I could go on and on. You can say that some of these are partly my fault, and I wouldn't disagree, but the place is still fucking mental.

Oh god, I'm sharing that quote with everyone I know. I'm in the tail end of a 6+ year biology Ph.D. and truer words were never spoken. It is so easy to lose perspective especially when everyone around you looks down on anything that isn't academia. I have kept a foot in the real world, but totally under the table from my advisor. Can't wait until I graduate and can finally be honest about my heretic "science for society" interests.

But the point it, academia is never at fault. There is never anything that needs change, in academia. Success rates are perfect, the process of a Ph.D. is optimized and needs no change, the length of a Ph.D. is as short as it should be, and the sacrifices made by Ph.D. students aren't sacrifices - instead they're opportunities. Opportunities to be the best, to build character, to learn how to make do with little, to realize that the best experiences in life happen in a small lab when nobody else is around - partly because everybody else is asleep.

Opportunities.

But, just maybe, there is a better way to do the Ph.D. Maybe, it can be improved further - heck everything else can. Maybe, like every other institution on the face of Earth, academia needs to adapt to the times. Even greedy corporations can do it. Even the catholic church is doing it.

Maybe there is a better way of doing the Ph.D. - one which actually works for the student, and not just for the student's P.I.

Or, maybe not. After all, when you finish that Ph.D., you'll be called "doctor". With a title like that, why change a thing? Pfft.

Two situations come to mind:
1) You went to graduate school and were expected to be a drone in the lab, spending countless hours on your boss' stuff and are at the mercy of any recommendation they may give you. This situation is common and leads the most difficult transitions out of graduate school. If people do find a way out, they are relieved they will never work that hard again.

2) You were in a theoretical area, got lots of computer experience etc. This gives students the most time to branch out, network and maybe take some classes in something on the side. These people do a lot better and can sound far more intelligent and knowledgeable than lab drones. These people have sharper minds and can more easily navigate out of academia.

Just my experience in grad school so far.

I am curious - what is the best way to leverage yourself in grad school, in case it leads you nowhere? Is it to take extra coursework in other disciplines, or is it to explore other interests on your own? Or, is it to build and maintain a strong network of friends who can help you out when you're done?

There must be some way of leveraging yourself so you don't fall off the abyss when you realize grad school isn't working out - or, similarly, when you do finish your Ph.D. studies but realize there is no opportunity out there for you, other than a continuation of your Ph.D. studies in the form of a post-doc.

...but, they forget the obvious: the lack of opportunity at the Ph.D. level. Look, everybody likes a little money to pay their bills, but kids who like science don't leave science just to pursue the green trail in business or law. They leave because there is too little opportunity for them in science - anything beyond a Ph.D. is a gross bottleneck of doctorates competing for that rare steady Ph.D. position; anything below the Ph.D. and you're not a scientist at all, you're a technician preparing lab samples for real scientists.

I think they've got it wrong. I think the real reason we're losing american students in science is not because other fields pay a lot more - most of us are keenly aware of the salary differences from our freshman years - but because there not enough attractive, steady jobs, period. What we need to do is not to funnel more funds to the creation of a Ph.D. graduate, but to channel funds to the creation of Ph.D. level positions - REAL scientist positions that are steady and pay well enough for you to make a living.

But, instead, they insist on overproducing Ph.D. graduates, dump them into a black box of unemployment or underemployment, and cry 'foul' when american kids develop an aversion to science. And then we find the need to recruit Ph.D. students from overseas, which further aggravates the real problem with science in the U.S. - the fact that there simply are too few real, steady opportunities as real scientists. At the Ph.D. level the competition is too fierce to find a job, and below the Ph.D. level you're not a scientist at all, you're a mere technician, perpetually working under a Ph.D. holder. And, heck, in that situation, you're better off in a field like business, where a Masters degree allows you to rise through the ranks, and not be confined into perpetual peon positions under Ph.D. holders.

And no, a Post-Doc is not a real job, and neither is a temporary 1-yr assignment with corporation XYZ. Create real demand for scientists, and the american kids will line up for them.

If there is such a dire shortage of scientists, why not just dip into these frustrated and disillusioned Ph.D graduates who have to settle for a post-doc for lack of a real, permanent opportunity?

The more I hear this "science shortage" crap, the more I am convinced that this is not about a "science shortage" at all, but about a "cheap science shortage". It's not that we don't have enough scientists, it's that we don't have enough cheap scientists. So, they cry "not enough scientists" to congress, which goes on to expand the number of visas awarded to foreigners, who are willing to just come to the States, and who will do our research for much less.

