This is really cool. I'm 30 right now, and only just recently finished my bachelors and have been looking to get a PhD, but it's really hard to find a program that will let you work full time while doing it. It doesn't help that a part of me does sort of feel "too old" to do this sometimes. The PhD system in the US is really tailored around the assumption that you haven't entered the corporate world yet.
Anyway, it's really inspiring that someone almost three times my age pushed himself through the program. I guess it's important to remember that you really shouldn't give up on your dreams.
You definitely aren’t too old, but I would never take on a PhD student that wants to continue working elsewhere. A PhD is a full-time job. It took me 6.5 years and was hard enough with very little outside distractions.
By "old" I didn't mean actual biological age exactly. I guess the more appropriate word would be something more like "settled". As it stands, I have a mortgage and whatnot to take care of, it's not really realistic for me to quit my job and focus full-time on a PhD for the next 5-6 years.
> but I would never take on a PhD student that wants to continue working elsewhere
That seems to be the consensus in the US for the most part. Ironically, it's actually easier for a working American to get a distance-learning PhD from a British university than it is to get a local PhD in person in the states.
Right now I'm in the process of trying to get into University of York's distance part-time PhD, while remaining in NY. It's a long shot but it's basically my only option.
You're right, expectations are very different in the "old continent". Things very quite significantly from country to country, but generally speaking in most EU you can do your PhD while working.
Retrospectively, knowing what I know know, I should add that if I were to start a PhD now I wouldn't trust a university that asks for a full time commitment, no exceptions.
I would be very suspicious that they will burden me with all kind of side activities (e.g. tutoring undergraduate students, handling bureaucracy, paper work, etc.) that are not really of any actual help towards the thesis.
As a professor my view is that PhD students should have quite a lot of "free time" to explore, try different things and fail as many times as possible, with the highest degree of freedom allowed by the domain in which they work. I think that that's at the core of what academic research is all about.
If you don't need lab equipment or anything that requires in person training, I'd say to go absolutely for a remote position as a PhD student. It doesn't really make a huge difference if you can do everything you need in front of a computer.
If you can do your PhD fully remotely, the two most important things are how respected and wel known is the university in which you enrol, and the tutor that will be assigned to you (don't underestimate this!).
Best of luck!
PS you're definitely not too old, and not too settled, as long as you have "hunger" for understanding how things around you work!
You really can't at good universities in the UK. At Cambridge we had to get special permission to live more than 10 miles from Great St Mary's. My advisor's advice was that it was near impossible to finish up while working.
Had enough of Americans telling me about their excruciatingly long PhD programmes when half of that time is spent teaching and doing exams which we'd probably call an MSc. Or half of a post-doc position.
3-4 years is a great length of time for a contract where you're subject to such a power imbalance.
Yes, I have recently completed a PhD at a UK university (aged late 30s). I was able to get full funding for my salary and lab resources for 3 years. I worked so hard and submitted after 4 years. Can't imagine how I could have done those three years while working - it was a very much full-time occupation, if not more.
Fascinating. Was there a lot of coursework, or was this dissertation-based?
The reason I say fascinating is that people do part-time law degrees (25-30 hours a week estimated commitment) while working at times demanding jobs. However, I am very willing to belive that law school is a lot more straightforward than a PhD (attrition rates in elite law schools are below 1%, as opposed to 35%-50% for elite PhD programs).
There wasn't any coursework - just a single thesis at the end. I think some people do achieve a PhD alongside work, but it can be a long process. I also think things have changed these days in that decades ago you could take as long as you liked, whereas now they're very strict about you handing it in completed in 4 years after registration. It maybe that you can register part-time and the deadline is subsequently pushed back, but I imagine it can be a bit risky as departments change and supervisors will come and go if you're taking more than 5 years to do it. The other aspect is what type of PhD it is. For laboratory work it can be hard to fit that around work, especially if you're receiving samples on another timetable.
The funding that you were granted covered your full traditional salary and not a shoe-string budget? I really want to do graduate studies full time but I'm struggling to figure it out financially.
Yes it covered my clinical salary and had around 20'000 per year for the lab work. It was very generous, but hard to get. Also, the year after I got it, the recession had truly hit and charities and research organisations stopped most of their funding.
It was hard applying for the grants, but it is possible in your spare time. You can talk to potential supervisors and they can point you towards grants coming up - and help you write them.
A few decent universities in the UK appear to be somewhat amenable to the idea of part-time distance learning for a PhD. I don't think University of York is considered a bad school by any measure, and it has a program for such things.
I wonder if anyone knows the answer to this Q. Back in the day, UK universities, and in particular Open University, often let you take as long as you liked to finish a Phd. I knew someone who in the 1980s got a lecturer job at Cambridge Uni with only a Masters, and over a period of 16 yrs got a Phd part-time. But it seems this got clamped down, and now unis don't like to see anyone take longer than 6 yrs to complete a Phd, thus restricting opportunities for those working full-time / raising families at the same time. Does anyone know of some exception to this? I quite fancy doing a Phd myself one day, but I assume I'd have to do it in "stealth mode" unofficially for a few yrs without a supervisor first, getting quite far down the line then approaching a supervisor when it seemed like could complete it within 6 yrs, and that whole approach seems potentially to have pit-falls
Brian May started a PhD in astrophysics at Imperial college in the 70s and dropped out when Queen took off. He then re-registered in 2006 and completed so it was clearly possible at that time.
Interesting story about the lecturer. The RAND institute proposed an alternative approach to PhDs modeled more on professional degrees. Law professors, for instance, typical complete law degrees in a very predicable 3 years and build their publications on the job as well paid professors.
This suggestion in the RAND paper was part of an article concluding that there is no shortage of interest in STEM PhDs, and that the aversion US citizens have to these PhD programs is rational and market based when compared to outcomes from professional degrees with (comparably) short, predictable completion times and vastly lower attrition rates.
In other words, if there really were a shortage of PhD STEM students, the career path you described would be plentiful and typical (well, not the 16 year part, but the model of getting good, stable, paid employment after a shorter and more easily completed degree, followed by a process of building publications in that role).
For now, unfortunately, the main lesson is to just say no to PhDs, unless you have a very very strong personal interest in completing one.
> I quite fancy doing a Phd myself one day, but I assume I'd have to do it in "stealth mode" unofficially for a few yrs without a supervisor first
I'd suggest you think very carefully about this first. There's a very high chance the stealth mode work will be non-useful for getting onto a programme. Similar to how working on a 'build it and they will come' approach is generally disadvised for startups. Obviously it depends on how much of a lone genius you are but only you know that ;)
Thank you for friendly helpful advice :) Yeah I've misgivings too. Ha ha I've no idea whether I'm a lone genius or not. I've a hunch for an approach to an area of study which I believe other people have steadfastly ignored or not noticed. Now either (a) they're all informed and I'm not, and they're right not to waste time on such a fruitless approach or (b) I'm on to something worth pursuing. Only one way to find that out. ;) My plan was to try to produce something then demo that to a potential supervisor. There's a couple of professors from when I did my MSc, one in particular is a very nice person who'd probably be interested and at least give it a (healthily critical) hearing. Well, good people of HN you're welcome to reply and shoot down this approach or encourage it, whichever makes most sense. :)
- Full time commitment seems critical to the process. A Ph.D is a time of intellectual exploration, and you can't really do that fighting work and family deadlines.
- On the other hand, time can be squished for older people by virtue of industry experience making them more efficient
- I'd be hesitant about remote, since so much of a Ph.D is learning from others. Hallway conversations are critical. That's possible remotely, but not common.
- Fully agreed about "side activities." Teaching is fine -- you learn A LOT from it -- but a lot of Ph.D programs give stupid administrative grunt work. The metaphorical cleaning of test tubes on a professor's project is a serious red flag.
No such thing as too old, but having a mortgage and family myself now, I definitely get much out of a Ph.D program right now.
I'll mention too: If I didn't have a Ph.D, I'm mature and disciplined enough now that I could learn the same without a formal program.
I am skeptical of new world "accelerated" programs, which often have little substance, and are designed to milk working professionals. It's like getting the piece of paper in Wizard of Oz.
> Full time commitment seems critical to the process. A Ph.D is a time of intellectual exploration, and you can't really do that fighting work and family deadlines.
This is BS. In every other field great strides have been made by individuals who balance a multitude of life requirements. Being able to devote every waking hour to something only results in burnout. And, I suppose, graduate students slave labor, which is the real reason for wanting 100% available graduate students in the program.
Academia in the US has become a pyramid scheme where faculty lures bright, young, hard working students into doing their chores for poverty wages. It's not the faculty's fault, either; they're often overworked as well.
I don't know how anyone produces meaningful research in that environment anymore. It's untenable.
> I don't know how anyone produces meaningful research in that environment anymore. It's untenable.
By ignoring the system.
One of the biggest problems in academia is that students don't know their rights, and professors set the culture. It's a power problem. If students assert their rights -- and they have plenty of them -- they usually do okay. It's neigh impossible to fire a grad student for not doing slave labor, and it looks really, really bad for the professor.
Professors can advise students, but they have very little real power to control them, once students are in the program. The power dynamic comes mostly from a mutual belief in that power existing.
Do good research. Take interesting classes. Have fun. Explore. If your professor tells you to do menial labor, politely blow them off.
That's the deal 5-10x pay cut in return for that freedom. Make sure you get your part of the bargain.
Students need to pass their quals, and produce a good thesis.
That's it. Once you realize that, grad school gets a lot better.
There's a gap a mile wide between Ph.D+family+work (which I described as a bad idea) and "Being able to devote every waking hour"
The whole point of graduate school is to have time for intellectual exploration -- reading papers, talking to students, traveling, taking interesting classes, and so on. Grad school was a wonderful time for me, but I can't imagine doing the same while having a deadline to ship a system next week at work or whatnot.
