[tharne]

I was at a social event and got to talking with a professor at an Ivy League school. He had a really insightful take on this. He said that the only fair way to present a doctoral program to prospective students is to compare it to trying to become a rockstar.

Every day tons of people form garage bands and have dreams of becoming rock stars. But...they do so knowing they almost certainly won't make it.

This professor said that starting a doctoral program should be viewed the same way, as a sort of moon-shoot that will take a lot of time and resources from other pursuits. If you're okay with that, go for it, and if you're not, find a path that works better for you.

Unfortunately, the administration of the school he worked for told him he would be removed from his position if he shared this philosophy with prospective students.

[scott_s]

That is a good framing. When I explain it to people, I compare it to the NBA. Except it's like trying to get into the NBA when all of your coaches over your entire basketball life up until that point have been in the NBA. Proximity can trick you into thinking you just have to "decide" to pursue such a position, not knowing that such positions are the result of a ruthless tournament system.

[xhkkffbf]

The thing is that there are more prosport athletes hired each year than there are new professor slots in most disciplines. There are probably 3-5 new players on each NBA team each year which amounts to 75-150 people taken from the draft. Most academic disciplines have only a few dozen slots available each year.

[scott_s]

The reason I pick the NBA is because there are only 450 positions available (30 teams, 15 players per team). This is the least number of total positions in popular team sports in the US. The ratios will never be perfect, they just need to be relatively similar. The point is to use something which people already have an intuition for; everyone already has an intuition for how unlikely it is for any given high school or college basketball player to play in the NBA.

[gammarator]

The problem with this analogy is that rock stars don't depend on the wannabes for their success.

In contrast, universities and their faculty absolutely need a large supply of low-wage teaching and research assistants to function today.

[gowld]

A PhD program is not a trade school. It was originally designed for the intellectually inclined aristocracy to put their minds to good use. If you understand that, you are fine.

[tharne]

That's a really good way of thinking about it.

[abnry]

I like this. The analogy I always use is trying to be a major league baseball player, because I think the farm system captures the dynamics of the grad student component of academia.

[newen]

Unless becoming a rockstar is equivalent only to becoming an Ivy League professor, passing a PhD program really isn’t that hard for most PhD programs even in the best schools. To pass a PhD program, you just need to come in every day and do your work for <8 hours a day for a few years. As in, actually treat it like a job.

The students who did their PhD the quickest in my program did exactly that. The students who failed or took longer usually slacked off, skipped days, focus on other stuff, etc etc etc. I know one person who disappeared for weeks and then quit. Thing is, he could still have come back and resumed his PhD even after that disappearance.

You could argue that it’s difficult for students to plan and do work on a consistent basis while having full academic freedom and very little direction (my advisor when I joined with almost no research experience told me to “read papers” and then we’ll discuss what to do after you do; like what does read papers mean anyway; I had no idea at the time but I learned by asking fellow students). But it’s not something that you get lucky in. It’s something that you keep at it until you finish it.

[aj7]

Very honest and correct. At least in the sciences, there are “outs” in related business and engineering careers.