That said, I have to moderate my comment by saying that I have only appreciation for the work these bright foeign individuals do. It's just that we can't simultaneously cry to our kids that they need to pursue a 10 year college education in science, and then bring in foreigners to compete with them. Because if science is going to be so rude to me, I'll just go study something else.

Unfortunately, Wall Street took all our snacks. And, so it's just PhD holders who have been left out in the rain - it is also, and especially, non-PhD holders.

But that is the result of the speculative, over-leveraged greed that drove Wall Street to the ground in 2008 - or would've, if our taxpayers didn't come to their rescue; if the middle class didn't bear the weight of the bad decisions made by upper class elitist know-it-alls.

But my bitterness with Wall Street, and all who reside in it is not our concern here.

The issue with the PhD glut is this: that it existed well before the 2008 Great Recession. And so you can't point to the effects of the Great Recession and say "well, yeah, non-PhD holders are struggling too". They are, and most of them are better than the hand they've been dealt.

But our issue is with the continued PhD glut, which we have sustained since well before the Great Recession. And we need to let this glut to correct itself, naturally. That will mean fewer PhD candidates, but it's something that will eventually have to happen.

Just because you can throw a lot of money into the training of a PhD holder, doesn't mean you have a system that can support said PhD holder. What we need is a system that works for PhD holders as much as it does for the making of these PhD holders.

That doesn't mean anything. I'm sure most guys would choose a career in baseball if they had the talent to make it to the big leagues and earn millions throughout their career, even if they have little passion for playing the game itself. Not to mention that being a MLB player offers more prestige that most occupations, even if one is merely a backup outfielder or long reliever. Perhaps being a principal investigator for a research university has more prestige than the lowest MLB player, but being a good player in the Majors has more prestige than them.

By saying that you would only consider playing professional baseball if it was a near certitude that you would play in the majors, you really don't believe that working as a post-doc or graduate student for an opportunity (arbitrarily defined as a 10 percent chance) to be a tenure track professor is worse than playing double-A ball for years for the opportunity to play as a mediocre position player/back-end starter, reliever in the Majors for $2,000. (you might argue that the Minor Leaguer has a better expected value since they would earn at least $400,000 in the majors while a professor might earn only in the mid to high 10 thousands if he/she is accepted as a tenure track professor, but the point is Minor Leaguers and graduate students face analogous situations.

But my intention was not merely to articulate the alleged economic grievance of Minor League baseball players, but to argue against the notion that I should specifically care about the financial travails of graduate students and post-docs relative to the general population.

"But that's the idealized scenario. In reality, we are in the midst of a science & engineering PhD glut, which has created a significant oversupply of PhD holders - leaving us to fight with each other for the few jobs available. And because the lowest bidder stands a better chance of securing a job, the result is a bunch of PhD holders, all driving each other's value down for the chance of securing that rare PhD-level position."

That sounds like many jobs in the United States and in the global economy, not just for PhD students. Read Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich.

And here I thought that, as a real flesh-and-bone human being, with real responsibilities and obligations - not just to myself and those around me, but to my family as well - that I needed some sort of real income, and that I needed to dedicate myself to other life priorities.

So it's god to know that, as long as I love doing science, science will be all the reward I will ever need. I can pay my mortage with my love for science. I can buy this week's groceries with my love for science. I can ignore my family because of my love for science. Better yet, I can marry science instead. Have little science babies, and have science mother them while I work on my research.

Let's be real. Science and engineering are profitable, and there are plenty of financial resources to go around. That is why, for example, U. of Illinois president Michael Hogan makes >$600,000/year + $225,000 retention bonus + presidential house + presidential perks. It is also why, General Electric, United Technologies, Genentech, IBM, etc, dedicate enormous financial resources to research & development.

Money is there. It's just that, for some odd reason, it is not trickling down to us - until we've done a Ph.D., two post-docs, become adjunct faculty somewhere, adjunct faculty elsewhere, earned a nobel prize - and then maybe, you can live with a degree of comfort and peace, knowing you can provide for yourself, and your kids - who, by now might have their own families to support.

We are human beings first, scientists second. And we should not have to choose between one and the other. But somehow, science demands that we forfeit all else for the sake of science itself. That we should produce science for the sake of producing science, without demanding a modicum of compensation, so that we can raise a family and feed and house ourselves without falling into more educational debt.

Science, in a way, is demanding that we be willing to become martyrs for its sake. Perhaps that is another reason why so few bright, self-respecting americans today choose to pursue a science Ph.D.

And in our discussion, he was kind enough to tell me how his hiring process worked. And it worked like this:
1. Break al applicants into three piles - a B.S., an M.S., and a Ph.D. pile
2. Throw the Ph.D. pile in the trash - they're expensive, without many real-world skills, and with a difficulty working with other people; finally, they will be gone as soon as something better comes up
3. The M.S. pile is good - it is better educated than the B.S. pile, and it is smaller, which means it's easier to pick a candidate. The B.S. pile is generally a thick pile, hard to comb through.

