Well, this is distressing -- from a Nature news article in 2004:
"US graduate programmes, especially in life sciences, have grown excruciatingly long in recent decades... In 1973–82, the average in biosciences was 6.3 years; for 1993–2002, the average was 7.7 years. In physics, time to degree increased from 6.6 to 7.4 years, in chemistry from 5.8 to 6.7 years."
Wow. I knew it was bad, but not this bad. But wait, it gets worse, much worse:
According to this NSF white paper, registered time-to-degree (the time you were in school minus breaks) was as follows: 6.8 for physical sciences, 6.9 for life sciences and 9.0 for the humanities.
Oh, the humanity.
2009-02-06 19:07:01
Let's not forget one of Freddie's original points, which is that people REALLY love doing what they get to do. I love doing chemistry every day, which is something you get to do (and do and do) in graduate school. Paul, I'm sure you loved learning how to act well...
But when you're asked to bear huge financial costs (anything over 50k aggregate, IMHO), you need to have a "Schumer box" of some sort to get informed consent.
2009-02-06 18:59:56
By the way, have I ever told you how much I love you for this quote?:
"What's the problem? The problem, first of all, is that college is not and should not be Club Med with classes. By focusing so much money and attention on buildings and facilities, the universities play into a vision of college that is damaging to the educational mission. You need facilities and buildings. But nice basketball courts and cafeterias are rather peripheral to the core project of the academy. Money should principally be spent on better faculty and better academic services and facilities. Sadly, those things have little of the obvious "curb appeal" that new buildings and new amenities have. ("Did you see how big the dorm rooms are?")"
So true, so true.
2009-02-06 18:50:40
Speaking for the scientists here, you liberal arts types get screwed. The dirty little secret of graduate school in the sciences is that you get paid to do it (tuition + stipend). Sure, it's a pittance ($15-25K), but you'll have a car, roommate and you'll eat more ramen and less meat than you'd like, but you can live on it and you won't accumulate massive piles of debt like law students.
(I took out a couple of student loans in grad school (~$22K), but that was basically for quality of life, not actual tuition/food, etc.)
Once you leave grad school, you can either go get a job (much better money, but a tough time finding a job these days) or you can go for a postdoc. The physicists and the chemists have been better at clearing out their backlogs of postdocs and the like than the biologists, who toil for years without finding jobs in either academia or industry. You can't blame it on academia, totally -- it's the industrial job market that just can't absorb the new entry-level folks.
I've always worried about academia basically being a pyramid scheme, where folks are recruited to teach students. What will the students do when they've graduated? Why, teach, of course! Who will they teach? Why, students, of course...
The commenter archive features may be temporarily disabled at times.
Well, this is distressing -- from a Nature news article in 2004:
"US graduate programmes, especially in life sciences, have grown excruciatingly long in recent decades... In 1973–82, the average in biosciences was 6.3 years; for 1993–2002, the average was 7.7 years. In physics, time to degree increased from 6.6 to 7.4 years, in chemistry from 5.8 to 6.7 years."
Wow. I knew it was bad, but not this bad. But wait, it gets worse, much worse:
According to this NSF white paper, registered time-to-degree (the time you were in school minus breaks) was as follows: 6.8 for physical sciences, 6.9 for life sciences and 9.0 for the humanities.
Oh, the humanity.
Let's not forget one of Freddie's original points, which is that people REALLY love doing what they get to do. I love doing chemistry every day, which is something you get to do (and do and do) in graduate school. Paul, I'm sure you loved learning how to act well...
But when you're asked to bear huge financial costs (anything over 50k aggregate, IMHO), you need to have a "Schumer box" of some sort to get informed consent.
By the way, have I ever told you how much I love you for this quote?:
"What's the problem? The problem, first of all, is that college is not and should not be Club Med with classes. By focusing so much money and attention on buildings and facilities, the universities play into a vision of college that is damaging to the educational mission. You need facilities and buildings. But nice basketball courts and cafeterias are rather peripheral to the core project of the academy. Money should principally be spent on better faculty and better academic services and facilities. Sadly, those things have little of the obvious "curb appeal" that new buildings and new amenities have. ("Did you see how big the dorm rooms are?")"
So true, so true.
Speaking for the scientists here, you liberal arts types get screwed. The dirty little secret of graduate school in the sciences is that you get paid to do it (tuition + stipend). Sure, it's a pittance ($15-25K), but you'll have a car, roommate and you'll eat more ramen and less meat than you'd like, but you can live on it and you won't accumulate massive piles of debt like law students.
(I took out a couple of student loans in grad school (~$22K), but that was basically for quality of life, not actual tuition/food, etc.)
Once you leave grad school, you can either go get a job (much better money, but a tough time finding a job these days) or you can go for a postdoc. The physicists and the chemists have been better at clearing out their backlogs of postdocs and the like than the biologists, who toil for years without finding jobs in either academia or industry. You can't blame it on academia, totally -- it's the industrial job market that just can't absorb the new entry-level folks.
I've always worried about academia basically being a pyramid scheme, where folks are recruited to teach students. What will the students do when they've graduated? Why, teach, of course! Who will they teach? Why, students, of course...