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### Instruction:
"40% of Ph.D. students in the UK at high risk of suicide". I knew Ph.D. life can be really testing, but not to this level!! How can we make the process more emotionally sustainable? https://thetab.com/uk/2021/10/14/40-per-cent-of-phd-students-are-at-high-risk-of-suicide-study-says-226001 Speaking from experience, I honestly felt I had it worse than anyone. I wouldn't say I was ever suicidal, but I honestly didn't know how I was supposed to cope if I didn't pass. Thankfully, despite having an incredibly bumpy Ph.D. journey, it was all worth it in the end, the viva went incredibly well, and so did the post viva (minor) corrections. Although I was the primary architect of my misery, I thought I'd share some admin/program level fails that made the whole process much more of a mental torment than it should've been: 1) Supervisors do not give back feedback until the final year, or the final few months prior to the (initial) submission deadline. I've sent them quite a lot of work throughout the years, which they've never responded to. The first real feedback they gave me was on my first thesis draft, which they absolutely tore apart. And that was a horrible blow because right up to that point (very close to the original submission date), I had no clue my written work was so bad. We had fairly regular meetings, but at no point did they even hint my progress, as far as written work goes, was not up to the par of doctoral level. This was perhaps the biggest psychological blow, especially when you're close to finishing. I needed 6 more months to re-write the whole thing from scratch. 2) Don't allow students to veer too much off the main aim of the project. You're encouraged to have a divergent mindset at the beginning of your Ph.D. But sometimes, particularly inexperienced researchers can easily fall into hopeless cul-de-sacs that waste a lot of time. I look back at my early work and cringe. I veered off so much initially, that it made my research scope inplausibly vast. I wish my supervisors would've at least hinted much earlier that some of those routes were complete dead ends, that ended up wasting almost a year of my time. This is a tricky one to critique, one should be encouraged to think expansively in the beginning. But less experienced researchers (as I was) can truly find themselves lost. And the intervention often comes too late 3) Admin f\*ckups. There have been so many admin failures, like delays to my compulsory international research visit (part of our Ph.D. training program) until the final few months of the year, or the time when they accidentally SENT THE WRONG DOCUMENTS TO me MY VIVA EXAMINERS INSTEAD OF MY ACTUAL THESIS. Our examination process consists of a 1-hour presentation + Q/A, and then a full classical British style Ph.D. viva. It's literally two viva examinations in one. I did the first part well. And then the chair of my viva told me "we're so sorry, but your examiners didn't receive your actual thesis, they got a minor document by accident". So I had to go through the psychological terror of viva anticipation all over again! 4) Have all the necessary facilities easily available for the student to cope with such pressure. This is a two-way street, the student must be prepared to also ask for help. Which I never did tbh, though looking back, I really should have. Encourage students to attend conferences, and events, and network as much as possible. Don't make them fall into the isolation trap as I had done. Please share some of your ideas! I know a Ph.D. isn't supposed to be easy. Stress is just the reality of life, and a Ph.D. is no different. But it shouldn't get to this level bad! Share your thoughts and experiences!
### Response:
I agree with the other comment about funding, but I'd also add that I feel like a contract of some kind would be so useful. Some places already do this, and there's no reason that everywhere can't adopt this. A huge amount of my PhD stress came from being in this weird in-between not-a-student-not-staff liminal space. I needed credits to graduate but couldn't enroll in modules because I wasn't a student. I was teaching and responsible for printing assessment and exams but couldn't use the staff printers (for free) because I'm not staff. I, too, constantly had a barrage of admin screw ups often because they didn't know what to do with me. I'm not staff so I can't be enrolled with HR, but because I can't be enrolled with HR I can't receive payslips or payment, which meant I couldn't be paid for teaching. But I was teaching. It took nearly a month to get payment going but I was still not staff and still not able to get payslips. A contract outlining expectations and entitlements, and also just generally clarifying our role for administration would be incredibly useful.
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### Instruction:
"40% of Ph.D. students in the UK at high risk of suicide". I knew Ph.D. life can be really testing, but not to this level!! How can we make the process more emotionally sustainable? https://thetab.com/uk/2021/10/14/40-per-cent-of-phd-students-are-at-high-risk-of-suicide-study-says-226001 Speaking from experience, I honestly felt I had it worse than anyone. I wouldn't say I was ever suicidal, but I honestly didn't know how I was supposed to cope if I didn't pass. Thankfully, despite having an incredibly bumpy Ph.D. journey, it was all worth it in the end, the viva went incredibly well, and so did the post viva (minor) corrections. Although I was the primary architect of my misery, I thought I'd share some admin/program level fails that made the whole process much more of a mental torment than it should've been: 1) Supervisors do not give back feedback until the final year, or the final few months prior to the (initial) submission deadline. I've sent them quite a lot of work throughout the years, which they've never responded to. The first real feedback they gave me was on my first thesis draft, which they absolutely tore apart. And that was a horrible blow because right up to that point (very close to the original submission date), I had no clue my written work was so bad. We had fairly regular meetings, but at no point did they even hint my progress, as far as written work goes, was not up to the par of doctoral level. This was perhaps the biggest psychological blow, especially when you're close to finishing. I needed 6 more months to re-write the whole thing from scratch. 2) Don't allow students to veer too much off the main aim of the project. You're encouraged to have a divergent mindset at the beginning of your Ph.D. But sometimes, particularly inexperienced researchers can easily fall into hopeless cul-de-sacs that waste a lot of time. I look back at my early work and cringe. I veered off so much initially, that it made my research scope inplausibly vast. I wish my supervisors would've at least hinted much earlier that some of those routes were complete dead ends, that ended up wasting almost a year of my time. This is a tricky one to critique, one should be encouraged to think expansively in the beginning. But less experienced researchers (as I was) can truly find themselves lost. And the intervention often comes too late 3) Admin f\*ckups. There have been so many admin failures, like delays to my compulsory international research visit (part of our Ph.D. training program) until the final few months of the year, or the time when they accidentally SENT THE WRONG DOCUMENTS TO me MY VIVA EXAMINERS INSTEAD OF MY ACTUAL THESIS. Our examination process consists of a 1-hour presentation + Q/A, and then a full classical British style Ph.D. viva. It's literally two viva examinations in one. I did the first part well. And then the chair of my viva told me "we're so sorry, but your examiners didn't receive your actual thesis, they got a minor document by accident". So I had to go through the psychological terror of viva anticipation all over again! 4) Have all the necessary facilities easily available for the student to cope with such pressure. This is a two-way street, the student must be prepared to also ask for help. Which I never did tbh, though looking back, I really should have. Encourage students to attend conferences, and events, and network as much as possible. Don't make them fall into the isolation trap as I had done. Please share some of your ideas! I know a Ph.D. isn't supposed to be easy. Stress is just the reality of life, and a Ph.D. is no different. But it shouldn't get to this level bad! Share your thoughts and experiences!
### Response:
For starters, have proper bloody funding. I mean like £25k-£30k or more per year of funding and for more than a select few PhDs so they can actually focus on their work rather than having to earn money alongside it/panicking about not having any money. That would be fair and reflect how PhDs are treated across Europe and the US. PhDs do cutting edge work that is the lifeblood of university departments. The system should give them the financial backing they deserve. Then people like me (who would find working alongside doing a PhD very hard if not impossible because of my mental health) would be able to pursue a PhD.
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### Instruction:
"40% of Ph.D. students in the UK at high risk of suicide". I knew Ph.D. life can be really testing, but not to this level!! How can we make the process more emotionally sustainable? https://thetab.com/uk/2021/10/14/40-per-cent-of-phd-students-are-at-high-risk-of-suicide-study-says-226001 Speaking from experience, I honestly felt I had it worse than anyone. I wouldn't say I was ever suicidal, but I honestly didn't know how I was supposed to cope if I didn't pass. Thankfully, despite having an incredibly bumpy Ph.D. journey, it was all worth it in the end, the viva went incredibly well, and so did the post viva (minor) corrections. Although I was the primary architect of my misery, I thought I'd share some admin/program level fails that made the whole process much more of a mental torment than it should've been: 1) Supervisors do not give back feedback until the final year, or the final few months prior to the (initial) submission deadline. I've sent them quite a lot of work throughout the years, which they've never responded to. The first real feedback they gave me was on my first thesis draft, which they absolutely tore apart. And that was a horrible blow because right up to that point (very close to the original submission date), I had no clue my written work was so bad. We had fairly regular meetings, but at no point did they even hint my progress, as far as written work goes, was not up to the par of doctoral level. This was perhaps the biggest psychological blow, especially when you're close to finishing. I needed 6 more months to re-write the whole thing from scratch. 2) Don't allow students to veer too much off the main aim of the project. You're encouraged to have a divergent mindset at the beginning of your Ph.D. But sometimes, particularly inexperienced researchers can easily fall into hopeless cul-de-sacs that waste a lot of time. I look back at my early work and cringe. I veered off so much initially, that it made my research scope inplausibly vast. I wish my supervisors would've at least hinted much earlier that some of those routes were complete dead ends, that ended up wasting almost a year of my time. This is a tricky one to critique, one should be encouraged to think expansively in the beginning. But less experienced researchers (as I was) can truly find themselves lost. And the intervention often comes too late 3) Admin f\*ckups. There have been so many admin failures, like delays to my compulsory international research visit (part of our Ph.D. training program) until the final few months of the year, or the time when they accidentally SENT THE WRONG DOCUMENTS TO me MY VIVA EXAMINERS INSTEAD OF MY ACTUAL THESIS. Our examination process consists of a 1-hour presentation + Q/A, and then a full classical British style Ph.D. viva. It's literally two viva examinations in one. I did the first part well. And then the chair of my viva told me "we're so sorry, but your examiners didn't receive your actual thesis, they got a minor document by accident". So I had to go through the psychological terror of viva anticipation all over again! 4) Have all the necessary facilities easily available for the student to cope with such pressure. This is a two-way street, the student must be prepared to also ask for help. Which I never did tbh, though looking back, I really should have. Encourage students to attend conferences, and events, and network as much as possible. Don't make them fall into the isolation trap as I had done. Please share some of your ideas! I know a Ph.D. isn't supposed to be easy. Stress is just the reality of life, and a Ph.D. is no different. But it shouldn't get to this level bad! Share your thoughts and experiences!
### Response:
UCU is mounting a 'PGRs as staff' campaign to have PhD students treated as staff which would hopefully result in guaranteed employment protections, access to paid leave for sickness/ holidays, and clearer structure and supervision of their research. Given my own and my peers' experiences, it's a long time coming. With mental health, finances, family issues and the difficulties caused by international status, hopefully the worst impacts could be mitigated by something like this. https://www.ucu.org.uk/pgr-manifesto-launch Also, if you're a PhD student in the UK, I would fully recommend joining UCU, and you can do so for free.
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### Instruction:
"40% of Ph.D. students in the UK at high risk of suicide". I knew Ph.D. life can be really testing, but not to this level!! How can we make the process more emotionally sustainable? https://thetab.com/uk/2021/10/14/40-per-cent-of-phd-students-are-at-high-risk-of-suicide-study-says-226001 Speaking from experience, I honestly felt I had it worse than anyone. I wouldn't say I was ever suicidal, but I honestly didn't know how I was supposed to cope if I didn't pass. Thankfully, despite having an incredibly bumpy Ph.D. journey, it was all worth it in the end, the viva went incredibly well, and so did the post viva (minor) corrections. Although I was the primary architect of my misery, I thought I'd share some admin/program level fails that made the whole process much more of a mental torment than it should've been: 1) Supervisors do not give back feedback until the final year, or the final few months prior to the (initial) submission deadline. I've sent them quite a lot of work throughout the years, which they've never responded to. The first real feedback they gave me was on my first thesis draft, which they absolutely tore apart. And that was a horrible blow because right up to that point (very close to the original submission date), I had no clue my written work was so bad. We had fairly regular meetings, but at no point did they even hint my progress, as far as written work goes, was not up to the par of doctoral level. This was perhaps the biggest psychological blow, especially when you're close to finishing. I needed 6 more months to re-write the whole thing from scratch. 2) Don't allow students to veer too much off the main aim of the project. You're encouraged to have a divergent mindset at the beginning of your Ph.D. But sometimes, particularly inexperienced researchers can easily fall into hopeless cul-de-sacs that waste a lot of time. I look back at my early work and cringe. I veered off so much initially, that it made my research scope inplausibly vast. I wish my supervisors would've at least hinted much earlier that some of those routes were complete dead ends, that ended up wasting almost a year of my time. This is a tricky one to critique, one should be encouraged to think expansively in the beginning. But less experienced researchers (as I was) can truly find themselves lost. And the intervention often comes too late 3) Admin f\*ckups. There have been so many admin failures, like delays to my compulsory international research visit (part of our Ph.D. training program) until the final few months of the year, or the time when they accidentally SENT THE WRONG DOCUMENTS TO me MY VIVA EXAMINERS INSTEAD OF MY ACTUAL THESIS. Our examination process consists of a 1-hour presentation + Q/A, and then a full classical British style Ph.D. viva. It's literally two viva examinations in one. I did the first part well. And then the chair of my viva told me "we're so sorry, but your examiners didn't receive your actual thesis, they got a minor document by accident". So I had to go through the psychological terror of viva anticipation all over again! 4) Have all the necessary facilities easily available for the student to cope with such pressure. This is a two-way street, the student must be prepared to also ask for help. Which I never did tbh, though looking back, I really should have. Encourage students to attend conferences, and events, and network as much as possible. Don't make them fall into the isolation trap as I had done. Please share some of your ideas! I know a Ph.D. isn't supposed to be easy. Stress is just the reality of life, and a Ph.D. is no different. But it shouldn't get to this level bad! Share your thoughts and experiences!
### Response:
don't just assume thesis advisors know how to manage people. most of them are absolutely horrible at it. literally don't give them the choice and say 'if you're going to be a professor you need to go through this manadatory training'. One of my former bosses was the kind of person where people would ask 'what's he like to work for?' and you know and they know the answer is never 'oh he's just as awesome as everyone says'. but when he became my group lead they had this policy where new group leads had to go through training through the business school. In about six months or maybe less a LOT of his rough edges had come off and I actually started learning some useful management skills from him third hand.
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### Instruction:
"40% of Ph.D. students in the UK at high risk of suicide". I knew Ph.D. life can be really testing, but not to this level!! How can we make the process more emotionally sustainable? https://thetab.com/uk/2021/10/14/40-per-cent-of-phd-students-are-at-high-risk-of-suicide-study-says-226001 Speaking from experience, I honestly felt I had it worse than anyone. I wouldn't say I was ever suicidal, but I honestly didn't know how I was supposed to cope if I didn't pass. Thankfully, despite having an incredibly bumpy Ph.D. journey, it was all worth it in the end, the viva went incredibly well, and so did the post viva (minor) corrections. Although I was the primary architect of my misery, I thought I'd share some admin/program level fails that made the whole process much more of a mental torment than it should've been: 1) Supervisors do not give back feedback until the final year, or the final few months prior to the (initial) submission deadline. I've sent them quite a lot of work throughout the years, which they've never responded to. The first real feedback they gave me was on my first thesis draft, which they absolutely tore apart. And that was a horrible blow because right up to that point (very close to the original submission date), I had no clue my written work was so bad. We had fairly regular meetings, but at no point did they even hint my progress, as far as written work goes, was not up to the par of doctoral level. This was perhaps the biggest psychological blow, especially when you're close to finishing. I needed 6 more months to re-write the whole thing from scratch. 2) Don't allow students to veer too much off the main aim of the project. You're encouraged to have a divergent mindset at the beginning of your Ph.D. But sometimes, particularly inexperienced researchers can easily fall into hopeless cul-de-sacs that waste a lot of time. I look back at my early work and cringe. I veered off so much initially, that it made my research scope inplausibly vast. I wish my supervisors would've at least hinted much earlier that some of those routes were complete dead ends, that ended up wasting almost a year of my time. This is a tricky one to critique, one should be encouraged to think expansively in the beginning. But less experienced researchers (as I was) can truly find themselves lost. And the intervention often comes too late 3) Admin f\*ckups. There have been so many admin failures, like delays to my compulsory international research visit (part of our Ph.D. training program) until the final few months of the year, or the time when they accidentally SENT THE WRONG DOCUMENTS TO me MY VIVA EXAMINERS INSTEAD OF MY ACTUAL THESIS. Our examination process consists of a 1-hour presentation + Q/A, and then a full classical British style Ph.D. viva. It's literally two viva examinations in one. I did the first part well. And then the chair of my viva told me "we're so sorry, but your examiners didn't receive your actual thesis, they got a minor document by accident". So I had to go through the psychological terror of viva anticipation all over again! 4) Have all the necessary facilities easily available for the student to cope with such pressure. This is a two-way street, the student must be prepared to also ask for help. Which I never did tbh, though looking back, I really should have. Encourage students to attend conferences, and events, and network as much as possible. Don't make them fall into the isolation trap as I had done. Please share some of your ideas! I know a Ph.D. isn't supposed to be easy. Stress is just the reality of life, and a Ph.D. is no different. But it shouldn't get to this level bad! Share your thoughts and experiences!
