The h Bar

vzn

11:00 PM

saw this on reddit. :(

How an oversupply of PhDs could threaten American science / Hechinger report

2

@tpg2114 yeah saw that profiled elsewhere, very impressive work, can you follow any of it? :)

Danu

@vzn Gotta love not being an American

vzn

yeah US science in not so great shape sometimes, but suspect most trends in the article are worldwide.

user54412

@Danu In some fields it's even worse everywhere else. It's not like there's much astro/cosmology positions outside the US, but Europe certainly trains lots of PhDs

vzn

its probably very field dependent, the article pts that out some...

user54412

There's actually a big worry that with Planck ending there will be many unemployed European cosmologists looking for work here

vzn

11:12 PM

have always thought there is something wrong with an economic system that just doesnt really seem to value phds that much at times... sometimes its baffling...

0celo7

@vzn Why should we value PhDs? What value does @ChrisWhite bring me (for example, no hate), as a taxpayer?

user54412

@vzn conversely, maybe the problem is ascribing any value to a PhD in the first place

user54412

@0celo7 lol. probably none

0celo7

@ChrisWhite Exactly. @vzn , you can't say that something is wrong with the system, when, objectively, most PhDs have no value.

vzn

the pt is phds are highly educated (at high time/ expense), but it doesnt often translate into pay. so the economic system does not always actually value education.

0celo7

11:15 PM

@vzn It values economically valuable education.

vzn

ah, so you guys have no objections to capitalism at all? even if working for low wages, doing highly sophisticated work?

user54412

This topic came up for discussion in my department recently, while meeting with a relatively important person in science policy. Rather than sit back and quietly observe like an obedient grad student, I took the opportunity to challenge the faculty to justify getting a PhD for someone my age.

0celo7

@vzn I have no desire to become a physicist, because I fear being an impoverished graduate student.

user54412

@vzn I have no problem (in principle) with being paid based on the value of my work to others, rather than some abstract objective "value" based on difficulty

0celo7

It has nothing to do with the system being bad, it's just that most physics grad students are worthless to the macroeconomy.

vzn

11:17 PM

oce you dont want to be a physicist? (finding this hard to follow...)

dmckee

Be aware that the 1 in 5 number quoted in the article is too optimistic for physicists. The APS' estimate is about 1 in 7 and worse still for theorists.

0celo7

@vzn I'm going to college for nuclear engineering.

vzn

seems there are often a lot of "devils advocates" in this room :|

oce, you dont want to work in academia?

user54412

I could also imagine living in a more planned economy where people are paid based on their intelligence or something (sounds pretty dystopian though)

dmckee

The lesson you should take is have a Plan B.

Seriously.

0celo7

11:19 PM

@vzn Perhaps, perhaps not. I want get my PE license so I can put food on the table first.

vzn

everyone thinks anything different than current capitalism = communism or socialism.

user54412

what I really don't get is the inconsistency -- we tell college students about the glories of a PhD, but the economy at large doesn't believe in them

0celo7

@dmckee Essentially this.

vzn

we live in managed capitalism & its possible to question the management....

user54412

(this is especially true in the humanities and biological sciences)

vzn

11:19 PM

CW exactly, college is highly promoted as a "ticket to the future" but it doesnt translate exactly to phds....

0celo7

@dmckee You know anything about symmetry factors in Feynman diagrams?

dmckee

For reference, mine was programming.

@0celo7 Not to speak of. My field theory class was long time in the past and I wasn't that great at it.

0celo7

@dmckee Crap. Every reference does one or two and then expects you to be able to do all of them, OR provides a general formula without proof.

P&S is Feynman heavy, I'll check there next.

It's ridiculous how terse these QFT books are when it comes to symmetry factors.

user54412

@vzn I do know that PhDs add some value outside academia, in that companies are willing to pay higher salaries to people who've already been vetted. Non-PhDs are riskier investments for them. What I've been searching for (unsuccessfully) is quantitative data on how much added value there is, and how this compares to the opportunity cost of 5-7 years of industry experience.

0celo7

Zee just calls them "pesky combinatoric factors" and never mentions them again.

@ChrisWhite My brother (EE) did all of his PhD course work, but working full-time was better for him career-wise than working less and writing his dissertation.

Now he has kids, so he'll never get his PhD.

vzn

11:25 PM

@ChrisWhite re "anything other than current capitalism could be dystopian", it seems ppl cant think about capitalism without black/ white/ extreme thinking at times.

yes some phds get very high pay in industry, others are working for minimum wage (aka "outside their field"), its very difficult to quantify.

there is some crossover, some physicists make big $$$ in quantitative finance etc.

