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You don’t need to be a university professor, or a teacher at school to teach people stuff. Heck, you don’t even need PhD for that.
… And?
A lesson every child should be taught in school before they are 18: if you want to do something talk to someone who has done it or tried to before you start. All it would have taken was one conversation with an Adjunct Professor to avoid this, or really any professor.
or look into universities, how many are hired as adjunct professors, or part time. my state school had quite a few, and the tenures are like there for 20-30+years already and are pretty salty people, and they definitely see people as a threat to thier wages/lievelyhood in some way, one dint like the fact the i was talking to him about job references he became quite irate over it, plus dint want to be used a reference, because for some reason(my hunch) its a threat to his reputation if i dont have very good rapport with him, although i suspect its due to his native american heritage(being abused by the us, has made him unstrustworthy of people) so he had to protect his ego from getting hurt or taking “Advantage” of him .
and others was doing everything possible to get you to stop talking about post- graduation career path. the most obvious is during summer school though, as advisors, they are very terrible at it for majors, and to sign off on your graduation forms. one post on indeed forums lines in what i thought, advisors giving you bad advice to get you to quickly stop talking about your major, in order to make it easier for them, like takes these classes to quickly graduate, and not lab experience, or other classes that are more crucial. the universities went cheap and just laid all the work on them instead of having a dedicated advisor hired for each department. overall i felt they were subsconsicously threatened by students competing in the future for htier salaries, lowering it, so thats why its so gatekeeped in the industry as well.
Where I live this is always mentioned. There are also many resources that list what jobs have too many people or not enough people. These are often linked to on the websites of schools right next to the degrees they offer. I remember being happy because the degree I went for had a gold star next to it telling me this is would lead to good job opportunities and a high pay. Also, the jobs with not enough people often have cheap or even free courses that are subsidized by my government. There was a big need for (well paid) underwater welders for example, and the full courses were completely free.
God I love socialism.
That sounds awesome. What country is that? Was it just your school or is it regular practice where you live?
Belgium. For the Dutch speaking part there’s VDAB, which handles the path from unemployment to employment. They are the ones that help you get a job, which is a requirement for unemployment benefits, so they are quite active. They currently have 246 different types of jobs listed that need more people. This list is actively referenced to by schools, especially on the degrees that lead to a job in this list, as well as all the school counselors that help you figure out what you want. There’s also many jobs in the list that do not require a degree or course, often for less wanted jobs that are harder to find people for.
I have never met a PhD student who didn’t realise this before starting. You’d think someone who qualifies for grad school has better critical reasoning skills than this.
you be surprised, but some are cognizant enough to get a job somewhere(i think mostly for the people who was phd for like 10+years without a tenure positon), but alot of them are hoping for FACULTY positions in the future, which is pretty much very competitive, and unrealistic, because most tenure arnt leaving til they croak.
Like I tell everyone, PhD doesn’t mean you are smart, it just means you can take more abuse and humiliation than most. This is the thorny path to become an expert.
Also intelligence isn’t some all encompassing thing. Just because you are a good learner or have superb spatial thinking or whatever else doesn’t mean you are good at planning for shit.
The classic view of intelligence completely misses how different people are, and how many different things intelligence could actually mean.
As a CS grad I can confidently say: No! They are absolutely worth your time.
I’d love to go back to school full time… But the only way that could ever happen is if I somehow get enough money so that I never have to work again
You just have to observe how many McDonalds employees are cursing their life in Latin
I’ve said it before, but one reason I didn’t pursue a PhD is that there appeared to be an element of hazing in the entire thing.
Several of the PhD students I knew were languishing for years trying to get their thesis together, in what can only be described as poverty.
Meanwhile, half of the professors were miserable, and if they made good money, it was because they were very focused on how to make money. The happiest postgrad I knew was a senior lecturer who had given up on becoming a professor.
The best you can hope for is that your personal area of interest happens to have a lot of funding.
Yet these people almost universally seemed to think, “Well, that’s just how it is. The nice thing is that if you can get an academic position, it sucks less than being a PhD student.”
I have a PhD because I thought I wanted to go into research. And while I loved research, that didn’t come close to cancelling out how much I loathed all the non-research shit you need to do for funding and keeping a job.
Then I went from academia into corporate R&D, and realized I basically started to hate doing chemistry in general. Mostly because it reminded me of all the stuff I hated.
Im now super happy as a safety consultant, and my PhD sometimes helps in convincing people that I do in fact know more than them. It also covers an ugly spot in the wallpaper, a purpose it fulfills much more frequently.
thats what i heard in college and in other discussion boards, basically just grant chasing for your career. and then i recall while i was in courses with these professors, they said they spend most of thier time chasing grants. i wanted to be in research to, but at the undergrad level, i needed experience in the field, and i wasnt eligble for MS, and the jobs out there are next to impossible without significant experience by the time of graduation.
I got my current teaching position by essentially volunteer-professoring while doing some grad work. Super exploitative on paper, though that wasn’t the intention of anyone involved (tiny college hated by the conservatives so they kinda had to wing it every time legislative fuckery happened). But it’s rough, I don’t make enough to pay my (incredibly cheap) mortgage so I’m in the awkward position of having been financially unemployed for a year while still working full time. Not to sound too whiny but man, the culture of “Guess I’ll starve because I just love my students so much” is absurdly toxic. And that’s coming from someone firmly part of that culture.
they abuse the use of part-time professors/PHD for instructors, so they dont get tenure, to cover all thier neccesary classes. it explains why certain colleges dont offer the same stem courses every semester, because the UNIVERSITY is being a cheapskate.
not to mention the dozens of PAPERS(fluff pieces) you need your resume to get certain positions in a faculty positon in a university. thats where im hearing the complaints coming from. Plus PHD spends alot of thier time chasing grants in universities( at least for the most part), Also they have to frame certain research in a way that does blame “anthropromorphic causes”.