* Family+grad school is definitely okay, if you're independently wealthy or your spouse has a decent income.
* Grad school+work might be okay if the two align, and your thesis touches on your work. But other than that, I wouldn't recommend it.
* Grad school+work+family? That's a waste of your time. You'll get a slip of paper at the end,
But yes, grad student slave labor mentality is a problem, and if you're grad student slave labor, you are wasting your time too, and working for a fraction of your market value where all you get at the end is a paper.
A thesis advisor is an _advisor_, not a boss. I professors job is to _profess_, not to control. And grad school is _school_, which happens to give a stipend, not a job. If you're not using the time for intellectual explorations, you're doing it wrong.
Yep, I agree 100%. Its just about full-time slave-ownership on disguise, you don't want to share your little slaves with any time sucker like family, hobbies, or whatever outside work they might enjoy... Better to have them full time working for nothin'. While our real professors just do nothin'
> I would be very suspicious that they will burden me with all kind of side activities (e.g. tutoring undergraduate students, handling bureaucracy, paper work, etc.) that are not really of any actual help towards the thesis.
What you're calling a "burden" is the stuff that (a) pays for the funding that covers tuition and living expenses and (b) provides experience that helps you to get a job when you're done. You don't need to burden yourself with those things if you pay everything yourself.
In my experience, some universities/programs still expect these ancillary duties even if you're self-funded. If I was a cynic, it would lead me to believe they are just trying to get cheap labor out of grad students.
Both of your examples are duties that an academic may have in the future. What about someone like the OP that just wants the PhD and continue their path in the industry?
Speaking anecdotally: the US research universities seem like research mills driven by low wage labor from international students. American students I met in my graduate program had to be both really smart or passionate and willing to put up with the demands of the PhD. It’s pretty bleak, and it’s good to hear that it’s different on the old continent.
> Things very quite significantly from country to country, but generally speaking in most EU you can do your PhD while working.
In physics? I don't think so. I did my PHD in Germany but we work in large international collaborations, so I meet s lot of phd students from other countries as well.
Doing a phd in physics is everywhere I know at least a full time job. Often, depending on topic, group, supervisor and yourself even more than a 40 hour week.
The complexity, depth and specialization required don't really allow for anything else.
> I would be very suspicious that they will burden me with all kind of side activities (e.g. tutoring undergraduate students, handling bureaucracy, paper work, etc.) that are not really of any actual help towards the thesis.
So, every PhD position? I have looked at dozens and almost none don't require teaching, paper work, bureaucracy, organisational work, etc. done. I was even warned by one person that this weekend will be the first free weekend in months. Because of teaching, etc. I don't know how meaningful work can be done like this.
I'm sorry the hear that, and I think it's mostly worng.
I should add though that some activities are indeed useful, one of those is certainly teaching. If PhD students have full responsibility over the course, or part of the course, of which they're entrusted, it can be a very productive activity.
It is particularly formative if PhD students are entrusted with teaching activities covering subjects closely related to their thesis. In this way they can practice speaking over the things they are studying, which brings a ton of experience and positive growth.
On the contrary, if it's just teaching to cover hours that the professor to which the course is appointment is not willing to do, than it's much less attractive.
As a general rule, I'd suggest to a PhD student to be as selfish as possible. Although apparently counterintuitive, in their position it is a good rule of thumb to only engage in things that bring some tangible (but not necessarily immediate) utility. There are way too many professors willing to take advantage of younger positions for their own agenda. And that is also why it's very important who your thesis supervisor is.
Finally: never underestimate the "contractual power" that a PhD student has over a professor. Apart of few exceptions, professors need PhD students more than PhD students need professors. And in the case of those exceptions in which the professor is so well known and respected that there is a waiting list to be a PhD student, then I'd bet that it will also be so because such professor knows how to properly supervise PhD students.
Professors depend on grant money and they need to push out papers to be competitive in grant applications. The vast, vast majority of work in research is done by grad students. Without students, professors would have to do everything themselves or compete with industry for talent they can't afford.
Students by contrast need professors for training and advice. Whether they receive these from their advisor depends on the lab. In bigger labs junior students learn more from senior students and post-docs than professors.
Just as an anecdote. I was in a doctoral program in engineering, and I mastered out into a 90k/yr job (this was in the early 2000s) writing cplex code to optimize supply chains. A buddy in the PhD program was doing nearly identical work for a 15k/yr stipend.
> I'm sorry the hear that, and I think it's mostly worng.
I think there is just a large variance between countries and/or fields. I've worked in CS/EE in three top EU universities, and in every case I've seen, PhD students working in a research group had a heavy load of both teaching and project work on top of their PhD research.
… if you already have a master’s degree, which takes 2 years. In the US many 5-6 year PhD programs do not require—and in fact include—a master’s degree.
This isn't the case in England. Most master's degrees are 1 year and a master's isn't a requirement for many PhD programmes. So it's possible to do your entire higher education, including a PhD, in 6 years (3 years of undergrad + 3 years full-time PhD).
This is true in principle, but in practice my experience is you have to have an extraordinarily good CV to get funding without a masters degree. Natural science bias in my friendship group though.
That said, a masters degree in the UK is much less of an undertaking than many other countries. Level of independent research in my "combined" masters (4 yr course, usually taken as 1st degree), pales in comparison to what colleagues in mainland Europe had to do.
Oh, that explains a lot. In France it's usually 3 years (180 ECTS) for a license (which is usually equivalent to a bachelor), 2 years (120 ECTS) for a master's degree and then usually 3 years for a PhD. At least in software, most people have a master's degree.
Which I find weird; are European/British PhDs generally considered less valuable than American? I didn’t think they were but there’s a lot I don’t know about this.
One major difference between UK and US undegraduate courses is that when you study undergraduate at a UK university, you _only_ do courses in your chosen course of study. No faffing about for a year or two picking a major, no time spent filling language requirements or taking interesting-sounding courses to scratch an itch. As a result, UK graduating undergraduates tend to have spent more time in their chosen field of study than US undergraduates have. It has plusses and minuses: I (UK grad) would have loved to have followed my diverse interests more; but on the flipside I do know more about my subject than my US equivalents. I have no proof but it's reasonable to think that would transfer to shorter PHD programs.
Germany's basically the same. I've lived here 20 years. I went to a liberal arts college in the US. Shortening the time to getting a PhD is the only argument I could make for the European system vs. a liberal arts system. German even has a word for people who are knowledgeable in their field and nothing else: "fachidiot" (literally field-idiot). Even aside from being a well-rounded individual, the number of times it's helped in my career that I had to take university-level general education classes is huge.
Even with my liberal arts background, and having worked in pretty mathy areas of industry, it's rare that I, say, have to use much from my last two years of CS education. (What they did prepare me for is getting to the point that I can read research papers in areas I've since worked in.)
To be clear: virtually everywhere in the US a CS curriculum takes 4 years. There's no deciding in year three and graduating on time. You could potentially switch to CS from engineering, math or physics and get close.
In Germany at least, in contrast to the US, there's no coursework in a PhD, which I believe is the main thing that makes a PhD shorter than, say, a US PhD directly after a bachelors degree (which is typical in the sciences).
If I recall correctly, the exception is in Scotland, where the undergraduate programs tend to be more like America's: 4 years of study with emphasis on broad liberal arts education in secondary and higher education. I remember when applying for colleges in the U.S., our councilors noted that while it's virtually impossible for an American to apply as a full-time undergrad at English schools, particularly Oxbridge, due to incompatibilities in our educational systems, it's perfectly feasible to go from an American high school to a Scottish undergrad program (aside from the obvious travel and visa hurdles).
Not exactly sure about the UK specifically, but elsewhere in Europe you can absolutely take any course that the university offers - it just wont be accredited and you will gain 0 ECTS Points, which you need to collect in a timely manner to complete your degree.
Yes you generally can in the UK too, just ask the lecturer as a courtesy at least, if there's capacity they'll probably be pleased someone's keen, but might ask you don't submit any problem sheets or whatever for grading.
That's not what GP means though: in the first year in the US, generally speaking, undergraduates aren't enrolled on a particular programme; they take a range of courses from different faculties for credit, and decide which area to 'major in' (and perhaps additionally 'a minor') later.
It's the same in France as in the UK. I'd say 90% of my time in college was spent on things directly related to maths, computer science or software engineering. Sports was mandatory for the first 2 years and half too.
> I have no proof but it's reasonable to think that would transfer to shorter PHD programs.
I didn't enter one (regretfully) anywhere - but from what I recall when looking, US/Can typically have more of a taught element in preparation, included in the first year or two of the PhD programme.
Sort of like doing an MPhil or something followed by PhD I suppose, but built-in and I assume designed to counter the effect you describe.
They make a sharper distinction of PhD being a post-Masters degree. In USA, I started the PhD program without a Masters, others started with me who had a Masters. We all took roughly the same amount of time to complete the PhD
It is the same with undergraduate study. In countries such as the UK or Australia, the majority of Bachelor's degrees take only 3 years, versus a standard 4 year minimum for the US. I get the impression that a lot of US-based hiring managers don't know about this, but even if they do, nobody really seems to care much anyway. Unless it is your very first job after university, what you did as an undergraduate rarely has much significance.
Anecdotal, but I never saw a hiring manager complaining about degrees from elsewhere. Even in cases where documentation was asked (a FAANG... and Immigration too) a diploma equivalence is enough.
Hiring managers, agree. Sourcing recruiters, not so sure. For the conveyor belt directly from college into FAANG internship and onwards, I expect you'll have an easier time at a big name.
Generally speaking, American PhD programs expect that you'll be spending at least a year (and generally two) on graduate-level courses before engaging in full-time research. European-style undergraduate degrees are much more focussed, with far fewer "gen-ed" requirements, and you're expected to pick up any extra background material en passant, alongside your thesis work.
