college in my first 'system analyst' position (which amounted to being the main programmer for web and desktops apps for a hospital, dba, web server admin, all in one type position), than some of the people with computer or science degrees.

If you have to make program/application design decisions that require you to understand people, and the way they use data, as well as looking past what they are saying and being able to read their true needs, having a good chunk of liberal arts is really helpful. I ended up with an Anthro major, but was very close to a chemistry major also, so I may have been benefiting from the best of both class types. Of course, it took me a while to get up to speed on the language used by the workplace at the time (foxpro hehe), and then some time to learn newer languages, server environments, dba stuff, etc... but all of that knowledge wouldn't matter at all if in implementing it, I had made the wrong initial decisions about the user needs, the organizations structure, etc...

I remember joking with friends that application design starts with putting on my Indiana Jones Anthro hat. Each department was basically a different tribe, with a different language. I had to learn rituals, and which could be broken, and how to do so. I had to sometimes ask business logic questions that had nothing to do with the project at hand, because I suspected that some other underlying business process was broken, and the tribal chiefs were leading me in the wrong direction.

My math, chemistry, and physics courses in college didn't feel nearly as creative to me. We did some original research, and some tests were actually fairly creative. I had good professors who would sometimes give us tests that were completely different than the book. It did, at times, really stretch our brains. But much of that was definitely "in the box" of conventional science. Take any two chemistry majors from two different schools, and they will likely approach a chemistry problem in nearly identical ways. Now take any two liberal arts majors from two different schools and ask them to, say, streamline an office process, or design a workflow, or redo the budget process, and I'm fairly confident that the approaches, and likely the solutions, will be different.

In addition to making you think about things that you will likely never hear about in your 'real life' or work later in life (I studied a things like walking marriage in China, so odd), the very fact that liberal arts programs are so NOT standardized, is almost always guaranteed to produce an original thinker. Tack on programming or other skills later, and it ends up being a pretty solid problem solving set imo.

Re:Sounds like liberal arts grad students

[w_dragon]

Not disagreeing with your post - but how many of your companies VPs and CxOs have MBAs? I work for a 20k person tech company and all but one of the senior management positions are held by people with MBAs. It isn't enough to get the position, but it is required.

Re:Sounds like liberal arts grad students

[Antisyzygy]

I took two anthropology courses, a humanities, a music appreciation, and japanese history. My point is science majors get liberal arts too. Saying that being a liberal arts major is what makes people think outside the box is actually evidence of thinking inside one of your own design.

Re:Sounds like liberal arts grad students

[jwhitener]

Wouldn't you agree though that two chemistry majors are more likely to approach a task in a more similar manner than two liberal arts majors?

Re:Sounds like liberal arts grad students

[Antisyzygy]

If it was a task such as "Titrate this substance" then yes. However the liberal arts people would probably have already forgotten how to do it. If it was something like "Find the most efficient method to arrange the items on this desk for your co-worker" then no, and I think the liberal arts majors would probably end up having the same end performance. Liberal arts majors can think outside the box just as frequently as science majors and vice verci, that's my point. Saying science makes you "think inside the box" and only liberal arts majors "think outside the box" is just a bullshit line used by liberal arts majors to make themselves feel better about not being in as much demand for jobs or whatever other insecurity they have.

Re:Sounds like liberal arts grad students

[rabun_bike]

I completely agree and you question is well directed. So I did a little research just to see myself. This is about 1/3rd of the top level executives of a 70k person tech company.

CEO - JD, MBA Finance
SVP - BS Engineering
SVP - BS Engineering
SVP - MS CS
SVP - MS CS
SVP - MS Economics, Phd
EVP CFO - MBA
SVP - JD
SVP - MBA
SVP - MBA
SVP - No degree at all
SVP - BS EE, MS EE

As I mentioned it isn't going to get you the job but it can't hurt as you plan you way up the food chain.

Navel-gazing

[paiute]

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.

current environment in biology causes bad science

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Sad state of affairs

[L4t3r4lu5]

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.

Re:Sad state of affairs

[dkleinsc]

The trouble is, right now there's a surplus of top-end-of-genius smart people with PhDs.

I know you wouldn't think so walking down the street, but the simple fact is that for every tenure-track position there are about 12 PhDs with useful published work capable of doing the job and doing it well, and even more for adjunct and other non-tenure track positions. The same sort of imbalance exists for research positions. The effect of this is that a lot of younger would-be scientists are working as part-time lab techs, or going into other fields, or trying to survive as part-time adjunct faculty, and the wages of those sorts of positions are steadily dropping. Also, many universities have been trying to save cash by avoiding giving anybody any sort of chance at tenure, leaving would-be academics basically no chance of making it.

And yes, that's a terrible waste of a lot of brilliant minds, but it's totally consistent with what's been going on in the US for the last 30 years.

Re:Sad state of affairs

[timeOday]

The whole of tenure seems to be in decline, like pensions. A lot of teaching is done by grad students, and a lot of research is done by soft-money PhD's, which basically means you're self employed with all the job security of a sole-proprietorship but paying a university 80% overhead to use their brand name. At the same time college has become incredibly expensive for students, too. I don't understand where it all goes.

Re:Sad state of affairs

[radtea]

paying a university 80% overhead to use their brand name. At the same time college has become incredibly expensive for students, too. I don't understand where it all goes.

I think you just answered your own question. University administrators.

And software development?

[mangu]

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.

Re:And software development?

[bberens]

While I agree that people from other walks of life should get a good introduction to mathematical programming I don't think it's very important that they get good at it so much as they get a basic understanding of what types of things are possible. The defense contractors (I only use them because I'm familiar with them) seem to have found a nice balance. They hire mechanical, aeronautical, etc. engineers who know just enough about programming to *get by* and then hire some pure computer scientist types to really help them make sure their code is good quality and to help tighten up their algorithms and such.

Re:And software development?

[cashman73]

The other nice part about computational research is the ability to pretty much do your work anywhere, as long as you have an Internet connection. No need to be physically present in the lab. Plus, you can have some interesting conversations with people when you've got your laptop propped open in a bar, your mouse in one hand and a beer in the other,. . .

Re:And software development?

[ShakaUVM]

>>Computers have become the universal tool, but no one is able to explore their capabilities, recent graduates are like illiterate peasants in a library.

To be fair, betting on ignorance is always a safe bet, no matter what subject or area of our society you're talking about. Nobody** knows history, math, computer programming, religion, physics, etc. at a very good level these days.

That said, there's a lot of smart people in every field. Some of the best math people I met were bioengineering professors at UCSD, at least or especially in their areas of expertise. I was fortunate enough to be partnered on my master's thesis project with an AMES guy who was a pretty decent programmer and had a good knowledge of math, but unfortunately the AMES program at the time (early 2000s) was still using FORTRAN. So we had fun getting our code to interoperate, but at least he was competent enough that if I told him how I was formatting my output, he'd have it all read in and analyzed by the next day.

