Academia: Exponential Growth & Post Docs Till 40?

[chill_factor]

the thing with industry, according to someone working there (my closest experience was lab serf) is that they want VERY SPECIFIC PEOPLE.

if you want to do optical communication (for example) in industry at anything other than lab serf level, your MS or PHD thesis had better be, in optical communication. if you want to do OLEDs and displays, your MS/PhD had better be in OLEDS or display technology.

And if you did your MS/PHD in theoretical astrophysics, then start practicing your banker face.

 

[Vanadium 50]

If funding agencies are keeping track of this information, why isn't it published somewhere?

Do you remember the last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, when the Ark is being placed in a huge warehouse of a million identical boxes? Same reason. You have information scattered across grant proposals, mail-in evaluations, panel reports, site visits, etc. Most of it is correct, but some of it is wrong, or even self-contradictory.

If your goal is to rank N proposals and not do too bad a job of it, this is fine. If you want publishable quality data, you're going to have to pay someone to sort this all out.

 

[dipole]

So it sounds like if you want to get a PhD and aren't the next Feynman, you should do it in a field that is valuable to people other than other Physicists?

Threads like this scare me.

 

[ParticleGrl]

You have information scattered across grant proposals, mail-in evaluations, panel reports, site visits, etc. Most of it is correct, but some of it is wrong, or even self-contradictory.

But that doesn't answer the fundamental question- how can they possibly have better information on where my advisor's former students are than my advisor does himself? It seems like the proposal information has to be mostly self-reported.

Also, consistently professors I interact with seem to be in touch with their students still in the field (for obvious reasons), but rarely do they know what the students who left are doing now. If this knowledge is lucractive I would assume they would at least keep a spreadsheet somewhere with what their students are doing. Is keeping track of students normal behavior, and I just had a particularly strange subset of collaborators?

 

[Pyrrhus]

ParticleGirl,

Why don't you try consulting?

Many of the big consulting groups hire PhDs (in pretty much any technical area).

 

[twofish-quant]

Is becoming a stockbroker that easy? In the UK, at least, daddy better have the contacts and money

US and UK have very, very different financial systems, and in the US it's pretty straight forward to be a stockbroker, but because it's not that hard, it's not a particularly high status position. (I'll avoid the temptation to explain why the US and UK systems are so different, but there are deep cultural, historical, geographical, and legal reasons for it.)

I often wondered if I should have applied for a stockbroker job. Now I see that I would have had 0% chance! Makes me feel a bit better... I never had a chance of earning easy big bucks :)

In the US, stock broker jobs are relatively easy to get, but they don't pay very well and aren't high status, and involve skills that I'm awful at. In the US, most retail stock brokers are glorified bank tellers, and you aren't going to make big bucks being a stock broker.

I suppose it's obvious - those with big money and power are going to make sure that the jobs that easily provide big money and power are kept for their kids.

Yes and no. There is a balance here, because if you keep money and power *only* for your kids, then eventually people on the outside will form their own counter-elite and you lose. So you have to keep the bulk of money and power for your kids, but you have to keep the system open enough (or at least provide the illusion of openness) so that people try to preserve the system rather than overthrow it.

Also, you are in trouble if your kids are idiots, and don't have the brains to preserve the system you hand down to them.

In China about a 1000 years ago, they figured out a way around this by creating an examination system, which evolved over the years and in my case "getting a Ph.D." became the functional and social equivalent of "passing the imperial examinations."

 

[twofish-quant]

whats wrong with non-research technical fields?

Or research technical fields.

A lot of the barriers turn out to be psychological. There is part of me that says "finance... eehhhhhhwww", but after a lot of effort, I've managed to get that part of me to shut up.

Now getting around psychological barriers turns out to not be the easiest thing in the world, since you are going against decades of socialization. But it's doable, and changing the way that you look at the world is easier than changing the global economic and political system, and in a lot of situations, it's not as if you have much of a choice.

 

[twofish-quant]

To be clear: we don't even have to reduce tenured professors' salaries or the permanence.

Yes you do.

Once you have a department that is mostly long term researcher, then the next question is why those people aren't on the major committees and in administration. Once you put those people in positions of power, then the question comes up as to why the tenured professors have tenure.

Now you can reach a deal in which *current* tenured faculty are grandfathered, and tenure is dead for *new* hiring. But make no mistake, that this is the end of tenure. In some industries, notably the auto industry, this was the "grand bargain" that was reached in the 1980's, and even there you had to do a lot of financial stuff to keep paying pension and retiree medical benefits.

I just mean that tenure sounds like hitting a jackpot, and a few superstars can have that. I think we'd just have a total of more productive researchers if they had a reasonable way of pursuing their research other than hitting that jackpot.

One thing about tenure is that if you go back to the 1950's, it *wasn't* that unusual. Most unionized industrial workers in the 1950's were under contract with tenure like provisions. These mostly disappeared in the 1970's and 1980's.

OTOH, maybe it's not such a bad thing. The reason those provisions disappeared was the belief that inflexible labor regulations prevented economic flexibility by making it difficult for people to go into the industry where they would do the most economic and social good. One reason this argument needs to be taken seriously is that it might be true. I'm not doing exactly what I want, but it's hard to make an argument that I'd be generating more economic or social value working in university versus what I'm doing now.

There is clearly something between permanent and strictly temporary, which probably would be a desirable enough alternative for someone who spent 7 years doing a physics PhD out of liking it, instead of doing a different job which pays much more for roughly that energy.

I don't think there is politically. One other problem here is that one has to look from the point of view of society. My personal job satisfaction really isn't that important to most people in the grand scheme of things.

One other problem is that if there were a politician who could credibly argue for fewer tenure protections in exchange for better treatment of non-tenure faculty and graduate students, I'd at least listen to them, but the politicians that are anti-tenure are also strongly anti-academia, so I'm going to side with the tenured faculty when there is a dispute (and it's been a major issue in Texas.)

 

[twofish-quant]

If university administrations could get away with eliminating tenure without increasing salaries or foreign hirings and still have quality candidates, why haven't they tried?