It's a philosophical difference that doesn't mean a great deal practically. Often, European undergraduate programs are five years in length, although that's been changing as many European institutions now seem to be moving towards four-year programs. I'm not really sure what's driving that shift, but I think it's done partly in an effort to standardise what it means to have a "bachelor's degree" in terms of what employers can expect between Europe and North America, &cet.
The difference comes from the fact that smart Europeans graduate secondary school with the equivalent of an American university grad's education. U.S. universities must therefore offer more coursework in order to bring their postgrads up to snuff with what's expected of a fresh university grad in the rest of the developed world.
Having lived in Europe for almost twenty years, with a spouse teaching in a European secondary school, and with the utmost respect to my European colleagues, please allow me to assure you that this is not even remotely the case.
Having grown up in the USA, gone through the "second high school" USA university system, and heard reports from personal acquaintances and sites like this one on what levels of math German and Russian students graduate with, I'm still gonna press X to doubt the truth of your assurance, as earnest and well-meaning as it may be.
Only in the US/Canada. The stereotype is that they may be fine researchers but they don't have the breadth that comes of spending two years doing graduate level classes.
The biggest issue is the remote part, not the part-time part. I'm a professor, and myself and others in the dept. have remote, part-time PhD students. However, they have finished their coursework, which must be done in person for the most part. The coursework could be done part-time, though.
I've been looking into Graduate school for years and decided I won't go back in the US mostly likely and will head to Europe. Our system is designed to take advantage of PhD's as labor for the university system.
One factor - I was under the impression that European PhD programs are much more dissertation focused, whereas US based ones are intensely coursework focused for the first few years. Is this the case?
I was in a US based PhD program (at Berkeley, mastered out), and I would attest to the heavy coursework load, but I've only heard that European/British programs are largely or purely dissertation based. Would enjoy hearing more about this from someone knowledgeable.
Not in the program yet (and very likely won't be), but with the people I've been chatting with at University of York, this definitely seems to be the case. The professors I've been talking to indicated that I would be hopping directly into research towards an end goal instead of spending a bunch of time in coursework.
They also seemed to assume a lot more knowledge about CS and math than most US grad schools do. Presumably you're just expected to enter with most of the knowledge required to research your dissertation. For my application, I had to write a 5-6 page proposal on what I wanted to research, and had to more-or-less defend the proposal during the admissions interview.
I'm not as familiar with the American PhD process, but my dad said for him (about 38 years ago, PhD in Aerospace at Notre Dame) it was more or less akin to the undergrad admission process: he took the GRE, sent a few transcripts, interviewed a few people, was accepted, and after about a year he decided what he wanted to focus on.
Yes, that is very different from what I experienced at Berkeley as well. There were some notable differences between my PhD application and undergrad, in that PhD admissions committees weren't really interested in the undergraduate dog and pony show of "tell me how your volunteer work and experience playing the flute in your high school orchestra shaped you as a person..." My personal statement was about what I intended to get out of a PhD program and a vague direction of possible future research interest. Interestingly, med and law school applications in the US are much more similar to the undergrad essay than PhD programs.
But still, even the PhD statement was nothing like the 5-6 page proposal with a clear research focus that you described. Sounds more like the kind of program I'd be interested in if I were to go back, as I'd be mainly interested in researching something deeply, not taking classes.
Sure but this is a distinction without a difference in this case. My choice of the word “old” wasn’t very good, as explained in the following sentence.
Indeed. And while I get your point that it's often more than 40 hours, the reality is also that an 80 hour work week (PhD + job) doesn't work for the vast majority of people. There are people for which it works, but chances are -- statistically -- that you, the reader, are not one of those. So a PhD being a full-time job, even if that means "just" 40 hours, is indeed a reason why full-time job + PhD does not work in practice for most people.
The main problem in academia is that worldwide those who work a 40 hour week seem to be far less common than those who work, or claim loudly to work, more than 100 (particularly at the earlier career points). I'm lucky enough to have gone beyond the point where I sleep in the lab, but I definitely have done so.
The OP should be able to do a doctorate part time, and in Europe that is definitely doable. The funding and the practicalities are very much subject specific, but it does take a long time -- and is very much a labour of love.
This is a similar attitude that you sometimes still see in employers with pregnant employees.
Your total justification seems to be that because it was hard for you, it will be hard for others too.
Fwiw my partner got her PhD part-time while working for the university as a researcher and consultant, actively authoring and publishing papers. It took her many years, but mostly it was finishing that was tough.
I don't remember the specifics, I had a presentation on PhDs during my license that mention this system, and CIFRE-funded PhD thesis seem to fit it, but I don't know if it's the only mechanism that exists.
That sounds really weird to a european. A manager at my job in his 50's I know is doing is PhD studies along side his quite demanding workload. To my knowledge as he described the process it was no problem to the department to work on his courses and thesis "only part time". This is CS so domains may differ.
In many places of the world PhD candidates officially work 50% and more as teaching assistants, system admins or other vaguely related jobs. I see little scientific downside to work part time in a well paid related job instead.
Experiences vary. I was just at the point of qualifying exams when a full time job op came up in a tightly related field. They (profs and managers all) understood, my new co-workers mostly being phds themselves, and I hired on at 32 hrs a week for full time - health insurance etc, and dropped my dicey gov research funding.
I loved every second of working mon-thurs, phd by,… every other spare second. But I could live on chewing gum, beers, and ideas at that age, I guess. I also took about 6 years all up. God it was fun when it was fun.
I would never take on a PhD student that wants to continue working elsewhere
We have several people at the company I work (in Sweden) doing their PhD part time. The company gets 'free' research in an area relevant to them and the university gets connections to industry and their research field tested on real world projects. Both se it as a win-win. This sort of arrangement seems quite common in Sweden I know several people who got their PhD this way.
I agree, and neither is a PhD, but I don't think that's a great reason.
"Why don't we pay teachers a decent wage? Because money isn't everything and helping students grow to the next generation is something that is inspiring in itself."
It's easy to say "money isn't everything" when you don't have to worry about money. A single parent is unlikely to be able to quit a decent-paying job to work with the low wages of a PhD program; are we just going to say "single parents need not apply" or "your kid should learn that money isn't everything while you live on subsistence wages for the next six years"?
Obviously there are single parents who manage to their PhDs, and that's really cool, but I don't think it's realistic for a lot of (otherwise qualified) people.
Indeed, the GP admitted it's an "indulgence", i.e., a luxury to be able to pursue a PhD for the love of the process. I don't think it's realistic for many people, particularly a single parent, nor necessary to have a fulfilling career that makes significant academic contributions.
I think this is a false dichotomy even though it fits in with the traditional American template.
"Go work in industry after undergrad/masters" or "forgo making money to pursue a PhD".
Maybe it's borne from the bubble of academia, but as I got more experience in industry it became apparent there were many, many more pathways to a PhD than were discussed while in university.
My dad did his PhD while working full-time. He had previously been working 70 hour weeks at a startup and switched to a 9-5 job with an NGO and used the extra 30 hours a week of time to work on his PhD, so it is doable.
Interesting. My dad is an MD PhD and he got the PhD while being a full time trauma surgeon in his forties. I think perhaps this is like all the other things people have told me are impossible: if I (or all the people like me) want to, we’d find it easy.
I work with surgical MD PhD's in my work and I'm pretty sure it's different in medicine. You must constantly stay in practice to stay relevant and your research area overlaps with your practice.
Yes. A phd has very little overlap with learning broad topics about a field (unlike masters and bachelors/associates). Unless your job is literally to do research on the subject of your dissertation, it will not help.
What about working harder than your peers? If you're 2x harder working than the avg phd student shouldn't you be able to dedicate half or a third of that time to work and still finish the phd in 5 years?
How many PhD students have you known? The successful ones at least work extremely hard already; there is no such thing as working twice as hard as them.
So you take the 0.01% of all university students, that are accepted into a PhD program, and then take the 0.01% of that ?
So 0.0001% of all university students, and then... work three times as hard as them ?
Working harder gets exponentially harder the harder you work. So... 0.0000000000001% of all students then ?
And now, in your application form for a PhD program, you want to convince an employer that they should hire you because you think in you are in that bracket, without any proof that backs it up, even though if for some reason you are not, things catastrophically fail for your employer ?
If you don't mind anecdata: I'm in the third year of my PhD and would classify myself as an average hard worker compared to my peers. It is highly improbable for someone to work three times as hard as an average PhD in any half-decent program. A lot depends on your adviser but anyone serious about their work will demand a certain level of output from their grad student (like any other manager situation) which necessitates a certain level of work. PhDs and post-docs are notoriously underpaid for the amount of work they do.
That's my point, can someone in that group instead of devoting more time than the average to their academic work take that extra time and devote it to their job?
No. If you plan to be successful, there is little to no time outside of being a PhD student. If you want to be in the top 1%, and especially the top 0.01%, you should plan to spend your free time researching to become an expert in your field. But such numerical distinctions are typically meaningless since, by virtue of working towards a dissertation, you should be pushing the boundaries of your field of knowledge and thus have few exact comparables as peers.
Source: me (several years now complete w/ PhD), my cohort in my program, and my PhD-earning friends outside my field.
Take olympic athletes. There are differences not only in the level of work but also physiologically between those who win gold medals and those who can't be olympic athletes. If you're a would-be gold medalist why isn't it possible to settle for getting into the olympics and have a job on the side?
That's an interesting analogy. If you can find recorded examples of part-time Olympic athletes from a competitive country that would help your point. By a competitive country, I mean one with non-negligible chance of getting a medal in that sport.
I wonder if they exist and if so, how rare.