By contrast, two of the stupidest people I've ever had to work with were at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. It was at the time of the internet boom, so they were having trouble finding competent programmers, so they hired these biology PhDs instead. Their sum output of work in the two years I spent there was half-constructing a web page (that didn't work) and a lot of snarky emails to my professor about how I should be using whatever trendy thing they'd read about somewhere. Because I wasn't using XML or whatever internally in our project, you know, that was the only reason they couldn't get any work done.

(**Approximately.)

Re:And software development?

[internerdj]

In my CS undergrad we had a single math course that used Maple and a single math course that used Matlab. While they gave me exposure to the packages, I spent more times with the quirks of the packages than learning the actual contents of the course. This has caused me some pain in my PhD courses because I'm expected to apply some of these concepts that I probably could "work out" in a math package, but I wasn't able to focus on the theory enough to make application now. It would have been nice to have a computer aided math course offered but that may be an accrediation risk for the program. The other option would be to teach a package as part of a lower level course and stick with it through later courses.

Re:And software development?

[donscarletti]

My 53 year old uncle is a senior professor (or whatever they call a full professor in North America) in geotechnical engineering. I've heard him lament how kids these days don't know how to do programming, since there are so many pre-made tools that ALMOST do what you need. Amazing to hear a white haired old chap complaining about my generation and its poor computer literacy, usually that is the one exception that they give us credit for. Apparently his PhD students all come running to him to do basic programming for them. Programming of course is on his IBM monstrosity that cost $100K and who's only practical difference from a high-end Xeon is that it runs a visually identical version of AIX and runs an input-compatible version of his Fortran 70 compiler and graphics package as he used in "the good old days"... turns out that old people are just like that.

As a professional 3d game engine programmer with multiple published titles, it is a little bit embarrassing when he is going on about the Delauny triangulation algorithm he hacked up back in '95 or whenever and I suddenly realise it's better than what I used a few weeks ago with the benefit of the Internet, at that point I just agree and pretend that I use a similar algorithm all the time. Main point of contention is when he interrupts my anecdotes about writing in c with some disparaging remarks about recursion and how I should use an array as a stack in a for loop to make program flow clear or some archaic bollocks, God help me if he ever sees what I do with python.

Problem is, you force an scientist or engineer to use FORTRAN or MATLAB and you will get code written with hate. He may make good calculation or publish useful papers in his field, but he'll end up a cranky old bastard complaining about how PGPLOT does not look like it did on the faculty mainframe in '87, that is about as un-hacker as they come. Matlab is obviously designed by someone who hates computers and FORTRAN was designed BEFORE the compiler was invented, meaning it was never meant to be used as what we would call a programming language. Engineers/Scientists love this stuff just to be rude to us, because every successfully executed program written in this spaghetti is a huge fuck-you to 40 years of software research.

Re:And software development?

[DetriusXii]

I agree with this. Speaking as a former physics graduate student that didn't see the light at the end of the tunnel and went back for a computer science degree (which I then later discovered that I enjoyed more), there's paradigms in the computer science world that can and should be used in the physics programming world. a) my physics friend that quit physics from the same university was describing how he and his supervisor would always tag code revisions by renaming files. I then pointed out there's version control tools like Git, SVN, and Mercurial that do just that without the pain. b) Another friend was saying how they target multiple processors on a distributed server farm was to split their code files into multiple code files with the for and while block structures changed such that each compiled code file operates on a different iteration of data . Rather than just using threaded libraries that do the same thing without the compilation inconvenience of splitting the code file. Example just to make it clear for (int i = 0; i 10; i++) { doSomething(); } would become 5 fives of for (int i = 0; i 2; i++) { doSomething(); } for (int i = 2; i 4; i++) { doSomething(); } To be honest. I don't think my physics friend's knew that arguments could be fetched from the command line from the program, so that they could at last launch multiple processes that compute different data ranges without the need for recomputation.

Re:And software development?

[Quiet_Desperation]

It's terrible in engineering. I know so many fellow engineers who have little or very atrophied coding skills. They sit around creating these gigantic, clunky spreadsheets to solve problems that a small program could do so much more efficiently. I survived a bloody round of layoffs early in my career because I could do all the firmware and external control software for the hardware I designed, so I was considered way more valuable than a hardware only or software only person.

Re:And software development?

[Quiet_Desperation]

Ha! I run into that. They create these ungodly complicated things in Matlab, and then act baffled when I tell them the biggest FPGA in the world contains about 1/100 the number of gates they need to implement it.

Then I come up with some silly kludge developed on a white board that does the same thing in about 50 lines of VHDL. Oh, that baffles them. ;-)

Re:And software development?

[microTodd]

Amen to this!

Back in the day, even just 10 years ago, you could get a degree in CS and be a programmer, and if you wanted a programmer you always hired a CS. Nowadays, there are only certain types of programmers that are pure CS degrees. If I need a program to do some type of physics or biology I'm not going to hire a programmer, I'm going to hire a physicist or biologist and teach them to program.

Re:And software development?

[conspirator57]

it makes me a sad panda when i optimize an algorithm, put it in VHDL, and the simulation of the VHDL runs comparably to the original ratlab. thankfully that doesn't happen that often.

Re:And software development?

[SQLGuru]

First off, Computer Science is not a "programming" degree. In fact good programming skill doesn't come from a class, but from real practical experience (hopefully with a good mentor).

That being said, I agree. I think there a large number of CS majors (and even MIS majors which is the "applied physisist" to the CS "theoretical physisist") who graduate with no clue as to how to actually develop a software system (developing includes a lot more than programming).

Re:And software development?

[TeknoHog]

At least ours works with MPI.

I was just about to say that Fortran (90+) is great for numerical work with its built-in sense of parallelism. For almost everything else, I prefer Python. Right tool for the right job.

Re:And software development?

[bzipitidoo]

Guess your uncle doesn't know about ACM's Transactions on Mathematical Software. Hundreds of routines for all sorts of math. And it's mostly FORTRAN. Here's one for Delaunay Triangulation. Made in '96. Sadly, it's behind a pay wall.

Hacking up your own routine is all very well, and knowing how to do it is important. But actually doing it is a waste of time, unless you need the practice, or it's something real simple. Yes, some people will go hunting for a library routine to find the maximum of two values, or something else really basic. Or they'll write some serious overkill without realizing it, use a gigantic routine for something short and easy. A common one is to use a string append function complete with automatic dynamic allocation and reallocation of more memory, to build a string one character at a time. Talk about slow. But for the rest... You know, the old expression "reinventing the wheel". There's a huge difference in quality, too. Your hack job will have bugs both subtle and gross, and will be a minimal effort with minimal or no testing that barely does the job. The library code will have fewer bugs, and probably be able to handle more and weirder data, be more stable (numerical stability), and faster. The whole focus of most software engineering paradigms is "reuse"!

Some of the shortest path algorithms I've seen in commercial software is downright shameful. They aren't hard algorithms. Maybe a game designer can be excused for a crap pathing algorithm, but how about a map application? No excuse for that.

Re:And software development?

[mikael]

There isn't much need for anyone to write their own statistical analysis or graphing software. Applications like Matlab, SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Studies), Excel or Gnuplot all do the basic statistics and graphing. Excel format (tabs and returns) is the standard way of exchanging data between these applications.