Because most university administrators come from the tenured faculty, and political power in most universities is in the hands of the faculty committees who are composed of tenured faculty. The other thing is that professors aren't line workers, and if they get pushed too hard, they will strike, and get the President removed.

In the case of public universities, you have some power in the hands of politicians, and at least in Texas, there's been a major war on tenure, which Governor Perry (fortunately) has been losing.

Also *new* universities have effectively gotten rid of tenure. Witness University of Phoenix, that has a ton of adjuncts, and a very, very few permanent faculty.

 

[twofish-quant]

I suppose it comes down to a judgment call; it will certainly become just as hard to get for those remaining. However, I'm hardly proposing that every last person in the planet should have a faculty position.

I don't think it would be bad. Everybody has something to teach, and everybody has something to learn.

Personally, I think that the world would end up better off if instead of graduating 1000 physics Ph.D.'s/year it was graduating 100,000. Part of what I've been trying to figure out is what that sort of world would look like.

I think the problem is when people show themselves very capable of handling the pace, rigor, etc and still have an absurdly low chance at continuing their research. It's hard to deny that's wasteful.

It really depends on what else they end up doing. It's worked out pretty well for me.

 

[atyy]

Isn't it a good thing that most PhDs don't stay in academia? What good is it to society if they stay in the ivory tower? I think as long as students get realistic career advice, they won't be so bitter. (But really, are most bitter about academia because of bad career advising, or because of unfair treatment?)

To be fair, this seems to be largely because they didn't know

If they didn't know, they should have said they didn't know. They must have at least known how many students they had, and how many they knew and didn't know about. So they probably knew they didn't know, in which case they were fabricating numbers.

 

[chill_factor]

Or research technical fields.

A lot of the barriers turn out to be psychological. There is part of me that says "finance... eehhhhhhwww", but after a lot of effort, I've managed to get that part of me to shut up.

Now getting around psychological barriers turns out to not be the easiest thing in the world, since you are going against decades of socialization. But it's doable, and changing the way that you look at the world is easier than changing the global economic and political system, and in a lot of situations, it's not as if you have much of a choice.

what if your math is anywhere from horrible to average? how is finance even remotely an option for those in experimental fields?

i do not think this is just a psychological barrier. sorry. most people in experimental aspects of biomedical engineering, materials science, condensed matter physics and chemistry would not be able to go to finance because they do not know enough math and programming.

 

[twofish-quant]

The hope is that the extra postdocs, because they are well-trained scientists, keep productivity in the lab up and reduce the need for students.

The trouble is that this starts looking a lot like how business and law schools work, and to me it seems that the cure is worse than the disease. Personally, I think that we are going the wrong way when we start talking about *reducing* the number of physics Ph.D.'s. We really should be talking about *vastly increasing* the number of physics Ph.D.'s.

There's an old joke. A genie shows up and tells a farmer that he can wish for anything. "My neighbor has a cow and I don't, I want you to kill his cow." If we are going to do fundamental social engineering, it would be better to increase demand than reduce supply.

The implicit assumption I made when I heard "PhDs in physics enter industry" was that phds in physics enter industry TO DO PHYSICS.

If the problem is definitions, then just tell my boss to change my business card to read "econophysicist." As far as I'm concerned, I'm doing physics.

The political bodies fund physics to get research done, not to produce physicists for the finance industry.

You know you have a good system when good things happen even though people didn't intend for it to happen. I need to point out that I don't sell insurance. I'm actually doing pretty cool physics research. My one big annoyance is that I can't publicly tell anyone exactly what I'm doing without getting into trouble with my boss and the SEC.

But it's cool.

If everyone (including your professors) tells you what a great career path science is, why wouldn't you believe them?

A lot depends on what you consider a "great career." I've had a great career so far, and it doesn't look like its going to stop anytime soon. Some of it is personal. For me "adventure" is more important than money, and it's been a wild and interesting adventure so far.

If I wanted a "connect the dots" life, I wouldn't have gone physics.

If everyone says there is a huge shortage of American scientists, why wouldn't you believe them?

I think that people stopped talking about a shortage of American scientists around 2005. Also, none of my professors talked a lot about the shortage of scientists, because they came from the generation that was screwed over in the physics crash of the 1970's.

You look around and say "well, not everyone gets to be a professor, but surely all these physicists go on to work as industrial physicists of some kind."

And physics Ph.D.'s that work in investment banks are industrial physicists.

 

[twofish-quant]

what if your math is anywhere from horrible to average? how is finance even remotely an option for those in experimental fields?

It depends on the meaning of average. If your math skills are "average or somewhat below average for a Ph.D." that's not a problem. Also people from experimental fields usually have lots of experience in computer programming, instrument design and statistics which is very, very useful in algorithmic trading.

There are some issues with finance:

1) People in finance are extremely closed lipped about what they are doing. Part of this is cultural (i.e. would you put your money in a bank that gives out account numbers to anyone that asks) some of it legal. For example, if you are working on an algorithm for a new financial product, even *hinting* that you are about to market the product will get a ton of lawyers, regulators, and compliance people on your case.

2) It changes from month to month. Asking someone about the employment situation is like asking about the weather.

3) The only near absolute requirement for physics Ph.D. finance is that you have to be winning to move to NYC, London, or some city in Asia.

 

[ParticleGrl]

Isn't it a good thing that most PhDs don't stay in academia? What good is it to society if they stay in the ivory tower?

That implies its better for society to have trained physicists doing something other are than physics. That isn't obvious to me. Isn't it better for physicists to be doing physics/engineering and laying the ground work for tomorrow's ipads than for them to be doing jobs that require no knowledge of physics?

Sure, a physicist can learn to do data mining or finance, but what does society gain from paying to teach someone physics, only for them to leave and teach themselves some other field? Sure, a physicist can learn finance or data mining, but what does society gain from the superfluous training? They could have totally skipped the learn physics step.

 

[atyy]

That implies its better for society to have trained physicists doing something other are than physics. That isn't obvious to me. Isn't it better for physicists to be doing physics/engineering and laying the ground work for tomorrow's ipads than for them to be doing jobs that require no knowledge of physics?

