[king_magic]

Sorry, but candidly, this just reads as a bunch of lame excuses to continue a blatant cycle of abuse.

Nothing in my professional 15 year career has come anywhere remotely close to the brutal, absurd reality of what I’ve seen graduate/PhD students go through.

I think academia is nearing a kind of crisis akin to what the the Catholic Church is going through with rampant sex abuse. Diminishing, unimpressive returns in output (aside from a few bright areas), and dark secrets continually being covered up/brushed aside.

Academia needs to do some serious soul searching.

[lewis500]

I don’t think they’re excuses. They’re explanations of how things happen. The asymmetrical relationship especially explains how professors can get away with treating students badly, but it isn’t a justification. If you read Bad blood, for instance, E Holmes and sunny treat everyone horribly, but ultimately lots of people quit because they have other options.

The pressure on the professor and the selection for obsessiveness explain motives.

[BeetleB]

Let me explain why it can sound like excuses.

Collectively, professors are the ones who set almost every aspect of the culture in academia. They are the ones who populate committees that set all the rules, and decide when a professor is being abusive and when he/she isn't. Professors decide how much is "enough" for a PhD. Even the pressure on professors comes mostly from other professors. A lot of people in the funding agency's committees are professors or former professors. If any change is to occur, it has to come from professors. No external or internal group really has any say in the matter.

So as a professor, the burden of change is pretty much on you. It's probably risky for you to do anything about it[1], but no one else can. When an outsider looks at the situation, all they see are professors pointing fingers at other professors as the cause. It is your profession to fix. And you have less to fear than most workers in most industries: Once you have tenure, attempting to fix the problem will not cost you your job. It will cost other things, but that's the point where it becomes clear what a professor's values are.

And you kind of skirt around it, but a big aspect of it these days is essentially the "rite of passage". As an example, I had a group mate who continually cursed his advisor because he wasn't letting him graduate and was being given work unrelated to his thesis just so that the professor could squeeze as much out of him as possible. Yet when he graduated, he said "Of course I'll treat my students the same. If I had to go through all this, then so should they!"

That's not an uncommon sentiment amongst professors.

Let's all keep in mind: This is mostly a US problem.[2] I don't normally hear these complaints in Europe, and most students there get their PhD in 3 years after their MS.

[1] Not really - there are lots of small things an established professor can do that help.

[2] Well, OK. Maybe also a Korean problem.

[king_magic]

That’s fair, and I think my wording might have been too harsh in the context of your post.

But outside of this context, these same explanations are exactly the excuses that professors and administrators will ultimately make.

Don’t get me wrong, industry isn’t perfect either. But I know which one I’d rather pick, and it sure as hell isnt academia.

[lewis500]

I agree I would recommend industry to almost everyone. In fact, engineers ask me about grad school several times per year and I almost always discourage them. Too many people think of grad school as sort of a vague "next step" that will "open doors" or else a way of "leveling up" as though life is an RPG and a grad degree is a special badge or skin you can get. I encourage them rather to think concretely about what academia specifically entails: reading abstruse papers, writing papers with little chance of being appreciated, debugging software, writing grants, giving presentations, etc. Academia is only appropriate for a rare type of person, like being a classical musician.

[goalieca]

I really love research but here I am stuck in a coding job. I tried my shake at academia but I got depressed at the lack of stability. I wanted to start having a life but there was just no stability in any of it. It's hard to plan long term when you're always 6-12 months away from having your income dry up.

Moral of the story: there's always someone willing to sacrifice more than you whether its their health, money, life, ethics, whatever.

[mattkrause]

Along with the personal cost, this instability can't be great for producing good science either. My lab has learned and lost some techniques over and over again, as people churn through.

If it were up to me, I'd convert some MS/PhD slots into staff scientist roles with longer contracts. I think you could probably do this in a way that increases productivity, and makes more people more happy to boot.

