Reforming Higher Education: Is It Time to Move to Industry?

[WiFO215]

This was recently published in Nature

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110420/full/472276a.html

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110420/full/472280a.html

http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/2011/110421/full/nj7343-381a.html

There seems to be a need for reform, doesn't it? Often I find people on PF complaining about how hard it is to find a job after doing a PhD, especially in academia. What are we going to do? Is it time to encourage younger generations to move to industry rather than go through with higher education?

 

[twofish-quant]

There seems to be a need for reform, doesn't it? Often I find people on PF complaining about how hard it is to find a job after doing a PhD, especially in academia. What are we going to do?

Make it easier for Ph.D.'s to get industry jobs?

Also, one thing that I like thinking about is "what can I do right now to help the situation?" There is the typical bureaucratic approach where to fix a problem, you have a year of committee meetings, a dozen reports, and nothing gets done. I think that's not going to help...

But if I can post two or three pointers to help people write better resumes, then that might do more than a dozen committee meetings.

Is it time to encourage younger generations to move to industry rather than go through with higher education?

Bad, bad, bad, bad idea.

It's my belief that economic growth comes from productivity increases from science and technology, and if we can't get Ph.D.'s into positions where they are contributing to scientific and economic growth, then the future is economic stagnation which means no jobs in industry. (Feel free to disagree.)

We can try to ration education, but what will happen if you do that is that people will money will get more money. People with less money and power will get less money and power, and pretty soon you will have a revolution.

 

[twofish-quant]

There seems to be a need for reform, doesn't it?

By the way, I hate the word "reform". Any time some talks about "reform" it means "let's spend five years having meetings until we figure out that we don't agree on anything and we come up with a consensus proposal that does nothing."

 

[twofish-quant]

But PhD graduates can run into problems if they want to enter internationally competitive academia. To get a coveted post at a top university or research institution requires training, such as a postdoctoral position, in another country. Many researchers do not return to China, draining away the cream of the country's crop.

That's a bit old news...

What's happened in the last two years is that a lot of Chinese Ph.D.'s have figured out that they don't want jobs in the US. Right now, I'm more worried more about the brain drain impact on the US than on China, since people are packing up and going home, and I think the US research university is going to collapse without cheap Chinese (or Indian) labor.

One reason that China is finding it easier to keep Ph.D.'s is that the government has a "visible hand." Chinese SOE's have been *ordered* to hire people, and if you are a high tech foreign company doing business in China, the Chinese government will refuse to grant you licenses unless you promise to hire a certain number of people.

 

[ZapperZ]

This was recently published in Nature

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110420/full/472276a.html

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110420/full/472280a.html

http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/2011/110421/full/nj7343-381a.html

There seems to be a need for reform, doesn't it? Often I find people on PF complaining about how hard it is to find a job after doing a PhD, especially in academia. What are we going to do? Is it time to encourage younger generations to move to industry rather than go through with higher education?

Before we make an overly-broad characterization of this, we must look at how each area of studies have been doing. Since this is predominantly a "physics" forum, let's look at the number of PhDs in physics that has been awarded in the US over a period of time:

http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/highlite/edphysgrad/figure6.htm

You will note that since the 1960's, the number of PhDs awarded in physics has NOT dramatically increased. In fact, for a period of time till recently, it has been declining!

Over-generalization articles such as this, which calls for major overhaul of something without looking at the various components, can be dangerous. In many schools outside of the "brand-name" large schools, the number of PhDs in physics awarded each year is often very small (a number typically less than 10). Many of these schools often produce not physics PhDs that went on into Academia, but rather into various private sectors.

So no, in Physics, I don't see the statistics indicating that colleges are producing more and more PhDs.

Zz.

 

[WiFO215]

Make it easier for Ph.D.'s to get industry jobs?

But how exactly do we go about doing that? Don't we need to train them differently from what we are doing currently? Teach them how to react to 'real-word' scenarios? Would that cut into the time that they spend doing research?

Before we make an overly-broad characterization of this, we must look at how each area of studies ...often produce not physics PhDs that went on into Academia, but rather into various private sectors.

So no, in Physics, I don't see the statistics indicating that colleges are producing more and more PhDs.

Zz.

Yes, I see. Well, the number of physics PhDs hasn't been increasing all that much, but what about the job prospects? Is it becoming increasingly difficult for them to land a job, both outside and inside academia, as the article claims?

 

[Shaun_W]

Make it easier for Ph.D.'s to get industry jobs?