I suspect it's extremely rare or non-existent for an athlete who holds another full-time job up to the selection time to get selected into a US Olympic swimming team, for example.
So if you had the capability to be one of the greatest PhD students in the world your strategy would be "do a bunch of stuff average instead"? How would you achieve such a high level of performance in the first place? Being a good grad student is as much learned and practiced as any other skill.
"But if you want something extraordinary, you have two paths:
1. Become the best at one specific thing.
2. Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things.
The first strategy is difficult to the point of near impossibility. Few people will ever play in the NBA or make a platinum album. I don’t recommend anyone even try.
The second strategy is fairly easy. Everyone has at least a few areas in which they could be in the top 25% with some effort."
I'm not sure what your ideal of a good PhD student is; there's no measurable level of "good enough" that once met allows you to do a bunch of other things. It's supposed to be an all-consuming, single-focus period of intense research and knowledge generation.
“Hard work” in the context of phd studies is not measured in a number of hours one works per week. It’s measured in a number of first author publications in top journals/conferences.
Let’s assume this is a CS PhD (so no “lab” work). Is this person doing 60 hours of actual research a week? If I did a PhD while working full time, I would expect to do purely research. I’m not interested in teaching or grading papers or anything non-dissertation related.
Btw, this is how most people do their PhDs here. It’s a quick in and out 3 year seal-team like operation. Caveat: We see Ph.D as a degree you do after a 2 year Masters degree. So in total 5 years after undergrad.
When I was in grad school (Econ, not CS) teaching, etc., was less than 10h a week. The rest of the time was research. So yeah, 60+ hours of actual research a week.
That seems... excessive? 60 hours a week / 5 days a week is 12 hours a day. Even working Saturdays, that would give you 10 hours a day 6 days a week. I personally have never met any single PhD student who did that amount of pure research each week for 5 or 6 years. Again, I'm not talking about "lab" type research.
I know there are people pooh-pooh'ing the idea of pursuing a PhD while still working, but I think that's because they're just working from inflexible mental models. It can definitely be done, but you may have to think a bit outside traditional routes (which is seems like you're already doing). I started my program at an older age than you, so it can be done.
One option is to look for a full-time job that does research but is also affiliated with a university. Think national laboratories or government positions. If you're smart about it, you may be able to make your full-time work count towards your thesis. Many of these affiliations also offer free/reduced tuition and you'll almost certainly be paid more than if you were a PhD student working for a university. Some will even pay your normal salary and allow you to take a year or more off to focus on school. The real difficulty is working a schedule that let's you take courses, but I suspect this is easier now with the amount of remote learning available. I'd also say to stay away from advisors who think there's only one way to skin this cat :-). It was my experience that they don't work as well with non-traditional students.
To echo what was said elsewhere, advisors/programs that mandate a certain time commitment may be looking to burden you with ancillary duties that don't fit well with a non-traditional approach. Some programs would not admit me unless I was willing teach a certain number of classes, even though I was self funded through my employer. Some tried to force me into a resident status for the same reasons; there was an expectation of working on campus as a means of paying for my keep. I attribute most of these attitude's as a lazy way of thinking where they apply the same template to every student, but I think you can find an alternate path if you're willing to be a bit creative/resilient/persistent.
When I worked at a DoD lab in the 90s, there were PhD students that were essentially employees. Their thesis work was directly tied to the lab’s work, and they were at the lab every day. I do not known the compensation arrangement, but it certainly appeared that they were paid as full-time employees (and may have been employed there before entering the PhD program). May be worth looking into something like that
Same is quite usual in some Cambridge University departments.
Also worth mentioning Scandinavian and Swiss universities treat PhDs like a regular industry job (job contract, paid at an acceptable discount wrt industry, pension contribution & other perks). This is how it should be everywhere.
Germany typically pays PhD students as research or teaching assistant (there are Grad schools in CS but this is the minority at least in my lab) When I started in 2005 the salary was even better than in many industry CS jobs (today the situation changed a bit). The problem I faced was that afterwards the PhD was not actually really valued by industry and I could not get myself to do a boring industry job without being paid 'adequately' to compensate for the loss of freedom. So I stayed at university again. I still have my freedoms but am kind of stuck in the academic system. If I would have gone to industry straight away my salary would probably be much higher by now.
Where I work allows full-time employees to get their PHD and also gives some paid time to write your thesis. You can also propose research projects that align with your thesis topic.
I'm (counts on fingers) 33 now and am a few years into doing exactly what you're thinking of. I'm working full time and am probably going to finish within the next year and a half.
My advice is to look at advisors who have a record of doing what you want to do or placing people where you want to go at schools that are a little bit down the rankings from the best possible place you could get into.
My email is in my bio if you want to talk about it.
Come to Sweden (or, rather, Nordic countries in general). There are a lot of opportunities as an industrial PhD student. There are at least 3 out of 10 PhD students in my group doing research while still working in the industry. Usually, the deal is 80% PhD and 20% industry, but I know someone doing 50:50.
You don’t even need an industrial PhD. In Denmark at least, a PhD study is a paid position, essentially just a job that runs 3 years and results in handing in a PhD dissertation. It pays less than what you get in the industry, but very decently, so no need to balance multiple jobs, just focus on your research.
The Industrial PhD pays the same here, so that’s mostly a position you would take if you specifically want to collaborate with a company on some research project, not something you do because of income considerations.
Maybe it depends on the field and the country, but I know some industrial PhD position pays a better salary than the one employed full time by the university. Not sure if it is considered to be "much", but at least around 20% more.
I would add a word of warning here. In the multiple research groups that I've worked in, the completion rate for industrial PhD students has been way less than 50%.
The industry part (whether 20% or 50%) easily ends up being close to 100% in practice. And many industrial PhD positions only last a few years, after which you get a normal full-time position and are expected to finish the PhD on your free time. Realistically, this makes it practically impossible to conduct the kind of research that you need to get a PhD from top programs.
> I'm 30 right now, and only just recently finished my bachelors and have been looking to get a PhD, but it's really hard to find a program that will let you work full time while doing it.
I did a similar thing during my bachelor: working close to full time. I was essentially busy 14 hours a day, seven days a week. I was burned out within a year and switched to 20 hour weeks. Looking back I suspect that I suffered from somewhat severe lasting consequences for at least another two years and I don't think I've been quite the same person since.
Be mindful of what you're doing. Your brain and body need downtime at some point.
AFAIK at least on some European countries, especially in the east this is not so and used to be almost the opposite in the past. People are expected to upgrade from an engineer (~master) to a doctor (or a candidate of sciences first in some post-soviet countries) in parallel with their work as they gain real-life expertise and age. And in general I think it always is a great idea to study abroad (needless to say European universities are generally cheaper and easier to get in). So I think I would probably consider an European university if I were you.
I know of one person who worked part time in industry while obtaining a PhD (also part time) from a major university in the southern California region and another who is currently doing the same at a different major university in the same region. Both people were working for a very large, Fortune 200 company. At the time they were in their mid 20s but I was offered a similar path (I'm in my 30s), but I've since left the company
JHU has a "Doctrate of Engineering" program where you work full time. But you have to convince your employer to be able to work full time on a particular problem.
As stated above European PhD are not typically the same as North American PhDs. I've never seen a respected program here that allows for part-time let alone while holding down a full-time job.
1. PhD in the USAs are 3 years too if you count like europeans do (we don't include the masters)
2. Industrial PhDs are not part time PhDs, it's a different thing.
American PhD students spend half of their time doing irrelevant things like taught classes and teaching work. They only do three years of actual research like everyone else.
This is very inspiring. I too am young and been in the work force for several years, but unlike the other comments in this thread I am
not settled down as an older student returning to school.
I am willing to give up a high paying salary to return back to school as a PhD student and I am
not tied down with a mortgage or anything else.
I find mathematics simply too interesting to not learn at the highest level. Working in industry will simply not teach me the material I want to learn. I’m considering going back for either a PhD in Math or a math heavy PhD in CS. I read math textbooks for fun and worked with tutors to ensure my proofs are done correctly. I can do this for hours on end without external motivation. I taught myself a lot of math and can see myself doing this as a career. I want to do research.
Most people my age say the same things in the comment sections in this thread (tied down to a mortgage, make too much money to return). I’m glad generalizations like these don’t apply to me and can’t wait to get back to school
Often your advisor in grad school will force you to focus on what they want rather than what you want to learn. This is less likely in a math department, but more likely in a CS one. As with everything, it all depends on your advisor.
The PhD is replete with hoops you have to take that will be orthogonal to your goal of learning (e.g. spending a lot of your time doing HW on the professor's pet topic when taking a course). Someone I know who retired somewhat young (early 50's) enrolled in a PhD program because he loves to learn. He dropped out within two years because he found it fairly inefficient in learning the topics he wanted to learn about (he had a career on mathematical topics and can handle the math). Unlike younger folks, time is precious for him, and being efficient is more important to someone in their 50s than in their 20s.
If all you care about is learning and not the actual piece of paper in the end, it may be more efficient to get a less demanding job and use your spare time studying what you want to study. Do it right and you'll make more money than you would as a student, and potentially learn more than you would in grad school.
Finally, PhD is about research. Yes, you will learn a lot, but learning is not the goal. A lot of people drop out because they realized they loved learning much more than doing research, which will involve large chunks of your time being unproductive. If you plan to do a PhD, you will have to draw a line at some point and say "OK, those 10-100 things there that really interest me? I have to drop them forever so I can do research." If you opt not to do research, you can learn a lot more.
While everything else you say may be true, I take issue with efficiency being a function of age. Fundamentally you have no idea how many years you will get. Be efficient at all ages, and live like it might (and might not!) be your last year, regardless. Personally I’ve had close brushes with death a couple times in my life, and the dice roll could easily have gone the other way. I’m sure I’m far from alone in this.
