Farewell to MIT(evanjones.ca)
evanjones.ca
Farewell to MIT
http://www.evanjones.ca/farewell-mit.html
35 comments
The quoted line is a good point, but your take on it is completely wrong, I believe. The main point in college is to get a degree. You don't spend approximately $150,000 in order to "not have regrets later on". You spend it to increase your net worth and hiring price in whatever field you wish to work within.
Don't forget that PhD student in most departments get paid a stipend; they aren't accruing debt during their graduate career.
(For what it's worth, I received my PhD and soon thereafter left academia as well, for many of the reasons outlined in the article above.)
Don't forget that PhD student in most departments get paid a stipend; they aren't accruing debt during their graduate career.
(For what it's worth, I received my PhD and soon thereafter left academia as well, for many of the reasons outlined in the article above.)
"You spend it to increase your net worth and hiring price in whatever field you wish to work within."
I don't like the direction the world is heading. Knowledge is not a commodity. Nor are we livestock that is being bred to be sold on The Market.
I still hold the illusion that some people go to academia with non-material motives. How could research in some obscure part of some obscure field ever increase your price tag. Yet how can we hope of any academic progress if we base our research on what the economy needs.
I don't like the direction the world is heading. Knowledge is not a commodity. Nor are we livestock that is being bred to be sold on The Market.
I still hold the illusion that some people go to academia with non-material motives. How could research in some obscure part of some obscure field ever increase your price tag. Yet how can we hope of any academic progress if we base our research on what the economy needs.
Yup ... money isn't everything (for everyone). I knew at least two people in grad school who had sold their startups for decent but not exorbitant paydays and then had come to grad school for personal satisfaction and other non-monetary reasons.
Fully agree. Education should be primarily about furthering knowledge, not finding a job. The same should be true about school as well as Uni.
I studied Computer Science because I was interested in it, not because I thought I would make a lot of money.
Frankly I deplore the attitude that the only point in education is to get a job. Many (most?) advancements in science occur because of curiosity, not from perceived practical value.
I studied Computer Science because I was interested in it, not because I thought I would make a lot of money.
Frankly I deplore the attitude that the only point in education is to get a job. Many (most?) advancements in science occur because of curiosity, not from perceived practical value.
>Fully agree. Education should be primarily about furthering knowledge, not finding a job.
I couldn't agree with you more, but unfortunately I didn't feel this way as an undergrad. While I did enjoy the field of engineering, I was ready to be a "big boy" and start chipping away at my student loans with a real income. Soon after starting my job I was blown away by the level of knowledge of my co-workers and it motivated me to push myself to learn more...about anything! I didn't come from a CS background so I didn't know much about programming or hacking, but I was always fascinated with electronics and technology so I decided to learn how to program. I didn't want to feel like a one trick pony. If I could do undergrad all over again I would have taken more classes that were far out of my realm, possibly even a dual major. I feel like I'm playing catch up, but I'm glad I realized it while I'm only a year out of college and not half-way through my career.
I couldn't agree with you more, but unfortunately I didn't feel this way as an undergrad. While I did enjoy the field of engineering, I was ready to be a "big boy" and start chipping away at my student loans with a real income. Soon after starting my job I was blown away by the level of knowledge of my co-workers and it motivated me to push myself to learn more...about anything! I didn't come from a CS background so I didn't know much about programming or hacking, but I was always fascinated with electronics and technology so I decided to learn how to program. I didn't want to feel like a one trick pony. If I could do undergrad all over again I would have taken more classes that were far out of my realm, possibly even a dual major. I feel like I'm playing catch up, but I'm glad I realized it while I'm only a year out of college and not half-way through my career.
I agree. The problem is that the price of college is so high now that you'll be financially ruined if you get a degree that doesn't increase your income. That, and the fact that most non-college-required jobs pay so little, if you're going to have a reasonable lifestyle, you need a career-focused degree.
I concur, though it's important to note the STEM bias in statements like "[most PhD Students] get paid a stipend". I can assure you my friend studying the history of Eastern European Political-Economic Thought is not receiving a stipend.
Further, for a large fraction of STEM PhD students the stipend only slightly dulls the loss from opportunity cost. A PhD-worthy CS undergraduate in particular is looking at 60-100k/year starting income plus raises in industry vs 20-25k/year PhD stipend. Over five years that's easily around 150k foregone post-tax (assuming for accounting purposes that the increased income would not translate to increased consumption).
Further, for a large fraction of STEM PhD students the stipend only slightly dulls the loss from opportunity cost. A PhD-worthy CS undergraduate in particular is looking at 60-100k/year starting income plus raises in industry vs 20-25k/year PhD stipend. Over five years that's easily around 150k foregone post-tax (assuming for accounting purposes that the increased income would not translate to increased consumption).
It certainly is easier to get a stipend for a PhD in the STEM fields, but that doesn't mean they don't exist outside of it. I have several friends doing PhDs right now in subjects including English and Philosophy who are getting full stipends. Furthermore, I had a professor in college who told me (somewhat tongue-in-cheek, so take it with a grain of salt) that an unfunded PhD probably wasn't one worth doing...