Why isn't it easy for PhDs to get industry jobs?

Is what goes on in academia not relevant to what goes on in industry?

 

[ZapperZ]

Yes, I see. Well, the number of physics PhDs hasn't been increasing all that much, but what about the job prospects? Is it becoming increasingly difficult for them to land a job, both outside and inside academia, as the article claims?

OK, so we have falsified his argument as far as physics PhD is concerned. Now we're changing topics and looking at the employment opportunities. Again, unless there's a better source, I would refer you to the AIP statistics for PhD employment:

http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/highlite/emp3/figure1a.htm

.. and look at the unemployment rate.

Now, this doesn't tell you of the quality and nature of employment. So you need to dig deeper and spend more time looking at the statistics to see what kind of employment that these PhD received. Still, if the issue is "... to land a job, both outside and inside academia... ", this statistics is very clear, and it is done over time so that one can truly see the trend.

The nature of employment in physics can be very misleading. I said goodbye to a theorist friend last year, who left the lab to seek employment elsewhere, since he couldn't get a staff position here, and he's having a difficult time finding a tenured position at the top-tier universities. At the same time, 2 of our Ph.Ds that graduated last year found employment almost immediately (one even BEFORE he did his thesis defense). What's different between them? The AREA OF PHYSICS that they specialized in. The 2 PhDs in our group graduated in experimental accelerator physics, with very good knowledge of RF system, engineering, design, etc. They have a greater range of "employability" than my theorist friend.

I've seen this in way too many cases where someone with a PhD in physics is having a challenge of a time in finding a good job, while another had multiple offers! Not only that, it is also difficult to just flat out describe the availability of jobs, because a lot of it depends on funding climate. This is certainly true in the US where the physical sciences had been under funding duress for decades! There were spurts of funding here and there, and you see the employment number climbs with the available jobs. So to simply generalize that the jobs are getting less, or more, etc. is not easy, and certainly not as simple as the author was describing.

Zz.

 

[erok81]

I am glad someone posted this - I saw the article and was going to post it.

Between this article and posts about non-funded PhD's increasing, it got me a bit more depressed about trying for a PhD.

 

[bcrowell]

In their description of the situation in the US, I see a glaring gap in the logic.

First we have:

By 2006, only 15% were in tenured positions six years after graduating, with 18% untenured [...].

And then we continue on immediately to this:

Figures suggest that more doctorates are taking jobs that do not require a PhD. "It's a waste of resources," says Stephan. "We're spending a lot of money training these students and then they go out and get jobs that they're not well matched for."

Wait, what "figures suggest" this? The figures don't suggest that PhD-holders are settling for inappropriate jobs. It shows that about 2/3 of PhD-holders are not ending up in faculty jobs. A faculty job is not the only job appropriate for a PhD. Actually I'm surprised that the number ending up in faculty jobs is as high as 1/3. There are other things you can do with a PhD in math, engineering, etc.

If they showed that only 1/3 of PhD-holders in history or English had faculty jobs, then that would sound to me like more of a problem, since there probably isn't much else you can do with such a degree besides teach.

If we want to moan about something, let's moan about the exploitation of part-time faculty at colleges and universities. This actually *is* a problem, because part-timers don't have job security, don't have office hours for their students, etc.

 

[Choppy]

One possible option is for universites to strengthen their relations with industry and thereby make it easier for their PhD graduates to get jobs, or at least enter the industrial world in some respects.

Some options for this might include:

(1) Set up an office dedicated to assist students and young investigators with patenting and marketing products that come out of their research, starting up companies, and establishing connections with venture capitalists.

(2) Offer graduate courses in marketable skills that are perhaps only accessible by PhD-level students. Say for example, in addition to graduate physics courses you also require your PhD cadidates to take a course in something like: financial modeling, actuarial science, engineering courses that could make PhDs legally competative for engineering jobs, product design, high-tech management, high level network design, high-level programming, etc.

(3) You could also attack the problem at the committee level and rather than focus only on research, include emphasis that will prepate the candidate for a non-academic career. Why could you not, for example, invite professionals from outside academic to be on a supervisory committee?

(4) Post-PhD certification programs.


Of course I do realize there are obstacles to these ideas. Some PhD students are already taking over 6 years to finish. Adding even more work may keep people in school into their mid-30s. On the other hand, those who are avoiding the scary real world by dragging their feet as grad students may finish faster.

 

[twofish-quant]

You will note that since the 1960's, the number of PhDs awarded in physics has NOT dramatically increased. In fact, for a period of time till recently, it has been declining!

