[mililani]

Has anyone ever looked at how large some of these graduate STEM departments are by the number of students? When I decided to go back to grad school for maths, I realized that doing a Ph.D. would probably be fruitless. How did I determine this? I went to UC Berkeley, Stanford and UCLA, arguably the best math departments in the country based on the NRC rankings and AMS rankings, and counted up their graduate students. There were over 300 students. THREE HUNDRED. Three hundred brilliant minds with brilliant credentials with at least 300 other hundred brilliant competitors. That's not including the grad students at the other more mediocre schools in California like USC, UCSC, UCSB, UC Davis, UCI, UCR, and, god, I must be missing some. Oh yeah, UC San Diego. I was wondering, then, where are all these brilliant students going to go? Surely, there is not enough openings in academia, even at lower ranked institutions, for these guys. I went and checked for job openings in academia for math tenure tracked appts, and yes, there were only 10 jobs out there at the time. I then started piecing together things I saw in my own life's journey: brilliant mathematicians and scientists teaching and researching at second or third tier research universities. A lot teaching at teaching colleges (at my school, SJSU, there are several math professors from Stanford and Princeton teaching there).

It was then I realized that doing a Ph.D. in STEM is a pretty piss poor proposition. I would highly discourage most people from doing it, unless you really love research, don't care about job prospects or money, and that's all you want to do in life.

[fsk]

I was going for a PhD in Math and dropped out for pretty much the same reason. The field was so specialized that nobody really understands anyone else's research, which makes it mostly not-merit-based (politics) who gets hired where. Also, it really wasn't fun. I figured it would be easier to work as programmer and study Math (or other things) in my spare time.

It seems like a waste to spend 5+ years on a PhD and 3-5 years on postdocs just to get a tenured position at the #200 ranked university or to be a permanent-adjunct.

[raverbashing]

Yeah, there are a lot of possible divisions and specializations in Math it's not even funny. Most of them unintelligible to "mere mortals".

Also hard to find a job, especially one that uses your work, unless you work in number theory, in this case you have a job at the NSA.

[adrianN]

Number theory is an extremely broad field in itself. I'm pretty sure most of it is completely irrelevant to the NSA. If you do a PhD in any theoretical field you'll almost never find a job outside of academia that uses any of your work.

[mililani]

I've seen permanent adjuncts / post-docs. There was a guy at my old school who was there as a post doc. He did his PhD at UC Berkeley. I can't believe that he has been jumping around to different institutions as a post doc or lecturer for over 10 years. It's quite sad. My friend did his Ph.D at University of Oregon. It took him 6 years to finish it. Then he spent 2 years as a post doc at University of Toronto. He finally got a job back home at a small 4 year college. I guess he's doing what he set out to do: be a university math professor. But, I believe him being from Hawaii helped him land that gig. They prefer locals who want to go back home before considering others.

[nraynaud]

As an outsider I'm a bit frightened. I my (mostly estranged) cousin is a Maths researcher (from wikipedia it looks like he's at UCLA now). Once I was talking to a PhD student friend about him, and actually he had used my cousin's work in his field.

So I don't think there is no hope in research. Also I admit this whole citation, publication and plagiarism hunt is a toxic bullshit.

[Bahamut]

I was once a PhD student of math at UIUC - after some pains with job searching, I eventually landed in software engineering after teaching myself a lot. Graduate school fulfilled a special challenge for me, proving to myself that I had one of the brightest minds out there.

It turned out there were plenty of others smarter than me, but I held my own, which was enough for me. From what I can tell, smart PhD holders and/or dropouts (which I fall under the latter) can fall in many fields. My brother (a PhD graduate from Johns Hopkins in Chemistry) has been recruited for HR and data scientist positions. I have also been recruited for data scientist positions, especially once I proved my excellence in software engineering. I have also been recruited for sales positions in the past.

There are still some organizations/companies out there that recognize the value of pure intelligence over specialty. In some ways, I also look more favorably if someone shows great indicators of this when I am hiring.