### Response:
A whole culture change. Pursuing a PhD becomes completely consuming and leaves little room for friends, family, hobbies and self-care. Too many PhDs I know gave up their health, their relationships, homes and so forth because of their work. This means that their entire identity (which for most people includes everything above) gets wrapped up in their work so when their work fails, their identity is that of failure. Isolated from home, family and friends, and add bad physical health, it would be shocking to hear that their mental health didn’t decline. Students are thrown into these projects often completely alone, with little guidance or help. Many labs do not have a sense of community and don’t function like a team. Everyone has their own project and that means that failures and successes are not likely shared. That’s great for successes as you don’t have to share first authorship and gives you ownership over your work but it’s miserable in failures and is incredibly isolating. The best projects I’ve worked on were ones that were collaborative. I shared first authorship but when the experiments failed, it wasn’t “my” fault. It was “our” fault and just that small change made a world of difference. It also meant I had more time for myself because I could share the workload. My colleague did all the cell culture experiments and I did all the mouse work and western blotting. Papers got published quicker. I wasn’t stuck doing something I hate and am terrible at (cell culture) and neither was my colleague (who hates animal work). We played to our strengths. This is how science should be now. The projects are too big these days to leave on the shoulders of one 25 year old. It’s absurd.
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### Instruction:
"40% of Ph.D. students in the UK at high risk of suicide". I knew Ph.D. life can be really testing, but not to this level!! How can we make the process more emotionally sustainable? https://thetab.com/uk/2021/10/14/40-per-cent-of-phd-students-are-at-high-risk-of-suicide-study-says-226001 Speaking from experience, I honestly felt I had it worse than anyone. I wouldn't say I was ever suicidal, but I honestly didn't know how I was supposed to cope if I didn't pass. Thankfully, despite having an incredibly bumpy Ph.D. journey, it was all worth it in the end, the viva went incredibly well, and so did the post viva (minor) corrections. Although I was the primary architect of my misery, I thought I'd share some admin/program level fails that made the whole process much more of a mental torment than it should've been: 1) Supervisors do not give back feedback until the final year, or the final few months prior to the (initial) submission deadline. I've sent them quite a lot of work throughout the years, which they've never responded to. The first real feedback they gave me was on my first thesis draft, which they absolutely tore apart. And that was a horrible blow because right up to that point (very close to the original submission date), I had no clue my written work was so bad. We had fairly regular meetings, but at no point did they even hint my progress, as far as written work goes, was not up to the par of doctoral level. This was perhaps the biggest psychological blow, especially when you're close to finishing. I needed 6 more months to re-write the whole thing from scratch. 2) Don't allow students to veer too much off the main aim of the project. You're encouraged to have a divergent mindset at the beginning of your Ph.D. But sometimes, particularly inexperienced researchers can easily fall into hopeless cul-de-sacs that waste a lot of time. I look back at my early work and cringe. I veered off so much initially, that it made my research scope inplausibly vast. I wish my supervisors would've at least hinted much earlier that some of those routes were complete dead ends, that ended up wasting almost a year of my time. This is a tricky one to critique, one should be encouraged to think expansively in the beginning. But less experienced researchers (as I was) can truly find themselves lost. And the intervention often comes too late 3) Admin f\*ckups. There have been so many admin failures, like delays to my compulsory international research visit (part of our Ph.D. training program) until the final few months of the year, or the time when they accidentally SENT THE WRONG DOCUMENTS TO me MY VIVA EXAMINERS INSTEAD OF MY ACTUAL THESIS. Our examination process consists of a 1-hour presentation + Q/A, and then a full classical British style Ph.D. viva. It's literally two viva examinations in one. I did the first part well. And then the chair of my viva told me "we're so sorry, but your examiners didn't receive your actual thesis, they got a minor document by accident". So I had to go through the psychological terror of viva anticipation all over again! 4) Have all the necessary facilities easily available for the student to cope with such pressure. This is a two-way street, the student must be prepared to also ask for help. Which I never did tbh, though looking back, I really should have. Encourage students to attend conferences, and events, and network as much as possible. Don't make them fall into the isolation trap as I had done. Please share some of your ideas! I know a Ph.D. isn't supposed to be easy. Stress is just the reality of life, and a Ph.D. is no different. But it shouldn't get to this level bad! Share your thoughts and experiences!
### Response:
From the article, referring to a study: >40 per cent of PhD students based at UK universities could be “at high risk of suicide” according to the findings of a survey that interviewed 1,263 respondents. Chronic stress levels and acute loneliness were cited as key reasons for the raised suicide risk. Researchers from the universities of Sussex and Westminster also found that eight per cent of respondents had actually attempted to take their own lives. 11 per cent of respondents considered suicide “very often” (more than five times in the past year) while nearly six per cent revealed they “often” thought about (three to four times in the past year). From the actual study: >"For recruitment purposes, every Doctoral School in the UK (N = 162) was asked to promote the survey to their students. The survey was also promoted via social media, Prolific Academic, and paid advertisements on Facebook, with snowball sampling encouraged in the debrief information provided to respondents" (pp. 759-760) The self-selected participation got them 1,263 participants. There are >100,000 doctoral students in the UK. So, some 0.1 % of these chose to participate in a survey about mental health. A very important topic but a misleading article about a study that doesn't even discuss obvious and very likely significant sampling bias.
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### Instruction:
"40% of Ph.D. students in the UK at high risk of suicide". I knew Ph.D. life can be really testing, but not to this level!! How can we make the process more emotionally sustainable? https://thetab.com/uk/2021/10/14/40-per-cent-of-phd-students-are-at-high-risk-of-suicide-study-says-226001 Speaking from experience, I honestly felt I had it worse than anyone. I wouldn't say I was ever suicidal, but I honestly didn't know how I was supposed to cope if I didn't pass. Thankfully, despite having an incredibly bumpy Ph.D. journey, it was all worth it in the end, the viva went incredibly well, and so did the post viva (minor) corrections. Although I was the primary architect of my misery, I thought I'd share some admin/program level fails that made the whole process much more of a mental torment than it should've been: 1) Supervisors do not give back feedback until the final year, or the final few months prior to the (initial) submission deadline. I've sent them quite a lot of work throughout the years, which they've never responded to. The first real feedback they gave me was on my first thesis draft, which they absolutely tore apart. And that was a horrible blow because right up to that point (very close to the original submission date), I had no clue my written work was so bad. We had fairly regular meetings, but at no point did they even hint my progress, as far as written work goes, was not up to the par of doctoral level. This was perhaps the biggest psychological blow, especially when you're close to finishing. I needed 6 more months to re-write the whole thing from scratch. 2) Don't allow students to veer too much off the main aim of the project. You're encouraged to have a divergent mindset at the beginning of your Ph.D. But sometimes, particularly inexperienced researchers can easily fall into hopeless cul-de-sacs that waste a lot of time. I look back at my early work and cringe. I veered off so much initially, that it made my research scope inplausibly vast. I wish my supervisors would've at least hinted much earlier that some of those routes were complete dead ends, that ended up wasting almost a year of my time. This is a tricky one to critique, one should be encouraged to think expansively in the beginning. But less experienced researchers (as I was) can truly find themselves lost. And the intervention often comes too late 3) Admin f\*ckups. There have been so many admin failures, like delays to my compulsory international research visit (part of our Ph.D. training program) until the final few months of the year, or the time when they accidentally SENT THE WRONG DOCUMENTS TO me MY VIVA EXAMINERS INSTEAD OF MY ACTUAL THESIS. Our examination process consists of a 1-hour presentation + Q/A, and then a full classical British style Ph.D. viva. It's literally two viva examinations in one. I did the first part well. And then the chair of my viva told me "we're so sorry, but your examiners didn't receive your actual thesis, they got a minor document by accident". So I had to go through the psychological terror of viva anticipation all over again! 4) Have all the necessary facilities easily available for the student to cope with such pressure. This is a two-way street, the student must be prepared to also ask for help. Which I never did tbh, though looking back, I really should have. Encourage students to attend conferences, and events, and network as much as possible. Don't make them fall into the isolation trap as I had done. Please share some of your ideas! I know a Ph.D. isn't supposed to be easy. Stress is just the reality of life, and a Ph.D. is no different. But it shouldn't get to this level bad! Share your thoughts and experiences!
### Response:
I can't give advice considering I broke down in tears during a lab meeting today...
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### Instruction:
"40% of Ph.D. students in the UK at high risk of suicide". I knew Ph.D. life can be really testing, but not to this level!! How can we make the process more emotionally sustainable? https://thetab.com/uk/2021/10/14/40-per-cent-of-phd-students-are-at-high-risk-of-suicide-study-says-226001 Speaking from experience, I honestly felt I had it worse than anyone. I wouldn't say I was ever suicidal, but I honestly didn't know how I was supposed to cope if I didn't pass. Thankfully, despite having an incredibly bumpy Ph.D. journey, it was all worth it in the end, the viva went incredibly well, and so did the post viva (minor) corrections. Although I was the primary architect of my misery, I thought I'd share some admin/program level fails that made the whole process much more of a mental torment than it should've been: 1) Supervisors do not give back feedback until the final year, or the final few months prior to the (initial) submission deadline. I've sent them quite a lot of work throughout the years, which they've never responded to. The first real feedback they gave me was on my first thesis draft, which they absolutely tore apart. And that was a horrible blow because right up to that point (very close to the original submission date), I had no clue my written work was so bad. We had fairly regular meetings, but at no point did they even hint my progress, as far as written work goes, was not up to the par of doctoral level. This was perhaps the biggest psychological blow, especially when you're close to finishing. I needed 6 more months to re-write the whole thing from scratch. 2) Don't allow students to veer too much off the main aim of the project. You're encouraged to have a divergent mindset at the beginning of your Ph.D. But sometimes, particularly inexperienced researchers can easily fall into hopeless cul-de-sacs that waste a lot of time. I look back at my early work and cringe. I veered off so much initially, that it made my research scope inplausibly vast. I wish my supervisors would've at least hinted much earlier that some of those routes were complete dead ends, that ended up wasting almost a year of my time. This is a tricky one to critique, one should be encouraged to think expansively in the beginning. But less experienced researchers (as I was) can truly find themselves lost. And the intervention often comes too late 3) Admin f\*ckups. There have been so many admin failures, like delays to my compulsory international research visit (part of our Ph.D. training program) until the final few months of the year, or the time when they accidentally SENT THE WRONG DOCUMENTS TO me MY VIVA EXAMINERS INSTEAD OF MY ACTUAL THESIS. Our examination process consists of a 1-hour presentation + Q/A, and then a full classical British style Ph.D. viva. It's literally two viva examinations in one. I did the first part well. And then the chair of my viva told me "we're so sorry, but your examiners didn't receive your actual thesis, they got a minor document by accident". So I had to go through the psychological terror of viva anticipation all over again! 4) Have all the necessary facilities easily available for the student to cope with such pressure. This is a two-way street, the student must be prepared to also ask for help. Which I never did tbh, though looking back, I really should have. Encourage students to attend conferences, and events, and network as much as possible. Don't make them fall into the isolation trap as I had done. Please share some of your ideas! I know a Ph.D. isn't supposed to be easy. Stress is just the reality of life, and a Ph.D. is no different. But it shouldn't get to this level bad! Share your thoughts and experiences!
### Response:
Pay your PhDs more, to the point that they have the freedom to afford basic living on their own (without roommates, parents' help, or food stamps). Create a sustainable social system in which having a PhD in a field of work that is transferrable to another job sector is favored and desirable. Stop underpaying adjuncts. No one with a PhD should be making an onlyfans account, or turning tricks, or living out of their cars by doing the work they do for universities.
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### Instruction:
"40% of Ph.D. students in the UK at high risk of suicide". I knew Ph.D. life can be really testing, but not to this level!! How can we make the process more emotionally sustainable? https://thetab.com/uk/2021/10/14/40-per-cent-of-phd-students-are-at-high-risk-of-suicide-study-says-226001 Speaking from experience, I honestly felt I had it worse than anyone. I wouldn't say I was ever suicidal, but I honestly didn't know how I was supposed to cope if I didn't pass. Thankfully, despite having an incredibly bumpy Ph.D. journey, it was all worth it in the end, the viva went incredibly well, and so did the post viva (minor) corrections. Although I was the primary architect of my misery, I thought I'd share some admin/program level fails that made the whole process much more of a mental torment than it should've been: 1) Supervisors do not give back feedback until the final year, or the final few months prior to the (initial) submission deadline. I've sent them quite a lot of work throughout the years, which they've never responded to. The first real feedback they gave me was on my first thesis draft, which they absolutely tore apart. And that was a horrible blow because right up to that point (very close to the original submission date), I had no clue my written work was so bad. We had fairly regular meetings, but at no point did they even hint my progress, as far as written work goes, was not up to the par of doctoral level. This was perhaps the biggest psychological blow, especially when you're close to finishing. I needed 6 more months to re-write the whole thing from scratch. 2) Don't allow students to veer too much off the main aim of the project. You're encouraged to have a divergent mindset at the beginning of your Ph.D. But sometimes, particularly inexperienced researchers can easily fall into hopeless cul-de-sacs that waste a lot of time. I look back at my early work and cringe. I veered off so much initially, that it made my research scope inplausibly vast. I wish my supervisors would've at least hinted much earlier that some of those routes were complete dead ends, that ended up wasting almost a year of my time. This is a tricky one to critique, one should be encouraged to think expansively in the beginning. But less experienced researchers (as I was) can truly find themselves lost. And the intervention often comes too late 3) Admin f\*ckups. There have been so many admin failures, like delays to my compulsory international research visit (part of our Ph.D. training program) until the final few months of the year, or the time when they accidentally SENT THE WRONG DOCUMENTS TO me MY VIVA EXAMINERS INSTEAD OF MY ACTUAL THESIS. Our examination process consists of a 1-hour presentation + Q/A, and then a full classical British style Ph.D. viva. It's literally two viva examinations in one. I did the first part well. And then the chair of my viva told me "we're so sorry, but your examiners didn't receive your actual thesis, they got a minor document by accident". So I had to go through the psychological terror of viva anticipation all over again! 4) Have all the necessary facilities easily available for the student to cope with such pressure. This is a two-way street, the student must be prepared to also ask for help. Which I never did tbh, though looking back, I really should have. Encourage students to attend conferences, and events, and network as much as possible. Don't make them fall into the isolation trap as I had done. Please share some of your ideas! I know a Ph.D. isn't supposed to be easy. Stress is just the reality of life, and a Ph.D. is no different. But it shouldn't get to this level bad! Share your thoughts and experiences!
### Response:
This is something I repeatedly see whenever people talk about suicide. People think that whatever annoys them must be what is causing someone else in a similar position to be suicidal. Suicide is a complex mental state. It's commonly associated with the mental disease of depression, which is NOT the same thing you feel when something bad happens in your life and you say "I feel depressed." Suicide doesn't have much to do with what you are describing. There are people who have your dream job who have killed themselves. Nothing personal, OP, but you are describing annoyances. Fixing all the annoyances in your PhD program is not going to help anyone on the brink of suicide.