0celo7

@vzn You need to provide a coherent argument why PhDs have inherent value.

vzn

oce, they have greater value than "mere" undergraduates. the argument is the same for undergraduates, extended. (same for masters degree etc)

0celo7

@vzn No, that depends entirely on the field.

user54412

@vzn I didn't say everything else was dystopian. Just the idea of the government doling out money based on raw intelligence.

0celo7

An undergraduate engineer with co-op experience is more valuable than an egghead PhD.

vzn

11:27 PM

agreed its hard to picture any other system. we are "fish in water" wrt that.

user54412

@vzn You know, 60% of my graduating class from college went into PhD programs. The rest, as far as I can tell, entered finance or silicon valley and started making $100-250k instantly

vzn

seems our culture has double stds wrt science. quite happy to profit off the fruits of scientific research but not that enthusiastic about funding it.

0celo7

@vzn Not at all. We fund those sciences in which we expect beneficial advances.

vzn

CW what school was that?

user54412

@vzn Caltech, so it's a bit of an outlier.

vzn

11:30 PM

oce, no, funding is somewhat random at times. highly politicized. in US.

caltech yeah great school for silicon valley.

user54412

Certainly a number of my classmates only went to grad school because "everyone else was doing it" which is a weird environment to be in

vzn

the caltech/ silicon valley model is nice. synergistic.

user54412

I thought it was the Stanford/Silicon union that did so well

vzn

yeah ofc that is strong too.

bet a lot of caltech grads have done major work in chip fabrication over the years.

saw a good documentary on silicon valley recently.

my comments mirror some earlier ones in chat re sputnik. a rare case when US science kicked into high gear, ~½ century ago. great in some ways, horrible in others. a response to USSR aka "the enemy", and in some ways militaristically motivated (although that was probably somewhat intentionally concealed from the public).

0celo7

@vzn There's an interesting phenomenon that hurts PhDs trying to get into entry-level positions. Employers view (somewhat ironically) PhDs as having more "options" and therefore think that they will be snatched up by other companies. Thus they don't hire as many PhDs all around.

vzn

11:36 PM

oce this is generally called "overqualified".

0celo7

Almost exactly.

vzn

which is just another facet of the workplace not always highly valuing phds.

its uneven.

somewhat unpredictable.

0celo7

Overqualified means you are working below what you could be working at.

vzn

overqualified means different things. it may mean "we dont want to hire you, because we think you might not hold onto the position when better one comes along," etc

0celo7

In the phenomenon I mentioned, they aren't even hired out of fear that other companies think they are overqualified and offer a pay raise.

@vzn So companies should always hire PhDs over undergraduates or masters degree holders?

vzn

11:40 PM

so oce what are your long term plans? research? these considerations highly impinge on that.

0celo7

That doesn't make very much sense.

vzn

youre putting words in my mouth. :(

user54412

vzn: Another piece of data I'd like is how much value a phd adds above the trait "selected for a phd program"

Stan Shunpike

If I have an affine space (E,V,+) and an inner product defined on $V$ what's the point of the inner product? Does it give me any information about the elements of E?

0celo7

@vzn UT had a 100 percent job rate last year for those who didn't want to go to a PhD program. I have no clue where I'll land up.

user54412

11:41 PM

There was a study in Princeton a while back to see the value added for getting an undergrad degree here vs. elsewhere, considering the same population of students (those admitted to Princeton) -- turns out the answer is "not much"

0celo7

@vzn I apologize. What do you propose?

vzn

oce dont have a (soundbite) answer/ solution, its a very deep issue. "noticing"/ acknowledging it is a good place to start...

0celo7

@StanShunpike The inner product is just a (canonical) map from the vector space to the complex numbers.

vzn

CW that study sounds like trying to quantify the value of an elite school (princeton) wrt later (post edu) salaries... which is a similar challenge...

Stan Shunpike

@0celo7 so there's nothing more to it than that. Okay.

0celo7

11:45 PM

@StanShunpike The inner product could be a map into the field over which you define the affine space. Note that $\mathbb{C}-\{0\}$ is just the most popular choice for the field.

@StanShunpike Now that I think about it...I'm not sure affine spaces have an inner product. Perhaps I'm misremembering what an affine space is. What does $(E,V,+)$ mean?

vzn

re going to the moon, last massive US natl science program....

yesterday, by tpg2114

@StanShunpike It had nothing to do with realism and everything to do with beating the communists

(speaking of communism lol)

alarge

@ChrisWhite In what sense do you mean "value added"? Expected lifetime pay Bachelor's vs PhD, or from the company's perspective?

user54412

@alarge Both. The company will pay a certain premium to draw employees from a pool of people with less risk of being failures at the job. So it's a statistical value from the company's perspective, which translates to a real pay increase for the phd.

user54412

I just don't know how big an effect this is.

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