The philosophy was that trying to write your own statistics routines would more than likely introduce more errors - things like forgetting to zeroing subtotals and totals, starting at 0 or 1 or visa versa, using over-runs with fixed areas I've seen some homebrew libraries, and they had separate CLI programs for different sized images.

Re:And software development?

[Mandi Walls]

I would hug the last paragraph of this comment. Code written with hate, code printed out on a line printer with hate, code dumped to machine language and then reverse compiled by hand out of the most powerful spite in the universe. crazy bastards.

Re:And software development?

[ceoyoyo]

Non-CS scientists who think they know how to program are dangerous. There's an attitude in science that programming is easy and grad students should be able to just do it. You wouldn't trust a mechanical engineering student with no training in wet lab work to sequence DNA, so why would you trust a biology student with no specific programming training to write software you depend on? Yet people do, all the time. Nobody seems to specifically hire a CS specialist for their lab and when one gets in by accident (like me), their advice is generally ignored until something catastrophic happens.

Re:And software development?

[0100010001010011]

Problem is, you force an scientist or engineer to use FORTRAN or MATLAB and you will get code written with hate

Not everyone hates to program. I was borderline CS/ME and chose ME (mechanical engineering) because I wanted my code to "do" something. Code to me isn't an end, it's a means. If you're an ME that knows Matlab/Simulink, you automatically have a leg up on almost your entire class. MEs for some reason hate to code. People in my class just didn't get a for loop, let alone recursion.

Matlab is a rapid prototyping language. For the most part it's quick and dirty and is a tool. They have a near repository of useful stuff, the Matlab File Exchange. But Matlab is much more powerful than just writing some code. You could do that in C, Python, etc. They actually hire controls engineers, there is some VERY high level control theory behind some of their toolboxes. Pole placement design, root locus, bode plots and that's just scraping the surface of what it can do. They also have aerospace, hydraulic, motor toolboxes and there is absolutely nothing that even comes close to what Simulink is.

The only thing that really grinds my gears is that indexing starts at 1.

Re:And software development?

[internerdj]

We had a mathmatician who worked for us for a while. He insisted on writing his own data structures for the sole purpose of starting indexing at 1 like God intended...

Re:And software development?

[donscarletti]

Well, as I said a paragraph earlier, I am a C/C++ programmer, hence the dinner table debates about recursion. Python is good for tools and for initialization routines though, you can waste days writing some complex logic that's only going to be run once in a compiled language, or you can solve it with a mess of nested list constructions and lambda expressions in half an hour. Much of the time what is generated is actually quite readable still, which is the glory of python. C may be my day job, but the things that I manage not to write in C are where I justify my salary.

PS: MPI4piIt strikes me that in general you should quit using python long before you turn to MPI, but it's there if you need it.

Re:And software development?

[makubesu]

Don't hate the tool, hate the approach. I studied CS in college, and I use Excel for lots of things. It's the best tool for many jobs. The real problem is how they teach people to use Excel. I learned Excel because I also studied Chemistry, and the way they teach it is basically cookie cutter. You need to teach people programming from the ground up, so that they can solve problems they've never run into before, and maybe nobody else has ever solved before.

Re:And software development?

[biobogonics]

Matlab is obviously designed by someone who hates computers and FORTRAN was designed BEFORE the compiler was invented, meaning it was never meant to be used as what we would call a programming language.

Matlab was designed as a wrapper around library routines. Obviously you've never written in a modern Fortran. It has modern flow control, whole array operations, generic functions, user defined types, polymorphism and so on. AND a modern Fortran compile will still compile the dustiest decks from the early 60's.

Us old farts are trainable. I've forced myself to use Fortran 77, 90/95/2000/2003 to replace the FORTRAN I learned back in '62.
So keep off my lawn!

Re:And software development?

[turkeyfish]

Sorry but Fortran IV code is seldom compilable with later versions of the language as too much is now deprecated.

Re:And software development?

[ThorGod]

Not that everyone needs to learn C/C++ (fortran, really?) to do good programming work.

You could have achieved the same message without inviting a language-war. Aside from that, I agree with you.

Re:And software development?

[HornWumpus]

Speaking as an electrical engineer, I was a better programmer as an incoming freshman then most CS students are at graduation.

I will go so far as to say if you are entering college intending to be a programmer and don't already have more then 3 languages and library packages under your belt you should reconsider your carrier choice. This was true 20 years ago and is even more true today.

I can spot the future programmers among grade schoolers. Put them in a room with all kinds of toys etc. The programmers are the ones playing with logic puzzles (chinese block puzzles, rubiks cubes etc).

Re:And software development?

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

telecommuting is nice. The problem is, is mentioned on the other /. topic, your boss can easily fire anyone that is not seen in office.

Re:And software development?

[Tarsir]

I will go so far as to say if you are entering college intending to be a programmer and don't already have more then 3 languages and library packages under your belt you should reconsider your carrier choice.

What a load of crap. If your program can only produce good programmers from people who already know programming, then your program is worthless.

Furthermore, for every guy who taught himself programming and is brilliant at it, there's one who taught himself every bad habit in the book, and is basically irredeemable.

Re:And software development?

[internerdj]

I worked for a hardware company for a bit. They had a software group devoted to system management. If you weren't in the systems management group, software specialists weren't welcome. As a contractor to the company I got loaned to one of the hardware groups to try and fix some software. What I found was OO code from the chip-manufacturer had been wrapped in a functional language because none of the EE/CPEs had seen a new language in 20 years. The worst offense was someone was using a union instead of a structure to "save space" and yet trying to use every member at once.

Re:And software development?

[Kell Bengal]

Hi, engineering PhD here. I'm working as a researcher, doing my post-doc in aero-robotics. There is a very good reason we do stuff in Matlab - ease of use. Yes, I can write C, Assembly, and an alphabet soup of other languages - I have written very very hardened embedded code for flight control of expensive flying robots. But I still do all my simulation in Matlab.

Why? Because I can bang it out in an M-file and have something debugged and running (slowly, but functionally) much much faster than if I did it in any other language. The only IDE I need is an installation of Matlab, which the department pays for.

It's easy to piss and moan about researchers using Matlab and similar tools to do things, but if you've got to get a paper out in a month and can't spare the time to do it 'optimally', then 'good enoughly' is the right solution.

Re:And software development?

[Noren]

I've been there, I've coded some Fortran for computational chemistry. There's a lot of old stuff out there... I didn't work with it as long ago as you did, but at least parts of the code we used were almost in that era, still formatted like it had been for cards, with comments dated from the 1970s.

In 2003 or so, I really quite wanted to use some recursion features that had been introduced with Fortran90. It took me quite some time to convince my boss at the time that we could lose full Fortran 77 backwards compatibility. It was like pulling teeth to get him to upgrade from the 26-year old version of the language to the 13-year old version...

Re:And software development?

[radtea]

If experimental scientists had the same grasp of their tools that "computational" scientists have, Universities would blow up a lot more often.