Any decent humanities program will fully fund its PhD students. In exchange, those students are tasked with teaching a majority of the courses in a given term (composition, first- and second-year languages, etc.). Or, if they aren't teaching their own courses, they're doing the grunt work for the larger lectures.
I have no specific information on the humanities side aside from anecdotes and personal experience, so I'd be interested if you could elaborate. Is it perhaps possible that most of the students that are accepted are fully funded, but that there are far fewer positions and so de facto there are far fewer opportunities for humanities students? Also, my specific example of a friend in Eastern European Political Economic Thought was at an Ivy League school, where he has a tuition waiver but no stipend (so one could call that "fully funded, but unpaid").
Just to elaborate on my limited view of the funding landscape, in STEM disciplines I can name 5-10 major public funding organizations easily (NSF, DARPA, DOE, ONR, AFOSR, NASA, ARL, DHS off the top of my head). My uninformed guess is that there are not nearly as many organizations for humanities, and that they are not nearly as well funded, but that's just based on my hypothesized motivations for the funding (military industrial complex, communists/terrorists/whateverists etc.).
If you have any light to shed on the subject, I'd be interested :-)
Just to elaborate on my limited view of the funding landscape, in STEM disciplines I can name 5-10 major public funding organizations easily (NSF, DARPA, DOE, ONR, AFOSR, NASA, ARL, DHS off the top of my head). My uninformed guess is that there are not nearly as many organizations for humanities, and that they are not nearly as well funded, but that's just based on my hypothesized motivations for the funding (military industrial complex, communists/terrorists/whateverists etc.).
If you have any light to shed on the subject, I'd be interested :-)
Sorry for not seeing this before!
To the first part of your question: You're absolutely correct, good humanities PhD programs typically admit only 10-15 students per year, all of them fully funded. My question about your friend would be what program was he in (schools in themselves aren't indicative of much)? It sounds like it might be a niche program. I'd be stunned if an Ivy had unfunded PhDs in English, History, Philosophy, etc.
The thing about humanities programs is that they're funded de facto because graduate students do most of the teaching. If you look at the class schedule for a given term, for example, you're likely to see more basic writing classes than all other English classes combined (or math classes, or...). This is because writing is the only class in the US system that virtually every college student will have to take. The result is ample funding for humanities PhDs and, in many cases, MAs.
Don't get me wrong, though. Humanities PhDs face a whole host of other problems later on, like poor job prospects, mediocre pay, and politicking like you thought only existed in the Dune novels!
To the first part of your question: You're absolutely correct, good humanities PhD programs typically admit only 10-15 students per year, all of them fully funded. My question about your friend would be what program was he in (schools in themselves aren't indicative of much)? It sounds like it might be a niche program. I'd be stunned if an Ivy had unfunded PhDs in English, History, Philosophy, etc.
The thing about humanities programs is that they're funded de facto because graduate students do most of the teaching. If you look at the class schedule for a given term, for example, you're likely to see more basic writing classes than all other English classes combined (or math classes, or...). This is because writing is the only class in the US system that virtually every college student will have to take. The result is ample funding for humanities PhDs and, in many cases, MAs.
Don't get me wrong, though. Humanities PhDs face a whole host of other problems later on, like poor job prospects, mediocre pay, and politicking like you thought only existed in the Dune novels!
You spend it to increase your net worth and hiring price in whatever field you wish to work within.
Not for me. I could have probably made just as much money by now had I left with a Master's in CS back in 2005. I got a PhD because I thought research was more fun than straight development, and a PhD is the research merit badge.
Not for me. I could have probably made just as much money by now had I left with a Master's in CS back in 2005. I got a PhD because I thought research was more fun than straight development, and a PhD is the research merit badge.
> $150,000
Does everybody go to private universities or something? Because in-state is still under $10,000/year in most places.
Does everybody go to private universities or something? Because in-state is still under $10,000/year in most places.
That's not the only reason either, if you can pay the cost back later & it's a field you're interested in it will broaden your horizons
Same often goes for founding a startup. Do it, push yourself as far as you can with it, but then get out before you run out of money and destroy your sanity. That way, you have no regrets, and also no permanent harm done to your finances or psyche.
I think everyone ought to go to a great college and at least try it out. I live in a country where the universities are fairly awful, and I don't know if it's worth people's time to study at them (I dropped out), but I totally get why most companies require a bachelor in computer science, even though it means that I will never be able to get those jobs.
I wonder what it means in terms of getting US visas, too, but I guess I'll just have to adapt. I'm glad to be in a position where my main interest at the moment is so location- and language-agnostic, so I don't have to stay in any specific country, as long as I can communicate with people in their preferred language.
I wonder what it means in terms of getting US visas, too, but I guess I'll just have to adapt. I'm glad to be in a position where my main interest at the moment is so location- and language-agnostic, so I don't have to stay in any specific country, as long as I can communicate with people in their preferred language.
What if you just exchange regrets for not having tried for regrets for having tried?