And the problem of unrealistic expectations for physicists is not a new one. It's been there since the 1970's.

http://web.mit.edu/dikaiser/www/CWB.html

Over-generalization articles such as this, which calls for major overhaul of something without looking at the various components, can be dangerous.

What's worse is to look at a problem without historical context. That's why things like David Kaiser's book are useful. It also helps understand physics, because Kaiser explains why quantum mechanics is taught in the way that it is, and other mysteries of the universe like why lecture hall courses exist.

So no, in Physics, I don't see the statistics indicating that colleges are producing more and more PhDs.

I don't think that has changed since the 1970's. What *has* changed very recently (i.e. in the last three years) is the rise of social networking. In the 1970's, a physics Ph.D. that wasn't able to find an academic positions "went quietly into the night" and could be ignored. Today, said person will have a blog and start networking with other people.

One thing that has changed since the 1990's, is that people just don't disappear any more.

 

[ParticleGrl]

One possible option is for universites to strengthen their relations with industry and thereby make it easier for their PhD graduates to get jobs, or at least enter the industrial world in some respects.

Absolutely! I've actually been working with my old institution to try and contact old alumni of the department to

a. find out what they are doing since they graduated
b. discuss the idea of internships type relationships with the department

One thing I didn't realize until I was looking for work and getting interviews is that no one seems to know what skills theorists have that are useful in industry, what industries hire theorists, and (this is the most important) how to communicate that you have those skills to the HR person who sits between you and the hiring manager (assuming you can't bypass said HR person).

A simple way to alleviate that would be to allow graduate students to spend a summer (or a six months) in industrial internships, much like engineering graduate schools do. I'm trying to lay the ground work for such a program at my old institution- though admittedly my goals are not entirely altruistic, I need work myself :) The surprising thing to me is how much resistance I'm getting from some of the professors.

 

[twofish-quant]

.. and look at the unemployment rate.

One other bit of context is the situations with non-physics Ph.D.'s, Yes physics Ph.D.'s are having a tough time getting jobs, but they are having a *much* less difficult time than anyone else.

The big problem right now isn't the lack of jobs for physics Ph.D.'s, it's the lack of jobs for people, period.

At the same time, 2 of our Ph.Ds that graduated last year found employment almost immediately (one even BEFORE he did his thesis defense). What's different between them? The AREA OF PHYSICS that they specialized in. The 2 PhDs in our group graduated in experimental accelerator physics, with very good knowledge of RF system, engineering, design, etc. They have a greater range of "employability" than my theorist friend.

And it's not clear to me that this has to do with the inherent nature of the dissertation or with what are basically sales and marketing issues. I'm a theorist, but I haven't had much difficulty getting jobs, and theorists that have followed similar career paths as my recently haven't also had difficulty getting jobs. The fact that I have computational experience is helpful, but I know a few people that have very, very, very basic computational experience but a lot of deep theory, and they are doing mortgage backed and credit securities modelling.

One reaction that people have is "after all of the blow-ups, people are still hiring physicists for finance?" And the answer is absolutely since the blow-ups show what really, really, really, really bad things can happen if you get your models wrong. If you have a bad mortgage prepayment model, you can blow up the world, and you really do need a physics or math Ph.D. to go through a model that has five pages of integrals and say "this model stinks".

One issue is flexibility and marketing issues. When I mention that I'm working for in finance company, the reaction that I've see is "eewwwwww... I'd never do *finance*." The curious thing is that people make quick assumptions about what I do. In graduate school, I wrote numerical radiation hydrodynamic models for core collapse supernova. Today, I write basically the same thing, only instead of modelling supernova, I model financial markets. Same equations.

But people say. Yeah, this is interesting, but it's not physics. My response is "so why isn't it physics?" If I were employed writing models of semiconductors or lasers or high-mach number airflows or fluid flows in underground oil reservoirs, no one would question that I was an industrial physicist. But because I happen to be modelling financial markets, that doesn't count as physics. Why is that?

If you look carefully, it's more or less because of an accident of history, and the British class system. Basically, the British nobility wanted to keep control of the country, so that they set up a situation in which the nobles kept control over politics and finance, and left the mechanical work to people that were left out of class system because of issues of birth. Over time, the old nobility gave way to the new nobility (Oxbridge-educated bankers), but you still had the science/politics class distinction.

I've seen this in way too many cases where someone with a PhD in physics is having a challenge of a time in finding a good job, while another had multiple offers!