[nsainsbury]

Over on /r/math you hear this sentiment a lot from maths postgrads.

The recommendation you hear a lot on that board is that if you are doing a maths degree you should also study something else somewhat complementary (comp sci is a popular choice) and hope to find employment in that field. I had honestly at some point considered doing a Ph.D in Maths but upon further consideration - and realizing then that my future would likely involve low pay, excessive travel, low job stability, and a crushing amount of work - it just seemed like a very sad proposition.

[mililani]

Yeah, I'm also on r/math. The saddest thing to see is the periodic repost of jobs for math degrees. It really is sad to see, and it reminds me of why I was often depressed as an undergrad. It's hard enough that the courses are challenging, but wondering what all this hard work would lead made it even more depressing.

[onetimeusename]

So did you end up getting the phd anyways? In your experience, did you feel the departments' agendas placed importance on the field or were they more interested in career aspirations or money? My personal experience is that mathematics comes second to research grants and ensuring prestige. I do want to hear from other people though since that was just my own.

[mililani]

No, I'm actually starting grad school next month. But, I decided against a PhD and will just do a masters in math with a concentration in statistics. My ultimate goal was to teach at the community colleges anyways. I really don't want to do research for the rest of my life.

[Stubb]

Another option, at least in the United States if you're a citizen, is to do contract work for the Department of Defense.

Step 1: Acquire STEM Ph.D.

Step 2: Get a job with a DoD contractor.

Step 3: Profit!

A short look at job options in academia disabused me of pursuing that option. Working twice as hard for half the pay? No thanks.

[LunaSea]

I think you forgot:

Step 1.5: Drop ethics.

[Stubb]

I'm a-okay with my job, and it's great that you're not. That means one less person I'm competing against in the applicant pool. And that pool is already substantially limited by excluding non-citizens.

[afarrell]

It depends on how you feel about working with weaponry or logistics and how you feel about the political effect of NATO.

[chestervonwinch]

From what I've gathered, this has been the job outlook for academic positions for some time across most areas (not strictly STEM), hasn't it? The prospects for STEM phds in industry appears better (or at least as someone pursuing a math phd with plans to go into industry, I must tell myself that). I'm interested in what decision you made.

[mililani]

Yes to academia. Academia is hard to break into, and from what I gather from talking to a lot of math professors, it seems to have been this way since the 50's.

No on industry. I'm on other math forums, and judging by the constant reposts of "Finding a job with a math degree", I really believe that it's tough finding a job in private industry as well.

Personally, I decided not to do a pure maths degree but instead concentrate on statistics. The job prospects in industry are much better in that field. And, my goal was to teach at community colleges. From my discussion with CC faculty, their most popular math courses are statistics. So, they often look for people who have strong stats backgrounds. My plan is to find work as a statistician and work as an adjunct until I can land a permanent TT job at the community colleges. I just got certified as a SAS programmer, and there are lots of jobs at there I can do remotely.

[math0ne]

The PHD in academia has never been about getting good a good job or getting value out of your time though it's about pursuing personal knowledge and projects. If you don't find any value in that than a PHD will not and never has been a good proposition.

[Dewie]

> I realized that doing a Ph.D. would probably be fruitless. How did I determine this?

Well clearly it takes someone going to the best math departments in order to realize that within a hierarchical organizations wherein tenured employees can supervise a lot of grad students in the span of their career, only a few of those grad students can really get a job similar to their supervisor. Was this really a revelation?

[shard972]

So why is the US pushing STEM so much?

[ArkyBeagle]

Basically, because technocracy.

[tritri]

> at my school, SJSU, there are several math professors from Stanford and Princeton teaching there

You were bashing on schools like, "USC, UCSC, UCSB, UC Davis, UCI, UCR, and, god, I must be missing some. Oh yeah, UC San Diego." and calling the mediocre? HA!

You go to SJSU and are calling those UC's mediocre?? I don't know how you got to the top of HN, but you need a HUGE perspective change dude...