Sure, a physicist can learn to do data mining or finance, but what does society gain from paying to teach someone physics, only for them to leave and teach themselves some other field? Sure, a physicist can learn finance or data mining, but what does society gain from the superfluous training? They could have totally skipped the learn physics step.

It's not superfluous - it's basic facts about the universe that everyone should know - just like knowing the sun goes round the earth;) - ok, maybe not now, but in 20-30 years. By the same token, I assume that by now, physicists all know about the double helix and action potentials, which 60 years ago was cutting edge biology.

 

[chill_factor]

It depends on the meaning of average. If your math skills are "average or somewhat below average for a Ph.D." that's not a problem. Also people from experimental fields usually have lots of experience in computer programming, instrument design and statistics which is very, very useful in algorithmic trading.

There are some issues with finance:

1) People in finance are extremely closed lipped about what they are doing. Part of this is cultural (i.e. would you put your money in a bank that gives out account numbers to anyone that asks) some of it legal. For example, if you are working on an algorithm for a new financial product, even *hinting* that you are about to market the product will get a ton of lawyers, regulators, and compliance people on your case.

2) It changes from month to month. Asking someone about the employment situation is like asking about the weather.

3) The only near absolute requirement for physics Ph.D. finance is that you have to be winning to move to NYC, London, or some city in Asia.

A PHD in what? what if its not physics? what if its some other science or in engineering? and even if it is physics, there's a lot of things different now.

i am working with a Physics grad student. He takes pictures with an AFM and measures DC conductivity. I'm responsible for device fabrication. These are commercial instruments. There's no need to design anything new with them, just know how to use them. I've never seen an experimentalist in materials science program much. everything is on commercial instruments. just know how to use them and interpret their results.

what statistics? we use excel and find mean, median, mode, standard dev and fit it to a curve. i don't think this is the type of statistics you had in mind, it certainly isn't enough for finance.

 

[twofish-quant]

Isn't it better for physicists to be doing physics/engineering and laying the ground work for tomorrow's ipads than for them to be doing jobs that require no knowledge of physics?

I think "keeping the world financial system from collapsing again" is socially useful, and trying to do that involves a ton of "econophysics." I know fairly senior people with physics/math Ph.D.'s that are involved in these sorts of "fate of the entire world" discussions.

Sure, a physicist can learn to do data mining or finance, but what does society gain from paying to teach someone physics, only for them to leave and teach themselves some other field?

Because everything in finance has already been written down in textbook, the typical physics Ph.D. can learn in about a month or so. The important stuff isn't in a textbook, because either it's "tacit unwritten knowledge" or its stuff that no one knows. Also the textbooks are often wrong.

So what you need is someone that is good at research and mathematical modelling. It also makes sense to train these people on "known unknowns." I can't train someone to do mathematical modelling of the world financial system of 2020 or even 2015, because I don't know what the problems are going to be. So have them work on black holes or stellar nucleosynthesis, so that they have the skills necessary to work on whatever comes up in 2020.

Sure, a physicist can learn finance or data mining, but what does society gain from the superfluous training? They could have totally skipped the learn physics step.

If investment banks didn't have to hire Ph.D.'s, they wouldn't. The have to so they do.

 

[ParticleGrl]

It's not superfluous - it's basic facts about the universe that everyone should know - just like knowing the sun goes round the earth;) - ok, maybe not now, but in 20-30 years. By the same token, I assume that by now, physicists all know about the double helix and action potentials, which 60 years ago was cutting edge biology.

I think you have an over-optimistic view of the speed of information propagation, at least in physics. Grab a dozen condensed matter physicists, and maybe 1 or 2 can describe the standard model, and that's decades old. Grab a few dozen college grads and ask them to describe general relativity and probably none can, and that's approaching a century old. You'd be lucky if half could get the laws of thermodynamics.

But what does society gain if the guy pricing financial derivatives once calculated a 2 loop diagram?

 

[twofish-quant]

A PHD in what? what if its not physics? what if its some other science or in engineering? and even if it is physics, there's a lot of things different now.

Whatever is fun.

i've never seen an experimentalist in materials science program much. everything is on commercial instruments. just know how to use them and interpret their results.

My background is astrophysics and everything you build for a telescope has to be pretty much custom manufactured.

what statistics? we use excel and find mean, median, mode, standard dev and fit it to a curve. i don't think this is the type of statistics you had in mind, it certainly isn't enough for finance.

In HEP and astrophysics, there is a ton of what is essentially pattern recognition and time series analysis, along with dealing with massive databases.

 

[chill_factor]

Whatever is fun.



My background is astrophysics and everything you build for a telescope has to be pretty much custom manufactured.



In HEP and astrophysics, there is a ton of what is essentially pattern recognition and time series analysis, along with dealing with massive databases.

we have a totally different background then. that is why we have communication problems.

in materials science, almost everything is commercial and there's rarely statistics beyond excel. everything can be done on excel and mathematica. you don't need too much math.

 

[deRham]

I don't think it would be bad. Everybody has something to teach, and everybody has something to learn.

Yeah, I guess I should revise to say: I am not proposing every physics (or for that matter mathematics) PhD be given a faculty position in which the goal is to produce as much physics as possible (there may be other faculty positions to better suit them; heck, I may decide that one of these other positions better suits me some day, but of course, under the current system, that won't mean I'll even have a reasonable choice). Many will decide it simply isn't what they want to do, and the pace expected is not healthy for everyone. But I would definitely say (as I think many have probably said) that the current system seems to have certain obvious (yet still difficult to push for) avenues to encourage people who probably would do well for themselves in such a career.

It really depends on what else they end up doing. It's worked out pretty well for me.

Somehow, I get the feeling you're the odd one out :) I do not deny that doing a physics or math PhD is a tremendously enriching thing, but the question is how good the second or third or whatever next best thing to the ideal faculty position the given individual obtains. I find that for whatever reason (maybe just lack of the right knowledge), the option a lot of people end up with is far enough from ideal that I'd call the current system wasteful.