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### Instruction:
"40% of Ph.D. students in the UK at high risk of suicide". I knew Ph.D. life can be really testing, but not to this level!! How can we make the process more emotionally sustainable? https://thetab.com/uk/2021/10/14/40-per-cent-of-phd-students-are-at-high-risk-of-suicide-study-says-226001 Speaking from experience, I honestly felt I had it worse than anyone. I wouldn't say I was ever suicidal, but I honestly didn't know how I was supposed to cope if I didn't pass. Thankfully, despite having an incredibly bumpy Ph.D. journey, it was all worth it in the end, the viva went incredibly well, and so did the post viva (minor) corrections. Although I was the primary architect of my misery, I thought I'd share some admin/program level fails that made the whole process much more of a mental torment than it should've been: 1) Supervisors do not give back feedback until the final year, or the final few months prior to the (initial) submission deadline. I've sent them quite a lot of work throughout the years, which they've never responded to. The first real feedback they gave me was on my first thesis draft, which they absolutely tore apart. And that was a horrible blow because right up to that point (very close to the original submission date), I had no clue my written work was so bad. We had fairly regular meetings, but at no point did they even hint my progress, as far as written work goes, was not up to the par of doctoral level. This was perhaps the biggest psychological blow, especially when you're close to finishing. I needed 6 more months to re-write the whole thing from scratch. 2) Don't allow students to veer too much off the main aim of the project. You're encouraged to have a divergent mindset at the beginning of your Ph.D. But sometimes, particularly inexperienced researchers can easily fall into hopeless cul-de-sacs that waste a lot of time. I look back at my early work and cringe. I veered off so much initially, that it made my research scope inplausibly vast. I wish my supervisors would've at least hinted much earlier that some of those routes were complete dead ends, that ended up wasting almost a year of my time. This is a tricky one to critique, one should be encouraged to think expansively in the beginning. But less experienced researchers (as I was) can truly find themselves lost. And the intervention often comes too late 3) Admin f\*ckups. There have been so many admin failures, like delays to my compulsory international research visit (part of our Ph.D. training program) until the final few months of the year, or the time when they accidentally SENT THE WRONG DOCUMENTS TO me MY VIVA EXAMINERS INSTEAD OF MY ACTUAL THESIS. Our examination process consists of a 1-hour presentation + Q/A, and then a full classical British style Ph.D. viva. It's literally two viva examinations in one. I did the first part well. And then the chair of my viva told me "we're so sorry, but your examiners didn't receive your actual thesis, they got a minor document by accident". So I had to go through the psychological terror of viva anticipation all over again! 4) Have all the necessary facilities easily available for the student to cope with such pressure. This is a two-way street, the student must be prepared to also ask for help. Which I never did tbh, though looking back, I really should have. Encourage students to attend conferences, and events, and network as much as possible. Don't make them fall into the isolation trap as I had done. Please share some of your ideas! I know a Ph.D. isn't supposed to be easy. Stress is just the reality of life, and a Ph.D. is no different. But it shouldn't get to this level bad! Share your thoughts and experiences!
### Response:
LOL.........decrease the wealth gap. But that is not gonna happen.
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### Instruction:
Can we talk about how strictly “STEM” doesn’t really mean job security or good pay anymore? And the illusion is misleading students. STEM = Science Technology Engineering Math I will absolutely agree that: (1) Engineering and Technology, (2) Health Care (sub sector of “Science”) and (3) Statistics/Data Science (subsector of“Math”..?) are in high demand and are usually well paid. Going into any of these specific fields directly is healthy. HOWEVER basic scientists like biologists and chemists are not paid all that great and are certainly not in demand. It’s not quite as bad as being a Art History major but I see many similarities on these Reddit threads between science grad students and humanities grad students. It’s not unusual for grads with M.S. in life sciences to apply for many jobs with hopes of making just $45-50k. Meanwhile their business and engineering counterparts start out at $80k with a just B.S. Ok. So what? Why is this a problem? Well because many naive students believe their hard work, years of late night studying, 45 page thesis, lab work, etc. in life sciences will translate to a good paying job easily. I mean it is “STEM” right? But that’s just not the case. It’s a problem because budding science undergrads should be warned with a flashing red light that if they don’t go into health care directly, their degree will require several more years of study for a job that will probably be underpaid. (Steps off of soap box...)
### Response:
In general, the 'science' portion of STEM has always been incorrect - at least with regards to bachelor's degrees. While Physicists could get away with pretending they were mathematicians with a peculiar obsession with tensors, Biologists and Chemists weren't so lucky.
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### Instruction:
Can we talk about how strictly “STEM” doesn’t really mean job security or good pay anymore? And the illusion is misleading students. STEM = Science Technology Engineering Math I will absolutely agree that: (1) Engineering and Technology, (2) Health Care (sub sector of “Science”) and (3) Statistics/Data Science (subsector of“Math”..?) are in high demand and are usually well paid. Going into any of these specific fields directly is healthy. HOWEVER basic scientists like biologists and chemists are not paid all that great and are certainly not in demand. It’s not quite as bad as being a Art History major but I see many similarities on these Reddit threads between science grad students and humanities grad students. It’s not unusual for grads with M.S. in life sciences to apply for many jobs with hopes of making just $45-50k. Meanwhile their business and engineering counterparts start out at $80k with a just B.S. Ok. So what? Why is this a problem? Well because many naive students believe their hard work, years of late night studying, 45 page thesis, lab work, etc. in life sciences will translate to a good paying job easily. I mean it is “STEM” right? But that’s just not the case. It’s a problem because budding science undergrads should be warned with a flashing red light that if they don’t go into health care directly, their degree will require several more years of study for a job that will probably be underpaid. (Steps off of soap box...)
### Response:
Interesting fact: many humanities majors do far better at mid-career than do common STEM majors. For example, this study places philosophy majors well above chemistry, biology, biochem, and geology for mid-career earnings. While the top-earning degrees are indeed mostly in STEM, all of them are applied degrees-- engineering, computer science, petrochemical engineering, and the like -- or math fields like statistics that have broad application in areas like finance. Traditional science fields like biology not only pay less than some common humanities fields at mid-career, but placement rates for advanced degrees in biology are actually \*worse\* than fields like history for academic careers. STEM is hardly the golden ticket the media like to pretend it is, and if money is the motivator than a very large number of STEM students are actually in the wrong fields entirely.
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### Instruction:
Can we talk about how strictly “STEM” doesn’t really mean job security or good pay anymore? And the illusion is misleading students. STEM = Science Technology Engineering Math I will absolutely agree that: (1) Engineering and Technology, (2) Health Care (sub sector of “Science”) and (3) Statistics/Data Science (subsector of“Math”..?) are in high demand and are usually well paid. Going into any of these specific fields directly is healthy. HOWEVER basic scientists like biologists and chemists are not paid all that great and are certainly not in demand. It’s not quite as bad as being a Art History major but I see many similarities on these Reddit threads between science grad students and humanities grad students. It’s not unusual for grads with M.S. in life sciences to apply for many jobs with hopes of making just $45-50k. Meanwhile their business and engineering counterparts start out at $80k with a just B.S. Ok. So what? Why is this a problem? Well because many naive students believe their hard work, years of late night studying, 45 page thesis, lab work, etc. in life sciences will translate to a good paying job easily. I mean it is “STEM” right? But that’s just not the case. It’s a problem because budding science undergrads should be warned with a flashing red light that if they don’t go into health care directly, their degree will require several more years of study for a job that will probably be underpaid. (Steps off of soap box...)
### Response:
*laughs in philosphy and classics double major because i never had your illusions of wealth*
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### Instruction:
Can we talk about how strictly “STEM” doesn’t really mean job security or good pay anymore? And the illusion is misleading students. STEM = Science Technology Engineering Math I will absolutely agree that: (1) Engineering and Technology, (2) Health Care (sub sector of “Science”) and (3) Statistics/Data Science (subsector of“Math”..?) are in high demand and are usually well paid. Going into any of these specific fields directly is healthy. HOWEVER basic scientists like biologists and chemists are not paid all that great and are certainly not in demand. It’s not quite as bad as being a Art History major but I see many similarities on these Reddit threads between science grad students and humanities grad students. It’s not unusual for grads with M.S. in life sciences to apply for many jobs with hopes of making just $45-50k. Meanwhile their business and engineering counterparts start out at $80k with a just B.S. Ok. So what? Why is this a problem? Well because many naive students believe their hard work, years of late night studying, 45 page thesis, lab work, etc. in life sciences will translate to a good paying job easily. I mean it is “STEM” right? But that’s just not the case. It’s a problem because budding science undergrads should be warned with a flashing red light that if they don’t go into health care directly, their degree will require several more years of study for a job that will probably be underpaid. (Steps off of soap box...)
### Response:
Yep, you hit the nail on the head. Fortunately, there's a bit of overlap- I moved from DNA sequencing into genomic data science. My pay literally went up 2.5x when I did this
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### Instruction:
Can we talk about how strictly “STEM” doesn’t really mean job security or good pay anymore? And the illusion is misleading students. STEM = Science Technology Engineering Math I will absolutely agree that: (1) Engineering and Technology, (2) Health Care (sub sector of “Science”) and (3) Statistics/Data Science (subsector of“Math”..?) are in high demand and are usually well paid. Going into any of these specific fields directly is healthy. HOWEVER basic scientists like biologists and chemists are not paid all that great and are certainly not in demand. It’s not quite as bad as being a Art History major but I see many similarities on these Reddit threads between science grad students and humanities grad students. It’s not unusual for grads with M.S. in life sciences to apply for many jobs with hopes of making just $45-50k. Meanwhile their business and engineering counterparts start out at $80k with a just B.S. Ok. So what? Why is this a problem? Well because many naive students believe their hard work, years of late night studying, 45 page thesis, lab work, etc. in life sciences will translate to a good paying job easily. I mean it is “STEM” right? But that’s just not the case. It’s a problem because budding science undergrads should be warned with a flashing red light that if they don’t go into health care directly, their degree will require several more years of study for a job that will probably be underpaid. (Steps off of soap box...)
### Response:
When people say STEM they mean engineering.
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### Instruction:
Can we talk about how strictly “STEM” doesn’t really mean job security or good pay anymore? And the illusion is misleading students. STEM = Science Technology Engineering Math I will absolutely agree that: (1) Engineering and Technology, (2) Health Care (sub sector of “Science”) and (3) Statistics/Data Science (subsector of“Math”..?) are in high demand and are usually well paid. Going into any of these specific fields directly is healthy. HOWEVER basic scientists like biologists and chemists are not paid all that great and are certainly not in demand. It’s not quite as bad as being a Art History major but I see many similarities on these Reddit threads between science grad students and humanities grad students. It’s not unusual for grads with M.S. in life sciences to apply for many jobs with hopes of making just $45-50k. Meanwhile their business and engineering counterparts start out at $80k with a just B.S. Ok. So what? Why is this a problem? Well because many naive students believe their hard work, years of late night studying, 45 page thesis, lab work, etc. in life sciences will translate to a good paying job easily. I mean it is “STEM” right? But that’s just not the case. It’s a problem because budding science undergrads should be warned with a flashing red light that if they don’t go into health care directly, their degree will require several more years of study for a job that will probably be underpaid. (Steps off of soap box...)
### Response:
In bio lots of people go for funded phds, so the job market tends to place a ceiling on career growth for people with just a B.S. or even an M.S. Bio is a hot market if you are going the computational or molecular route, but I bet doing field work is pretty rough right now.
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### Instruction:
Can we talk about how strictly “STEM” doesn’t really mean job security or good pay anymore? And the illusion is misleading students. STEM = Science Technology Engineering Math I will absolutely agree that: (1) Engineering and Technology, (2) Health Care (sub sector of “Science”) and (3) Statistics/Data Science (subsector of“Math”..?) are in high demand and are usually well paid. Going into any of these specific fields directly is healthy. HOWEVER basic scientists like biologists and chemists are not paid all that great and are certainly not in demand. It’s not quite as bad as being a Art History major but I see many similarities on these Reddit threads between science grad students and humanities grad students. It’s not unusual for grads with M.S. in life sciences to apply for many jobs with hopes of making just $45-50k. Meanwhile their business and engineering counterparts start out at $80k with a just B.S. Ok. So what? Why is this a problem? Well because many naive students believe their hard work, years of late night studying, 45 page thesis, lab work, etc. in life sciences will translate to a good paying job easily. I mean it is “STEM” right? But that’s just not the case. It’s a problem because budding science undergrads should be warned with a flashing red light that if they don’t go into health care directly, their degree will require several more years of study for a job that will probably be underpaid. (Steps off of soap box...)
### Response:
At this point many health care professions have their own degrees and are not STEM. The main exception is physicians, which all biology freshmen think they will be. It frustrates me that by the time they co.e to terms with the fact they won't be physicians (organic chemistry) they have sunk years into courses which don't count toward professional health degrees.
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### Instruction:
Can we talk about how strictly “STEM” doesn’t really mean job security or good pay anymore? And the illusion is misleading students. STEM = Science Technology Engineering Math I will absolutely agree that: (1) Engineering and Technology, (2) Health Care (sub sector of “Science”) and (3) Statistics/Data Science (subsector of“Math”..?) are in high demand and are usually well paid. Going into any of these specific fields directly is healthy. HOWEVER basic scientists like biologists and chemists are not paid all that great and are certainly not in demand. It’s not quite as bad as being a Art History major but I see many similarities on these Reddit threads between science grad students and humanities grad students. It’s not unusual for grads with M.S. in life sciences to apply for many jobs with hopes of making just $45-50k. Meanwhile their business and engineering counterparts start out at $80k with a just B.S. Ok. So what? Why is this a problem? Well because many naive students believe their hard work, years of late night studying, 45 page thesis, lab work, etc. in life sciences will translate to a good paying job easily. I mean it is “STEM” right? But that’s just not the case. It’s a problem because budding science undergrads should be warned with a flashing red light that if they don’t go into health care directly, their degree will require several more years of study for a job that will probably be underpaid. (Steps off of soap box...)
### Response:
We need to stop thinking about degrees and the jobs they purportedly ensure and start thinking and talking about the relation between commitment and competency. If you are a s*** student with an engineering degree but you hate engineering, then you probably won’t get a good job. If you’re a great student in chemistry, it will be because you love it, you commit to it, and you stand a pretty good chance of getting a good job. The problem with all of these studies on the relationship between jobs and degrees is that they are EXTREMELY bad at differentiating between levels of competency and commitment amongst recent graduates. I’m not saying “work harder,” by the way. I can see people extrapolating that from this comment. The truth is that people work too hard sometimes to make a degree work for them that doesn’t really fit their temperament or personality. Find what you love and can commit to. Go from there. Do not pick a degree for the job it will get you. Edit: a word
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### Instruction:
Can we talk about how strictly “STEM” doesn’t really mean job security or good pay anymore? And the illusion is misleading students. STEM = Science Technology Engineering Math I will absolutely agree that: (1) Engineering and Technology, (2) Health Care (sub sector of “Science”) and (3) Statistics/Data Science (subsector of“Math”..?) are in high demand and are usually well paid. Going into any of these specific fields directly is healthy. HOWEVER basic scientists like biologists and chemists are not paid all that great and are certainly not in demand. It’s not quite as bad as being a Art History major but I see many similarities on these Reddit threads between science grad students and humanities grad students. It’s not unusual for grads with M.S. in life sciences to apply for many jobs with hopes of making just $45-50k. Meanwhile their business and engineering counterparts start out at $80k with a just B.S. Ok. So what? Why is this a problem? Well because many naive students believe their hard work, years of late night studying, 45 page thesis, lab work, etc. in life sciences will translate to a good paying job easily. I mean it is “STEM” right? But that’s just not the case. It’s a problem because budding science undergrads should be warned with a flashing red light that if they don’t go into health care directly, their degree will require several more years of study for a job that will probably be underpaid. (Steps off of soap box...)
### Response:
Here's some data: https://cew.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/Economic-Value-of-College-Majors-Full-Report-v2.compressed.pdf Here's chemistry: https://www.acs.org/content/dam/acsorg/careers/salaries/secure/salaries/new-graduates-2014-revised.pdf Then I got bored
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### Instruction:
Can we talk about how strictly “STEM” doesn’t really mean job security or good pay anymore? And the illusion is misleading students. STEM = Science Technology Engineering Math I will absolutely agree that: (1) Engineering and Technology, (2) Health Care (sub sector of “Science”) and (3) Statistics/Data Science (subsector of“Math”..?) are in high demand and are usually well paid. Going into any of these specific fields directly is healthy. HOWEVER basic scientists like biologists and chemists are not paid all that great and are certainly not in demand. It’s not quite as bad as being a Art History major but I see many similarities on these Reddit threads between science grad students and humanities grad students. It’s not unusual for grads with M.S. in life sciences to apply for many jobs with hopes of making just $45-50k. Meanwhile their business and engineering counterparts start out at $80k with a just B.S. Ok. So what? Why is this a problem? Well because many naive students believe their hard work, years of late night studying, 45 page thesis, lab work, etc. in life sciences will translate to a good paying job easily. I mean it is “STEM” right? But that’s just not the case. It’s a problem because budding science undergrads should be warned with a flashing red light that if they don’t go into health care directly, their degree will require several more years of study for a job that will probably be underpaid. (Steps off of soap box...)