As someone with both an experimental and computational background in physics, and who now works closely with biologists and chemists, I cannot agree more. And in biology, at least, there is a very significant tendency to treat all experimental appartus the way too many computationalists treat computers, as black boxes that work magically and ideally, rather than as messy and finicky approximations to what one would ideally want.

Re:And software development?

[AvitarX]

I know three people in science well enough to know what they are doing.

One is in Astronomy, and programs. One is in ocean shit (forget the specific field, they measure flows of water, and extrapolate past temperatures and what not), and programs. The last is in epidemiology, and thus far is know required to know Matlab.

None of these were taught as courses, but were tools you were expected to be able to use to be in the program itself.

Re:And software development?

[blivit42]

I sense a lot of hate and rant here. Let me try to address some of these issues based on my own experience:

I've heard him lament how kids these days don't know how to do programming, since there are so many pre-made tools that ALMOST do what you need.

I'm a biophysicist, did a 3-year post-doc in a biology lab, and have been doing disease-related data analysis professionally for the past several years. I can attest that there are a lot of off-the-shelf solutions that ALMOST, but not quite, fit whatever problem you are tackling. If I wasn't a good programmer, I simply would not be able to get any good data analysis done, since the tools to do it properly often don't exist and I have to write them myself (or modify existing ones if I have source code). And file format conversions, parsing, and merging of data are a never ending nightmare, especially with public data sets.

Your uncle does have a point here. While I wouldn't necessarily say that biologists need to be able to program -- we can't all be good at all things -- it is definitely advantageous to have someone on staff with a firm grasp of both biology and programming, either to serve as an interpreter between the hardcore biologists (Biology department) and the hardcore programmers (CS, Engineering), or to code up solutions themselves. Biologist generally don't have the programming background to produce useful programs, and CS/engineers generally don't have enough biological background to produce useful programs (not applicable to real-world noisy data and biological constraints). You need someone with good knowledge of both.

Main point of contention is when he interrupts my anecdotes about writing in c with some disparaging remarks about recursion and how I should use an array as a stack in a for loop to make program flow clear or some archaic bollocks

I used to use recursion in C as well, until I fed an algorithm too large of a problem and it segfaulted. Why? Because it recursed too deep and blew stack. The correct solution is indeed to implement it as a loop and use your own allocated array for your recursion stack, so that you will never run out of "stack" during your recursion. I still often prototype an algorithm with recursive functions on small test data to make sure it works correctly, but then I go and reimplement it as a loop so that it can then be used on arbitrarily large/complex data (and verify my results against the simpler to understand/debug recursive function version). Again, your uncle has a valid point here.

He may be stuck using his old archaic technology, but he does have 40 years of experience in his field, and along the way has encountered and learned from many pitfalls. Don't discount his rants (at least not all of them) just because he's using old stuff. A lot of it is still relevant today, you just may not have experienced the reasons for why it is relevant yet.

Matlab is obviously designed by someone who hates computers and FORTRAN was designed BEFORE the compiler was invented, meaning it was never meant to be used as what we would call a programming language.

Matlab and FORTRAN both have their strengths and weaknesses, just as any other language. I've not used Matlab much, since it costs money, and academic labs generally don't have much of that. I've not used FORTRAN much (other than to compile/fix old scientific code), because until the early 2000's or so, there wasn't a free FORTRAN compiler that supported anything beyond F77 (I believe F90 introduced dynamic memory allocation?), and by that time I was already proficient in C. So, both of these languages may have less uptake/use than they "should" due to monetary factors.

That said, I know a lot of mathematicians who do great stuff in Matlab. It has a lot of libraries that do a lot of powerful nice stuff, which can greatly reduce development time. FORTRAN has a *ton* of well vetted high performance scientific and math

Re:And software development?

[trb]

I'm a hacker, over 50. If your uncle is 53, he got his undergraduate degree roundabout 1980. By 1980, C was already in full bloom, and UNIX had been around for 10 years and was becoming widespread in academia. By 1985, while he was still young, personal computing was rampant, with a choice of Apple, Sun, Microsoft, and many other flavors like Apollo, PERQ, SGI, Symbolics/LMI, etc. The choice of commercial OS technologies was much richer then than it is today. If he's still using Fortran 66 or 77 (there was no Fortran 70), it's because he hasn't progressed since those days. I don't pretend to be right on top of all the latest software technologies and fads, because I keep busy with other things, but I see no reason why even an old nerd can't use a modern Linux (or Apple or Win) PC with a language like C and/or a scripting language like Perl/Python/Ruby/Tcl etc. And if your uncle is telling you to loop instead of recurse, you should refer him to Jon Bentley's "Writing Efficient Programs" (1982), where he said that you must measure before you optimize. Just blindly saying that you should use arrays as stacks is silly.

Re:And software development?

[techno-vampire]

FORTRAN was designed BEFORE the compiler was invented, meaning it was never meant to be used as what we would call a programming language.

Wrong. Although the draft specification for FORTRAN came out before there were any compilers, the original version for the IBM 704 wasn't finalized until the compiler was. The computer language you're probably thinking of was Pascal, which wasn't intended to be implemented. And, FORTRAN today is a much different language than it was back then, with constructs, features and statements that the original designers never dreamed of. FORTRAN is still a great language for doing math, especially if you need/want your program to be as optimized as possible, such as for real world applications, partially because of the decades of experience in optimization that have gone into the current compilers.

Re:And software development?

[bware]

And because everyone in the department has access to Matlab, you can give them your m-file and they can run it. Which you can't necessarily do with python, SciPy, etc.

I don't necessarily think Matlab is the best for everything, but it's the lingua franca of analysis and simulation around here. If you want to interact with other people, you have to use it. Else you'll live a lonely and short career.

Re:And software development?

[RightwingNutjob]

+1. MATLAB is slow, clunky, is indexed off of 1 instead of 0, and spends more time polling its license server than doing your computations, but it's also full of useful, standardized algorithms, makes pretty plots in a few keystrokes, and can be translated to C, C++, or FORTRAN without major restructuring.

Re:And software development?

[sjames]

FORTRAN is popular in science and engineering because it USED to be consistent across platforms and compilers. It successfully abstracted all differences away and just worked. While IEEE floats can be flaky around the edges, it would be consistantly flaky. That comes in really handy when the only way to validate a new compile is to re-run CPU weeks or months worth of simulations and compare to the results from the old platform.

Alas, compiler vendors have forgotten that and now each compiler introduces it's own quirks and may even sacrifice correctness at -O levels that aren't supposed to do that.

Your Uncle had a point about programming methods that applys well in his field. The code will be used and modified by others like him, not by career programmers.

Re:And software development?

[donscarletti]

I sense a lot of hate and rant here.

Not even close, I love my uncle, he's a brilliantly smart guy and a top personality, plus he's family. Just having a bit of fun here with some well meant hyperbole.

Re:current environment in biology causes bad scien

[arb phd slp]

... 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...

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.

Small Minded

[moss1956]

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.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Not just biology?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Not just biology?