[james-mcelwain]

One of my friends who is a graduate student complains about the difficulty of collaborating with other scientists who lack strong coding skills. They are so focused on the science that there's no time to learn or practice good code hygiene.

If often wondered why labs don't hire regular developers to increase research veliocity. I have no interest in research, but would happily work in the context of academia doing thing like handling merges, ensuring code modularity, maintaining infrastructure, writing unit tests, etc.

[ambicapter]

> Too many people think of grad school as sort of a vague "next step" that will "open doors" or else a way of "leveling up" as though life is an RPG and a grad degree is a special badge or skin you can get.

I have a Masters, and all the interesting jobs I want to do are held by PhDs (sometimes with a couple years of postdocs). And everyone who's on that team has a PhD and they're definitely not going to let anyone lesser than that onto their team.

[cortesoft]

Can I ask what field you are in? I work in software, and many of my colleagues have PhDs... and many of my colleagues never went to college.

They all seem to get along fine, and the ones who have PhDs are usually playing down their credentials.

[wpasc]

I can't speak for the person to whom your replying, but at any big tech company doing anything with recommendations, machine learning, etc. will have teams where having a PhD is huge especially when being considered for promotions

[ambicapter]

In software, not at a FAANG, but in ecommerce.

[jdietrich]

There is an absurd oversupply of graduate students. Where there is an oversupply of labour, there are always abusive conditions. Academia can do all the soul-searching it wants, but the only meaningful solution is to rebalance supply and demand in academia; a very useful first step would be the provision of impartial and informed careers advice to high school and college graduates.

[Mirioron]

I think this is one of the most important pieces of the puzzle. Graduate students are so common they they can't differentiate themselves from the rest by simply being graduate students. They need to do more to be above the rest and this leads to the bad circumstances.

[wool_gather]

Why do they need to "differentiate" or "be above the rest"? (Honest question, not rhetorical: I don't understand your point.)

[jdietrich]

Commodification. The easier you are to replace, the lower your market value and the weaker your negotiating position. Software developers can earn six-figure salaries and work in offices that look like holiday resorts because demand for their skills massively outweighs supply. Grad students get treated like dirt because the supply of grad students vastly exceeds demand.

Most people who choose to be grad students have better options, which we should encourage them to take.

[bhl]

I don't think oversupply is the causal element in this case. Most of us know that to be a graduate student is to be in an extremely privileged position: it's the pressure from having that position that allows for abuse to be tolerated in that environment, and which normalizes the condition of being abused.

Edit: There's one line from the article that summarizes that point.

> Struggling at the very university he had held up as his dream and trapped between feeling that he could not continue with his Ph.D. program but that he also could not stop, Aguisanda’s thoughts began to spiral.

There's nothing talking about feelings of competition, or of being replaced.

[afarrell]

How do you dismantle a cycle of abuse without first understanding the incentives and power relations which are the pieces of that abusive system?

——

I ask this as someone who has been accused of making excuses when I was explaining a problem ans asking for help in solving the problem:

What is it about the above comment that seems like excuses?

[throwaway9870]

Where were you a graduate student? I was a Stanford EE grad student for 8 years in the 90s (first year was for masters). You know why I was there so long? I loved it. Students returned from industry and said same thing: don't be in a hurry to get out. I worked for a hard-ass prof, they did not let anything slip. The hours I worked were insane, on one project it was literally every waking hour for almost a year. It was worth it to me, I would do it again. But I understand it isn't for everyone. After I graduated, I went to work for a chip startup and after a few months my boss made the comment that he was amazed how well trained I was. But that should not have been a surprise. I had a digital signal processing class with Teresa Meng (founder of Atheros), processor design with Hennessy (designed MIPS architecture), VLSI with Horowitz (founder of Rambus), OS programming with Mendel Rosenblum (founder VMWare), etc. I remember when Jerry and David got their funding to start a company with their little web directory. If that kind of environment doesn't excite you, maybe Stanford isn't for you.