I did not mean to imply one shouldn't be efficient at all ages - just that those doing their PhDs in their 20s do not value it as much as those in their 50s.
Also, those in their 20s often haven't lived long enough to know how to gauge their efficiency. The person who has spent decades working 40 hour/week jobs knows better the value of less free time.
Where can people who are interested in learning math find math tutors? I'd like to engage a math tutor though i don't think I would pursue a math PhD :)
For sure. I'll list some books for introduction to proofs, abstract algebra, real analysis, topology and category theory.
These are not comprehensive, just listing books off the top of my head. I'll definitely be leaving off personal favorites other people have. You'll like some better than others. Some of these are beginner books and some are more advanced. A good tutor can help you get through the more advanced books. I tried to list the most beginner friendly book first in the list under each subject. Then the more advanced books later in the list.
Introduction to Proofs:
Just pick one of these that speaks to you the most. All three are good.
Discrete Mathematics with Applications - Epp
Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications - Rosen
Mathematical Proofs: A Transition to Advanced Mathematics - Chartrand, et al.
Abstract Algebra:
How to Think about Abstract Algebra - Alcock
Abstract Algebra - Pinter
Abstract Algebra: A First Course - Saracino
Algebra - Artin
Abstract Algebra - Herstein
Abstract Algebra - Dummit & Foote
Linear Algebra:
Maybe an engineering based book first if you haven't seen linear algebra in a while (e.g. Strang or Linear Algebra: Step by Step by Singh).
Then:
Linear Algebra - Friedberg, et al
Linear Algebra Done Right - Axler
Linear Algebra - Hoffman & Kunze
Real Analysis:
How to Think About Analysis - Alcock
Understanding Analysis - Abbott
Tao's Analysis text
Principles of Mathematical Analysis - Rudin
Topology:
Topology - Munkres
Topology A Categorical Approach - Tai-Danae Bradley, Tyler Bryson, and John Terilla
Categories and Toposes: Visualized and Explained - Southwell
Conceptual Mathematics: A First Introduction to Categories - Lawvere
Category Theory for Programmers - Milewski (if you like functional programming)
Programming with Categories - Fong, Milewski, Spivak (if you like functional programming)
Category Theory in Context - Riehl
There are a few others by Spivak which you may like.
If you don't know category theory whatsoever then I like Southwell the best (pair them up with his youtube videos). Eugenia Cheng also has a nice set of lecture videos.
If you already know math pretty well, then Riehl is a favorite.
Calculus is a subset of analysis. It's not really its own subject. Generally what people call calculus is a collection of results that are part of analysis.
As a university student in my last year of undergrad, I've been tempted to go work as a software engineer, even though I'm interested in doing research. The opportunity cost just seems too large to give up. Working as a SWE will allow me to earn a massive income in my 20s, during which I have few defendants and a lot of leisure time. While many of my peers are planning to do graduate school right away, I feel like my quality of life would simply be better by going to work in industry right now.
With that said, I still love learning and diving deeply into topics like math and the history of science. I hope that I can one day retire off my savings as a SWE and return to graduate school (maybe in my late 30s or 40s). Has anyone done this before? Is there a stigma against graduate students (both Masters and PhD) who are not in their 20s?
Be aware that the meme that any developer with a pulse can make so much money they can retire in their 30s plays out very rarely. (ADDED: And if you're in that top tiny percent of success, will you really just drop out?) That said, you'll almost certainly make more money as an SWE than in academia.
I do know someone who got a PhD in their early 40s or so in a pause from tech and is back in tech. I gather they thought it "OK" but basically are back doing the same thing in industry as before.
I think about it like this. Software Engineering is still a damn hard industry to break into AND be successful in, but that barrier is masked by the democratization of tools and resources.
I've had many friends ask he how they can get into SWE, they see me, a 20 something, making more than their parents make. I used to give the advice "anyone can do it, you just have to practice". I've since stopped giving that exact advice.
My advice now is "you can do it, but it's going to take at least 2-4 years of almost complete dedication". The disconnect for all my friends is I think, is none of them see what I do on a daily basis. Coding, coding, more coding, reading articles about coding, and more coding.
I realized the only reason it was so "easy" for me is that I really liked it, so spending hours in front of a screen learning all this wasn't a drain on me like it would be on other people. Looking back it was by no means easy, and you have to keep working on it. I don't put in the insane hours i used to in my early 20's, but my Github history still has commits every single day except for maybe Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Well, it's not just about excelling. But presumably winning the startup lottery or hitting the fast-track at a handful of companies in specific locations. (Or becoming an exec at a variety of companies but that's presumably not a path that's being contemplated here.) Most competent engineers make respectable salaries relative to the US population as a whole but they're not retiring at 40.
Why do you associate learning and diving deeply into topics exclusively with research? A phd program will only require you to dive deeply into your topic of research. You can get very far in many fields by reading through relevant texts and sci-hub papers.
In addition, even though their is a dearth of theoretical experience in industry, at FAANGs and similar you will find opportunities to learn a lot in areas such as systems design, networking, and machine learning from senior/principal engineers who are as savvy as professors, albeit with a practical lean.
Even the hands on aspect of a phd can be done on your own time with a little know how and income, see applied science[0] on youtube. Full time engineer who often tinkers and replicates scientific publications in his garage in his free time.
The issue with software developers is that in some places there was no requirement to finish uni to work. Though, I would advise to finish studies asap, as later you won't have that much energy to share among work, relations, family, health and studies.
I am planning to finish my course after a very long gap in my 40s. Not sure if I need to, but for the sake of finalizing it, so it does not bother me anymore. The long gap seems to bother my university at my home country more than it should bother me and they have still the same irritating procedures in place that I do not like... but why should others care about how you spend YOUR money and time?
I started a PhD in computational molecular biology. Dropped out after year and focused on software. Some years later, I applied to grad school for a CS PhD but was not accepted. The following year, I got a job in the CS department I had been rejected from, spent 4+ years there before leaving to help start a certain e-commerce company, then left that after a year to raise my daughter. Eventually back to software, and feel proud and happy about the libre software I've given to the world over the last 21 years of that part of my life.
You might think after all that that a PhD would be an irrelevance. But actually, I do still sometimes dream of being able to follow that process, of drilling down and into a problem much more deeply than any other context would allow, of having my ideas constantly challenged by smart people, and of eventually (one hopes) coming to some sort of conclusion.
I have many friends with CS PhD's, and to be honest, I don't think my life has been impaired in any way by the absence of the PhD, and maybe even enhanced. Still, it would be nice. And apparently, I've still got 30 years (at least) to get it done!
A college friend of mine intends to pursue a PhD in Chemistry once he retires (soon). I was accepted back in the early 80's but instead spent 4 decades doing programming. I decided to do art instead of going back to school. Sometimes I wish I had actually gotten the doctorate, but not enough to start over again.
This resonates with me as someone going back to get an MD. I’m early thirties and a new father. Working through undergrad science classes is kicking my ass, so I’m really impressed that this guy’s brain was plastic enough to handle the rigors of theoretical physics. Inspirational on many levels!
That's because brain/synaptic plasticity in relation to learning was made up on the spot and simply repeated ever since. It's just been a convenient shared crutch to not learn new concepts after a certain age because the incentives are not strong enough for most people.
Is this true? I would love to read further on this. For one reason or another, I am experiencing some concern lately about my waning ability to learn new concepts as I age, or at least my perception of it. I would be chuffed to learn that it was all just in my head (so to speak).
The only thing we do know is that there is a shared experience that seems to make learning new concepts difficult as we get older. We also have plenty of examples of people thriving when placed amongst people that prioritize learning those concepts and have the same lack of encumbrances as those other people. This points to willingness and lifestyle being the primary limiting factors over mental ability.
The plasticity concept has only been extrapolated to learning ability but is as well studied as phrenology. It still needs studies to both prove and disprove it in relation to learning ability. People have shared experiences about supernatural deities, the similarity being that the prevalence of an experience doesnt provide answers about the experience.
Additionally, and apologies for not linking the study as I simply can't find it anywhere but remember it in brief, if older people are exposed to younger people on a more regular basis it was found that their capacity for learning new things was substantially higher.
Of course the major questions from this were, 1. Are older people with the capacity to learn more interested in spending time with younger people, and 2. Are younger people more likely to distance themselves from older people without the capacity to learn. Both are probably true, but it would be interesting to see how much these factors skew the results.
This was of course also done in the West, where older parents live separately to their children on average. It would be interesting to see whether, if this study was done across multiple nations, the result continues to ring true.
My father earned a PhD in Political science (in France) when he was 70; his thesis was 500+ pages long. He retired early and spent all his time on it. It made him pretty happy.
He's now 89 and while he hasn't done any new research, he's still intellectually and physically very active.
Retirement is not the time to do nothing, it's the time to do what you really like. I can't wait.
For all the fantasy here, let me remind you doing a PhD at an early age is one of the worst things you can do to your financial security (CS Ph.D being a major exception). It does not teach any employable skills, leads to a very high level of depression/anxiety compared to regular jobs and creates a huge opportunity cost where you miss out saving money early that has true compounding capability. The 2019 Nature survey has more information
A PhD is certainly not for everyone (or even most), but it's rather unfair to say that it does not teach any employable skills. Even PhDs who go on to work in completely unrelated fields learn how to make progress on poorly defined problems and to advance the frontier of human knowledge. And a PhD is also of course a hard prerequisite for career in academia or research.
As for that survey of PhD students, I suspect you would get similarly dismal reviews of parenthood from parents of 0-5 year old children -- but of course that doesn't mean that nobody should have children! A better survey would ask PhD students how they feel about the experience well after they are done with it.
I don’t know. It seems quite different than parenthood.
Are these people complaining about something that’s hard-but-worth-it? Or are they regretful participants in a genuinely broken system? Many signs seem to point to the latter.