[jellomizer]

I agree. As well the schools often exasperated the problem with their marketing to new undergrads (College will give you the skills you need for a good career). Then when they get you in it is This is Education not a Job Training facility. And will only give you training for a career path of becoming a professor.
While a lot of the work should be on the student to choose their major and take classes that will direct them where they want to go in life, colleges environment makes often makes their students path very unclear.

Majors such as Education, Computer Science, Engineering, and Business do help get people ready for work outside school. But many of the other major fail in their course material to help guide people to further careers.

Re:Short answer

[mjeffers]

That saddens me. They're no artists, street performers, or entrepreneurs with really hair brained ideas.

You're correct here in that while artists, street performers, and people getting advanced degrees in specialities without high demand are taking a risk doing things they love regardless of potential reward, only the grad students (and the crazier entrepreneurs) are paying tens of thousands of dollars to do it.

In America, we're taught that the more education you get the better. We're taught that we should follow our passions and ever thing will be great.

Sadly, that's not true for 99% of us.

Nor has it ever been. Pursuing your intellectual passions whether or not anyone wants to keep you in food and shelter while doing it has forever been the domain of the idle rich. For most people you'll need to balance what you want to do with what you need to do to support yourself. This might involve turning your passion into a hobby intead of a career, living a frugal life to pursue your dream or (as many who wanted to grow up to be rocks stars or pro-atheletes have found) giving up on your dreams.

If you've been taught that just following your passions will lead to everything being great then I'm sorry you were mislead. People trying to be nice spared you from the reality that, even in America, the choice to follow your dreams without consideration of how you'll stay alive while doing it has historically always been funded by daddy's deep pockets.

The ex grad students

[smallmj]

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.

Re:The ex grad students

[arb phd slp]

Are you nuts? Have you ever been to grad school? I worked in my field before going back to get a PhD and I found my normal job to be way better.
Research and academia may be insular, but it's plenty "real."

Re:The ex grad students

[smallmj]

Yes actually, I got my MSc (Physics) in 1997. I still look back fondly on the grad school days. It may have been lots of work, but life was much more fun back then.

Some people call grad school the snooze bar of life.

Re:The ex grad students

[Anonymous Coward]

MSc is not a real graduate degree. We're talking PhD where you have to work for your degree, not some extra year at a party school for a BS-MS.

Re:The ex grad students

[david_thornley]

Sure, for a Master's. Taking classes is fun. A guy who'd been around longer than I had once told me, "I've never seen anybody come out of their oral prelim and say 'That was OK'". I've seen people with ashen complexions hours later.

Re:The ex grad students

[arb phd slp]

Yes! This, exactly. Once I was done taking classes it turned into a horrendous grind.

Re:Short answer

[__aamnbm3774]

99% is a bit extreme. You make it sound like you have to search for drinkable water every damn day.

Crawl out of your mothers basement already.

Education itself is just a tool, you still have to go out and take risks. The more tools you have available, the better your chances that you will be successful.

Get a grip.

Re:current environment in biology causes bad scien

[The_Wilschon]

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...

miserable grad student != miserable career

[damn_registrars]

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.

The reason 25 years ago was...

[KeithH]

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.

Re:The reason 25 years ago was...

[cptdondo]

25 years ago "working together" was cheating, and would be cause for expulsion. It's only now that those in my generation that were brought up that way are in positions of power that we see how stupid that was.

I am not kidding - if you were to so much as ask advice from a fellow student on a critical assignment you could be expelled. Cooperation, unless strictly supervised, was not allowed. The sort of informal peer review that goes on today was unheard of.

Is it any wonder that those who got PhDs then now foster a "cut throat" environment?

Re:The reason 25 years ago was...

[KeithH]

There is a big difference between plagarizing another students work and working on assignments together. In fact, in some of my courses, the work was explicitly team work. If you've ever been a grad student, then you must have also marked undergrad labs for your advisor. In this case, you must also remember that it's bleedin' obvious when two students collude. If the assignments were sufficiently identical, the grade was split between the students - very effective. Since you need to work together in a professional environment, it's only fitting that school help prepare you for cooperative assignments.

selling it as a soft-values field..

[gl4ss]

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).

"Generalism" is why I like experimental physics

[dlenmn]

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...

Re:"Generalism" is why I like experimental physics

[nurdmann]

That's why I studied physics as well. I also found that the skills of a physicist as problem solver and reductionist are applicable to a number of fields outside of academic research as well. I worked as an in-house consultant for a law firm specializing in reverse-engineering devices in product liability cases, and it was a blast. I made a lot of money for ten years, and then bailed out when working for attorneys got to be too annoying. While I teach at a four year college now, I still do some consulting work, and find my training and education as a physicist in general have served me well in my career. Even though I was a computational theoretical physicist, I always kept one foot in a lab, just to keep my hands dirty, and to satisfy my inner tinkerer. Leaving grad school never stopped my learning, in fact I found that graduate study taught me that my education will never be a static thing. I think the misery the author of the article found arises from students' expectation that an advanced degree translates into financial success. If someone told you getting an advanced degree will somehow fulfill you personally, or because you're going to make a lot more money because of it, you will be sorely disappointed.

The Student is not the only Failure...

[damn_registrars]

... 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.

Re:Short answer

[meowris]

I simply don't buy it. Find something you enjoy doing. [X] Find something you enjoy doing that which will also get you some income. [O]

If you don't value education your country is stuck

[fantomas]

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.

Transferable Skillzzzz

[Anonymous Coward]

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)

Really?!

[JamesP]

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/

Re:Really?!

[penguinchris]

I guess it may be specific to computer science, which is not my field, and perhaps I'm just reading into it differently than intended, but I think you might have missed part of the point of the comic. The academic in the comic will take the result and turn it into papers and grad student theses - for other people, with the professor's name attached. The guy who wrote the original code may be credited but is incidental to the other people who will be involved. Too much work, not enough pay, is exactly right!

The point though is that in academia, you can turn almost anything into a source of further research (which means further funding). Every grad student (and the programmer in the comic is implied to be a grad student) feels that their work is special, but they lack the perspective to realize it probably isn't - but, even the smallest things can be turned into more research and more funding if you're good at writing grants, which is what the professor is excited about, not the code itself.

I mean, actually the comic is primarily a dig at the business perspective on research problems (and it is truly a problem in many industries that businesses don't share their basic research), but the way academia is portrayed is derisive as well, just not as transparently.

Re:Really?!

[darkstar949]

Huh, I didn't get the professor taking the working and using out of the comic at all, but rather that other people would actually find out about and use the solution to the problem beyond just the program that the business is working on. The flavor text for the comic also seems to imply this.

In the business research sector the problem of other people taking credit for your work is likely even worse than in academia: in academia you might be far down on the list of authors on the paper, but at least you are an author where as in industry I've been in situations where I made a measurable impact upon an project (i.e. significant amount of novel work) but was either only given a token in the acknowledgements or not even mentioned on the paper at all.

Re:Really?!

[JamesP]

If that's what you like doing, great.

I don't care much about money, as long as I don't starve

But I do like to be recognized, and working with what I want (and care) and it was not happening.