### Response:
It‘s just as if there’s no demand anymore for any workforce whatsoever. I mean I didn’t know it looks as grim for STEM grads as well but I would say this is clear evidence that there’s a structural phenomenon underlying this …
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### Instruction:
Can we talk about how strictly “STEM” doesn’t really mean job security or good pay anymore? And the illusion is misleading students. STEM = Science Technology Engineering Math I will absolutely agree that: (1) Engineering and Technology, (2) Health Care (sub sector of “Science”) and (3) Statistics/Data Science (subsector of“Math”..?) are in high demand and are usually well paid. Going into any of these specific fields directly is healthy. HOWEVER basic scientists like biologists and chemists are not paid all that great and are certainly not in demand. It’s not quite as bad as being a Art History major but I see many similarities on these Reddit threads between science grad students and humanities grad students. It’s not unusual for grads with M.S. in life sciences to apply for many jobs with hopes of making just $45-50k. Meanwhile their business and engineering counterparts start out at $80k with a just B.S. Ok. So what? Why is this a problem? Well because many naive students believe their hard work, years of late night studying, 45 page thesis, lab work, etc. in life sciences will translate to a good paying job easily. I mean it is “STEM” right? But that’s just not the case. It’s a problem because budding science undergrads should be warned with a flashing red light that if they don’t go into health care directly, their degree will require several more years of study for a job that will probably be underpaid. (Steps off of soap box...)
### Response:
I agree... But I'll add I feel this way about most jobs. I'm a phd student but only after coming back to school after ten years working in a different industry. When I get to great school and I hear the panic about how jobs are scarce, get out to industry where the real money is, I want to tell people it's just not true. Some people get lucky and change station. Most people stay in their social economic class their parents were in and according to rich billionaires in Forbes the major players for success are having had connections to begin with (silver spoon) and luck. Every market is horrible right now and they are all suffering. Pensions and benefits have been slashed in every market by enormous percents. Younger genx and millennials will be the first to not only make less than their parents but live shorter lives or have more health problems. I had arthritis at 25. I saw a girl waiting tables today about 22, with a knee brace..... That didn't happen to anyone fifty years ago except vets. I'm not sure there are any safe harbors anywhere, not even in stem. The only thing I can do is study what I love and accept I will always be poor, have debt, but at least my life has meaning and I don't want to die like I did in my last career.
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### Instruction:
Update: gave my 15 minute presentation about my PhD at a job interview Hi all- I just wanted to say thanks x1000 to all your super helpful tips. I posted here last week about summarizing my doctorate work for a job interview. The job interview was about 2 hours of questions/discussion going over the position and my past experience. I then gave my presentation, which in the end took 18 minutes 😬. I summarized two papers from my work, the 2 I thought would be most interesting to the outside world. And per your tips, I really just gave the most high level take home messages, didn’t get too lost in methods and details. And in the end I was offered the job 🎉🎊. Thanks reddit family!!
### Response:
what's the position? what's your field?
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### Instruction:
Finally! Open Science -- All US Federally Funded Research must now be Freely Available! https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2022/08/25/ostp-issues-guidance-to-make-federally-funded-research-freely-available-without-delay/ ​ Research results should be freely available. Too excited not to share...
### Response:
We had something similar pass in Canada a few years back. The ultimate outcome was that it was decided that PIs could upload a pre-formatting post-review draft of the manuscript to their website or university repository and that would be sufficient. It doesn't make journal-formatted papers free.
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### Instruction:
Finally! Open Science -- All US Federally Funded Research must now be Freely Available! https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2022/08/25/ostp-issues-guidance-to-make-federally-funded-research-freely-available-without-delay/ ​ Research results should be freely available. Too excited not to share...
### Response:
Do you still have to pay the open access fee for publishing?
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### Instruction:
Finally! Open Science -- All US Federally Funded Research must now be Freely Available! https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2022/08/25/ostp-issues-guidance-to-make-federally-funded-research-freely-available-without-delay/ ​ Research results should be freely available. Too excited not to share...
### Response:
So now publishers can just crank up their OA fees since you don’t have a choice but to pay them. Everyone ups the costings in their grant apps to compensate. These costs are borne by the public. Less money being spent on actual science, more profits for the publishers.
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### Instruction:
Finally! Open Science -- All US Federally Funded Research must now be Freely Available! https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2022/08/25/ostp-issues-guidance-to-make-federally-funded-research-freely-available-without-delay/ ​ Research results should be freely available. Too excited not to share...
### Response:
1) OA requirement for all NIH funded research was already a thing. This just removes the delay of a year. 2) I haven't read the whole law, but right now you pay a pub fee, and open access fee in addition to your subscription to the journals and this does nothing to demand that the journals don't charge for it, so the onus is on researchers, who will mostly do this from their grant, so the tax payers are still paying twice for this. Not sure why you are so excited?
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### Instruction:
Do you think universities are becoming too "business-minded"? I'm referring to a growing trend where universities are churning graduates without any regard for jobs or educational achievement. Equally frightening is this over-reliance on International students, solely for the money they can charge them. It feels thats universities have stopped becoming higher education centres and are profit generating businesses. Do you agree and if so which country are you referencing?
### Response:
Yes. United States. On the one hand, academic ideals were perhaps a bit too idealistic; after all, somebody does have to pay to keep universities running. As I see it (which may not be especially well) there are 3 problems. 1. Students who just want jobs and don't care about learning. They just want to pay for a certificate. 2. Administration should not be separate from faculty. Some admin is necessary, but when people talk about a university, they often mean the administration.... They should mean the faculty and students but the power has been taken (and perhaps given) away from them. Students should take more responsibility for things like housing, while faculty, the same people who teach, should be making many of the decisions presidents or provosts do. 3. State governments who don't properly fund institutions who then have to take business like approaches to keep the lights on.
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### Instruction:
Do you think universities are becoming too "business-minded"? I'm referring to a growing trend where universities are churning graduates without any regard for jobs or educational achievement. Equally frightening is this over-reliance on International students, solely for the money they can charge them. It feels thats universities have stopped becoming higher education centres and are profit generating businesses. Do you agree and if so which country are you referencing?
### Response:
obviously. Just from a very simple "big picture" perspective. USA government gives money (student loans) to people for university, universities increase student costs to soak up all that extra money. Other independent point: USA college sports is BIG BUSINESS. It is a billion dollar industry, and its raw resource is 18 year old kids. They are consumed, universities chew them up and spit them out, and profit.
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### Instruction:
Do you think universities are becoming too "business-minded"? I'm referring to a growing trend where universities are churning graduates without any regard for jobs or educational achievement. Equally frightening is this over-reliance on International students, solely for the money they can charge them. It feels thats universities have stopped becoming higher education centres and are profit generating businesses. Do you agree and if so which country are you referencing?
### Response:
Masters programs in the US. Yes 100%.
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### Instruction:
Do you think universities are becoming too "business-minded"? I'm referring to a growing trend where universities are churning graduates without any regard for jobs or educational achievement. Equally frightening is this over-reliance on International students, solely for the money they can charge them. It feels thats universities have stopped becoming higher education centres and are profit generating businesses. Do you agree and if so which country are you referencing?
### Response:
Australia leads all other countries in this case.
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### Instruction:
Do you think universities are becoming too "business-minded"? I'm referring to a growing trend where universities are churning graduates without any regard for jobs or educational achievement. Equally frightening is this over-reliance on International students, solely for the money they can charge them. It feels thats universities have stopped becoming higher education centres and are profit generating businesses. Do you agree and if so which country are you referencing?
### Response:
tldr: Holy fuck yes. (not so)Little story. I'm a PhD student at an English university (I won't get too specific, but some of you might still be able to guess where - then again, I think a lot of this is true everywhere). The UK government allowed uni's to charge up to £9000 per year tuition a few years ago (while also cutting lots of government support for university). The typical amount beforehand was £3k (for domestic students at least; internationals were often 1.5x higher or more). Immediately, pretty much every uni put their fees up to £9k. \[From what I understand of US universities/collages, it's only a few elite expensive ones that change anything equivalent or more, and even then very few students pay all of that top-whack themselves due to various grants and scholarships - there is still gov or scholarships in the UK, but you're not coming out of uni without a big fat debt\] Fortunately, I was in Scotland where tuition was (& is) free for long-term residents of Scotland or EU...just not England, which was hilarious. Anyway, this change happened while I was in my second year of 5 (inc. Master's). The class size when I started was about 30-35. This gradually whittled down to around 20 getting Batchelor's degrees and 5 of us getting Master's there. The year group after us was about 40 in first year, and the one after that started with 70. I heard the lecturers worrying how they were going to accommodate so many students in all the practicals, and where they could possibly lecture (I think there were only 5 lecture theatres at the uni that were designed to accommodate more than 55 at once - most rooms had only \~30 seats at most, though I guess they could've packed more chairs into some of them if they made the desks smaller). It wasn't just our department facing the massive influx. Cut to my current institution, where I did some lab demonstration and marking of the first years (oh my god. the marking. If you're reading this and you still have some essay's to write, please for the love of god put some effort into it; you may only have to write one, we have to mark a hundred and try to keep our faith in the future of humanity intact - also, if they give you a guide on how to write an essay; ffs read it). I therefore had contact with all 200 new students in my department. My current uni is bigger than my old one, but not THAT much bigger, so most departments were bursting at the seams. It was so full, the uni decided to move the start times to half past the hour; allowing them to start at 8:30 & finish at 5:30. Literally no one like this. Except possibly the bean counters who could now get maximal utility out of their lectures ... oh, I don't believe they saw a pay increase commensurate with these longer hours by the way. Couple all this with the already stressful conditions many academics face nowadays, and it's hardly surprising that it's been getting quite fraught the last few years. I've been here 3 years, every year's new intake has been about 200 to my department alone. They are franticly trying to build more space for everything. Meanwhile, my uni was in the news for one of the largest payouts to a retiring vice-chancellor ever (equivalent to around 93 student's tuition that year) on top of his pension. One day I was bored of analysing my own data, so I spent a harrowing afternoon looking up all the properties the uni had available for rent (the uni, or it's subsidiaries, none of the many private companies parasitising off the students' housing needs). I worked out that they had a turnover of around £25 Million a year, just in rent. They are currently building more student housing. I later looked up the uni's publicly available accounting document; the last financial year had a turnover of £400M, and a profit of £40M (even after all the building work across multiple campuses and paying massive bonuses to top staff I've never seen). Despite this, the finance department are busily bullying the academic staff into cutting costs while delivering better lectures and bringing in even more grant money (bit more difficult what with Brexit looming over our heads), and they are not-so-quietly threatening to close either the physics or engineering department (physics has been struggling to meet their student recruitment targets, so they fined them...no, I don't know how an institution can fine itself for not getting enough money either - BUT - Engineering, despite getting more students in and exceeding their targets, is more expensive to run per student and the building is currently having the asbestos removed...again, so it's still a toss up). That's not an empty threat either; they've closed a department before (and NOW some of you know exactly where I'm at). What we can be fairly confident in is that the business school is safe. All their students need is Excel, and that may go some way towards explaining why they get all the new comfy chairs and plush carpets. One last example, because I think it is particularly germane: In order to charge £9k/year, the universities must demonstrate to the government that they are 'committed' to outreach to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. As part of my PhD program I am required to carry out a certain number of hours of outreach (I'm not complaining, it's mostly pretty fun, but that it was a requirement was confusing to me until I found out the finial incentive). I have therefore met many people from the uni's outreach team, and every single one of them when I 'sarcastically' suggest 'Maybe not charging them nine grand a year would encourage these students to come here,' they all (unironically) agree with me. They know exactly what is needed, but whenever they propose grants for disadvantaged local students, or similar, it is immediately shot down as too expensive. It's all especially fervent in STEM, where there is a special box you get to tick if your outreach event would encourage young girls to come to you (and yea, it really does sound that creepy in the meetings too) - it's all pretty ineffectual though, because to get science students at all, they need to take the science classes at school; so really we'd need to target children before they're 11 (after this pupils in the UK pick their subjects for high school, and if you don't pick sciences then, most schools won't let you take it later \[because they're worried you'll drag their average marks down\]). Despite this, most of our outreach is targeted at high schools and specifically 16-18 year olds (because that yields more immediate results in student uptake). I was involved in a multi-university effort in this vain, so I know it's not a unique issue to us. All of this activity, which is good as far as it goes, could be massively improved by the university as a whole having a genuine desire to educate rather than primarily be to make money. Oh, did I forget to mention they're all registered charities? I could go on about how the profit-driven attitude provides some very perverse incentives for everyone, or specifically talk about how much they are courting Chinese students obsessively (I am of course happy we're educating the world, but they are targeting China more than the the non-European world combined, and it's nakedly about money), and I won't go into too much detail about the companies (who have no internal training programs) I've heard complain graduates don't have the exact specific skills they need, but sufficed to say; I am getting my doctorate and fucking off to be unemployable somewhere else.
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### Instruction:
Do you think universities are becoming too "business-minded"? I'm referring to a growing trend where universities are churning graduates without any regard for jobs or educational achievement. Equally frightening is this over-reliance on International students, solely for the money they can charge them. It feels thats universities have stopped becoming higher education centres and are profit generating businesses. Do you agree and if so which country are you referencing?
### Response:
Education is a commodity. The ivory towers fell long ago.
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### Instruction:
Do you think universities are becoming too "business-minded"? I'm referring to a growing trend where universities are churning graduates without any regard for jobs or educational achievement. Equally frightening is this over-reliance on International students, solely for the money they can charge them. It feels thats universities have stopped becoming higher education centres and are profit generating businesses. Do you agree and if so which country are you referencing?
### Response:
what choice do they have? Universities used to be heavily publicly funded. Increasingly they are not. If they cannot rely on public funds they must rely on donations, asset management and look to their students as sources of income. They have to essentially operate as hybrid businesses/charities if they wish to continue existing. Ultimately universities can remain sites of debate and education if the general public wishes them to be so. Politically I'd say at the the trend is against that I will say though that many western universities, for all their business minded characteristics, are still nonetheless critical sites of education. If you want to compare, look at what passes for university education in countries such as India. Bad as things are with the Americas, Brits or Australians, they could be much much worse. A college student still retains a much higher chance of accessing diverse opportunities if they graduate from a mid-tier American university in contrast to even a top tier Indian university.
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### Instruction:
Do you think universities are becoming too "business-minded"? I'm referring to a growing trend where universities are churning graduates without any regard for jobs or educational achievement. Equally frightening is this over-reliance on International students, solely for the money they can charge them. It feels thats universities have stopped becoming higher education centres and are profit generating businesses. Do you agree and if so which country are you referencing?
### Response:
Yes!!! United States. Even though most traditional institutions are not-for-profit, it doesn't mean that there is not someone getting rich. I was fortunate enough to have a professor in my Ph.D. program who was also on the board of trustees. He was not afraid to tell it like it was and said that one of his main functions on the board was to wine and dine alums to get them to increase donations postmortem (i.e. in their wills). And....he got paid over 500,000 a year to do that (in addition to the perks of the fancy office, designated parking spot, etc.). He talked about how much football and basketball coaches make, and how sports directly impacts admissions (which he supported with institutional historical data). He talked about how he was the ONLY member on the board with a background in education. All the others were businessmen, lawyers, finance people, etc. Given how much power the board has, and the fact that it was run by a bunch of businessmen, it made total sense that the university essentially is a business. Just instead of making stockholders rich, the money is used to increase salaries of higher admins, expand the campus in some way, or increase endowments for future endeavors.