“anthropromorphic causes”.
“This human-shaped molecule causes heart disease!”
With so many things going on in life outside of work and academics, there is only so much you could research and pay attention to to fully know what you could get into. Only practical experience will tell you if it’s worth it. As they say, experience is the best teacher. And even then, don’t regret and blame yourself. You made the decision based on what was the best available information at the time. I tell this to any people who tend to be anxious about decisions.
Your heart is in the right place, but I think “no regrets” is an insane take.
As a fellow unemployed CS grad, I once thought software engineering was my best shot at a middle class life.
Now after 5 years of unemployment, the financial reality is setting in. I will never be able to afford a home. I will never be able to afford a family. I will never be able to afford retirement. I will never be able to afford a vacation. I will never be able to afford most things that make life worth living.
I thought I was going to be an engineer. I thought I was going to be a professional. Now I’m fasting at the end of every month bc food stamps always run out, and the electric company is threatening to shut off my power.
Choosing CS is deeply regrettable.
TBH if you attend 5 years at uni and don’t catch on how few professors there are to literally everyone else at the university perhaps your reasoning skills are not that great.
I mean I did 5 years with a master in thermodynamics (physical chemistry) and my section had 20 offices. Three had a professor in them.
Top sciencetists are is like top athlets. The same drive, dedication and forsaking other things to be best.
True, but not everyone there is vying for an academic job. Especially like something in thermodynamics. I work in the aerospace industry and every engineer has at least a masters in a science/engineering field, a lot have PhD.
The OP laments how he did his PhD because he wanted an academic career, and how his PhD didn’t land him a professorship. Given how he must have spent 5 years at some institution or other, and have at least some success seeing how he got the PhD student position in the first place. My point was that how he in those 5 years didn’t figure out how hard it is to become a professor I find strange.
Trying for academia turned me off of chemistry so hard, I even started to hate my later corporate job doing research.
Though it did get me into regulations and safety, so it all worked out fine. If things had been different, they would have been different, but academia was a massive disillusionment for me.
It sounds weird to say that doing research for someone’s increasing personal wealth was much more enjoyable for me, since the funding was just there, and I didn’t have to teach students or write grant proposals I never wanted to complete.
When I was in college I got a science-related scholarship and as part of it they literally made us all chant together that we would go on to get a PhD.
Thankfully that was obvious enough cult behavior for me to tap out and take my career in a different direction.
That’s weird af
Meyerhoff?
This is a computer sci PhD. They rarely even finish their degrees and most bugger off directly to industry if they do. Couldn’t have picked a better degree of you want to be a professor.
Interestingly enough, I only got my PhD because the job market sucked after Bush’s recession and I was promised 5 years of funding. I did get some great data analytic skills out of it, but academic positions are indeed far and few between.
One of the main factors after my graduation a few years ago was that professors just refused to retire, leaving very few faculty positions open; that changed slightly right after my kid was born but by that point I was and am ok with an adjunct part time and homemaker full time situation.
Now it’ll mostly be a lack of funding, though, unless I leave the US. Meh.
i said many times in other forums, people think thier career is a tenure track, but they underestimate the competitiveness of the tenure positon, plus tenures tend to not retire until they CROAK, or become to ill, old to teach and thats expected 20-40+year wait.
I dunno… getting a PhD just teaches you how to do research. If you want to get a faculty position, there’s a whole other set of skills on top of that; in the US for CS at larger universities it’s mostly about getting funding and becoming “respected” in your field. But you have to tell people that you want to learn those additional skills. That’s the part that’s hard to know about beforehand.
Yep, my buddy is finally on a tenure track at a really nice school and it’s the accumulation of like 15 years of stressful work that might have never really paid off.
You have to be good at getting published, attending conferences, creating conferences, building relationships with different universities and that’s just to keep up with the competition. I think what seals the deal is not only getting funding for yourself, but showing universities how employing you would actually be a sound investment.
The one “secret” I wish I’d known a lot earlier is that you don’t have to do it alone. In fact, the more you collaborate the more successful you’ll be: more research ideas, more publications, more committee memberships in workshops/conferences, more participating on teams being put together to apply for research funding, more people to reach out to when you’re looking for a job, etc. The most successful scientists I’ve known had huge networks of collaborators.
One of the reasons my friend is in the position he’s in now is because he built a really good relationship with a couple people from the university of Tokyo when he was a grad student in Hawaii.
It’s a little funny that networking is one of the most critical skills you can have in hard science.
The dangerous thing is that you can, in many science fields, get a PhD with minimal collaboration. Just pass the quals and focus on your disseration project, there you go. But you’ll be at a tremendous disadvantage during a faculty search, when you’re up against all those people who did internships early in their career, kept those research connections, led research projects in the local lab, joined student groups at conferences and helped organize a student workshop, reviewed for conferences, helped out on projects with people you met at conferences, contributed to funding proposals, etc.
its pretty painful, just having to put dozens of publishing research on CV is a huge task on its own.
Hard to say what exactly a PhD teaches. It is a unique type of qualification that varies radically between situations, even in the same department. I can definitely say there is a difference between people with and without a doctorate, but many of the skills gained are soft skills.