As far as debt goes, I paid for my masters myself with loans (~29k) and the PhD was funded by my advisor with a stipend.

My strongest recommendation is two things: make sure you know why you are there and you are doing it for the right reasons, second, be part of a grad student environment. Don't go it alone. You are all in the same boat and can related to each other. We had a great research group, not everyone else did, spend time to build those relationships with other students or it will be more difficult than it needs to be.

But that isn't just advice for grad school, it really applies to most difficult challenges that we take on in life.

EDIT: one thing I see in other posts I want to address, you do have free time in grad school. Not always, but you do have it. I skied at Tahoe, hiked in Yosemite, toured Napa, visited Carmel & Monterey, went to Half Moon Bay many times, travelled to LA and San Diego. Also, get involved in some sport, physical excursion can really help reduce stress. I played a lot of b-ball in grad school.

[musicale]

It's nice to hear that you had a great experience in grad school; sadly, the original article and the comments here indicate that your experience isn't universal today (at Stanford or elsewhere) by any means.

With regard to some of your specifics: good courses (and/or courses with industry luminaries) aren't the same as a supportive environment for completing your Ph.D. research and dissertation. We should probably question whether pressure-cookers really are the best environment for grad students.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Well, my experience in the industry was that I changed five jobs in six years because in order for my work to be valued as highly as it was really worth, I had to sell it to someone new every year.

What is really brutal in academia is the competition to get your research published and appreciated (by being cited and reused by others). This doesn't happen automatically. The pressure to find something useful to contribute cannot be compared to the pressures in the industry where you basically just have to keep your boss happy if you want to stay in the money. It's a bit like an artistic career, really. You're constantly trying to hit the top 10.

And remember that academics are always required to do something genuinely new, not just "Uber for ice cream, but with AI".

[screye]

> And remember that academics are always required to do something genuinely new, not just "Uber for ice cream, but with AI".

This hasn't been my experience. A lot of papers coming out today are quite iterative.

They sound exactly like:"what if system X had feature Y". Just with more scientific jargon.

[dd36]

Lots of academics do “Uber for ice cream but with AI.” Academia is iterative.

Arguably, it’s even less competitive than the real world. It’s theory vs. practice. Guess what’s hard? Getting enough paying customers to be sustainable.

[mattkrause]

> Arguably, it’s even less competitive than the real world.

This might be true at an "organizational" level but I have a hard time believing it's true for individuals.

There are a few people in academia who have incredibly lavish funding (HHMI investigators, people with rich 'patrons'). A few tenured professors can opt out of competition, though this either dramatically limits their impact (no money for students/equipment --> much less research).

Everyone else is constantly scrapping for money and attention and the results are mostly assessed individually, or at best across a small group (PI + 2-4 trainees). In industry, this is at least averaged over the whole company or division.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

>> Lots of academics do “Uber for ice cream but with AI.” Academia is iterative.

Iterative, yes, but it must be innovative, not a recombination of existing contributions.

Also, if you only ever contribute tiny baby steps, you will simply not stand out. If you want to build a strong reputation you need strong results that advance the state of the art significantly.

[king_magic]

This still sounds like a bunch of excuses to continue abusing people. Intense pressure exists everywhere: don't put academic work on a magical pedestal, there's a lot more to working in the industry than just keeping your boss happy (and uh, a lot more happens in the industry than just building the next Uber for X).

Still no excuse to overwork people to near death (yes, there are extreme outliers like Goldman Sachs & whatnot, but this kind of overwork is a pandemic in academia).

[YeGoblynQueenne]

I don't follow- where is the excuse?

I left one of my junior dev positions in the industry with a stomach ulcer as a souvenir. I don't know what Goldman Sachs is like, but as a junior developer you're expected to do all the work for half the money it's worth and in half the time it would take your senior colleagues.

Edit: and while youre senior colleagues treat your work like rubbish to justify their senior salaries.