 

[deRham]

Once you have a department that is mostly long term researcher, then the next question is why those people aren't on the major committees and in administration. Once you put those people in positions of power, then the question comes up as to why the tenured professors have tenure.

There would definitely be more tenure-track researchers under my vision. In effect, you seem to suggest the middle will question who's at top. I say as someone at the bottom that I question who is in the middle.

I think my belief stems from the fact that there are definitely a few absurdly strong leaders in any field, whose tenure I simply couldn't question, simply because I could never claim to want to work alongside them at that level.

Effectively, I'd rather have more people actually doing research than worry about long-term researchers bickering about not having tenure. The reason I don't like the current system is that I find even at the graduate level, whoever made the cut went through a really strict screening process, and I'm sure the same holds for the next stage. I found there is a high level of randomness in this process except for a few truly stars who became virtually unquestioned authorities in their areas.

 

[chill_factor]

I think you have an over-optimistic view of the speed of information propagation, at least in physics. Grab a dozen condensed matter physicists, and maybe 1 or 2 can describe the standard model, and that's decades old. Grab a few dozen college grads and ask them to describe general relativity and probably none can, and that's approaching a century old. You'd be lucky if half could get the laws of thermodynamics.

But what does society gain if the guy pricing financial derivatives once calculated a 2 loop diagram?

condensed matter guys don't need to know the standard model of particle theory though. they don't even need to know that nuclei are anything except tiny positive blobs most of the time. i think you're right on relativity (i know nothing about relativity, at least) but thermo is easy and everyone should get that.

i think that excitement vs. pay and ease of study vs. easy of employment both follow inverse laws.

 

[twofish-quant]

But what does society gain if the guy pricing financial derivatives once calculated a 2 loop diagram?

Because anyone who has done a 2 loop diagram has experience dealing with path integrals.

If you take an interest rate curve and evolve it over time stochastically. You get very quickly into functional calculus and path integrals. Now add shocks, correlations, and defaults, you get into very complicated path integrals.

Now maybe there is a way of modelling interest rates without (implicitly) having a path integral, but it's going to take someone really good at modelling physical systems to work this all out. Hmmm... I wonder were we can find those.

But wait there is more...

Once you've *finished* calculating the path integral, then you have to explain what you did to a regulator or manager that doesn't know what a 2 loop diagram is.

 

[mal4mac]

Yes and no. There is a balance here, because if you keep money and power *only* for your kids, then eventually people on the outside will form their own counter-elite and you lose...

Well it's not quite *only*. But 96% of stockbrokers from public schools is pretty blatant. So why haven't Brits developed a counter-elite? Please don't say not enough time! The British money & power elite has been going since 1066...

 

[mal4mac]

... what does society gain from the superfluous training? They could have totally skipped the learn physics step.

Society says that until BSc level you can get to learn what you want. If you love physics then you can do physics! This makes 'the establishment' look like nice people... it keeps the more educated youngsters from changing riots into revolutions. If society let's you 'play' until you are 21, then you lose a lot of motivation for attacking the establishment. "How can I burn down a bank?" I ask myself. "This society paid for me to have a wonderful eduction, to study exactly what I wanted well into adulthood." So the physicist moves meekly into a low level bank job, the stockbroker stays rich as Croesus, and everybody is happy, especially the stockbroker...

 

[atyy]

I think you have an over-optimistic view of the speed of information propagation, at least in physics. Grab a dozen condensed matter physicists, and maybe 1 or 2 can describe the standard model, and that's decades old. Grab a few dozen college grads and ask them to describe general relativity and probably none can, and that's approaching a century old. You'd be lucky if half could get the laws of thermodynamics.

But what does society gain if the guy pricing financial derivatives once calculated a 2 loop diagram?

Because he does many things other than pricing financial derivatives. Maybe one day he'll be president of the US. Already happened in Germany, but ironically I'm not sure many physicists are agreeing with a no nuclear policy!

 

[Vanadium 50]

No, I assumed having a broad physics background (thermo, electrodynamics,mechanics, etc)

Have you had thermo? Stat mech, sure, but actual, real thermo? Heat and mass transfer, and all that. Could you, for example, design a BTG (boiler-generator-turbine) system?

Also, if you decide that you want to graduate half as many students and double their chances to find their dream job, you'll move the bottleneck upstream, so getting into grad school will be twice as hard. People will complain "it's not fair! I got A's all through undergrad and I still didn't get into grad school!"

It also means that there will be less of a track record when you decide who moves on and who does not.

 

[ParticleGrl]

Have you had thermo? Stat mech, sure, but actual, real thermo? Heat and mass transfer, and all that. Could you, for example, design a BTG (boiler-generator-turbine) system?

Yes, I've had an honest-to-god thermo class. All the staring at steam tables I could take. I've done textbook/test calculations for boilers and engines, and I designed and built a small fridge for the lab I worked in during undergrad.

Also, if you decide that you want to graduate half as many students and double their chances to find their dream job, you'll move the bottleneck upstream, so getting into grad school will be twice as hard. People will complain "it's not fair! I got A's all through undergrad and I still didn't get into grad school!"

But that's much better for people overall. You burn less human capital. You tell them no before they've spent a decade or more being trained.

 

[deRham]

People will complain "it's not fair! I got A's all through undergrad and I still didn't get into grad school!"

In fact, I don't even think it's necessary to graduate fewer people. It's fine as long as they're honest and go: "Look at the faculty at nearly any school. Nearly everyone got a PhD from an awesome school that tons of straight A students get rejected from every single year"; I'm sure a lot of people would rather spend those years doing a PhD anyway. If someone told me I had no chance getting a faculty position today, I don't think I'd change paths.

People already get rejected from tons of strong programs after straight A's in undergrad. They still have a chance of attending a less selective program and publishing something great while there, to boost chances at getting a good job. In some cases, people with straight A's but little more to show really aren't researchers in the making - having straight A's simply doesn't mean someone will want to be on the forefront of researching physics.