One thing that does throw people is that job hunting is a skill, and it's one that they don't teach you in graduate school. However, if the choice is starvation, you will figure things out. Writing a good resume is a skill, but if you can figure out QFT, you can figure that out.

 

[twofish-quant]

One thing I didn't realize until I was looking for work and getting interviews is that no one seems to know what skills theorists have that are useful in industry, what industries hire theorists, and (this is the most important) how to communicate that you have those skills to the HR person who sits between you and the hiring manager (assuming you can't bypass said HR person).

One skill is to figure out how to bypass the HR person. One thing that I advise people writing resumes for finance is to include a technical one page summary of their dissertation work, with some of the "magic buzzwords." The purpose is to confuse the HR person. If the HR person is confused by your resume, but sees some buzzwords, he or she will assume you are Albert Einstein, and then forward your resume to a hiring manager who more likely than not is a science/engineering Ph.D.

Also, most HR people are not looking for specific skills. When they are looking for specific skills, they have been given a list of keywords, and the only thing they care about is whether or not your resume has that keyword. In interviews, most HR people are looking for personality, and it's actually better if you don't talk too technical.

One other thing is that don't make assumptions about the background of the person that you are talking to. I've seen hiring managers with Ph.D.'s intentionally look and act like clueless HR people to see how you react.

A simple way to alleviate that would be to allow graduate students to spend a summer (or a six months) in industrial internships, much like engineering graduate schools do.

And investment banks have a ton of these sorts of internships. Banks like to work with universities, because universities can pre-screen people.

The surprising thing to me is how much resistance I'm getting from some of the professors.

Not surprising at all. One thing that I've learned is how to bypass people. One reason I don't like the "let's form a committee to study the issue" is that you are going to find a professor that will veto any changes, which means that nothing gets done. Also, the problem is that a committee of senior professors studying the problem of jobs for graduate students has no motivation to fix the problem.

The way around this is "subversion." If you let incoming students know which schools and which professors do not think that you should work for industry, then said professor and said school will soon find themselves without students, at which point things might happen. If you can at least change the culture so that professors are *embarrassed* if their students aren't gainfully employed, that will case things to happen (i.e. my student just got a job at an investment bank, what's your kid doing? Ummm, I don't know. Oh... That's too bad.)

 

[hadsed]

One possible option is for universites to strengthen their relations with industry and thereby make it easier for their PhD graduates to get jobs, or at least enter the industrial world in some respects.

Some options for this might include:

(1) Set up an office dedicated to assist students and young investigators with patenting and marketing products that come out of their research, starting up companies, and establishing connections with venture capitalists.

(2) Offer graduate courses in marketable skills that are perhaps only accessible by PhD-level students. Say for example, in addition to graduate physics courses you also require your PhD cadidates to take a course in something like: financial modeling, actuarial science, engineering courses that could make PhDs legally competative for engineering jobs, product design, high-tech management, high level network design, high-level programming, etc.

(3) You could also attack the problem at the committee level and rather than focus only on research, include emphasis that will prepate the candidate for a non-academic career. Why could you not, for example, invite professionals from outside academic to be on a supervisory committee?

(4) Post-PhD certification programs.


Of course I do realize there are obstacles to these ideas. Some PhD students are already taking over 6 years to finish. Adding even more work may keep people in school into their mid-30s. On the other hand, those who are avoiding the scary real world by dragging their feet as grad students may finish faster.

I completely disagree. Graduate students aren't undergrads, and they shouldn't be forced to take classes when that's not the reason they went to graduate school. It's not really enough to put the blame on the professors (they too are victims (somewhat) of the system, just that they don't lose as much as people without tenure) and related people. Graduate students ought to be somewhat mature and realistic. This is typical of a lot of people (in the American education system anyway). They go through a degree program and expect instant payout. If you're not in medicine or engineering, unfortunately it's very hard to do that. This sort of echo's the point twofish just made above: job hunting is a skill.

I don't know... this forum seems to be reaaaaaally helpful.. and I thought I once heard about MIT having an alumni forum? Sounds like a damn good idea. No major costs, just keep a website running with a forum board and a few moderators and get the alumni's to stick around and help the newbies. It's a perfect system.

 

[ParticleGrl]

Graduate students aren't undergrads, and they shouldn't be forced to take classes when that's not the reason they went to graduate school...Graduate students ought to be somewhat mature and realistic. This is typical of a lot of people (in the American education system anyway). They go through a degree program and expect instant payout.