Academia has a very small chance of, specifically, anything more than an extremely mediocre income. This, despite the fact that (generally speaking) some who would enter into, let alone complete, a Ph.D program would already tend towards the right said of the bell curve in that regard.
These programs often make many, if not most, people who join them miserable for years at the cost of a medium-to-large cut in lifetime earnings, all for a quickly shrinking chance at stability.
I know money isn’t everything in this life; truly, I do. I know that the pursuit of academic knowledge is noble, and in some ways a separate and valid good in its own right. It’s still a fucked-up system with serious and numerous flaws.
Depends on your definition of „better“. Since decisions are always emotionally made and rationalized after the fact, this approach will fall victim to significant amounts of survivorship and post-purchase bias.
Life doesn’t have an A/B Test and time tends to make things golden in retrospect — so it‘s hard to compare with what you could have done instead with your only truly non-renewable resource.
I would at least not recommend making a PhD if you don‘t love academia itself.
> it's rather unfair to say that it does not teach any employable skills. Even PhDs who go on to work in completely unrelated fields learn how to make progress on poorly defined problems and to advance the frontier of human knowledge.
Depressingly, about 0.001% of employers care about these skills.
> but of course that doesn't mean that nobody should have children!
Of course. For some short-term pain, the child's labour capability provides a clear economic benefit.
What are you going to get out of your short-term PhD pain? At best a job, where you are still limited by your individual labour output. Not exactly a scalable model.
I realize we’re mostly US-centric here on HN, but I have greatly benefited from my Physics Ph.D. Obtained in Denmark, while being paid $55000 a year throughout the study (standard rate for PhD students in DK).
In Denmark most people will hold a state sponsored Masters degree, so it has served me well in the private industry as a differentiator. Combined with an MBA (yes, I hear the snuffing sounds guys) it has been the perfect package for senior engineering management.
I was fortunate enough to pivot from Chemistry PhD (which I completed) to a career at Microsoft that has provided me with more than enough financial security to fund an adventure like this when I do decide to retire. While I may not be typical, I do use skills (though not specific knowledge) from my PhD all the time in my day job - mostly around communications both written and oral. The act of writing my thesis and papers really taught me the value of being able to communicate technical information clearly to a technical audience.
I think that the structure of pursuing research would be a great way to avoid losing a "sense of purpose" that I fear might await me when I do decide to retire. The tricky part of this is finding the right advisor and the right project in the right field.
A PhD is a journey of self discovery. There's something uniquely fulfilling about being on the edge of human knowledge on one particular subject and pushing that edge a tiny bit. No one does a PhD for the money. Even if you don't get any skills from your PhD which I'm sure you will (data analytics, writing, etc...) you'll certainly gain a boost in self confidence and first hand experience in managing a research project.
A Ph.D. is pretty much a license to do science in many fields, such as biochemistry. Unlike CS, you just don't get to do the cutting edge work without one -- you will remain forever a lab tech unless and until you get your doctorate.
maybe that is a good enough reason to avoid those fields and focus on fields that actually value your ideas and implementations rather than a credential.
But in return you might get to do amazing research and discover things that our species did not know before. That's worth something to those of us who don't view life as a monetary optimization game.
> huge opportunity cost where you miss out saving money early
Either direction only works out if a bunch of things line up in your favour over a relatively long period of time. If you choose the academic path and succeed, you end up with little money and a higher credential. If you choose not the academic path, you end up with potentially more money. However, you might fail at one or both paths, so it doesn't really matter at all, and you're better off trying both if you're not so confident. I initially chose the employment path, but as that's failed miserably over that 10 years, I have no money at all to show for it, and I've dipped into school from time to time and generally like it for the most part. If I traded that block of time for just academics or just employment, I'd probably be equally depressed and anxious, just for different reasons.
I went into a PhD programme in Australia straight out of my undergrad degree, and while it certainly wasn't great for my financial security, I'm glad I did it. Anecdotes don't make data, of course, but this is background to what follows.
I had a really easy time getting admitted to the program, was fully funded and received a scholarship. I had a lot of freedom in terms of topic and got to travel every year of the PhD, so I think the actual experience was much better than it sounds like other people have it in the linked study.
What I did see, however, was a university system that was pushing through students at what I would consider an irresponsible pace. This was especially the case with foreign students, who were fodder for the supervisors' career aspirations (the supervisors having to see through a number of students to completion per five-year period to advance). The quality of the resultant PhDs was shockingly low in some cases, but there is no incentive for good theses, just complete theses. And for a university system like Australia's, which is to a large degree reliant on exporting education, these incentives are probably far worse now than they were when I was in the midst of it in 2015-16.
The other major problem is that a PhD is, essentially, an apprenticeship for academia. In Australia, we have a apprenticeships in trades (like electrical, plumbing, etc.) in which you learn 'on the job'; you're paid poorly, you do the menial jobs, but at the end you have a career. A PhD is like that: you do almost everything a lecturer or professor does, except -- and here's the catch -- there's no job prospects whatsoever at the end. And it seems like it'll get worse. Imagine working for four years on something that you love, that you're passionate about, and that you think will change the world intellectually, to only end up being some cheap labour to get publications for others more advanced in their careers -- and then you're done, and shown the door.
I was incredibly lucky in that I got a two-year postdoc, but I had to change fields (which I wanted to do), and I ended up paying for my own post-doc doing contracted research through the university. My heart wasn't in being an academic, and the applied side appealed to me a lot -- but I imagine this would be intolerable for many candidates.
These are factors I tell anyone who is thinking of a PhD. It is a highly-specific apprenticeship for a single industry that is, in Australia, collapsing substantially as the result of its own mismanagement, poor education funding policy at the Federal level, and (of course) the pandemic. It's no wonder that PhD candidates are so discontent, in my view -- despite my having had a wonderful and very fulfilling time.
It depends what you want to do and what you're good at.
For example, if you're good in the academy thing and manage to get papers into top tier companies you will finish your PhD faster if you won't take breaks in the industry. If your PhD is on desrible topic (e.g., ML) there are plenty of academy and industry jobs waiting for you, regardless of your work experience.
Mathematics is closer to the least in-demand humanities than CS in terms of investment quality... actually, it's probably one of the worse fields in which to do a phd. History or Philosophy might be better... at least there you're free to live a life of the mind. If you sign up for a Math PhD in the USA, you're almost certainly just signing up to be a university College Algebra/Calc I teacher for like 1/2-1/3rd of what middle school teachers are making.
Seriously. Don't get a PhD in Math. It's a miserable field.
I disagree completely (my PhD is in maths). I don't know about the USA specifically, but this doesn't match my experience or that of anyone I know. Many maths PhDs don't go into academia, and those that do earn decent money (definitely more than our equivalent of middle school teachers). I don't know anyone who would describe the field as miserable, and I'm sorry to hear you have reached that conclusion (and confused, to be honest).
Seriously, if you're really interested in maths, look into a PhD in it. It's an exciting and fulfilling field. There are decent odds you won't end up in academia, so aim for an area with practical applications or that will teach you useful skills.
> Many maths PhDs don't go into academia, and those that do earn decent money (definitely more than our equivalent of middle school teachers).
I meant during the PhD. In the USA, it's very common for math folks to teach for most of their PhD. Teaching every semester + summers is not common at all in the rest of STEM. Between the higher salary and pension (!), middle school teachers are making a lot more than PhD students. It would be a weird apples-to-oranges comparison for most phd programs, but, unlike mot phd programs, math phds spend an enormous amount of their time TAing baby math classes.
> but this doesn't match my experience or that of anyone I know.
It matches the experience of almost everyone I know
> Seriously, if you're really interested in maths, look into a PhD in it.
But also consider PhDs in other fields.
Or just take an under-paying/low-time-commitment in industry and study math on the side; in a math phd program in the usa, your College Algebra/Calc I teaching load will be almost a full-time job anyways.
But, even more than that, if you're considering a PhD, choose a mathematically-adjacent field that isn't math and pick up a co-supervisor from the math department. The only parts of math that you can't do in other departments are exactly the areas that don't match the criteria of "area with practical applications or that will teach you useful skills".
That does sound quite different. In NZ TAing during a PhD is completely optional, something you do for extra money. It's definitely a good idea to do some, but in general you wouldn't be allowed to do more than ~10 hours per week.
Not sure why you're being downvoted - most PhDs have almost no chance at becoming a faculty member - although it is a lot easier in engineering than in other disciplines.
Can anyone with a background in the area comment on how legit this is?
I have no trouble believing that a spry research professor in a quantitative field could get a PhD in another quantitative field at a fairly advanced age, especially if they can bring existing skills that are underused in their new domain, but it would be genuinely amazing if someone in his 80ies were to successfully
> set to work on a very difficult problem [...] the theory that he was doing involves techniques that are incredibly advanced and challenging to master
in physics, a field were people are often considered over the hill past their 20ies, and an elite uni at that. The only reference to his work a quick google scholar search turned up is from 2012:
Heh, my second attempt at a Bachelor's degree was at 27, and when I was done, a professor asked if I will also continue with the Master's degree at the same University. To that I said, no, I'm over 30 and too old :-).
" ... I wanted to do something that keeps my mind active. But it is a matter of whatever you want to do. If you have a dream, follow it. Sometimes that dream may never have been verbalized, it may be buried in the subconscious. It is important not to waste your older days. There is a lot of brainpower in older people and I think it can be of enormous benefit to younger generations. Older people have experience and many times history repeats itself.”
I see this as a way to protect one's health and sanity as one ages. Aging gracefully should be possible.
What's more he's now 13 years older than the age at which Einstein died, so he's shown us that pursuing one's desires and goals at any age is a worthwhile venture.