The only thing I'm really against here is to take a bunch of people with similar talent and work ethic, and not only promote one but completely discard the rest. It seems too random, and it clearly loses people with good ideas without reason; well, twofish-quant gave good reasons why the system is hard to change (e.g. dealing with people who effectively don't value academia at all), but nobody has given good reasons thus far saying that the change wouldn't be welcome.

 

[Pyrrhus]

It's not like there are no jobs for Ph.D. in technical fields. The problem is those jobs require you to relocate (like most jobs anyway), move to another field (most likely), and perhaps even do some extra traveling...

 

[Pyrrhus]

I also remembered that I have some friends and a cousin that got PhD in Engineering (my cousin PhD in Physics), and all the ones that have jobs relocated, and changed fields. The ones that do not have jobs were not willing to relocate or change field. My cousin is in finance.

 

[aquitaine]

Is academia a scam? Not in the sense of what the OP that was describing. However, it does have a side to it which is the biggest scam that has ever been played in the entire history of the world. That scam would be enticing people who wouldn't otherwise go to university into taking worthless degree programs with the promise of getting that safe, secure high paying job. You know what I'm talking about, the myriad of worthless liberal arts majors.

Of course there are some fields that really do require the kind of specialized training that universities and (where applicable) graduate schools provide, like science, engineering, medicine, law and probably one or two others. But the rest? The rest are nothing more than temping little children into the gingerbread house to be eaten alive by the wicked witch of 50%+ dropout rates, crippling debts and no job prospects.

Universities are not the only guilty parties, our higher educational system used to have a better balance between university (for those with the capability) and vocational training. Employers are also to blame for the "have a 4 year degree in anything we don't care what it is but we probably won't hire you anyway" approach, leading to rampant degree inflation and the idea that you have to bury yourself in student loans to get anything. The high school system is also to blame for mindlessly encouraging people who can't handle those "good fields" I mentioned to go into universities anyway.

Perhaps the finest example of the insanity of our system is how few startups are started by business majors. You'd think it would be more, but I haven't met a single business major who is seriously considering starting his/her own business. I'm sure some of them are out there, although they are after management jobs. But when those bureaucratic type jobs aren't available, like now, they either get a menial low wage service job (like restaurants) or go back to school to bury themselves in more debt. In both scenarios they are just crossing their fingers and hoping things turn around so they can get that job.

 

[ParticleGrl]

I also remembered that I have some friends and a cousin that got PhD in Engineering (my cousin PhD in Physics), and all the ones that have jobs relocated, and changed fields.

Emphasis mine. I think the point of this thread is that a physics phd isn't sold as "get this phd, then change fields to something other than physics/engineering, then get a job." Its sold as "get this phd so you can work as a physicist." Thats the "scam" as it were.

 

[JakeBrodskyPE]

I'm going to cite a bit of reality from where I sit: We need physicists to do the research. But we don't need very many. We need legions of engineers to translate that research into a usable reality. And we need even more writers to document this stuff, business majors to manage the creations and sales people to sell it.

Our schools have sold a lot of people on the idea of being at the very edge of the wedge to use physics to benefit society. They have ignored the transfer of that technology to a useful application.

For example, many of the discoveries with Graphene are truly astounding. But the research is only the very first step into making something useful happen. There is no shame for the Ph.D. types to point the Engineers in the right direction to show them how to scale these discoveries to something useful. But even here, as much as we need innovation, what we really need is marketing so that the innovative products can become a part of society. The Ph.D. doesn't convey the practicalities of application. It goes the other direction: It shows you how to conduct research, not apply what has been discovered.

Engineers have to take the practical world, the standards, the limits, and set conservative performance goals so as to build something reliable that people will use and want more of. It is a completely different way of thinking about problems.

Schools have failed us because we aren't educating our population on the things it will take to improve society. We have an excess of scientists, Engineers are few in number and generally treated with polite contempt ("If you want to get the product out the door, you must first shoot the engineer."). Marketing is filled with people who are interested in psychology, but are shockingly ignorant of the foundations that built our society such as Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics, or even Classic Literature.

Our schools are failing us because from our first days in Pre-School we fill our children with this self-actualizing nonsense that is guaranteed to cause pain and hurt the first time they ever try a real challenge. We tell our kids they can be anything they want to be. And while that's true, they not only have to want it, they have to have some sort of talent for whatever it is they seek.

So we have legions of Physics students drawn like moths to a flame. And who can resist? It's a great study with the possibility of having your name known for centuries. It can have long-lasting fame. Yeah, it attracts smart people the same way that Hollywood attracts pretty actresses. The vast majority of them will be lucky to eke out a living. Meanwhile, there are other activities all around that people are ignoring because of the siren song...

Remember that the people who made the real fortunes from the 1849 gold rush to California were not the miners themselves, but the shrewd businessmen who figured out what these people needed and how to get it to them at a price they were able to pay.

 

[atyy]

Emphasis mine. I think the point of this thread is that a physics phd isn't sold as "get this phd, then change fields to something other than physics/engineering, then get a job." Its sold as "get this phd so you can work as a physicist." Thats the "scam" as it were.

Maybe you were just ill-informed. There are dishonest things in academia, but I can't imagine that this was one of them (especially for HEP theory).

 

[twofish-quant]

Well it's not quite *only*. But 96% of stockbrokers from public schools is pretty blatant. So why haven't Brits developed a counter-elite?

Because the elite is flexible enough to absorb anyone that may oppose them. In the 18th century being elite in British society meant having a noble title and having a country manor. If the people in charge of Britain had stuck to that definition of elite, then they would have lost their power.

So the people in power, changed the definitions of elite to mean a degree from Oxbridge and a job in the city. They then made sure that their kids got the degrees and the jobs, but they left just enough room for new people so that anyone that has the ability to overthrow the system, "sells out" and gets a nice job doing something that won't challenge the power of the people running things.

A hundred years ago, the British Labour Party was waving red flags and sing the Internationale, and you end up with New Labour and Tony Blair.

If you want an example of where an elite failed to absorb new people and lost power to a counter-elite, look at the Ascendancy in Ireland.

Please don't say not enough time! The British money & power elite has been going since 1066...