Most graduate students go to graduate school to because they want to become faculty. As such the training you get in grad school is largely focused on becoming a research professor. After all, your advisor is a research professor, its the life he (she) knows. Most of the focus is on getting your research done, getting your papers out the door, etc. All things that help build a research network and develop the skills you need to be a research professor.

Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority won't become research professors. This means that a lot of the training is mis-matched to reality. The simplest way I can think of to help correct this are internship programs that put graduate students in contact with industry, so they can make contacts with people who do know what skills are valued by industry.

I don't think graduate students will ever be particularly realistic- pretty much every physics graduate student is used to being the absoute best. If the program forces them to develop some 'plan B' skills, a bit of pain could be alleviated.

 

[hadsed]

Sure, but this probably has more to do with the culture that's already in place. Probably introducing some new programs like your internships idea could help get rid of this mentality (or at least to get rid of the 'losers are losers because they're inherently just losers' mentality). Forcing them to take classes is just absurd in my opinion.

 

[ParticleGrl]

Sure, but this probably has more to do with the culture that's already in place. Probably introducing some new programs like your internships idea could help get rid of this mentality (or at least to get rid of the 'losers are losers because they're inherently just losers' mentality). Forcing them to take classes is just absurd in my opinion.

Why? Many programs already have some sort of breadth requirement (maybe a biophysics course if you are a high energy theorist, or a cosmology course if you are a biophysicist). Why not add finance, or a seminar on 'how to move to industry' to the possible electives? Given the overall importance of numerical work in most fields today, why not add a numerical methods section to whatever qualifying exam is given? This makes sure that everyone has some numerical skills, even those that later retreat into pen and paper theory.

 

[twofish-quant]

This may seem more harsh that I intend, so I apologize. I've just been in too many committee meetings and academic fights, so that any time someone even mentions the word *committee* I start getting bad flashbacks and scream in horror.

Committees exist to make sure that nothing gets done and that nothing changes. Academic committees in particular work through consensus which means that all you need is one person on the committee to say no, and that's the end.

The problem of Ph.D.'s has existed since 1970, and if we could "fix" the problem through the committee system, we would have fixed in 1975. The one new thing is facebook and social networking, and that allows you to totally bypass the committees.

Don't start a committee, write a blog. Even a blog can be difficult.

One possible option is for universites to strengthen their relations with industry and thereby make it easier for their PhD graduates to get jobs, or at least enter the industrial world in some respects.

It's not an easy option. The problem is that any time you have to go through university bureaucracy, you end up with a dozen people that can and will veto any new idea you have. If you really want something done, you have to totally bypass the university bureaucracy, or else you will be spending 95% playing office politics wars with people that have decades of experience at it.

(1) Set up an office dedicated to assist students and young investigators with patenting and marketing products that come out of their research, starting up companies, and establishing connections with venture capitalists.

Or else encourage people to join the MIT Enterprise Forums that have already set this up. You don't have to be an MIT alumni to join the Enterprise Forum or even start a chapter. Also, you don't want the university bureaucracy to touch any of this, so you don't want to set up an "office." You want to set up a "club."

The other thing that is poison is that tenured faculty have a tendency of wanting things done their way. If you make this an official university project, you may well have a professor start lecturing a VC about how to run their business, at which point the VC will stop attending meetings.

Also you run into weird politics. One of the funny thing is that University of Texas at Austin has some *excellent* connections with business. Unfortunately, they are all in the McCombs School, which means that if you are engineering or natural science you *WILL NOT* be allowed to access those resources. They won't even let you into the careers library if you are not in McCombs. Which leads to the weird situation that UT Austin as at least two competing MBA programs that seem to hate each other.

You have to understand that the primary motivation for university bureaucrats is to protect their fiefdoms. You see this also in businesses, but businesses will at least go bankrupt if there is too much politics, which isn't true for universities.

It's a losing game. If you really want to connect VC's with Ph.D.'s then start a blog, and you'll get 100x times as much done.

(2) Offer graduate courses in marketable skills that are perhaps only accessible by PhD-level students. Say for example, in addition to graduate physics courses you also require your PhD cadidates to take a course in something like: financial modeling, actuarial science, engineering courses that could make PhDs legally competative for engineering jobs, product design, high-tech management, high level network design, high-level programming, etc.

Don't take this the wrong way, but NO, NO, NO, NO, NO. I've been in too many meetings.