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### Instruction:
Do you think universities are becoming too "business-minded"? I'm referring to a growing trend where universities are churning graduates without any regard for jobs or educational achievement. Equally frightening is this over-reliance on International students, solely for the money they can charge them. It feels thats universities have stopped becoming higher education centres and are profit generating businesses. Do you agree and if so which country are you referencing?
### Response:
In a capitalist society, it would be foolish to think that universities would not eventually be decoded by flows of capital.
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### Instruction:
Do you think universities are becoming too "business-minded"? I'm referring to a growing trend where universities are churning graduates without any regard for jobs or educational achievement. Equally frightening is this over-reliance on International students, solely for the money they can charge them. It feels thats universities have stopped becoming higher education centres and are profit generating businesses. Do you agree and if so which country are you referencing?
### Response:
All the admins sitting on the board of my university (40,000 undergrads in a big city) all are CEOs or executives for large companies in my province.
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### Instruction:
Do you think universities are becoming too "business-minded"? I'm referring to a growing trend where universities are churning graduates without any regard for jobs or educational achievement. Equally frightening is this over-reliance on International students, solely for the money they can charge them. It feels thats universities have stopped becoming higher education centres and are profit generating businesses. Do you agree and if so which country are you referencing?
### Response:
Have been for awhile. Australia. For example, the Masters of Engineering courses in this country are condensed bachelors courses minus the support with very little prospect for integrating into industry. Theyre cash grabs attracting international students mostly. Engineering degrees are almost always bachelors here with an integrated internship component while the graduate version is obsolete and only really attracts international students. It's highly unethical.
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### Instruction:
Does anyone else think that there should be more restrictions on anything calling itself a university or college? Examples: Lowe's University, Prager University, and so on. Even things adding U after their name to imply University. Should businesses not be allowed to use the word University or U (when implying University) or College?
### Response:
These regulations exist by state. To even use the word school in texas, you have to show your graduates get jobs in the field they studied.
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### Instruction:
Does anyone else think that there should be more restrictions on anything calling itself a university or college? Examples: Lowe's University, Prager University, and so on. Even things adding U after their name to imply University. Should businesses not be allowed to use the word University or U (when implying University) or College?
### Response:
You mean my degree in Hamburgerology from Hamburger University isn’t accredited?
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### Instruction:
Does anyone else think that there should be more restrictions on anything calling itself a university or college? Examples: Lowe's University, Prager University, and so on. Even things adding U after their name to imply University. Should businesses not be allowed to use the word University or U (when implying University) or College?
### Response:
Yes. Case and point: Trump University.
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### Instruction:
Does anyone else think that there should be more restrictions on anything calling itself a university or college? Examples: Lowe's University, Prager University, and so on. Even things adding U after their name to imply University. Should businesses not be allowed to use the word University or U (when implying University) or College?
### Response:
Yes, but my bigger complaint is actual colleges and universities behaving like for-profits
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### Instruction:
Does anyone else think that there should be more restrictions on anything calling itself a university or college? Examples: Lowe's University, Prager University, and so on. Even things adding U after their name to imply University. Should businesses not be allowed to use the word University or U (when implying University) or College?
### Response:
I'd be happy enough if a bunch of universities admitted that they're just research labs and football clubs that offer a few classes to maintain the fiction that they're educational institutions. That said, yes I think it was criminal that Trump University was allowed to market itself as such.
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### Instruction:
Does anyone else think that there should be more restrictions on anything calling itself a university or college? Examples: Lowe's University, Prager University, and so on. Even things adding U after their name to imply University. Should businesses not be allowed to use the word University or U (when implying University) or College?
### Response:
In the UK the word University is a protected term. Vast vast majority are publicly funded institutions and the for-profit ones are all crap.
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### Instruction:
Does anyone else think that there should be more restrictions on anything calling itself a university or college? Examples: Lowe's University, Prager University, and so on. Even things adding U after their name to imply University. Should businesses not be allowed to use the word University or U (when implying University) or College?
### Response:
In America cash is king they literally don’t give a fuck about you or anyone. Everything is a business and they will push you down the stairs if it means profit.
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### Instruction:
Does anyone else think that there should be more restrictions on anything calling itself a university or college? Examples: Lowe's University, Prager University, and so on. Even things adding U after their name to imply University. Should businesses not be allowed to use the word University or U (when implying University) or College?
### Response:
Trump University
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### Instruction:
Does anyone else think that there should be more restrictions on anything calling itself a university or college? Examples: Lowe's University, Prager University, and so on. Even things adding U after their name to imply University. Should businesses not be allowed to use the word University or U (when implying University) or College?
### Response:
Especially all these For-Profit colleges that only cheapen the whole idea of University. As someone said, real universities should not be businesses. Otherwise you end up with things like Trump University.
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### Instruction:
Professor is either developing dementia or burnt out... An older professor in our group has always had a very rude character but lately she's been super weird. I've cc'd her in an email to a collaborator about a data transfer and she replied: "why are you asking him how to handle him the data?? I don't understand!! Didn't I tell you to handle him the data?". When I asked her what I should present to an online meeting that was about to happen in 6 days she organized she replied "what on earth are you talking about?". She had no idea there was a meeting... I talked to the people she's the PI of and they're desperate. In the last 6 months she's been constantly sending them incoherent emails with contradictory request, if the text even made sense at all. She refuses face to face meetings (both her and her staff have been fully vaccinated for more than 4 months). They've also told me that... In most of these rambling emails she keeps writing "I don't understand". A sentence she hasn't ever used before. And all of this of course results in huge delays in all of the projects. She's probably got some huge issues... We seriously suspect dementia (she's the PI of a team that studies Alzheimer's disease) or maybe just a burnout due to pandemic stress... And... How do we tactfully deal with this? What exactly can be done about this?
### Response:
this isn't something that you should be expected to manage on your own. talk to her line manager about your concerns - dean, head of school, whatever it is there for you. approaching this and working to find solutions is their problem, not yours. lastly, these are very valid concerns and you are 100% justified in approaching a higher-up about them. you might been guilty like you are tattling, but things are dysfunctional right now and it is affecting the work environment, and by taking appropriate measures in a professional way, you are doing the right thing.
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### Instruction:
Professor is either developing dementia or burnt out... An older professor in our group has always had a very rude character but lately she's been super weird. I've cc'd her in an email to a collaborator about a data transfer and she replied: "why are you asking him how to handle him the data?? I don't understand!! Didn't I tell you to handle him the data?". When I asked her what I should present to an online meeting that was about to happen in 6 days she organized she replied "what on earth are you talking about?". She had no idea there was a meeting... I talked to the people she's the PI of and they're desperate. In the last 6 months she's been constantly sending them incoherent emails with contradictory request, if the text even made sense at all. She refuses face to face meetings (both her and her staff have been fully vaccinated for more than 4 months). They've also told me that... In most of these rambling emails she keeps writing "I don't understand". A sentence she hasn't ever used before. And all of this of course results in huge delays in all of the projects. She's probably got some huge issues... We seriously suspect dementia (she's the PI of a team that studies Alzheimer's disease) or maybe just a burnout due to pandemic stress... And... How do we tactfully deal with this? What exactly can be done about this?
### Response:
Sorry for the long answer, but I have been in a similar situation. My graduate advisor was older, and had always been famously difficult to work with. While prickly and not great at communicating, the first few years were managable. During the last two years of my degree, she became unbelievably difficult to work with. She would disappear for weeks at a time and when she resurfaced she would send incoherent emails, she never provided any feedback on research and clearly was not keeping up with the literature, she would miss important deadlines and come up with wild, implausible excuses as to why - a couple of times I went to her house (she lived alone), and I found her front door open, or other things very out of place. Lots of concerning things, and I firmly believe she had dementia. She ended up retiring before I finished my degree (while I was doing my dissertation research abroad, and she didn't even officially tell me) and I finished with her as my chair but as an emeritus professor. No one ever directly addressed her health, but I had multiple meetings with my other committee members and department chair before defending where it was made clear to me that she would not be an obstacle in me finishing my degree. I also had committee members tell me they would step in and write letters of recommendation (it was not *directly* addressed as to why I would need that) and other such offers that made it clear to me that everyone was aware of the situation. I finished up one paper with her after I graduated, but after that I moved on and found more reliable people to work with. At the time it made me absolutely crazy and I could not believe everyone would just let her behave like that, but looking back, I think it was actually handled with a fair amount of grace. She retired (I never got an answer as to whether she was forced to or decided herself she needed to), the department made sure I completed my degree, and my committee helped me get a job. I would suggest you reach out to the other people she works with and discuss the situation without being to explicit before going to any higher ups. Bring evidence of her behavior with you if you do go to the dean, but only show it if it becomes clear that they are unaware of the behavior (I always had the emails/ texts/ etc. of her communication with me for meetings with other people, but never needed to show them). Figure out which of her students can finish their research with her minimal envolvement, and who may need to transition research groups. If you can, try to finish up or disentangle all of your own research collaborations with her and then cut ties. Also, if you are in a position, think about her current students and if you can offer to be references for them. It was incredibly valuable for me to have other people to step in and write recommendations when she could/ would not. Hope this helps!
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### Instruction:
Professor is either developing dementia or burnt out... An older professor in our group has always had a very rude character but lately she's been super weird. I've cc'd her in an email to a collaborator about a data transfer and she replied: "why are you asking him how to handle him the data?? I don't understand!! Didn't I tell you to handle him the data?". When I asked her what I should present to an online meeting that was about to happen in 6 days she organized she replied "what on earth are you talking about?". She had no idea there was a meeting... I talked to the people she's the PI of and they're desperate. In the last 6 months she's been constantly sending them incoherent emails with contradictory request, if the text even made sense at all. She refuses face to face meetings (both her and her staff have been fully vaccinated for more than 4 months). They've also told me that... In most of these rambling emails she keeps writing "I don't understand". A sentence she hasn't ever used before. And all of this of course results in huge delays in all of the projects. She's probably got some huge issues... We seriously suspect dementia (she's the PI of a team that studies Alzheimer's disease) or maybe just a burnout due to pandemic stress... And... How do we tactfully deal with this? What exactly can be done about this?
### Response:
Everyone needs to print their emails and present them as evidence to the dept chair and if necessary the dean.
| 136
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### Instruction:
Professor is either developing dementia or burnt out... An older professor in our group has always had a very rude character but lately she's been super weird. I've cc'd her in an email to a collaborator about a data transfer and she replied: "why are you asking him how to handle him the data?? I don't understand!! Didn't I tell you to handle him the data?". When I asked her what I should present to an online meeting that was about to happen in 6 days she organized she replied "what on earth are you talking about?". She had no idea there was a meeting... I talked to the people she's the PI of and they're desperate. In the last 6 months she's been constantly sending them incoherent emails with contradictory request, if the text even made sense at all. She refuses face to face meetings (both her and her staff have been fully vaccinated for more than 4 months). They've also told me that... In most of these rambling emails she keeps writing "I don't understand". A sentence she hasn't ever used before. And all of this of course results in huge delays in all of the projects. She's probably got some huge issues... We seriously suspect dementia (she's the PI of a team that studies Alzheimer's disease) or maybe just a burnout due to pandemic stress... And... How do we tactfully deal with this? What exactly can be done about this?
### Response:
Since there's a huge difference between burn out and Alzheimer's but both require help, you or someone else needs to ask her how she's doing. "How've you been lately? You haven't quite seemed yourself. Feel like you're up for talking to someone?" That shows others have seen a problem without triggering the defensiveness that comes with questioning the mental health of a person whose identity is tied to high intelligence (professor, lawyer, doctor, etc.). It's not the best idea to make guesses about someone's health, let alone tell them your guesses. But it's appropriate to tell them you've seen a change and may want to seek medical or professional advice if they too think it's affecting their work.
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### Instruction:
Professor is either developing dementia or burnt out... An older professor in our group has always had a very rude character but lately she's been super weird. I've cc'd her in an email to a collaborator about a data transfer and she replied: "why are you asking him how to handle him the data?? I don't understand!! Didn't I tell you to handle him the data?". When I asked her what I should present to an online meeting that was about to happen in 6 days she organized she replied "what on earth are you talking about?". She had no idea there was a meeting... I talked to the people she's the PI of and they're desperate. In the last 6 months she's been constantly sending them incoherent emails with contradictory request, if the text even made sense at all. She refuses face to face meetings (both her and her staff have been fully vaccinated for more than 4 months). They've also told me that... In most of these rambling emails she keeps writing "I don't understand". A sentence she hasn't ever used before. And all of this of course results in huge delays in all of the projects. She's probably got some huge issues... We seriously suspect dementia (she's the PI of a team that studies Alzheimer's disease) or maybe just a burnout due to pandemic stress... And... How do we tactfully deal with this? What exactly can be done about this?
### Response:
Talk with someone about it, but don't call it dementia. You aren't in a position to make that assessment - it's like armchair diagnosing of any other mental illness. Completely valid to discuss the disruptive behavior, though. Fwiw, I have a collaborator who is a pain to work with who has always been the way you describe this person - more in times when they are very busy - and it's just their personality as far as I know. Rude, imperious, can't be bothered to stay up to date with what's going on with the project, hopelessly ill-informed, doesn't understand any of our research methods. It makes me think they got into academia at a time when standards were much lower, but I wouldn't make the leap to dementia. There are so many issues someone can have.
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### Instruction:
Professor is either developing dementia or burnt out... An older professor in our group has always had a very rude character but lately she's been super weird. I've cc'd her in an email to a collaborator about a data transfer and she replied: "why are you asking him how to handle him the data?? I don't understand!! Didn't I tell you to handle him the data?". When I asked her what I should present to an online meeting that was about to happen in 6 days she organized she replied "what on earth are you talking about?". She had no idea there was a meeting... I talked to the people she's the PI of and they're desperate. In the last 6 months she's been constantly sending them incoherent emails with contradictory request, if the text even made sense at all. She refuses face to face meetings (both her and her staff have been fully vaccinated for more than 4 months). They've also told me that... In most of these rambling emails she keeps writing "I don't understand". A sentence she hasn't ever used before. And all of this of course results in huge delays in all of the projects. She's probably got some huge issues... We seriously suspect dementia (she's the PI of a team that studies Alzheimer's disease) or maybe just a burnout due to pandemic stress... And... How do we tactfully deal with this? What exactly can be done about this?
### Response:
A friend had a coworker go through something similar - onset of unintelligible emails, unable to string sentences together or keep track of things, etc. turns out she has a massive brain tumor. My point is you don’t know what is going on with her so be careful about saying dementia or burnout. Obviously your career and your work is important, but your PI could be in a really bad place medically or even just emotionally. Your work will survive this, so try to figure out the best way to get the PI help.
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Professor is either developing dementia or burnt out... An older professor in our group has always had a very rude character but lately she's been super weird. I've cc'd her in an email to a collaborator about a data transfer and she replied: "why are you asking him how to handle him the data?? I don't understand!! Didn't I tell you to handle him the data?". When I asked her what I should present to an online meeting that was about to happen in 6 days she organized she replied "what on earth are you talking about?". She had no idea there was a meeting... I talked to the people she's the PI of and they're desperate. In the last 6 months she's been constantly sending them incoherent emails with contradictory request, if the text even made sense at all. She refuses face to face meetings (both her and her staff have been fully vaccinated for more than 4 months). They've also told me that... In most of these rambling emails she keeps writing "I don't understand". A sentence she hasn't ever used before. And all of this of course results in huge delays in all of the projects. She's probably got some huge issues... We seriously suspect dementia (she's the PI of a team that studies Alzheimer's disease) or maybe just a burnout due to pandemic stress... And... How do we tactfully deal with this? What exactly can be done about this?
### Response:
There’s a lot of good advice here, but slightly tangentially—why is there not an age limit for tenured professors? Many faculty receive huge salaries (the equivalent of several young assistant professors), massive office spaces they never use, and all the other privileges of professorship at age 80+ and at the same time don’t advise or advise students poorly, don’t teach or teach poorly, etc. It’s ridiculous IMO.