And if they play their cards right, they'll be in charge for the next thousand years.

It's mostly a matter of convincing anyone that might overthrow the system to join the system. Something similar happened in the US. In 1900, the major northeastern universities were finishing schools for the WASP Boston Brahmin establishment. The schools that came up with ways of letting people into the club, where able to survive and increase their power.

The only way of getting rid of an elite that isn't totally incompetent is to have a massive and usually bloody revolution, in which the people in charge get shot, and usually that ends up being a lot worse than what you started off with, because you end up with people in charge that not only are greedy and power-hungry, but homicidal, ruthless and crazy. Been there, done that.

 

[twofish-quant]

I think my belief stems from the fact that there are definitely a few absurdly strong leaders in any field, whose tenure I simply couldn't question, simply because I could never claim to want to work alongside them at that level.

I've noticed that in mathematics, there *are* prodigies, but this usually isn't true in other fields. It's not true in computational astrophysics because you need lots of people to debug code, and it doesn't matter how smart you are. If you have someone that is totally brilliant, then without people doing "grunt work" they are nothing.

The reason I don't like the current system is that I find even at the graduate level, whoever made the cut went through a really strict screening process, and I'm sure the same holds for the next stage. I found there is a high level of randomness in this process except for a few truly stars who became virtually unquestioned authorities in their areas.

I don't see how you can avoid a high degree of randomness. You just got too many smart people, and when you have that situation and you care about fairness, then what you end up with is basically random selection. If you have three places and fifty qualified people that would all be good at the job, then randomly selecting people is going to really be the only fair process.

Also relying on "stars" really isn't fair. I've noticed that things are different in pure mathematics where there are prodigies that seem to have some innate math ability, but in astronomy, the ability to do research means being able to beg, borrow, or steal computer and telescope time. If you "reward" people with good research with even more scarce resources, you pretty quickly end up with a situation in which people with resource access get even more access.

The other thing is that randomness isn't bad. If the people in power think that they really deserve what they got, they can get really nasty. If it's commonly realized that social status is a matter of luck, then people tend to be nicer to people that are unlucky because it was only fate that kept them from going down that route. Most people don't know that the term "meritocracy" came from a 1958 satire in which Michael Young argued that a "meritocracy" was a recipe for social revolution.

 

[chill_factor]

I'm going to cite a bit of reality from where I sit: We need physicists to do the research. But we don't need very many. We need legions of engineers to translate that research into a usable reality. And we need even more writers to document this stuff, business majors to manage the creations and sales people to sell it.

Our schools have sold a lot of people on the idea of being at the very edge of the wedge to use physics to benefit society. They have ignored the transfer of that technology to a useful application.

For example, many of the discoveries with Graphene are truly astounding. But the research is only the very first step into making something useful happen. There is no shame for the Ph.D. types to point the Engineers in the right direction to show them how to scale these discoveries to something useful. But even here, as much as we need innovation, what we really need is marketing so that the innovative products can become a part of society. The Ph.D. doesn't convey the practicalities of application. It goes the other direction: It shows you how to conduct research, not apply what has been discovered.

Engineers have to take the practical world, the standards, the limits, and set conservative performance goals so as to build something reliable that people will use and want more of. It is a completely different way of thinking about problems.

Schools have failed us because we aren't educating our population on the things it will take to improve society. We have an excess of scientists, Engineers are few in number and generally treated with polite contempt ("If you want to get the product out the door, you must first shoot the engineer."). Marketing is filled with people who are interested in psychology, but are shockingly ignorant of the foundations that built our society such as Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics, or even Classic Literature.

Our schools are failing us because from our first days in Pre-School we fill our children with this self-actualizing nonsense that is guaranteed to cause pain and hurt the first time they ever try a real challenge. We tell our kids they can be anything they want to be. And while that's true, they not only have to want it, they have to have some sort of talent for whatever it is they seek.

So we have legions of Physics students drawn like moths to a flame. And who can resist? It's a great study with the possibility of having your name known for centuries. It can have long-lasting fame. Yeah, it attracts smart people the same way that Hollywood attracts pretty actresses. The vast majority of them will be lucky to eke out a living. Meanwhile, there are other activities all around that people are ignoring because of the siren song...

Remember that the people who made the real fortunes from the 1849 gold rush to California were not the miners themselves, but the shrewd businessmen who figured out what these people needed and how to get it to them at a price they were able to pay.

one small comment:

there are far fewer physics majors than EE majors at the undergrad level but at the grad level there's more because more proportion of physics majors go to grad school than EE majors.

it is also because it is objectively easier to get money for projects in physics, rather than projects in EE.

 

[twofish-quant]

Our schools have sold a lot of people on the idea of being at the very edge of the wedge to use physics to benefit society.

Something to point out here is that there aren't very many physics majors. There is a selection effect because of the name of this group, but relatively few people go into physics.

Schools have failed us because we aren't educating our population on the things it will take to improve society.

The more I get into conversations like these, the more I realize that I ended up with an excellent education. One problem is that I have been taught to be extremely negative and critical, but sometimes it's possible to be to negative and critical. For example, if you argue that US universities are *totally* incompetent, that tends to push you to completely gutting the system, which may be worse than the problem you are trying to fix.

Also, most of the more important things I didn't learn in school.

We have an excess of scientists

I don't think we do. It *may* be that we have a social structure that doesn't make effective use of scientists, but perhaps even *that* isn't true. Also, if the US really does have an excess of scientists, then have them move to China or India, and let's see what happens in 20 years.

Our schools are failing us because from our first days in Pre-School we fill our children with this self-actualizing nonsense that is guaranteed to cause pain and hurt the first time they ever try a real challenge. We tell our kids they can be anything they want to be. And while that's true, they not only have to want it, they have to have some sort of talent for whatever it is they seek.

I don't think that you can blame schools for this. This sort of stuff you learn from parents, and even from the level of parents, it's a hard issue. For example, I'm a lot "softer" than my parents, and my kids are likely going to be even "softer" than me. The trouble is that my parents ended up being "hard" and "tough" because they grew up in an environment that looks pretty close to what Afghanistan looks like now.

