Episode 15: The Doctoral Dilemma (00:56:21)
In an interesting The Economist article, The Disposable Academic: Why doing a PhD is often a Waste of Time, an interesting tale of the modern doctoral program emerges. Because our stated goal at The Zipline Show is to encourage students to do degree work or pursue careers in STEM, this obviously struck a nerve with us (even though neither of us has a PhD). Today we discuss the modern academic system, and what that means for you as a high school student, an undergraduate, a current graduate student, a person with a masters degree, a person pursuing a research degree, or even those of you that already have them!
First we describe the current academic landscape. If the goal of higher education is to raise your expected potential earnings, then is the current academic system equipped to train future workers? We don’t think so, instead, the scholastic method is meant to create academics and university researchers, not engineers and doctors (notice the pre- in front of most undergraduate disciplines). We explore an interesting picture of what a PhD is compared to the body of human knowledge that was created by Matt Might and discuss how this might impact your future career/educational choices.
After the break we move onto a new theory. If PhDs mean different things to universities and employers, perhaps there is a third area where you can excel in a doctoral program, after all– research and innovation is the primary purpose of a PhD. In fact one of our future shows will be the “Third World of Innovation”, related specifically to this. Our conclusion is that you have to think very carefully before making a choice between employment and academia (duh), but hopefully we have helped grease that thought process a bit in this show.
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Links from the show:
- The illustrated guide to a PhD
- The Disposable Academic (The Economist)
- Expected Lifetime Earnings by Degree
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3 comments
mary says:
January 18, 2011 at 11:49 am (UTC -4)
My cousin got a PhD in medicine. From there on in, his own mother ALWAYS called him “Dr. Tim”.
Is it all about money? What about personal satisfaction? What about parental pride/bragging rights? I will not start practicing “Dr. Will” anytime soon.
Ben says:
January 18, 2011 at 12:01 pm (UTC -4)
No, it’s not all about money, but money is an easy way to measure personal satisfaction in a generic sense (i.e., you’re usually personally satisfied if you can pay your bills!) Money is also an easy way to quantify parental bragging rights- because our description of expected earnings by degree could also be applied expected parental pride per degree. (i.e. your parents are more proud sooner if you go to college than just get a job out of high school). But be honest, would you be more proud if Will got a PhD rather than having a super awesome job with a Masters? If so, the graph stil holds, the difference between a Masters and a PhD for parental pride is a very slim margin, and potentially not worth the effort and misery of modern degree programs!
Terry says:
January 18, 2011 at 4:48 pm (UTC -4)
I was trying to work a deal with Joey out at the University of Utah while he was a PhD student. He now has his own company pimping his cool, thru-wall motion technology.
A perfect example of a PhD student turned entrepreneur!
http://www.xandem.com/