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Professor is either developing dementia or burnt out... An older professor in our group has always had a very rude character but lately she's been super weird. I've cc'd her in an email to a collaborator about a data transfer and she replied: "why are you asking him how to handle him the data?? I don't understand!! Didn't I tell you to handle him the data?". When I asked her what I should present to an online meeting that was about to happen in 6 days she organized she replied "what on earth are you talking about?". She had no idea there was a meeting... I talked to the people she's the PI of and they're desperate. In the last 6 months she's been constantly sending them incoherent emails with contradictory request, if the text even made sense at all. She refuses face to face meetings (both her and her staff have been fully vaccinated for more than 4 months). They've also told me that... In most of these rambling emails she keeps writing "I don't understand". A sentence she hasn't ever used before. And all of this of course results in huge delays in all of the projects. She's probably got some huge issues... We seriously suspect dementia (she's the PI of a team that studies Alzheimer's disease) or maybe just a burnout due to pandemic stress... And... How do we tactfully deal with this? What exactly can be done about this?
### Response:
When I was a freshman in college, I had a freshman seminar with an older professor. He was meant to become my academic advisor, so this was a serious relationship, in a class of 12, seated at a round table. But his class was at 8am and I missed it 8 times in a row- almost three full weeks. I went in desperate to salvage whatever I could of my grade- I took my place at the table and he was discussing our “research papers”, which we had apparently been asked to have an idea for, ready to be approved that day. He looked right at me and said “I had suggested that you might want to do something on entrepreneurship in Meiji Japan, but you didn’t seem to pick up on my suggestion”- and I realized that he DIDN’T KNOW that I’d been absent. So I quickly agreed that that was indeed the topic I had chosen, and he was very pleased. A few weeks later, he passed out a “study guide” fir the final. We all studied together. The. We got the actual exam. IT WAS THE EXACT SAME PAPER. I got an A+ in that class and everyone else failed the final and got a D, because “It SEEMS like some of you worked together!” When I tried to get my schedule signed fir the spring semester, there was a note on the door. He had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. Everyone got a B, except for me. I retained my A+.
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Professor is either developing dementia or burnt out... An older professor in our group has always had a very rude character but lately she's been super weird. I've cc'd her in an email to a collaborator about a data transfer and she replied: "why are you asking him how to handle him the data?? I don't understand!! Didn't I tell you to handle him the data?". When I asked her what I should present to an online meeting that was about to happen in 6 days she organized she replied "what on earth are you talking about?". She had no idea there was a meeting... I talked to the people she's the PI of and they're desperate. In the last 6 months she's been constantly sending them incoherent emails with contradictory request, if the text even made sense at all. She refuses face to face meetings (both her and her staff have been fully vaccinated for more than 4 months). They've also told me that... In most of these rambling emails she keeps writing "I don't understand". A sentence she hasn't ever used before. And all of this of course results in huge delays in all of the projects. She's probably got some huge issues... We seriously suspect dementia (she's the PI of a team that studies Alzheimer's disease) or maybe just a burnout due to pandemic stress... And... How do we tactfully deal with this? What exactly can be done about this?
### Response:
Just a note to say that if this erratic behaviour has come on only recently, it likely is not dementia, which develops much more slowly. Nevertheless, I do think you should first bring this up with any peer colleague who is close to her, or any other person who might have insight into her personal life before making any kind of official complaint. She may well be somewhat overwhelmed by events or circumstances that have little to do with work *per se*, or dementia.
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Professor is either developing dementia or burnt out... An older professor in our group has always had a very rude character but lately she's been super weird. I've cc'd her in an email to a collaborator about a data transfer and she replied: "why are you asking him how to handle him the data?? I don't understand!! Didn't I tell you to handle him the data?". When I asked her what I should present to an online meeting that was about to happen in 6 days she organized she replied "what on earth are you talking about?". She had no idea there was a meeting... I talked to the people she's the PI of and they're desperate. In the last 6 months she's been constantly sending them incoherent emails with contradictory request, if the text even made sense at all. She refuses face to face meetings (both her and her staff have been fully vaccinated for more than 4 months). They've also told me that... In most of these rambling emails she keeps writing "I don't understand". A sentence she hasn't ever used before. And all of this of course results in huge delays in all of the projects. She's probably got some huge issues... We seriously suspect dementia (she's the PI of a team that studies Alzheimer's disease) or maybe just a burnout due to pandemic stress... And... How do we tactfully deal with this? What exactly can be done about this?
### Response:
I'm an academic, and I've seen similar situations. Academia is not like the business world, in which loss of competence is recognized by various co-workers, including some who are not afraid to address such issues because of impact on the business. In academia, people tend to work longer before they retire and senior, tenured professors are given a lot of independence. Students are probably much more familiar with the competence of faculty members than are their faculty peers, who may only interact closely in occasional meetings. I've seen professors with serious behavioral issues do egregious things yet continuing working for years because no one wanted to intervene. It can be very difficult to motivate a department chair or dean to address problems like this, or even to alert the family. Even if they want to resolve the issue, it can be a long and complicated process. Recently at my university a professor was discovered to have had serial affairs with grad students, but it took almost 3 years to remove them from the department. This one reason why you must alert this woman's chair, and/or dean, and encourage others to join you. It may take a protracted process to see any results. Also, it sounds as though this person may have a serious issue that needs to be addressed-and you can't rely on others to alert people.
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My Depression is Killing my Ability to Work I don't really know where to start, or to an extent, even what I'm here to ask... Let me preface with I love academics. They have always been an important part of my life, and I've always used them as a distraction from when my life is too much/feels overwhelming. I have had serious depression issues all my life, and am being medicated for them for a few years now. The meds arrangement I have isn't great, but it's better than nothing I guess. Recently, I've found myself questioning if I am really meant for this. I love research, reading and writing papers, but I am hitting the point where I have no happiness anymore in my life anymore. The things I used to love, that I used to continue going on, are becoming more and more difficult to do. It's at the point that even though academics are one of the few things that are keeping me going, my mental distress is now preventing me from being able to make the most basic progress possible. My long-term girlfriend recently decided that she doesn't think our lives are going to be going the same direction and wants to end things so she doesn't prevent me from having the life I typically thought I would have (family with kids, etc.). It really took me by surprise, but now I am looking at my life, where I am now, where I am heading, and if I am ever going to be happy. My main realization is I don't think academia is meant for someone like me. I'm soft, sensitive, just searching for a glimmer of happiness, and I feel like all I find in academics is isolation and loneliness. I feel absolutely lost because I just about hate everything else I could do with my degree except academia (engineering, but all the jobs I am best suited for are programming-related related, which I don't particularly enjoy). Here is my issue - What now? If I don't go on in academia, I have no idea what the hell I'll ever do. I don't feel mentally OK. I don't feel like I can have a job, a life like some people. Quite frankly, I feel like, aside from academia, I don't have a place in the world. But it seems like now I am losing my ability to even do that. That leaves me in an interesting state - I think I'm longing for something that just doesn't exist. I am going to keep going, but I am really questioning the reasoning as to why I am continuing on like this. I think I am forcing myself to keep going and there is no light at the end of this tunnel, just a brick wall I am going to run face-first into. I know COVID has been isolating, and many who have never had depression before are experiencing it. I am a slightly different case, I've had it all my life, I have been constantly depressed since I was in undergrad and now feel like there's nothing out there for me. Its a heartbreaking realization to come to, but I feel like maybe, I should save everyone some time and just leave on a "high-note" (before it becomes so painfully obvious to everyone that I'm a hollow shell of the man I once was).
### Response:
I've believe that everyone in graduate school goes through an existential crisis, so you should take comfort in knowing that you are in good company. The advice that I am going to give you is different that the other advice given here, in that you should maximize your opportunities and defer the decision of whether or not you want to continue in academia at a different time and focus on the now. It seems like you've already accomplished most of what is needed to just get your degree, and I don't think dropping out now or "leaving on a high note" is a good option. For all intents and purposes, you're near the end of a marathon and you should just power through and finish it. When you get your degree, then you can evaluate whether or not you should continue through with academia or pursue an industry job. Focus on getting your degree, yes it seems daunting but you're almost there. Finally, on a personal note, like you, I feel that I am too soft sometimes, but if anything that has strengthened my resolve to go into academia (because if there is one thing academia needs more of, it is humanity).
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My Depression is Killing my Ability to Work I don't really know where to start, or to an extent, even what I'm here to ask... Let me preface with I love academics. They have always been an important part of my life, and I've always used them as a distraction from when my life is too much/feels overwhelming. I have had serious depression issues all my life, and am being medicated for them for a few years now. The meds arrangement I have isn't great, but it's better than nothing I guess. Recently, I've found myself questioning if I am really meant for this. I love research, reading and writing papers, but I am hitting the point where I have no happiness anymore in my life anymore. The things I used to love, that I used to continue going on, are becoming more and more difficult to do. It's at the point that even though academics are one of the few things that are keeping me going, my mental distress is now preventing me from being able to make the most basic progress possible. My long-term girlfriend recently decided that she doesn't think our lives are going to be going the same direction and wants to end things so she doesn't prevent me from having the life I typically thought I would have (family with kids, etc.). It really took me by surprise, but now I am looking at my life, where I am now, where I am heading, and if I am ever going to be happy. My main realization is I don't think academia is meant for someone like me. I'm soft, sensitive, just searching for a glimmer of happiness, and I feel like all I find in academics is isolation and loneliness. I feel absolutely lost because I just about hate everything else I could do with my degree except academia (engineering, but all the jobs I am best suited for are programming-related related, which I don't particularly enjoy). Here is my issue - What now? If I don't go on in academia, I have no idea what the hell I'll ever do. I don't feel mentally OK. I don't feel like I can have a job, a life like some people. Quite frankly, I feel like, aside from academia, I don't have a place in the world. But it seems like now I am losing my ability to even do that. That leaves me in an interesting state - I think I'm longing for something that just doesn't exist. I am going to keep going, but I am really questioning the reasoning as to why I am continuing on like this. I think I am forcing myself to keep going and there is no light at the end of this tunnel, just a brick wall I am going to run face-first into. I know COVID has been isolating, and many who have never had depression before are experiencing it. I am a slightly different case, I've had it all my life, I have been constantly depressed since I was in undergrad and now feel like there's nothing out there for me. Its a heartbreaking realization to come to, but I feel like maybe, I should save everyone some time and just leave on a "high-note" (before it becomes so painfully obvious to everyone that I'm a hollow shell of the man I once was).
### Response:
My depression has significantly reduced for the past 5 years. BUT my anxiety disorder has become worse by day. Its like it replaces the void left by my depression lol, and it really tempers my daily life far more worse that depression back then. This is in fact getting more serious to the point that I thibk id rather have depression than this anxiety. Anyhoo, gudluck with your life. We all have that same inner demon wearing a different mask
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My Depression is Killing my Ability to Work I don't really know where to start, or to an extent, even what I'm here to ask... Let me preface with I love academics. They have always been an important part of my life, and I've always used them as a distraction from when my life is too much/feels overwhelming. I have had serious depression issues all my life, and am being medicated for them for a few years now. The meds arrangement I have isn't great, but it's better than nothing I guess. Recently, I've found myself questioning if I am really meant for this. I love research, reading and writing papers, but I am hitting the point where I have no happiness anymore in my life anymore. The things I used to love, that I used to continue going on, are becoming more and more difficult to do. It's at the point that even though academics are one of the few things that are keeping me going, my mental distress is now preventing me from being able to make the most basic progress possible. My long-term girlfriend recently decided that she doesn't think our lives are going to be going the same direction and wants to end things so she doesn't prevent me from having the life I typically thought I would have (family with kids, etc.). It really took me by surprise, but now I am looking at my life, where I am now, where I am heading, and if I am ever going to be happy. My main realization is I don't think academia is meant for someone like me. I'm soft, sensitive, just searching for a glimmer of happiness, and I feel like all I find in academics is isolation and loneliness. I feel absolutely lost because I just about hate everything else I could do with my degree except academia (engineering, but all the jobs I am best suited for are programming-related related, which I don't particularly enjoy). Here is my issue - What now? If I don't go on in academia, I have no idea what the hell I'll ever do. I don't feel mentally OK. I don't feel like I can have a job, a life like some people. Quite frankly, I feel like, aside from academia, I don't have a place in the world. But it seems like now I am losing my ability to even do that. That leaves me in an interesting state - I think I'm longing for something that just doesn't exist. I am going to keep going, but I am really questioning the reasoning as to why I am continuing on like this. I think I am forcing myself to keep going and there is no light at the end of this tunnel, just a brick wall I am going to run face-first into. I know COVID has been isolating, and many who have never had depression before are experiencing it. I am a slightly different case, I've had it all my life, I have been constantly depressed since I was in undergrad and now feel like there's nothing out there for me. Its a heartbreaking realization to come to, but I feel like maybe, I should save everyone some time and just leave on a "high-note" (before it becomes so painfully obvious to everyone that I'm a hollow shell of the man I once was).
### Response:
My heart hurts for you with the distress you've been experiencing. I've had my own episodes dealing with anxiety and depression in academia, and without a doubt, the two things that have helped me come out of some really low points are medication and therapy. I agree with another poster here- depression really alters your perspective! I was so hyper-focused on little things and overthinking it all that I also found it very difficult to function, be productive, but most importantly, be happy. A therapist helped by just listening to what I was feeling without judgment, then helped me to peel back those layers to get to the roots of the issues. The most important piece of advice was to take time for myself. Having a few days where I could truly detach from academia was transformative. It sounds like you're really burnt out too and definitely in need of a break!
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My Depression is Killing my Ability to Work I don't really know where to start, or to an extent, even what I'm here to ask... Let me preface with I love academics. They have always been an important part of my life, and I've always used them as a distraction from when my life is too much/feels overwhelming. I have had serious depression issues all my life, and am being medicated for them for a few years now. The meds arrangement I have isn't great, but it's better than nothing I guess. Recently, I've found myself questioning if I am really meant for this. I love research, reading and writing papers, but I am hitting the point where I have no happiness anymore in my life anymore. The things I used to love, that I used to continue going on, are becoming more and more difficult to do. It's at the point that even though academics are one of the few things that are keeping me going, my mental distress is now preventing me from being able to make the most basic progress possible. My long-term girlfriend recently decided that she doesn't think our lives are going to be going the same direction and wants to end things so she doesn't prevent me from having the life I typically thought I would have (family with kids, etc.). It really took me by surprise, but now I am looking at my life, where I am now, where I am heading, and if I am ever going to be happy. My main realization is I don't think academia is meant for someone like me. I'm soft, sensitive, just searching for a glimmer of happiness, and I feel like all I find in academics is isolation and loneliness. I feel absolutely lost because I just about hate everything else I could do with my degree except academia (engineering, but all the jobs I am best suited for are programming-related related, which I don't particularly enjoy). Here is my issue - What now? If I don't go on in academia, I have no idea what the hell I'll ever do. I don't feel mentally OK. I don't feel like I can have a job, a life like some people. Quite frankly, I feel like, aside from academia, I don't have a place in the world. But it seems like now I am losing my ability to even do that. That leaves me in an interesting state - I think I'm longing for something that just doesn't exist. I am going to keep going, but I am really questioning the reasoning as to why I am continuing on like this. I think I am forcing myself to keep going and there is no light at the end of this tunnel, just a brick wall I am going to run face-first into. I know COVID has been isolating, and many who have never had depression before are experiencing it. I am a slightly different case, I've had it all my life, I have been constantly depressed since I was in undergrad and now feel like there's nothing out there for me. Its a heartbreaking realization to come to, but I feel like maybe, I should save everyone some time and just leave on a "high-note" (before it becomes so painfully obvious to everyone that I'm a hollow shell of the man I once was).