I wish him well and hope he continues to get enjoyment from his new expertise in physics.
I am so jealous. I always wanted to do a PhD and was even accepted to a good program.
Ended up not going as I could not gather up the courage to leave my job behind.
I sincerely hope the experience getting the physics doctorate was all that he had imagined!
This gives me hope. I'm not even half his age, but already worry about my brain going. When I was 17 I could do basic calculus in my head. Today I struggle to carry numbers in long addition problems.
It already has me thinking about my career and future - it certainly is downhill from here.
Then something like this happens and just makes me feel like a big baby. Hats off Mr Steiner.
Don’t assume this is age. It could be a health condition beginning to manifest. Inflammation, vitamin deficiency leading to something bad, etc. Brain fog is a common symptom of many possible issues that may just be taking root. I would see a doctor and make sure I fixed any such issue I could.
Thanks. Would love to have such a solution, but generally, doctor visits are normal.
One giant difference I noticed is my speech. When I was younger I spoke very, very quickly, to the point it was off-putting to some folks. I've always thought people who speak quickly have a fast working brain, so to speak.
Today I speak much more slowly and with more deliberation. Not good or bad, just different. Unfortunately I also find myself searching for a word much more often.
"could be." It could also be _completely normal_ losing one's ability over time by not practicing, and one could get it back by just... doing more practice.
I'm in my mid-20's and I can't do mental math as well as I used to. Why? I don't spend as much time on it now, as I did when I was in school some years ago.
Also, I don't think you ought to consider "when I was 17, I could do basic calculus in my head" as a sign of more ability than you have today. The problems were likely not that hard, since you were 17.
Do you practice doing long division every day, without pen and paper? If not, then I think you ought to try that before making the judgement "I can't do it". Practice is very important, especially when it comes to memory intensive tasks. The other key bit is coming up with efficient algorithms for doing division in your head that take into account the pros/cons of memory vs. pen and paper (why should we expect algorithms that run well on paper to be effective in our memory-only execution as well?). Over the years, people have developed a wide variety of "mental arithmetic" algorithms.
Finally, doing long division in your head isn't important. No one will judge you by it, when you're applying for a PhD, and so you should not judge yourself by it. There are way bigger fish to fry, even in mathematics.
Economics - I took some calculus classes at the local community college to sort of spool up and get back into it. I was the weird old guy asking questions that nobody cared about but it’s been a great experience all around. And honestly the concepts are far more important than than the mental math, we all use calculators now :)
As I assume you know how to do it, carrying numbers in long addition is a short term memory thing. I bet you were roughly as bad at it when you were 17 as you are now. Doing basic calculus in your head is way easier, it's simple multiplication.
isn’t this likely just a matter of practice? at 17 I spent hours a week studying calculus so it was easy… then I stopped using it for 20 years and it’s very difficult.
I feel like I’d get good at calculus or anything by dedicating similar amounts of dedicated study time
I don’t even have a bachelors. I’ve been thinking about going back to school and pursing higher levels of education (research masters or PhD) twitch a mostly utilitarian fields and do industrial R&D work in a domain I’ve become interested in and my biggest worry is being “old” by the time I complete any graduate education (even though old in my case, would likely be mid-30s by the end if I start in the coming years).
I might get crucified for being so jaded and cynical, but completed a PhD as part of some lifelong dream seems a bit empty to me. I think it’s fair to call him a physicist, but I just personally wouldn’t feel the dream was realized. Now, at the end of his life, he’s achieved the bare minimum and I doubt he will be able to do much more in the field or see the field develop.
How is completing a super advanced degree in a very specific field 'the bare minimum'?
I feel like taking high school physics would be the bare minimum. Or maybe even getting a bachelor's. But a PhD? That's not the pinnacle of a career, by any means, but it's 100% the pinnacle of an educational experience.
>my biggest worry is being “old” by the time I complete any graduate education
There are 'old' students everywhere in college and graduate school. If you interact with any graduate students from not your home country, 99% of the time, they are much (read: a decade or two) older than the 'regular' student.
In my field, doing a PhD at decent university means doing real-world scientific research. Despite widespread forced publication of mediocre results, I still see a PhD as a recognition of having “done science”.
Those people are just trying to gain admission to american jobs. The numbers are way different for the people with real research potential at top american schools.
That's just moving the goalposts. Not really adding anything to the argument here.
The argument is just graduate students, not subset of graduate students that is impossible to measure with any accuracy based on available data due to your completely arbitrary and nebulous definitions. Also, even if we take your new arbitrary and meaningless 'definition', we can no longer use the key word from the original discussion: ----most----.
My point stands. Non-native graduate students skew older than native students by quite a bit.
I had the same worries as someone who with some luck will graduate in his 30s.
I went back to college after dropping out when I was in my early 20s. Someone told me "You're going to be X+4 years in 4 years anyway, why not try achieving that thing you want. Time will pass either way"
Surprise: Right now I enjoy college VS before when it felt like a chore I had to go because was the "right thing to do".
It's great to share a space with people who share the same interest in a topic of science/humanities as you do.
Being an old dude in college, allows you to be less worried about late-teenage problems like drama in relationships, in my case being hot-headed, dealing with parents' expectations, or the chronic stress from failing tests thinking it's the end of the world, etc.
Plus, being the "old dude" from the class, hasn't been a problem at all, people are respectful most of the time, and if you're friendly, they will even seek you for mentorship.
As long as you're not behaving like Chevy Chase from "Community", nobody will give much importance to your age.
Yeah, there is a lot of things that are just bureaucracy to create false gatekeeping that I don't like even now.
But from time to time, I find lectures about topics I didn't know existed... and I have that feeling of being a kid again, and finding something new from 0. And that's 100% worth it. So I get why the dude, would keep searching for a PhD even in his eldery years.
I am fortunate enough to live in a country where college it's free. But if it's too expensive, you could get a lot of the value from distance Coursera, and online courses/communities.
It’s not about being old in school, in fact I’m fairly sure I could make much more of it now then had I gone at 17-18.
It’s about being old when I finish. Losing the rest of my youth being out of place (funny enough I’ve always been the young guy among older people and school would just invert that, it’s not the biggest issue in the world, but it does become very isolating at times) and losing years of earning power on what feels like a gamble. Being the oldest candidate applying for a new job, etc.
It's a gamble. Opportunity cost it's a real thing.
The risk/benefit ratio will depend on the career. In IT, in a lot of jobs, you can have a competitive salary with Bootcamps and self-taught skills.
Now ageism it's a thing... but at the same time one that plays in your favor, usually companies that only hire early-20s, tend to be exploitative or abusive (pizza instead of proper extra hours payments, etc).
I will say it's only worth it if you see your college studies more like a self-development thing rather than just a multiplier on your salary.
> Now, at the end of his life, he’s achieved the bare minimum and I doubt he will be able to do much more in the field or see the field develop.
I'm sure the fact that it would inspire others was not lost on him. Or perhaps he did it just so it would be done? There's enjoyment in the journey and the accomplishment.
I'm 40 now, since the pandemics started studying game development (BA), and talking with my colleagues via discord, I'm quite sure I'm the oldest one. On the bright side, I'm the one with the best notes, delivering always weeks before the deadline, despite the fact that I have a full time job and family. I think what the life taught me at best are time management and context switching. Love to learn and be productive. I'm looking forward to still be a student in the age of 90.
yes, you are right. I dropped from $$ job, which allows me to work in something different (I do volunteer work with kids, afternoon). I wake up every day 6:30, and limit my studies to 1 hour early in the morning (coding, when I'm most productive) and 1 hour late in the night (reading through materials).
For many places, at least a masters or phd is the credibility doorway to do interesting work. By choosing not to get these credentials, you are also choosing to greatly narrow your opportunity in those lines of work.
Being able to do the work is figuratively 30% of the battle, whereas having the opportunity to do it is the real challenge.
College is expensive enough, and professors (but hey we call them "lecturers" so we can treat them horribly) earn nothing, but what is often forgotten is that a few years out of work can cost half a million bucks (or, for some people, far more) in opportunity cost.
A PhD is pretty much the minimum to be able to get much of anywhere in biology. In that context it's "don't do a postdoc, you'll never get a tenured position anymore".
Ugh. I agree that the exploitative behavior of some big name universities is horrible, but I don't at all understand how you from this conclude that "academia is over", and in turn from that that people should avoid doing PhD.
And you're right, I made three totally disconnected points albeit on the same area at least! Have done much worst in the past. I am sorry if I offended you or didn't explain myself much further.
Why is academia over in my opinion you ask?
Well, for one it's an overly saturated space, most of the folks doing a PhD go on to have very good career prospect's (of course thanks to the PhD in part).
But which percentage do stay in academia? Why not everyone with good ideas? It seems to me, it's a system like any other rigged for the rich and connected, who can afford a degree+master+phd, I guess if your parents are supporting you through it...
About avoiding doing a PhD, you can just read from all the people who was paid poorly, but since they needed the credentials, they went with it anyway's... As it stands right now, and much like everything that capitalism touches, Academia has gone to shit in standards in a few centuries from being the way of sharing knowledge, to being another way to manipulate and disinform the public.
I guess I would change my prior absolute statement to a more specific one, do a PhD only if you can afford the opportunity cost of not doing it and doing else more productive (for yourself or bank account at least)
And maybe academia is not over, but it's certainly in need of a shake up, and sadly as someone much more smarter than me once said:
> But which percentage do stay in academia? Why not everyone with good ideas? It seems to me, it's a system like any other rigged for the rich and connected, who can afford a degree+master+phd, I guess if your parents are supporting you through it...
There are several places where you can get a bachelor's and a master's for no tuition and with government support. Source: I did.
And there are several places where you can get paid decently to do a PhD. Less than an industry job, for sure, but definitely enough to get by just fine. Source: I did.