If you're happy in academia I can only wish you all the best.

PhD biologists replies

[cinnamon colbert]

As it is currently practiced, biology science at the phd level is a ponzi scheme.
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 /. 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.
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

Re:PhD biologists replies

[sandytaru]

The glut of new buildings on the local campus always bothers me. It's a boom and bust cycle. "We have money lets invest it in new facilities." Three years later, the state budget panics and strips funding for schools by 60 million. School cannot afford to operated, so hikes tuition. Suddenly, that 15 million new research facility is looked upon by the students with a great deal of resentment, and the school cannot actually afford any faculty members to put into it. Probably the most embarassing thing I've seen was at the UC Berkeley campus, in a 4 story math building. A sign on the elevator said, "Elevator repairs have been delayed due to budget restrictions." When one of the top research universities in the entire planet can't afford to fix an elevator, we've got serious problems with our priorities.

Re:PhD biologists replies

[Stem_Cell_Brad]

People (donors) prefer indelibly attaching their names to buildings or monuments and not on a repaired elevator or on maintenance of a building's HVAC or even on a student's stipend. I think this comes down to an ego thing. I agree that it is lame.

Re:PhD biologists replies

[jinushaun]

As someone with a girlfriend who has a degree in one of those "professor making" programs, I couldn't agree more. It's a ponzi scheme. Professors are eager to recruit more students to their program because more students equals more funding.

Re:PhD biologists replies

[JamesP]

Really, don't resent that.

Buildings are always useful, and it's never money wasted. If one department can't use, others can.

As opposed to faulty or outdated equipment, overpriced projects that end up in nothing, etc

Re:PhD biologists replies

[physicsphairy]

I'm pretty sure the money is often earmarked specifically for infrastruger. E.g., there is fairly ridiculous walkway connecting two buildings on our campus because we apparently had money to build an "addition" but not an independent building.

Re:PhD biologists replies

[martyros]

The glut of new buildings on the local campus always bothers me.

If you had $50 mil to give away just to prove how rich you were, would you rather have the "SandyTaru Building", or hire+fund an extra 5 profs for 10 years?

Re:PhD biologists replies

[RightwingNutjob]

A certain building on the UPenn campus has a plaque in a stairwell, commemorating the donor of the funds that built that named stairwell. Another building has a plaque above the urinals in the mens' room commemorating the donor of the funds that refurbished those urinals. You can always find money to pay for the little stuff. The problem is priorities in general, not the whims of politics in particular.

Re:PhD biologists replies

[JamesP]

Yeas, I've heard of "white elephants"

But I guess your last phrase said it all, especially the misspellings...

Re:PhD biologists replies

[PingSpike]

I've seen the same thing happen on K-12. Renovations were needed at my high school, but a pie in the sky expansion was put forth instead involving the construction of a redundant gym and a number of other unnecessary architectural changes. Using the time honored "shave 0.01% and resubmit to voters repeatedly until it passes" strategy it...eventually passed. After the standard cost and time overruns the project was completed. They then couldn't afford funding for class materials and were cutting courses to save money. The voters are of course even less interested in passing budgets since most of them feel they were tricked and enrolled had been on a downward trend for the past 15 years...but hey we got an extra gym now so now the kids can get that broad education they deserve...in playing kickball in a fancier building I guess?

I'll admit the college level is probably more embarrassing, but at least when its a private college you can route around the incompetence.

Re:PhD biologists replies

[Stem_Cell_Brad]

The problem is not getting money to build things (big buildings to small urinals). The example of UPenn bldg demonstrates this point quite well. The problem is getting money for other important things needed for the buildings to be useful. maintenance of systems, paying for staff, paying for the researchers. It is much more difficult to satisfy a donor's need to attach a name to those sorts of things, so those sorts of things get underfunded and construction gets overfunded. Perhaps we should propose tattooing donor names onto students?

The nature of the beast

[Fractal Dice]

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.

Re:The nature of the beast

[ColdWetDog]

Three of them will be borderline autistic and a fourth carries live grenades in his jacket.

Damnit! I knew I should have gone into math instead of biology. Live grenades. Cool. We just get thermite.

Re:The nature of the beast

[turkeyfish]

From your post, its fairly obvious you are not a biologist.

The application to a "more mathematical framework" merely reflects the reality that in most areas of biology the mathematics involved can often be quite intractable, even to professional mathematicians. The core of biology as a science has been about putting observations and descriptions into a conceptual context.

To make matters worse for your oversimplification, t-tests are almost never appropriate in biological questions as they assume independently drawn samples and uniform variances, a condition that almost never exists in biological (ie "real-world") studies. Indeed, it is usually a simplifying assumption to assume that spaitial and or temporal autocorrelation do not exist in ones data and too often it is unclear if such an assumption is even warranted, or if rejected just how much error needs to be regressed out as a result of such effects to make a particular set of error bounds meaningful.

Certainly, Einstein's dictum that one's theory should be as simple as possible, but no simpler clearly applies in biology. However, that does not make it any easier to demonstrate that one has accurately modeled a biological problem with the level of simplicity required to make it meaningful from the perspective of the nature of the biology being investigated.

How about even more general? (public presenting..)

[fantomas]

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...

That's easy

[Dcnjoe60]

"Which grads students are the most miserable?"

That's easy. Unemployed ones.

No, sounds like only in America

[Chicken_Kickers]

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.

Re:No, sounds like only in America

[mantis2009]

This is an important distinction -- why does the wealthiest country in the history of the world (today's US) have "miserable" scholars? Public funding is crucial in determining what (and even whether) scientific research is undertaken. The current political environment in the United States, which sees the debate between Democrats and Republicans reduced to how much public spending to cut, is generally hostile to research funding. This will inevitably lead to a decrease in the number of people who pursue Ph.D.'s in the US.

Re:No, sounds like only in America

[antifoidulus]

Of course the truth is the current budget cuts have absolutely 0 to do with the actual budget and everything to do with Republicans trying to cut funding to their political opponents while raining money on their political supporters. Critical thinking skills and being a Republican don't exactly go hand-in-hand and the Republicans will do anything to stay in power, even if that means sacrificing the future of our very nation just so they can score a cheap political victory. Lovely people.

Re:No, sounds like only in America

[penguinchris]

Yep, it's definitely not true in the rest of the world. I'm from the US and went to grad school in the US, but spent a lot of time at a university in Thailand while doing research there, and got some insight into how their upper education system works. It was very much like your description of Malaysia (no surprise).

I envied the Thai grad students, and I'm seriously considering going there for a PhD. It seemed like a much more sane place than US universities, the main reason being that it isn't a cutthroat atmosphere.

You don't see as much epic, ground-breaking research out of countries like that as you do out of the US. However, very, very few people in the US are doing that research either - most are doing second or third tier research, the same as in Malaysia or Thailand (not to knock any research done there). And the second or third tier people in SE Asia have no problem finding relatively fulfilling work. If you're second or third tier in the US, you're probably not going to end up with a job related to what you studied. I can't find a job doing *anything* - even working retail - with a master's degree from a second or third tier state school!