### Response:
I started an antidepressant, bupropion, back in November. It was for another reason but, a few months on, I've never been more productive or optimistic about my research. I've spent the last decade working on lifestyle modifications to help my depression and thought I had some stability with them. I just figured i was one of those unhappy people. Turns out it was my neurotransmitters. I'm not saying that medication is right for everyone but I can't tell you how nice it is to realize that I'm actually capable of this PhD and also it doesn't have to feel like death the whole time. ETA: Finding the right medication is definitely worth it. Work with your doc - the wrong or inconsistent medication could make things worse. <3
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My Depression is Killing my Ability to Work I don't really know where to start, or to an extent, even what I'm here to ask... Let me preface with I love academics. They have always been an important part of my life, and I've always used them as a distraction from when my life is too much/feels overwhelming. I have had serious depression issues all my life, and am being medicated for them for a few years now. The meds arrangement I have isn't great, but it's better than nothing I guess. Recently, I've found myself questioning if I am really meant for this. I love research, reading and writing papers, but I am hitting the point where I have no happiness anymore in my life anymore. The things I used to love, that I used to continue going on, are becoming more and more difficult to do. It's at the point that even though academics are one of the few things that are keeping me going, my mental distress is now preventing me from being able to make the most basic progress possible. My long-term girlfriend recently decided that she doesn't think our lives are going to be going the same direction and wants to end things so she doesn't prevent me from having the life I typically thought I would have (family with kids, etc.). It really took me by surprise, but now I am looking at my life, where I am now, where I am heading, and if I am ever going to be happy. My main realization is I don't think academia is meant for someone like me. I'm soft, sensitive, just searching for a glimmer of happiness, and I feel like all I find in academics is isolation and loneliness. I feel absolutely lost because I just about hate everything else I could do with my degree except academia (engineering, but all the jobs I am best suited for are programming-related related, which I don't particularly enjoy). Here is my issue - What now? If I don't go on in academia, I have no idea what the hell I'll ever do. I don't feel mentally OK. I don't feel like I can have a job, a life like some people. Quite frankly, I feel like, aside from academia, I don't have a place in the world. But it seems like now I am losing my ability to even do that. That leaves me in an interesting state - I think I'm longing for something that just doesn't exist. I am going to keep going, but I am really questioning the reasoning as to why I am continuing on like this. I think I am forcing myself to keep going and there is no light at the end of this tunnel, just a brick wall I am going to run face-first into. I know COVID has been isolating, and many who have never had depression before are experiencing it. I am a slightly different case, I've had it all my life, I have been constantly depressed since I was in undergrad and now feel like there's nothing out there for me. Its a heartbreaking realization to come to, but I feel like maybe, I should save everyone some time and just leave on a "high-note" (before it becomes so painfully obvious to everyone that I'm a hollow shell of the man I once was).
### Response:
Samesies. I've recently found out working out gives me just enough willpower to do actual work though (e.g. I will go cycling for 1hr which makes me kinda happy and then ride that wave of positiveness into doing actual work). Not sure whether you've found the physical activity that just boosts your mood, but maybe try looking for one? (I want to point out that for me, it doesn't work out with any activity though - running makes me sad and depressed, whereas cycling just hits that sweet spot).
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My Depression is Killing my Ability to Work I don't really know where to start, or to an extent, even what I'm here to ask... Let me preface with I love academics. They have always been an important part of my life, and I've always used them as a distraction from when my life is too much/feels overwhelming. I have had serious depression issues all my life, and am being medicated for them for a few years now. The meds arrangement I have isn't great, but it's better than nothing I guess. Recently, I've found myself questioning if I am really meant for this. I love research, reading and writing papers, but I am hitting the point where I have no happiness anymore in my life anymore. The things I used to love, that I used to continue going on, are becoming more and more difficult to do. It's at the point that even though academics are one of the few things that are keeping me going, my mental distress is now preventing me from being able to make the most basic progress possible. My long-term girlfriend recently decided that she doesn't think our lives are going to be going the same direction and wants to end things so she doesn't prevent me from having the life I typically thought I would have (family with kids, etc.). It really took me by surprise, but now I am looking at my life, where I am now, where I am heading, and if I am ever going to be happy. My main realization is I don't think academia is meant for someone like me. I'm soft, sensitive, just searching for a glimmer of happiness, and I feel like all I find in academics is isolation and loneliness. I feel absolutely lost because I just about hate everything else I could do with my degree except academia (engineering, but all the jobs I am best suited for are programming-related related, which I don't particularly enjoy). Here is my issue - What now? If I don't go on in academia, I have no idea what the hell I'll ever do. I don't feel mentally OK. I don't feel like I can have a job, a life like some people. Quite frankly, I feel like, aside from academia, I don't have a place in the world. But it seems like now I am losing my ability to even do that. That leaves me in an interesting state - I think I'm longing for something that just doesn't exist. I am going to keep going, but I am really questioning the reasoning as to why I am continuing on like this. I think I am forcing myself to keep going and there is no light at the end of this tunnel, just a brick wall I am going to run face-first into. I know COVID has been isolating, and many who have never had depression before are experiencing it. I am a slightly different case, I've had it all my life, I have been constantly depressed since I was in undergrad and now feel like there's nothing out there for me. Its a heartbreaking realization to come to, but I feel like maybe, I should save everyone some time and just leave on a "high-note" (before it becomes so painfully obvious to everyone that I'm a hollow shell of the man I once was).
### Response:
I feel like I could’ve written your post. My solution was to throw my resume to the wind and see where it sticks. Turns out the only industry jobs I get interviews for are at the scientist/senior scientist level where I’d spend my days programming and analyzing data. It is awful in the sense that I know I don’t want a job where I’m programming all day. This has been awesome in the sense that some of these multinational companies really want people with our skills. And they’re willing to pay. Think bonuses that will pay off your student loans in 2-3 years. It’s not like you’d be programming forever. Within 2-5 years you’d likely transition to more leadership roles. Who knows. It pays to talk to these people to see what they have to offer. This way if we go full steam ahead with academia at least we’ll know what we’ve walked away from. I’d suggest you apply to some jobs. It’s a huge confidence boost to see the response from these companies. And you’ll gain clarity about your goals by talking about yourself, your work, and hour goals.
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My Depression is Killing my Ability to Work I don't really know where to start, or to an extent, even what I'm here to ask... Let me preface with I love academics. They have always been an important part of my life, and I've always used them as a distraction from when my life is too much/feels overwhelming. I have had serious depression issues all my life, and am being medicated for them for a few years now. The meds arrangement I have isn't great, but it's better than nothing I guess. Recently, I've found myself questioning if I am really meant for this. I love research, reading and writing papers, but I am hitting the point where I have no happiness anymore in my life anymore. The things I used to love, that I used to continue going on, are becoming more and more difficult to do. It's at the point that even though academics are one of the few things that are keeping me going, my mental distress is now preventing me from being able to make the most basic progress possible. My long-term girlfriend recently decided that she doesn't think our lives are going to be going the same direction and wants to end things so she doesn't prevent me from having the life I typically thought I would have (family with kids, etc.). It really took me by surprise, but now I am looking at my life, where I am now, where I am heading, and if I am ever going to be happy. My main realization is I don't think academia is meant for someone like me. I'm soft, sensitive, just searching for a glimmer of happiness, and I feel like all I find in academics is isolation and loneliness. I feel absolutely lost because I just about hate everything else I could do with my degree except academia (engineering, but all the jobs I am best suited for are programming-related related, which I don't particularly enjoy). Here is my issue - What now? If I don't go on in academia, I have no idea what the hell I'll ever do. I don't feel mentally OK. I don't feel like I can have a job, a life like some people. Quite frankly, I feel like, aside from academia, I don't have a place in the world. But it seems like now I am losing my ability to even do that. That leaves me in an interesting state - I think I'm longing for something that just doesn't exist. I am going to keep going, but I am really questioning the reasoning as to why I am continuing on like this. I think I am forcing myself to keep going and there is no light at the end of this tunnel, just a brick wall I am going to run face-first into. I know COVID has been isolating, and many who have never had depression before are experiencing it. I am a slightly different case, I've had it all my life, I have been constantly depressed since I was in undergrad and now feel like there's nothing out there for me. Its a heartbreaking realization to come to, but I feel like maybe, I should save everyone some time and just leave on a "high-note" (before it becomes so painfully obvious to everyone that I'm a hollow shell of the man I once was).
### Response:
Just get a regular software development job, people are nicer and you get paid more
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My Depression is Killing my Ability to Work I don't really know where to start, or to an extent, even what I'm here to ask... Let me preface with I love academics. They have always been an important part of my life, and I've always used them as a distraction from when my life is too much/feels overwhelming. I have had serious depression issues all my life, and am being medicated for them for a few years now. The meds arrangement I have isn't great, but it's better than nothing I guess. Recently, I've found myself questioning if I am really meant for this. I love research, reading and writing papers, but I am hitting the point where I have no happiness anymore in my life anymore. The things I used to love, that I used to continue going on, are becoming more and more difficult to do. It's at the point that even though academics are one of the few things that are keeping me going, my mental distress is now preventing me from being able to make the most basic progress possible. My long-term girlfriend recently decided that she doesn't think our lives are going to be going the same direction and wants to end things so she doesn't prevent me from having the life I typically thought I would have (family with kids, etc.). It really took me by surprise, but now I am looking at my life, where I am now, where I am heading, and if I am ever going to be happy. My main realization is I don't think academia is meant for someone like me. I'm soft, sensitive, just searching for a glimmer of happiness, and I feel like all I find in academics is isolation and loneliness. I feel absolutely lost because I just about hate everything else I could do with my degree except academia (engineering, but all the jobs I am best suited for are programming-related related, which I don't particularly enjoy). Here is my issue - What now? If I don't go on in academia, I have no idea what the hell I'll ever do. I don't feel mentally OK. I don't feel like I can have a job, a life like some people. Quite frankly, I feel like, aside from academia, I don't have a place in the world. But it seems like now I am losing my ability to even do that. That leaves me in an interesting state - I think I'm longing for something that just doesn't exist. I am going to keep going, but I am really questioning the reasoning as to why I am continuing on like this. I think I am forcing myself to keep going and there is no light at the end of this tunnel, just a brick wall I am going to run face-first into. I know COVID has been isolating, and many who have never had depression before are experiencing it. I am a slightly different case, I've had it all my life, I have been constantly depressed since I was in undergrad and now feel like there's nothing out there for me. Its a heartbreaking realization to come to, but I feel like maybe, I should save everyone some time and just leave on a "high-note" (before it becomes so painfully obvious to everyone that I'm a hollow shell of the man I once was).
### Response:
It sounds like a lot all at once, and I’m sorry you’re struggling. I experienced something similar this year in terms of my views on academia as a future. I know academia isn’t for me, but I’m not sure what is for me and it’s very disorienting. Like what happened? I used to love this and now I hate it. I used to be so motivated, and now I couldn’t care less about my research. I think some of it is pandemic-related. But I also think as I learned more about academia, I learned I don’t love it. I try to view these realizations with optimism. Like “now I can try something new”. Or at least “thankfully, I realized this now instead of ten years from now”. It doesn’t always work, but it’s something. I think the most helpful thing for me is reflecting on all the very different things I’ve done personally and professionally that have brought me joy and have nothing to do with academia. These things remind me I can find a new vocation that fills me with joy once I’m done. I’m sure my new career path will be a spur of the moment decision. And I’m sure I’ll find as much or more joy as I found in academia and all earlier endeavors. Things just work out that way. I don’t think it’s worth stressing about now because I don’t have to make any decision yet. I also figure “if don’t know what I want to do, then thinking about it over-and-over won’t provide any clarity”. I’m only going to solve things by gathering new information. You mentioned academia was your whole life. If it really is the only thing you know, definitely try something else. Even something unrelated to your degree, something you think you’ll dislike, and/or something you know you don’t plan to do for very long. Maybe consider picking up an old passion or trying out something new that piques your interest.
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My Depression is Killing my Ability to Work I don't really know where to start, or to an extent, even what I'm here to ask... Let me preface with I love academics. They have always been an important part of my life, and I've always used them as a distraction from when my life is too much/feels overwhelming. I have had serious depression issues all my life, and am being medicated for them for a few years now. The meds arrangement I have isn't great, but it's better than nothing I guess. Recently, I've found myself questioning if I am really meant for this. I love research, reading and writing papers, but I am hitting the point where I have no happiness anymore in my life anymore. The things I used to love, that I used to continue going on, are becoming more and more difficult to do. It's at the point that even though academics are one of the few things that are keeping me going, my mental distress is now preventing me from being able to make the most basic progress possible. My long-term girlfriend recently decided that she doesn't think our lives are going to be going the same direction and wants to end things so she doesn't prevent me from having the life I typically thought I would have (family with kids, etc.). It really took me by surprise, but now I am looking at my life, where I am now, where I am heading, and if I am ever going to be happy. My main realization is I don't think academia is meant for someone like me. I'm soft, sensitive, just searching for a glimmer of happiness, and I feel like all I find in academics is isolation and loneliness. I feel absolutely lost because I just about hate everything else I could do with my degree except academia (engineering, but all the jobs I am best suited for are programming-related related, which I don't particularly enjoy). Here is my issue - What now? If I don't go on in academia, I have no idea what the hell I'll ever do. I don't feel mentally OK. I don't feel like I can have a job, a life like some people. Quite frankly, I feel like, aside from academia, I don't have a place in the world. But it seems like now I am losing my ability to even do that. That leaves me in an interesting state - I think I'm longing for something that just doesn't exist. I am going to keep going, but I am really questioning the reasoning as to why I am continuing on like this. I think I am forcing myself to keep going and there is no light at the end of this tunnel, just a brick wall I am going to run face-first into. I know COVID has been isolating, and many who have never had depression before are experiencing it. I am a slightly different case, I've had it all my life, I have been constantly depressed since I was in undergrad and now feel like there's nothing out there for me. Its a heartbreaking realization to come to, but I feel like maybe, I should save everyone some time and just leave on a "high-note" (before it becomes so painfully obvious to everyone that I'm a hollow shell of the man I once was).
### Response:
What I have to do when my depression causes me to feel like work is a chore, is take a step back. Look back at when it all started. The feelings of excitement and joy. Even the stress and obstacles you faced to get to where you are in your career. Remind yourself of the pride you once took in it. Focus on those feelings. Figure out why you wanted to take this direction in life in the first place and where you thought you’d go at the beginning. If you want to pursue a different job in your field, then do it. It is YOUR life. You’re happiness matters. YOU matter. Who have you helped in your career? Who have you inspired? Who has inspired you? Look for the purpose you have and you’ve served. What has been your motivation throughout your career?
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My Depression is Killing my Ability to Work I don't really know where to start, or to an extent, even what I'm here to ask... Let me preface with I love academics. They have always been an important part of my life, and I've always used them as a distraction from when my life is too much/feels overwhelming. I have had serious depression issues all my life, and am being medicated for them for a few years now. The meds arrangement I have isn't great, but it's better than nothing I guess. Recently, I've found myself questioning if I am really meant for this. I love research, reading and writing papers, but I am hitting the point where I have no happiness anymore in my life anymore. The things I used to love, that I used to continue going on, are becoming more and more difficult to do. It's at the point that even though academics are one of the few things that are keeping me going, my mental distress is now preventing me from being able to make the most basic progress possible. My long-term girlfriend recently decided that she doesn't think our lives are going to be going the same direction and wants to end things so she doesn't prevent me from having the life I typically thought I would have (family with kids, etc.). It really took me by surprise, but now I am looking at my life, where I am now, where I am heading, and if I am ever going to be happy. My main realization is I don't think academia is meant for someone like me. I'm soft, sensitive, just searching for a glimmer of happiness, and I feel like all I find in academics is isolation and loneliness. I feel absolutely lost because I just about hate everything else I could do with my degree except academia (engineering, but all the jobs I am best suited for are programming-related related, which I don't particularly enjoy). Here is my issue - What now? If I don't go on in academia, I have no idea what the hell I'll ever do. I don't feel mentally OK. I don't feel like I can have a job, a life like some people. Quite frankly, I feel like, aside from academia, I don't have a place in the world. But it seems like now I am losing my ability to even do that. That leaves me in an interesting state - I think I'm longing for something that just doesn't exist. I am going to keep going, but I am really questioning the reasoning as to why I am continuing on like this. I think I am forcing myself to keep going and there is no light at the end of this tunnel, just a brick wall I am going to run face-first into. I know COVID has been isolating, and many who have never had depression before are experiencing it. I am a slightly different case, I've had it all my life, I have been constantly depressed since I was in undergrad and now feel like there's nothing out there for me. Its a heartbreaking realization to come to, but I feel like maybe, I should save everyone some time and just leave on a "high-note" (before it becomes so painfully obvious to everyone that I'm a hollow shell of the man I once was).
### Response:
There's a lot of really good advice here, but I just want to say---I am worried about you when you talk about "just leaving." I hope you're talking about academia, but if you're talking about life, if you want to be dead...please get help. Depression may be a never-ending battle, but it can improve and be managed. The light at the end of the tunnel is not just there or not there...it can be fostered and grown. Du courage, and take care.