This is not to say that our goal in life should be to please some old crank reviewing job applications. It shouldn't. And it shouldn't be to fill some nice pre-specified job in industry either. That is just boring, rote, mundane, and unimpressive for anybody with any brains.

But, if getting a job in industry lies on the horizon - and for most of us it does - it's important to recognize that that Ph.D. will not be your gold ticket. That, once you're past your M.S. level, you're probably going to have a harder time getting employed. That your Ph.D. doesn't hold much value unless you can find a Ph.D.-specific position - and in a job market supersaturated with Ph.D. holders, those odds are progressively small.

I think it's appropriate to compare our Ph.D. job market to a solution of Ph.D.s. And when that solution becomes saturated, you start seeing a precipitate of Ph.D.s, sinking to the bottom because they can't dissolve in the job market solution. Yeah, I think it's appropriate.

So it's important to be good at things other than your research area and your discipline. You have earned very good analytical abilities, but that is not enough - you will need some vision, lots of motivation, and lots of time to make something else happen.

It's not a downhill ride. There are substantial potential barriers between you as a grad student and you as something else. And because there are potential barriers, there are also those who will not make it - there will be a probability distribution governing the odds of success upon transitioning from grad student to something else.

So it's not enough to have your excellent analytical abilities. They will help, but not much, unless you have fvcked around with other interests, from which you can pry a little bit of vision and a little bit of motivation. Then your analytical abilities might take you somewhere.

Bottom line is: fuck around with other, non-research, non-academic interests.

Because most other careers don't have a tax/government supported monopsony system of artificial scarcity combined with low pay. It takes a special kind of idiocy to create both a shortage of personnel and low incomes for them.

And while a PhD certainly requires intellect and conscientiousness - especially conscientiousness - it especially requires creativity. But there is no standardized test for creativity. How could there be? After all, creativity isn't standard. And you can't assign it a number.

The problem in our academic institutions is that we pretend that we can predict who will make a promising researcher based on a few standard markers. Like the GRE. Or the SAT. Or the GPA.

But research is much more than that. You can't encapsulate the capacity for creative research in a standardized test - or a series of standardized tests, no matter how many. For the same reason that you can't encapsulate a human being based on the amount of each chemical species present in their bodies. Because a human body is far more than the mere superposition of many different atoms. It matters how these atoms interact with each other; it matters how these atoms are organized.

In much the same way, in creative research it matters how the individual's different capabilities come together - his or her knack for mathematics, creativity, persistence, curiosity, and many other traits you can't begin to qualify, nevermind quantify.

Is there a correlation between GRE performance and success as a graduate student? Sure. But that is only a small piece of the puzzle. And this is no ordinary puzzle, either. It's one where a lot of creativity and persistence can make up for a shortcoming in mathematics, for example - especially because not all groundbreaking research involves complex mathematics. But all groundbreaking research must involve creativity, and it all must involve persistence too. But, ahh, these aren't measured.

The human body is incredible. It can take many variations. You can have short and stubby folks, and lean and tall folks. And the short and stubby folks would have a very hard time outcompeting the lean and tall folks in swimming, for example - but, depending on their physiological make-up, they would have an immediate advantage in powerlifting, where shorter limbs means that less force needs to be generated in order to lift the same weight. And the best powerlifters in the world tend to be short and stubby for this reason.

This last paragraph is meant to illustrate how different physical statures tend to dominate in different athletic endeavors. That, statistically, the best swimmers tend to be tall and lean, and that, statistically, the best powerlifters tend to be short and stubby. So "tall and lea"n has a natural area where it excels, and "short and stubby" has a natural area where it excels. And that is because different endeavors require different strengths.

The same can be said about creative research. All creative research is not equal. Different creative endeavors require different capabilities. And individuals that excel in one area of creative work will not necessarily excel in another area of creative work. For example, individuals that excel in mathematics may not excel in experimental work, and vice-versa.

And the point is that we are weeding out kids who don't get a 780 in their Quantitative GRE portion, for example, without regard for the basic facts that (i) not all meaningful creative work requires impecabble math skills, and often it requires intangibles - like creativity - which are not measured in any standardized test, and (ii) not all individuals capable of meaningful creative research have impeccable math quantitative skills. To weed somebody out by default simply because they did not have the very best Q-GRE scores is not only foolish, it is counterproductive. But it's something we commonly do in academic admissions.

And then they wonder why so many of their brilliant students go on to produce no meaningful research work...