I don't regret it a lot, it was only a year wasted and some good still came of it, but I regret going to grad school for my Master's. If I hadn't gone, I might have regretted that instead, but is that worse?
I don't regret it a lot, it was only a year wasted and some good still came of it, but I regret going to grad school for my Master's. If I hadn't gone, I might have regretted that instead, but is that worse?
I defended my dissertation in December 2010, and I started at IBM Research in January of 2011. Within weeks of being at IBM Research, I found myself having fantastically productive, ad-hoc research discussions with my colleagues that lead to real work being done - code being written, experiments being run and papers written. Things moved much, much faster than they could have when I was working alone as a graduate student. Three highly motivated people working together on the same problem are more than just three times more productive than a single person working on the problem.
I heartily endorse the author's advice to collaborate. I didn't do it much as I should have as a grad student. But, in some ways, doing so is not encouraged. My last two years, I had one goal: to graduate. I knew what I had to do to get that done, so I plowed through and did it. Because you need to come up with a dissertation that is yours, you have many students who will rationally work on their own projects without much collaboration.
I heartily endorse the author's advice to collaborate. I didn't do it much as I should have as a grad student. But, in some ways, doing so is not encouraged. My last two years, I had one goal: to graduate. I knew what I had to do to get that done, so I plowed through and did it. Because you need to come up with a dissertation that is yours, you have many students who will rationally work on their own projects without much collaboration.
I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who feels this way. I agree that working alone seems like the easiest or best choice. However, I think it is a local maximum, and not a true optimal solution.
At least for me, working with others makes me way more productive, so I think that my collaborations helped me graduate sooner. I were to start again, I would be more proactive about working with others. Its true that to graduate, you have to write your own thesis, but that doesn't mean you can't collaborate. I've found that parts of work naturally fall to people according to their interests, so it wasn't really a problem for the projects I worked on.
At least for me, working with others makes me way more productive, so I think that my collaborations helped me graduate sooner. I were to start again, I would be more proactive about working with others. Its true that to graduate, you have to write your own thesis, but that doesn't mean you can't collaborate. I've found that parts of work naturally fall to people according to their interests, so it wasn't really a problem for the projects I worked on.
I think people tend to work alone because of the pressure they feel to come up with something independent and original. I went through this process and eventually realised how much more I enjoy working closely with others on hard problems. It's far more productive as well.
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I'm curious how you discovered my post, months after I originally wrote it. Thanks to everyone for the thoughtful comments!
I'm was writing a user-space thread library and I found your article "Implementing a Thread Library on Linux", a really nice article by the way, and then found "Farewell to MIT" just through browsing the site.
"Farewell to MIT" just seemed like such great advice, I was surprised when I found it hadn't already been posted here.
"Farewell to MIT" just seemed like such great advice, I was surprised when I found it hadn't already been posted here.
"Take the next step with the ones that are really interesting: actually do some concrete work, even if it has to be done as a side project. At the worst, you will learn a lot and have fun by working on something new with other researchers."
It's a very good recommendation. I remember some PhD students reluctant to work on concrete implementations of their theorized approaches. But in the long-term, the most successful ones were doing a lot of concrete works and gained experiences for an academic career and while keeping a strong feet/competence into the private sector.
It's a very good recommendation. I remember some PhD students reluctant to work on concrete implementations of their theorized approaches. But in the long-term, the most successful ones were doing a lot of concrete works and gained experiences for an academic career and while keeping a strong feet/competence into the private sector.
Also, implementing ideas and testing them on real data can be a very good heuristic to drive theoretical thinking by:
- giving you empirical evidences on the practical limitations of a positive theoretical results that might have been otherwise overlooked.
- giving you new insights on which approaches (e.g. class of algorithm) are the most promising for a given class of problems.
- make explicit some assumptions you might have implicitly made in your theoretical work and check whether they can actually be satisfied in practice.
- giving you empirical evidences on the practical limitations of a positive theoretical results that might have been otherwise overlooked.
- giving you new insights on which approaches (e.g. class of algorithm) are the most promising for a given class of problems.
- make explicit some assumptions you might have implicitly made in your theoretical work and check whether they can actually be satisfied in practice.
When I said "concrete work" I didn't necessarily mean you can't do theoretical work, if that is your interest. I meant to say that you should actually be working together. It is very common for people to be part of a "single project" but the extent of their collaboration is that they have some meetings and talk about related issues. I don't think that is the same as working together.
> However, there is one important piece of advice I wish I could give to my past self, when I started my PhD: _Actively_ collaborate with others.
This great advice is hard to underestimate.
This great advice is hard to underestimate.
Yes. And understanding why is important.
Your collaborators/peers will be your most important source of learning. They will also form the basis of your professional technical network.
Your collaborators/peers will be your most important source of learning. They will also form the basis of your professional technical network.
This is a very interesting point.
These days many people argue that it's useless to go to college. But one of the points of going to college is not having regrets for not having tried.
Maybe the right approach is to go, and then drop out. You know you were able to go, you know how it is inside, and then if you get out after the first year you save at least 75% of the cost.