On the other hand, it's a fairly privileged few who are able to go into these fields in places like SE Asia. The researchers there are great and very smart, but there's not cutthroat competition because fewer people have the opportunity to give it a go in the first place. The US has such competition because more people have the opportunities to try, which IMO is ultimately a good thing - but funding has to scale with it and it's lagging behind.

Re:No, sounds like only in America

[jd2112]

So true, unfortunately you can substitute Democrat for Republican and the above post would only be slightly less accurate.

Re:No, sounds like only in America

[rabun_bike]

6 in 10 Americans don't even believe in evolution. How could they have any respect for the biological sciences? http://www.gallup.com/poll/114544/darwin-birthday-believe-evolution.aspx

PhD in Biochemistry = no job

[mhackarbie]

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.

The ones who don't belong

[Slippery_Hank]

The most miserable grad students are the ones who do their PhD expecting to learn 'generalized skills' to prepare them for industry jobs.

Re:Short answer

[robthebloke]

Not true. Students who graduate, are all happier than the ones who flunk their finals.....

Biochem *the* most marketable right now

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Biochem *the* most marketable right now

[BigDaveyL]

Because a lot of employers want actual "work expereince" in specific areas. They don't care if you actually have transferable skills (i.e. you're a proven problem solver, can think out of the box, etc. which are all things PhD's have proven). Also, there is a preception that people with advanced degrees are "overqualified" and will leave for perceived greener pastures. Again, this is a crock, and code words for poor behaviour on the part of the employer.

Re:Biochem *the* most marketable right now

[jinushaun]

I have a BS in biochemistry and the gp is correct. If I didn't already have work experience doing web development, I would've been fucked when I graduated with my biochemistry degree. A PhD in biochemistry only leads to a job at a university--and universities aren't hiring. Most PhDs are woefully underqualified for private sector jobs that require a PhD because they lack real world work experience. All your l33t lab skillz can be done by computers or interns, so all you have left is a piece of paper that says you're smart.

Re:Short answer

[paiute]

only the grad students (and the crazier entrepreneurs) are paying tens of thousands of dollars to do it.

Graduate students in most sciences are paid while they are in school. Some to teach, some to do research. Their tuition is also paid by the school if teaching or by grant if researching.

College is slow to be like the real work place

[Joe The Dragon]

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.

Re:How about even more general? (public presenting

[georgesdev]

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 ;)

Re:If you don't value education your country is st

[dargaud]

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 ?

Re:current environment in biology causes bad scien

[penguinchris]

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.

Shorter answer

[doti]

me

I'd say that it's the MBAs.

[errxn]

Oh, shit, wait...sorry, I read that as "Which Grad Students _Make Us_ the Most Miserable?"

Re:Short answer

[KingAlanI]

You seem to be lamenting that less-cerebral activities unfortunately pay more; perhaps many people are also thinking that the less-cerebral activities are more enjoyable.
For example - Heck, I'm a smart person myself, but I do enjoy a lot of lower-brow entertainment

(Conversely, perhaps serious academics are more of a miserable slog than they have to be?)

The Most Important Skill

[Orleron]

The author mentioned a few transferable skills but she left out the most important one: People Skills. With a BS or MS, if you are an asshole, you will have a hard time finding a job but you might eventually get one. On the other hand if you are a PhD who no transferable skills like she mentioned AND you are an asshole, you will really have trouble.

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.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

the PhD link

[KingAlanI]

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1056
will avoid looking for more /. + PhD comics + work is a wicked combination. :P

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Huh? It's not a bait and switch....

[Stem_Cell_Brad]

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.

Re:If you don't value education your country is st

[flappinbooger]

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.

Which grad students are the most miserable?

[Locke2005]

That's easy: the ones that aren't getting laid!

So yes, the STEM students probably qualify for that honor.

"Generalist skills"

[Endophage]

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?

Re:"Generalist skills"

[PPH]

Would you rather the person researching new cancer drugs knows how to program the Game of Life?

Probably yes. Because that person will have some understanding of how algorithms and data are represented in various s/w platforms. What the shortcomings are of each, what GIGO means. And that results handed her by the sacred machines owned by the IT department are not to be taken as gospel like the crap Moses brought down from the mountain.

I've done quite a bit of s/w work in engineering disciplines. And while I've often enlisted the aid of CS people to optimize GUIs, database structures and the like, I'd never give up the link to understanding exactly how this magic software stuff was getting my job done for me. And I've seen a few cases where the CS people told us (engineering) that something would never work. Like natural language recognition applied to requirements documents for automated code generation. Only to see a couple of engineers (mechanical at that) sit down and actually do it.

Re:"Generalist skills"

[Endophage]

Actually, applying natural language recognition to requirements documents doesn't work in general. If a couple of mechanical engineers wrote something that did I guarantee it was for a very specific case. I would guess that the CS people weren't presented with the correctly framed problem. If they had been told "we have these requirements documents that will always be written in a particular format" they may have given a different answer.

I would very much doubt that a non-computing person would really understand the shortcomings of various platforms or languages unless they had invested a lot of time into understanding code and systems, at which point it might be appropriate to consider them as much a computing person as they are a chemist/biologist/etc... Plenty of CS grads and post-grads struggle with understanding the pros and cons of various platforms and languages, hence the massive flame wars over python vs. perl or Java vs. C++. It takes years of coming up against the shortcomings in your own favourite editor/language/OS before you can objectively asses the options.

Re:"Generalist skills"

[PPH]

Actually, applying natural language recognition to requirements documents doesn't work in general. If a couple of mechanical engineers wrote something that did I guarantee it was for a very specific case. I would guess that the CS people weren't presented with the correctly framed problem. If they had been told "we have these requirements documents that will always be written in a particular format" they may have given a different answer.

And that's exactly what our AI people said when we presented them with the problem. Rather than asking for further clarification. Strangely enough, that's how our NL system works. Even I can't understand every document going in. The author may have used unfamiliar or unconventional vocabulary or unclear grammar. So I ask, "What do you mean by this? Can you add the unknown term to a glossary? Can you select the correct paraphrasing of this sentence to agree with your meaning?" If I can ask these questions (during a document review, for example) then why can't a machine? If I can ask them then wouldn't a machine taking the infamous Turing test be allowed (or even expected) to ask them? I'm no CS major. But I can write an app that shits out error codes for anything short of perfectly formatted input.

I guess our CS people failed their Turing test.

Re:"Generalist skills"

[Endophage]

Ummm... The point of the Turing Test is that the machine should be able to understand completely unformatted input (although still correct, not random words, for whatever language is desired). That's what makes it such a challenge.

A machine can certainly ask "What do you mean by this" but that doesn't equate to it understanding what you mean. If a machine asks questions of clarification during the Turing test it is very much a give away and the machine fails the test (assuming the person isn't writing in riddles).

Compiling and interpreting code is an exercise in language processing yet here we find the distinction of "Natural Language" processing. Code is in no way natural. Certainly it makes sense but you would never speak in computer code.