So it does concern me that my kids will be "soft" but what do you want me to do? Send them to military school or have them go through a major war? Put them in a jail for political crimes? I can teach them history, but listening about something is different from living it, and even at the level of teaching history, there are decisions to be made. There's stuff that people just don't want to talk about. I have no idea what my father saw in the army, but whatever it was, it changed him.

The vast majority of them will be lucky to eke out a living. Meanwhile, there are other activities all around that people are ignoring because of the siren song...

Things change. Maybe this "science stinks" has gone too far.

As far as I can tell, physics majors aren't having it much worse than any other majors. It's a terrible economy, but I really don't see physics taking people away from things that are "more productive." Physics is *really* useful as a technical liberal art.

 

[twofish-quant]

If society let's you 'play' until you are 21, then you lose a lot of motivation for attacking the establishment.

And if you have to "work" after you are 21, then you end up being too busy to attack to establishment. If you don't have a job, then you are considered a "loser" and your opinions don't count.

So the physicist moves meekly into a low level bank job, the stockbroker stays rich as Croesus, and everybody is happy, especially the stockbroker...

It doesn't work that way. The jobs that physics Ph.D.'s end up getting on Wall Street or in Canary Wharf aren't "low level." I'm not on the "committee that runs the world" (and yes there is a committee look up Basel III) but I know people with physics Ph.D.'s who are.

As far as money. I have more money than I know what to do with. One good thing is that I don't have expensive tastes, so I've long past the point that at which I can buy anything that I want to buy.

One thing about finance is that it's much more likely that a physics Ph.D. will report to an MBA than the reverse but this has something to do with the fact that there are 100x more MBA's than physics Ph.D.'s.

 

[twofish-quant]

That scam would be enticing people who wouldn't otherwise go to university into taking worthless degree programs with the promise of getting that safe, secure high paying job. You know what I'm talking about, the myriad of worthless liberal arts majors.

I don't think those are worthless. One thing that you can be reasonably sure if you have a college graduate is that they can write an essay and follow a deadline.

There's also the matter of "young adult day care." College provides an environment in which people can do truly stupid things, and without getting into huge amounts of trouble.

Universities are not the only guilty parties, our higher educational system used to have a better balance between university (for those with the capability) and vocational training.

One thing that makes me suspicious is when people talk about the "good old days." The other thing that also makes me suspicious is when people talk about vocational training. One curious thing is that the people that talk loudly about the wonders of vocational training, don't seem to have got it themselves, and don't seem to seem to want it for their kids.

Employers are also to blame for the "have a 4 year degree in anything we don't care what it is but we probably won't hire you anyway" approach, leading to rampant degree inflation and the idea that you have to bury yourself in student loans to get anything.

There is a reason why employers like degrees. If you have a bachelors degree, then you have a demonstrated that you can survive an office environment and work with authority. If I hire someone with a college degree, I can be reasonably sure that if I give them an assignment they don't like, that they'll moan and complain to their friends, but they aren't going to punch me in the face.

The high school system is also to blame for mindlessly encouraging people who can't handle those "good fields" I mentioned to go into universities anyway.

Well where else are they going to go? Before the 1960's, you'd end up in the army, but Vietnam put an end to that. One of the social functions of college is "young adult day care" and if you don't want universities to do that, then you have to come up with some other institution that does that.

Perhaps the finest example of the insanity of our system is how few startups are started by business majors. You'd think it would be more, but I haven't met a single business major who is seriously considering starting his/her own business.

Because the business major isn't intended for starting up companies. Most business professors that I know are very straight and upfront that if you want to start your own business, you should not get a business degree since a business degree will teach you the wrong habits and wrong way of thinking.

The purpose of the business major is to train corporate bureaucrats. Anything that's larger than a small start up is going to need corporate bureaucrats.

But when those bureaucratic type jobs aren't available, like now, they either get a menial low wage service job (like restaurants) or go back to school to bury themselves in more debt. In both scenarios they are just crossing their fingers and hoping things turn around so they can get that job.

Sure, but what else are you going to do? In order to start your own business, you are going to need capital, and in an economic downturn, no one is going to give or lend you money to start your own business that like most small businesses is likely to fail. There's a chicken and egg problem, if you could start a business, then you wouldn't have to.

One you realized that you are doomed, then going to an art museum or reading poetry will at least make you feel less bad, so all of those art and literature courses aren't a total waste. During the really dark days of 2008, I was thinking a lot about what I'd do if it turned out that it *was* great depression II. I had this image of myself in the cold, selling apples while reading a book on neutrino diffusion. For that matter, one reason that people in my family have a strong appreciation of art and culture is that it gives you something to think about even if all hell is breaking loose around you.

 

[twofish-quant]

Emphasis mine. I think the point of this thread is that a physics phd isn't sold as "get this phd, then change fields to something other than physics/engineering, then get a job." Its sold as "get this phd so you can work as a physicist." Thats the "scam" as it were.

No one ever sold me a physics Ph.D. that way. It was always made clear to me that there were very few research professorships available, and once it was clear to me that I wasn't "special" then the logical conclusion was that I wasn't going to get one.

Also, how much of this is "scam" and how much is "past performance is no guarantee of future results" is not clear to me. One thing that sort of surprised me was that among people graduating my department in the late-1980's, one third to one half ended up with permanent academic positions. There was a burst of Cold War research spending, that ended when the Soviet Union fell. So the messages that I was given in hindsight were pretty reasonable given what people were seeing at the time. People were hoping that things would be permanent, while at the same time, people remembered the 1970's crash.

(The other thing is that I need to be very careful about what messages I give. If you are graduating in the next year or so, I can give you a pretty decent picture of what the demand for physicists on Wall Street is, but I can't tell you anything about what things will look like in five years because I don't know.)

 

[deRham]

I don't see how you can avoid a high degree of randomness. You just got too many smart people, and when you have that situation and you care about fairness, then what you end up with is basically random selection.

Exactly, which is why the whole crux of what I believe could help is to level the playing field for the smart people to a high degree, and make the elite truly elite.