> About avoiding doing a PhD, you can just read from all the people who was paid poorly,
A PhD is not a set of courses to read. It's research training. It's doing research.
> but since they needed the credentials, they went with it anyway's
Where I live, nobody in their right minds would do a PhD for the credentials.
> I guess I would change my prior absolute statement to a more specific one, do a PhD only if you can afford the opportunity cost of not doing it and doing else more productive (for yourself or bank account at least)
Sure. I'd very much agree that a PhD often represents a lost opportunity cost, but that's something very different from the bleak picture that you paint (wherein only the rich and connected can do one without ending up in debt).
> And maybe academia is not over, but it's certainly in need of a shake up
OK, so, in summary: Academia isn't over, and PhDs aren't pointless. Literally nothing remains from your first comment.
Such a motivating life he has created... Please read the complete article and you'll find a very important advice in the end from this extraordinary human... ;)
I'm in my late 20s and my wife works on her own startup (non tech tangible product). I wonder if there are others who have their spouses working and how the marriage factored into their decision to pursue a CS PhD. I'm not from USA.
My primary concerns are her startup tanking, me being unavailable for her mental health and of course a steady income.
I sometimes wonder maybe I should pursue a CS PhD after settling down financially by late 40s.
It's always comforting to know that if you weren't good enough to achieve anything of note in your youth you can always earn accolades for being stubborn enough to do it in old age. I have some unreasonable rock climbing goals that seem less likely but more impressive as I age. Also a 42 year old man just became the light heavyweight UFC champ last weekend so I guess... Keep fighting.
Wow and I thought I was taking a risk spending a few years transitioning into robotics in my late 30s :) Awesome to see this, would like to think we all could undertake huge learning challenges at any point in life, and we'll probably need to if we care to keep contributing at a high level.
The topic is legitimate but Marston hasn’t done much CMT in 20 years, Witten is considered to have made most of the advances in bosonization in the 80s although there was a paper out of Riverside a few years ago I remember that looked interesting with Mike Mulligan
I don't see the point of this. He's not going to have a long career as a researcher so why dedicate resources trying to train him to become one? In my country typically being one year behind already counts strongly against you.
I did a masters in physics when I was 24 and thought not getting paid a meaningful sum of money was incredibly frustrating. If my two remaining brain cells still function at 84 I'll certainly take on a PhD program.
Very inspiring story indeed. But the first question resonating in my mind is...
Why??
While what the student did is good. It serves as bad inspiration for too many people going to college these days just because they want to. And not because of a reason.
If the cost of education was low, then I would not be opposed to it. But we all know stories of people who say they are "going back to school" for very minimal benefits later.
So... at that age, we can see it as just an aspirational thing. But for younger people, it mostly (not all the time) sends the wrong message.
STEM PhDs in the US pay no tuition and receive a stipend of typically $30K+ as well as health insurance and sometimes housing benefits.
Honestly, "fuck it, do another Ph.D. in an adjacent field like math" is definitely in my "shit ran out of funds for ski trips because I retired too early and need some health insurance ASAP" quiver.
> So... at that age, we can see it as just an aspirational thing. But for younger people, it mostly (not all the time) sends the wrong message.
Like 20-somethings doing startup shit, PhDs can be terrible life choices or wonderful life choices. Outcomes are anything but uniform. If I had gone industry out of undergrad I might be making $150K by now. Instead I'm making close to 10x that doing exactly what I would be doing if I were an unemployed bum following my passion, all thanks to my phd. Lucky, sure. So are startup folks.
This is the pay at top tier universities with extremely exclusive entry criteria.
I was a former PhD student in CS. Washed out due to costs because I was self-funding. It was a local university and an R1 so not "bad" but also not ivy. I had absolutely no problem keeping up with class + research work while also working in industry as I have a lot of time on my hands and no family. I'm still a little sour about the whole thing because I had an incredible and flexible advisor. But costs are costs.
The average STEM PhD student at my university made 13k, up to 20k if you took on summer teaching duties. You did get classes covered, but health insurance came out of your stipend and you still had to cover ancillary fees (gym, technology, etc). So you walked, after taxes, with anywhere between 10 and 12k. They offered me an RA position with my PhD admission that paid approximately 20k. Obviously I could not take it and afford rent. Perhaps if they offered a free dorm and healthcare I could consider choking down 12-15k for 3-4 years to get the pay off in the end.
American PhD programs generally pay below poverty wages. Several PhD student colleagues of mine were on food stamps and lived with 1-3 other PhD students in the run down apartments adjacent to the university. It's abject suffering for the most part and direct-to-phd students often leave in their mid 30s burned out and 10 years behind other students in the workplace. I inquired with several universities about associate professor positions and even those have pretty insane post-doc requirements before being considered. You'll be 15+ years behind your cohort if you, god forbid, decide to go another 3 or so years in a slighty-above-poverty post doc position. At my university these paid around 40-45k, up to 60k for fairly exclusive positions. For what it's worth I make as much as the average industry CS PhD in a software engineering capacity after 10 years of service. I was pursuing it for pleasure and credentialing.
It is not practical, unfortunately, to pursue a PhD as an American unless you are incredibly wealthy or on a visa program. It is not surprising many PhD students are foreign born. No one intends to get rich with a PhD, but it seems even comfort is a far flung dream.
The purpose of PHDs and the ultimate purpose of college is tied together. A PHD requires conducting a novel and heavily reviewed study to further human knowledge.
The esteem and accolades peppered throughout this discussion are incidental and transitory.
Brown is a respected US university. I don't believe anyone of count would mistake this title to think of his skin color. You'll probably have better luck with a tweet.
I can't help but wonder if this headline was A/B tested and was found to be more 'engaging' specifically because of the same sort of reaction GP demonstrated.
Edit: Interesting that the headline was changed from the original to no longer refer to Brown university at all. I genuinely wonder what prompted that.
Absolutely not. Americans don't call people 'brown.' We generally have white, black, and hispanic/latino. Anyone else we refer to by nationality, even incorrectly at times. If he were say, Indian, it would say Indian, not Brown.
If you are not familiar with Brown University, the first part of the headline is easily parsed differently. In English, adjectives tend to come in a certain order, with color generally being precedent to origin or qualifier. Therefore it would read as 'Brown' being an adjective describing Manfred Steiner, because the color 'Brown' generally comes before the qualifier 'Physics Student'.
I am not suggesting that Brown University actually A/B tested this. As a university press site, they seem less likely to pursue that. But it would be naive to think that in the current media and political climate in the US, the mistaken interpretation of the headline would not be more surprising, and therefore more likely to grab attention. That's what A/B testing the headlines is for.
Fair examples. Every rule does have exceptions. But none that would make Brown in the title make one think it was a skin color because of English rules.
Pretty much any university in the country would have written the headline in exactly the same manner substituting their institution's name. And, yes, anyone who interprets it differently is doing so in bad faith or just is pretty unaware of US university names generally.
> And, yes, anyone who interprets it differently is doing so in bad faith or just is pretty unaware of US university names generally.
I think most people outside of the US are unaware of US university names. I could name 5 to 10, and that's because I spend a lot of time reading american media and american-centric websites like HN.
What is your point? People interpret things in bad faith all the time, but that doesn't detract from my point about the A/B testing. The test wouldn't care why someone arrived at a given interpretation, its only measuring how many people arrived at which one as a proxy for engagement. The motivations people have are somewhat irrelevant.
And we know this sort of thing happens all the time with less scrupulous media outlets. Media outlets surely test specific headlines with the intention of attracting a certain bias depending on the outlets own leanings.
Americans absolutely call people brown. It's all over social media, sociology papers, and common conversation. Just search twitter for "black and brown".
A PhD is research training. Is he doing to do research now, or is this just, like everyone seems to be treating it - a big trophy? Does anyone ever stop to question their credentialist mindset? I heard a character in a video game say indignantly "Excuse me, I have a PhD", and I thought, well, that's not realistic dialog because a PhDs is something you have done, not something that you 'have'. But then people here are treating it like attainment of literally a 'qualification' is an end goal in itself.
The title is more accurately described as “Former Brown Professor of Medicine Returns to Brown to earn his Third Doctorate“
He had an MD, received a PhD from MIT, then went on to have a career as a researcher at Brown before taking up physics undergrad classes, and then continuing on to grad school.
He is quoted in the article as saying he will continue to work on physics research.
I was commenting on the responses though, of "I'm so inspired". People are treating it as if the person has pulled off deathbed salvation, thankfully earning access to the eternal status of "PhD haver" in time.
Sorry, I missed that. Your response came across as one made in response to the title of the article as opposed to the other comments here.
It took me a really long time to finish my bachelor’s degree. I always had a sort of romantic notion that going through it and really studying hard would help me to become a better thinker. I’m not really satisfied with my progress, so I definitely understand where those who want to pursue more formal education are coming from.
> Steiner is not prepared to rest on his laurels. He is currently reworking part of his dissertation for publication and plans to continue his theoretical physics work.
It definitely helps that he has a lifetime of research experience (in another field).
What is PhD research training? Are there any good indicators you might be a good researcher, without yet a full background in the discipline? What what be some of those qualities needed and sought for takin in my a professor. For example, say you just have an undergraduate degree in CS, what might be some ways to show you would be a good candidate without yet having written any publications.
I don't see what's wrong with saying "I have a PhD". It's equivalent to what (I think) you're saying: "I have a few qualifications (pertaining to research)".
Well, it's annoying and usually arrogant. Just like people who put Ph.D. in their LinkedIn or Twitter names. I don't care that you have a Ph.D., and if you flaunt it, I'll think you're dumber than someone with a bachelor's degree.
Anyway, it's really inspiring that someone almost three times my age pushed himself through the program. I guess it's important to remember that you really shouldn't give up on your dreams.