There are plenty of spheres where simple natural language processing has been used with great success, like identifying spam email. However, the general problem of building a machine that can understand language in general is far from being solved, if it ever can be. I'm very pleased for you that you built a system to help process requirements documents but if you ask people for help it's your job to explain the problem sufficiently, not their job to ask all the questions so please don't blame the CS guys for giving you what is actually a mostly correct answer given that your system can't read any document, just those that meet certain specifications.

Re:everyone knows

[conspirator57]

that bio majors are just failed pre-med or chemistry majors.

and that they got there by smoking up too much. it's like they wake up from a 5 year bender (undergraduate) and realize they have to work or something (grad school). meanwhile the rest of us in technical majors had to work during our undergrad programs so we weren't surprised when there was more work in grad school. /troll

Well the NSF favors biology

[elashish14]

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

Med Students

[bill_mcgonigle]

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.

Re:Med Students

[ceoyoyo]

Med students are undergrads.

Re:Med Students

[level_headed_midwest]

I think you're talking about surgical residents there, not med students. (For the uninformed, residency is basically the equivalent of a mandatory 3-8 year post-doc that all graduated-from-med-school physicians must do before they can practice medicine by themselves.) Med students sometimes do get only a few hours of sleep, but the most they do during a surgery is hold a retractor or suction. The residents can actually do at least parts of the surgery and they often are chronically sleep-deprived.

Re:Med Students

[demonlapin]

In some countries, yes. In the US, it's done after a bachelor's degree and is roughly comparable to grad school coursework (and yes, I've done both), although the focus is different.

Re:Med Students

[demonlapin]

While med students are rather harshly put upon, they do have a significant advantage over nearly all other grad students: they're essentially guaranteed to have a well-paying job at the end of it.

Re:Med Students

[bill_mcgonigle]

I think you're talking about surgical residents there, not med students.

Yeah, I was thinking of residents on an ER rotation, for instance. I realize they pass out the papers after year 4, but it's all part of 'the schooling you have to do to be a doctor'.

Which Grad Students Are the Most Miserable?

[Nyder]

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.

Don't want the answer

[ktrnka]

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.

Tai's Model

[0100010001010011]

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.

Re:If you don't value education your country is st

[jadavis]

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.

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.

Re:If you don't value education your country is st

[ceoyoyo]

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?

Re:Short answer

[stewbacca]

But if you don't take risk, you are forever stuck in your crappy job.

Re:Short answer

[sorak]

All of them. Get a real job.

Or go to a country that respects knowledge enough to create those jobs...

Too bad the US is no longer one of them.

Re:Short answer

[stewbacca]

Exactly. I really enjoy playing drums in weekend bands, but there's no income there, so I do it...wait for it....for fun. I play for beer and occasional cash. I would play for free if asked.

Therefore I have a real day job that has a salary and benefits. It's not nearly as fun as playing music, but it keeps my family insured and my bills paid.

Re:If you don't value education your country is st

[stewbacca]

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.

Re:If you don't value education your country is st

[stewbacca]

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.

Re:Short answer

[sorak]

NO! Never take risks. You make a mistake in this society with all the databases, credit bureaus, and every other goddamn company collecting data on people, you're forever fucked!

And if you do nothing, then you have no credit, which is worse than bad credit. Face it, society would rather trust someone who has a proven record of screwing up, than someone who has no record at all. (And I'm not just talking about credit. You can be the most incompetent person in your current workplace and still have a better chance of finding a job than someone who is straight out of college. Why take a chance on someone who may be incompetent, when this guy has been in the field for a year now?)

Simple answer....

[Lumpy]

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.

Re:Simple answer....

[WrongMonkey]

If you can't get into a grad program that covers your tuition and pays a stipend, they you're really not cut out for a PhD.

Back to general skills and RTFM

[fantomas]

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".

Re:Back to general skills and RTFM

[stewbacca]

Oh no, I have a graduate degree and make almost 6 figures. What I said was I don't use my undergrad degree at all, and never did.

And Another Biologist (PhD Prof. Emeritus) Replies

[turkeyfish]

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

Re:Short answer

[HornWumpus]

Opportunity costs are still costs.

They are giving up more money to stay in school.

There are exceptions where the grad students are in zero demand fields. They are giving up years of their lives to delay facing reality.

+5 HILARIOUS!!!

[mosel-saar-ruwer]

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...

Re:If you don't value education your country is st

[Quirkz]

I'm only 36, and I've tried 3 different career paths (and another 3 or 4 unrelated jobs), none of them related. to my college major. I'm (now) in IT, though, where that seems common. Almost none of my co-workers studied computers in college.

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.

Maths follows Philosophy.

[HornWumpus]

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.

Re:Maths follows Philosophy.

[haystor]

Accounting sure. It's a very particular skill with very detailed rules. Nobody knows these without having studied them, at the very least on the job.

That said, I'll take the math or physics major over the business major who hasn't had an accounting class.

Nobody fails out of business to end up with a math degree.

Re:Maths follows Philosophy.

[Xest]

Being too general is only a handicap if you're one of those people who thinks "Right, my degree is done, I don't have to learn anything ever again now", for those who keep learning however it's perhaps the single best starting point in life.

Something like accounting is trivial for a math graduate to pick up and in the UK you either have to do a starter course which takes a couple of years, or have a degree to do a chartered accountancy course anyway, so why not do the degree and do maths? At least then retraining to engineering or something later in life is much easier if you choose to. Contrast that to following a purely accounting or business course and you're stuck with them for life unless you put a much bigger investment into retraining. Even if you do something like physics then you'll find moving into something like say, financial mathematics trivial because of your experience of calculus that physics relies heavily on.

Contrast these scenarios:

- A graduate in say Physics or Maths goes on to become a chartered accountant, they work the role for 10 years but want something more for life, their accountancy skills make them well founded for financial mathematics and their degree means they find the subject easy and can excel in it.

- Someone who went straight into accountancy or became a chartered accountant following a business degree similarly works the role for 10 years and looks to go further, they'd like to go into financial mathematics but it will require a massive investment in learning the underlying maths, and will take them years to become competent enough at the subject to really thrive in such a role

Even for the likes of accountants mathematics makes the world of difference.

Re:Short answer

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

that is why during in school, start taking courses like finance etc. that will potentially evolve into a second career.

Re:If you don't value education your country is st

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

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.

Sounds some hottie...

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

Did you marry her? Should post a little bit more detail here if not xD.

Taking risk is a necessary survival skill...

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

Taking UNNECESSARY risk, however, will doom you to failure.

Managing and migrating proper risk is the key.

Re:Taking risk is a necessary survival skill...

[stewbacca]

Well yes, precisely. But the AC above me said "never take risks". That includes unnecessary risk and managed risks.

Quantitative easing of academic credentials

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

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.

Re:current environment in biology causes bad scien

[radtea]

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.

simple: Big nano/biotech life exstension research

[nerd1024]

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.

Pick up a second PhD for kicks!

[DSS11Q13]

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?

Re:Hey Kid: Remember ME? A person you gave shit to

[HungryHobo]

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.

Re:current environment in biology causes bad scien

[sulfur]

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.