The other thing is that randomness isn't bad. If the people in power think that they really deserve what they got, they can get really nasty. If it's commonly realized that social status is a matter of luck, then people tend to be nicer to people that are unlucky because it was only fate that kept them from going down that route.

It can go both ways though, right? The true prodigies don't really need someone telling them they're prodigies, because they're absurdly rare (beyond achievements like winning a gold medal at the IMO). The people who ascend to power because they were lucky can take their insecurities out on those who are less lucky.

There will always be some randomness; even in a system with mostly long-term researchers, there will be lots of randomness as to who gets to go where. That's true in undergraduate and graduate admissions too (sure, everyone who is talented generally gets into a good school, but which good school can vary a lot). But it will at least serve to maximize the number of people who actually continue doing the research they narrowly trained themselves to be specifically qualified to do.

 

[deRham]

I've noticed that things are different in pure mathematics where there are prodigies that seem to have some innate math ability

I think so too, and that's probably implicit in my outlook. It's true that perhaps my suggestions are less applicable to other fields.

I think in pure mathematics, the structure I outlined is roughly true: there are a few prodigies who invariably end up advancing the field, some other stars who make other extremely important contributions, and a fair bunch of other people who have good ideas and are capable enough of understanding and building on what the prodigies have started/revolutionized.

 

[twofish-quant]

Exactly, which is why the whole crux of what I believe could help is to level the playing field for the smart people to a high degree, and make the elite truly elite.

But why should your social position be based on how smart you are? Why *shouldn't* it be based on how well you can sell stuff, how kind you are, or who your parents are? One thing that I like about the world of business is that "raw intelligence" doesn't count for much.

Whether or not you can make someone feel good when you shake their hand, counts for 100x as much as what your IQ is and how well you can solve math problems.

The other thing is that things that appear to "level the playing field" in fact do the opposite. If you are rich and have lots of power, you can navigate college admissions a lot better than someone that has no power. If you have money, you can hire the best teachers and best consultants for your kids, whereas if you are poor, you can't.

If you talk to a group of physicists, it's easy to convince them that physicists should rule the world. If you aren't talking to physicists, it's harder.

The true prodigies don't really need someone telling them they're prodigies, because they're absurdly rare (beyond achievements like winning a gold medal at the IMO).

But if you have a prodigy that grows up as a farmer in Uganda, no one is going to care. If you don't have the resources to teach even basic math, then the fact that someone is hyper-good at math is rather pointless. If you grow up in West Texas, any sort of innate ability to do math, is going to be pointless. Now if you can play football...

The other thing is that if you start having good math systems, then the amount of people that reach a given level of accomplishment increases a lot.

But it will at least serve to maximize the number of people who actually continue doing the research they narrowly trained themselves to be specifically qualified to do.

But why is that a good thing? The fact that you have lots of physicists that get pushed out of the field and forced to do things that they *weren't* specifically trained for, seems like a good thing to me.

For example, there are a lot of physicists and mathematicians right now who are trying to work out how you calculate the value of collateral for the purpose of bank reserve requirements. No one thought that this would be in important problem in 1995. No one thought that this would be an important problem in early 2007. However, it's one of those things that the future of the world depends on. If you just limit yourself to problems that you are trained to do, then we are doomed, because no one was trained for this.

But I'm biased. I tend to lose in a system in which people are narrowly traded, because I'm too curious and I get easily distracted. Now if you have a situation in which adaptability and breath of knowledge are important, then I do much better.

 

[chill_factor]

But why should your social position be based on how smart you are? Why *shouldn't* it be based on how well you can sell stuff, how kind you are, or who your parents are? One thing that I like about the world of business is that "raw intelligence" doesn't count for much.

Whether or not you can make someone feel good when you shake their hand, counts for 100x as much as what your IQ is and how well you can solve math problems.

The other thing is that things that appear to "level the playing field" in fact do the opposite. If you are rich and have lots of power, you can navigate college admissions a lot better than someone that has no power. If you have money, you can hire the best teachers and best consultants for your kids, whereas if you are poor, you can't.

If you talk to a group of physicists, it's easy to convince them that physicists should rule the world. If you aren't talking to physicists, it's harder.



But if you have a prodigy that grows up as a farmer in Uganda, no one is going to care. If you don't have the resources to teach even basic math, then the fact that someone is hyper-good at math is rather pointless. If you grow up in West Texas, any sort of innate ability to do math, is going to be pointless. Now if you can play football...

The other thing is that if you start having good math systems, then the amount of people that reach a given level of accomplishment increases a lot.



But why is that a good thing? The fact that you have lots of physicists that get pushed out of the field and forced to do things that they *weren't* specifically trained for, seems like a good thing to me.

For example, there are a lot of physicists and mathematicians right now who are trying to work out how you calculate the value of collateral for the purpose of bank reserve requirements. No one thought that this would be in important problem in 1995. No one thought that this would be an important problem in early 2007. However, it's one of those things that the future of the world depends on. If you just limit yourself to problems that you are trained to do, then we are doomed, because no one was trained for this.

But I'm biased. I tend to lose in a system in which people are narrowly traded, because I'm too curious and I get easily distracted. Now if you have a situation in which adaptability and breath of knowledge are important, then I do much better.

A system where people are narrowly trained and narrowly hired just described much of industrial manufacturing though. Is that why you switched to finance?

 

[logarithmic]

I have a lot of thoughts on this issue, which I might add in later. But for now, I'll say that part of the problem with academia is that demand for a position is far greater than supply, because having being exposed to it at university gives people a romanticized view of it.

I can definitely say that's how I felt. My view on of academia in high school was essentially "those who can't do, teach" and then when I started university I had a Damascene moment and my view is now that there's no intellectual pursuit that is as pure or noble as being an academic.'

It seems that everyone who starts a PhD wants to be an academic. Clearly this is not possible nor sustainable.

 

[Skrambles]

If you grow up in West Texas, any sort of innate ability to do math, is going to be pointless. Now if you can play football...

You probably shouldn't watch so much Friday Night Lights.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Tech_University#Colleges_and_schools