You do not want to add any curriculum requirements. Curriculum requirements just make things worse. Curriculum requirements in universities for "score keeping". If you have any curriculum requirements, you are going to be in meetings for the next five years deciding whether it's a 2 credit requirement or 3 credit requirement.

What *will* happen if you require something is that you will just add work for an already overworked Ph.D. student. Since the main goal of a required class is score keeping, that class will be totally useless, since there is no incentive to make the class useful, and there are a dozen reasons to make it useless.

Ph.D. students are smart. The problem is lack of information. If they get information, then people will make rational decisions. You can get information with google.

Also, you don't want any restrictions on who can take the class. The last thing that you want in a class on making people marketable is for everyone in the class to have Ph.D.'s.

The other thing is that schools already have classes. If you really want to know how HR works, then take the same classes that HR people take. If you don't have time to take a class, then just go to the college bookstore, and buy the books that they read.

(3) You could also attack the problem at the committee level and rather than focus only on research, include emphasis that will prepate the candidate for a non-academic career. Why could you not, for example, invite professionals from outside academic to be on a supervisory committee?

Because the next step would be to invite professionals from outside academia to teach classes, apply for grants, become department heads, and run the university. At that point, tenure is dead, and professors without industrial experience may find themselves without jobs.

(4) Post-PhD certification programs.

No more certifications. Certifications are just a way to monopolize money and power. If you have to get paper X to get job Y, then the people that issue paper X are going to make a ton of money.

Of course I do realize there are obstacles to these ideas.

The big obstacle is that you are playing the old game with people that are a lot better at it than you are. You need to change the rules if you want to get anything done. Once question that you need to ask yourself is "why didn't people do this in 1975?" (And more often than not, you'll find that people did try it in 1975 and it didn't work.)

Also education is too important and too complicated to happen only in the universities. One idea that universities have been able to brainwash people into having is that universities have a monopoly on education. That's not true, and if you accept the idea that universities have a monopoly on education, then you are going to be a serf to the people that run the universities, and their interests are just not the same as yours.

Some PhD students are already taking over 6 years to finish. Adding even more work may keep people in school into their mid-30s.

And then you hit biology. If you want kids, you have to have stable sources of income by 30 or so. People have been putting off starting families, but we've hit basic limits in biology.

On the other hand, those who are avoiding the scary real world by dragging their feet as grad students may finish faster.

Real world is less scary than academia.

 

[twofish-quant]

Why? Many programs already have some sort of breadth requirement (maybe a biophysics course if you are a high energy theorist, or a cosmology course if you are a biophysicist). Why not add finance, or a seminar on 'how to move to industry' to the possible electives?

Because curriculum requirements are political footballs. Something that made a lot more sense once someone mentioned it is that funding for teachers and departments is tied to credit hours, so if you want to avoid committee meetings from hell, you want to avoid getting anything into the catalog.

Worse yet, once you make something a "required course" there is no reason to make it any good. If I were to give a non-required course on getting jobs in finance, then it has to be a good talk, because if it's not, then no one will show up and I'll just be talking to an empty room.

If you make it any sort of requirement, then it could be a totally useless and pointless talk, but people will have to go in order to check off the box.

Also in the case of finance, it's going to be terribly out of date. The finance job market changes on time scales of three months.

Given the overall importance of numerical work in most fields today, why not add a numerical methods section to whatever qualifying exam is given?

Because if you could give an exam on it, you wouldn't need to hire a Ph.D. Seriously. The reason I get hired to do numerical methods is because I'm doing research. There is no textbook teach me to do what they've hired me to do, and if there is one, it might be one that I write.

This makes sure that everyone has some numerical skills, even those that later retreat into pen and paper theory.

But that puts the initiative on the department rather than the student, which is bad for a lot of reasons. I think the solution is information. I tell you that I've been able to get a job with my skills in numerical work, and then you figure out what to do with that information.

Also, one reason I'm *really* careful is that I want to make sure that everything I say has this disclaimer, this worked for me in 2007, I can't promise that it will work for you in 2012 or 2015. Finance is a good gig right now, but I have this nightmare that I manage to convince everyone to go into Wall Street right before the great crash of 2015 kills all of the jobs there.

I try very hard not to give advice, because if I tell you "do this" even implicitly, I'll feel rotten if it blows up on you. What I do try is "this is what the situation seems like to me, you figure out what you need to do, and let me know how it turns out."

 

[WiFO215]

@Zz
Thank you so much! I was getting panicky after reading all this.

@two-fish
Thanks a lot. I'll keep what you said in mind.