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My Depression is Killing my Ability to Work I don't really know where to start, or to an extent, even what I'm here to ask... Let me preface with I love academics. They have always been an important part of my life, and I've always used them as a distraction from when my life is too much/feels overwhelming. I have had serious depression issues all my life, and am being medicated for them for a few years now. The meds arrangement I have isn't great, but it's better than nothing I guess. Recently, I've found myself questioning if I am really meant for this. I love research, reading and writing papers, but I am hitting the point where I have no happiness anymore in my life anymore. The things I used to love, that I used to continue going on, are becoming more and more difficult to do. It's at the point that even though academics are one of the few things that are keeping me going, my mental distress is now preventing me from being able to make the most basic progress possible. My long-term girlfriend recently decided that she doesn't think our lives are going to be going the same direction and wants to end things so she doesn't prevent me from having the life I typically thought I would have (family with kids, etc.). It really took me by surprise, but now I am looking at my life, where I am now, where I am heading, and if I am ever going to be happy. My main realization is I don't think academia is meant for someone like me. I'm soft, sensitive, just searching for a glimmer of happiness, and I feel like all I find in academics is isolation and loneliness. I feel absolutely lost because I just about hate everything else I could do with my degree except academia (engineering, but all the jobs I am best suited for are programming-related related, which I don't particularly enjoy). Here is my issue - What now? If I don't go on in academia, I have no idea what the hell I'll ever do. I don't feel mentally OK. I don't feel like I can have a job, a life like some people. Quite frankly, I feel like, aside from academia, I don't have a place in the world. But it seems like now I am losing my ability to even do that. That leaves me in an interesting state - I think I'm longing for something that just doesn't exist. I am going to keep going, but I am really questioning the reasoning as to why I am continuing on like this. I think I am forcing myself to keep going and there is no light at the end of this tunnel, just a brick wall I am going to run face-first into. I know COVID has been isolating, and many who have never had depression before are experiencing it. I am a slightly different case, I've had it all my life, I have been constantly depressed since I was in undergrad and now feel like there's nothing out there for me. Its a heartbreaking realization to come to, but I feel like maybe, I should save everyone some time and just leave on a "high-note" (before it becomes so painfully obvious to everyone that I'm a hollow shell of the man I once was).
### Response:
Seems to me you love Academia and the problem is not you neither is it your job, it’s just a postponed feeling that cannot be hidden anymore hence hitting you all at once. My suggestion is take some time off and focus on yourself. Travel, go somewhere and try to connect with life and nature. It’s good you’ve realized and acknowledged that you are not feeling right. You need to get a hold of yourself before you can love what you love and enjoy it more.
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My Depression is Killing my Ability to Work I don't really know where to start, or to an extent, even what I'm here to ask... Let me preface with I love academics. They have always been an important part of my life, and I've always used them as a distraction from when my life is too much/feels overwhelming. I have had serious depression issues all my life, and am being medicated for them for a few years now. The meds arrangement I have isn't great, but it's better than nothing I guess. Recently, I've found myself questioning if I am really meant for this. I love research, reading and writing papers, but I am hitting the point where I have no happiness anymore in my life anymore. The things I used to love, that I used to continue going on, are becoming more and more difficult to do. It's at the point that even though academics are one of the few things that are keeping me going, my mental distress is now preventing me from being able to make the most basic progress possible. My long-term girlfriend recently decided that she doesn't think our lives are going to be going the same direction and wants to end things so she doesn't prevent me from having the life I typically thought I would have (family with kids, etc.). It really took me by surprise, but now I am looking at my life, where I am now, where I am heading, and if I am ever going to be happy. My main realization is I don't think academia is meant for someone like me. I'm soft, sensitive, just searching for a glimmer of happiness, and I feel like all I find in academics is isolation and loneliness. I feel absolutely lost because I just about hate everything else I could do with my degree except academia (engineering, but all the jobs I am best suited for are programming-related related, which I don't particularly enjoy). Here is my issue - What now? If I don't go on in academia, I have no idea what the hell I'll ever do. I don't feel mentally OK. I don't feel like I can have a job, a life like some people. Quite frankly, I feel like, aside from academia, I don't have a place in the world. But it seems like now I am losing my ability to even do that. That leaves me in an interesting state - I think I'm longing for something that just doesn't exist. I am going to keep going, but I am really questioning the reasoning as to why I am continuing on like this. I think I am forcing myself to keep going and there is no light at the end of this tunnel, just a brick wall I am going to run face-first into. I know COVID has been isolating, and many who have never had depression before are experiencing it. I am a slightly different case, I've had it all my life, I have been constantly depressed since I was in undergrad and now feel like there's nothing out there for me. Its a heartbreaking realization to come to, but I feel like maybe, I should save everyone some time and just leave on a "high-note" (before it becomes so painfully obvious to everyone that I'm a hollow shell of the man I once was).
### Response:
I think many of us are on the same boat. Academia demands so much of your time and energy to be successful. I think COVID really brought those sacrifices into the forefront and made a lot of us question if we really want to be there. I’m personally torn right now about my future. I know I have to keep on with Grad School if I want to stay in STEM but im really questioning if it’s worth not having a life and living only in the moments when I get a break from school. I’ve been looking into alternate pathways and possibly taking a break to figure somethings out after wrapping up my BS this year. Stay strong, talk things through with friends, family and a therapist. And don’t feel bad about feeling bad. Good luck with your journey. I hope you find the answers you’re looking for
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How can we ethically justify training graduate students? My background is in biomedical research, and I'm currently a research scientist, applying for TT positions. I've been struggling with the idea of training my own graduate students and for years now I've been reluctant to encourage undergraduates to continue on to grad school. Every time an undergraduate research assistant has expressed interest in pursuing a PhD, I've tried to explain to them the enormity of the deck stacked against them. To wit: * Compared to other highly educated people in the general population, PhD students are about 2.5 times more likely to be at risk for depression and other psychiatric disorders. About one in three end up with symptoms of a psychiatric disorder. * For 80% of grad students, an academic career is the goal, but just over 10% actually achieve a faculty position. And those 10% are not equally distributed across institutions, but disproportionately come from elite institutions 1-3], the kinds of which I will most likely not be teaching at. * [Most biomedical PhDs end up having to do a postdoc, but postdoc salaries are lower than that of a new college graduate even though the postdoc is working 50+ hours per week and is 9 years older than the new college grad. * 20% of postdocs report having existential crises related to their careers. * If the postdoc goes into industry, their salary (~$48K/yr ) is still less than the median new college grad (~50K/yr) AND it's unlikely the private sector biology PhD will be able to continue doing research 4-5]. Indeed, if the postdoc sticks with research, they can expect to be paid [less. * Moreover, several studies agree that there isn’t any evidence a postdoc will actually benefit seekers of non-academic jobs 6-8]. When comparing private sector workers 10 years post-PhD, the salary of those who went the postdoc route are [$12,000 lower than those who skipped postdocs altogether. So if I encourage someone to go to grad school, I'm essentially putting them on a path toward some pretty dire consequences for their career, especially if they do a postdoc, which most will. If they're not getting paid well, they're not getting training that can help them thrive outside of academia, and they're miserable, how can I justify telling them to go this route? I think I'm a pretty good mentor. I think my research is important. But I'm realistic about the prospects of my trainees. They're not all going to end up in tenured faculty positions, and the numbers concerning the alternatives are all pretty grim. I can try my best to make sure my students aren't stressed out horribly, but I can't do anything to ensure they'll have meaningful, fulfilling jobs in science that actually pay enough to make grad school worthwhile. So how do you do it? How do we as mentors look our students in the eyes and tell them to ignore the statistics and persevere, hoping they'll be one of the few to buck the trends? References: [1] http://rescuingbiomedicalresearch.org/blog/bias-distribution-k99-awards-faculty-hires/ [2] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/622886v1.full [3] https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/1/e1400005 [4] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/350/6266/1367 [5] https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3766 [6] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6286/663 [7] https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3766 [8] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733318302312#bib0465
### Response:
Perhaps you would be better served to dissuade students and your university from counting on an academic job.
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How can we ethically justify training graduate students? My background is in biomedical research, and I'm currently a research scientist, applying for TT positions. I've been struggling with the idea of training my own graduate students and for years now I've been reluctant to encourage undergraduates to continue on to grad school. Every time an undergraduate research assistant has expressed interest in pursuing a PhD, I've tried to explain to them the enormity of the deck stacked against them. To wit: * Compared to other highly educated people in the general population, PhD students are about 2.5 times more likely to be at risk for depression and other psychiatric disorders. About one in three end up with symptoms of a psychiatric disorder. * For 80% of grad students, an academic career is the goal, but just over 10% actually achieve a faculty position. And those 10% are not equally distributed across institutions, but disproportionately come from elite institutions 1-3], the kinds of which I will most likely not be teaching at. * [Most biomedical PhDs end up having to do a postdoc, but postdoc salaries are lower than that of a new college graduate even though the postdoc is working 50+ hours per week and is 9 years older than the new college grad. * 20% of postdocs report having existential crises related to their careers. * If the postdoc goes into industry, their salary (~$48K/yr ) is still less than the median new college grad (~50K/yr) AND it's unlikely the private sector biology PhD will be able to continue doing research 4-5]. Indeed, if the postdoc sticks with research, they can expect to be paid [less. * Moreover, several studies agree that there isn’t any evidence a postdoc will actually benefit seekers of non-academic jobs 6-8]. When comparing private sector workers 10 years post-PhD, the salary of those who went the postdoc route are [$12,000 lower than those who skipped postdocs altogether. So if I encourage someone to go to grad school, I'm essentially putting them on a path toward some pretty dire consequences for their career, especially if they do a postdoc, which most will. If they're not getting paid well, they're not getting training that can help them thrive outside of academia, and they're miserable, how can I justify telling them to go this route? I think I'm a pretty good mentor. I think my research is important. But I'm realistic about the prospects of my trainees. They're not all going to end up in tenured faculty positions, and the numbers concerning the alternatives are all pretty grim. I can try my best to make sure my students aren't stressed out horribly, but I can't do anything to ensure they'll have meaningful, fulfilling jobs in science that actually pay enough to make grad school worthwhile. So how do you do it? How do we as mentors look our students in the eyes and tell them to ignore the statistics and persevere, hoping they'll be one of the few to buck the trends? References: [1] http://rescuingbiomedicalresearch.org/blog/bias-distribution-k99-awards-faculty-hires/ [2] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/622886v1.full [3] https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/1/e1400005 [4] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/350/6266/1367 [5] https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3766 [6] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6286/663 [7] https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3766 [8] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733318302312#bib0465
### Response:
I think this is also a very field dependent question to ask. Some fields are well off for PhD grads, some moderately well off, and some exceptionally poor. To me, the biggest thing we can do as faculty is help our students be aware of the situation such that they are making informed choices. A lot of that, in STEM, is helping them make connections in non-academic markets to know what those fields look for, and what those jobs involve- this makes it possible for students to pivot to gainful employment more easily. I also think you're slightly over-interpreting the early PhD career academic interest (80%)- most students don't enter a PhD really having any idea of what a scientist outside of academia does, and there's a significant decline in interest during the PhD due to this.
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How can we ethically justify training graduate students? My background is in biomedical research, and I'm currently a research scientist, applying for TT positions. I've been struggling with the idea of training my own graduate students and for years now I've been reluctant to encourage undergraduates to continue on to grad school. Every time an undergraduate research assistant has expressed interest in pursuing a PhD, I've tried to explain to them the enormity of the deck stacked against them. To wit: * Compared to other highly educated people in the general population, PhD students are about 2.5 times more likely to be at risk for depression and other psychiatric disorders. About one in three end up with symptoms of a psychiatric disorder. * For 80% of grad students, an academic career is the goal, but just over 10% actually achieve a faculty position. And those 10% are not equally distributed across institutions, but disproportionately come from elite institutions 1-3], the kinds of which I will most likely not be teaching at. * [Most biomedical PhDs end up having to do a postdoc, but postdoc salaries are lower than that of a new college graduate even though the postdoc is working 50+ hours per week and is 9 years older than the new college grad. * 20% of postdocs report having existential crises related to their careers. * If the postdoc goes into industry, their salary (~$48K/yr ) is still less than the median new college grad (~50K/yr) AND it's unlikely the private sector biology PhD will be able to continue doing research 4-5]. Indeed, if the postdoc sticks with research, they can expect to be paid [less. * Moreover, several studies agree that there isn’t any evidence a postdoc will actually benefit seekers of non-academic jobs 6-8]. When comparing private sector workers 10 years post-PhD, the salary of those who went the postdoc route are [$12,000 lower than those who skipped postdocs altogether. So if I encourage someone to go to grad school, I'm essentially putting them on a path toward some pretty dire consequences for their career, especially if they do a postdoc, which most will. If they're not getting paid well, they're not getting training that can help them thrive outside of academia, and they're miserable, how can I justify telling them to go this route? I think I'm a pretty good mentor. I think my research is important. But I'm realistic about the prospects of my trainees. They're not all going to end up in tenured faculty positions, and the numbers concerning the alternatives are all pretty grim. I can try my best to make sure my students aren't stressed out horribly, but I can't do anything to ensure they'll have meaningful, fulfilling jobs in science that actually pay enough to make grad school worthwhile. So how do you do it? How do we as mentors look our students in the eyes and tell them to ignore the statistics and persevere, hoping they'll be one of the few to buck the trends? References: [1] http://rescuingbiomedicalresearch.org/blog/bias-distribution-k99-awards-faculty-hires/ [2] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/622886v1.full [3] https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/1/e1400005 [4] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/350/6266/1367 [5] https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3766 [6] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6286/663 [7] https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3766 [8] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733318302312#bib0465
### Response:
This is a very serious question and I don't think it has an easy answer. I think that in the short term, mentors can aim to provide PhD students better salaries and stability during their time so at least when viewed as a 4-to-6-year job, it isn't a completely unreasonable one. Practically this might mean not taking students unless you can guarantee good, ample, stable funding, health insurance, vacation time, etc for them. I think that some European institutions have done good work in this direction. In the long term, I don't know what kind of reforms are needed.
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### Instruction:
How can we ethically justify training graduate students? My background is in biomedical research, and I'm currently a research scientist, applying for TT positions. I've been struggling with the idea of training my own graduate students and for years now I've been reluctant to encourage undergraduates to continue on to grad school. Every time an undergraduate research assistant has expressed interest in pursuing a PhD, I've tried to explain to them the enormity of the deck stacked against them. To wit: * Compared to other highly educated people in the general population, PhD students are about 2.5 times more likely to be at risk for depression and other psychiatric disorders. About one in three end up with symptoms of a psychiatric disorder. * For 80% of grad students, an academic career is the goal, but just over 10% actually achieve a faculty position. And those 10% are not equally distributed across institutions, but disproportionately come from elite institutions 1-3], the kinds of which I will most likely not be teaching at. * [Most biomedical PhDs end up having to do a postdoc, but postdoc salaries are lower than that of a new college graduate even though the postdoc is working 50+ hours per week and is 9 years older than the new college grad. * 20% of postdocs report having existential crises related to their careers. * If the postdoc goes into industry, their salary (~$48K/yr ) is still less than the median new college grad (~50K/yr) AND it's unlikely the private sector biology PhD will be able to continue doing research 4-5]. Indeed, if the postdoc sticks with research, they can expect to be paid [less. * Moreover, several studies agree that there isn’t any evidence a postdoc will actually benefit seekers of non-academic jobs 6-8]. When comparing private sector workers 10 years post-PhD, the salary of those who went the postdoc route are [$12,000 lower than those who skipped postdocs altogether. So if I encourage someone to go to grad school, I'm essentially putting them on a path toward some pretty dire consequences for their career, especially if they do a postdoc, which most will. If they're not getting paid well, they're not getting training that can help them thrive outside of academia, and they're miserable, how can I justify telling them to go this route? I think I'm a pretty good mentor. I think my research is important. But I'm realistic about the prospects of my trainees. They're not all going to end up in tenured faculty positions, and the numbers concerning the alternatives are all pretty grim. I can try my best to make sure my students aren't stressed out horribly, but I can't do anything to ensure they'll have meaningful, fulfilling jobs in science that actually pay enough to make grad school worthwhile. So how do you do it? How do we as mentors look our students in the eyes and tell them to ignore the statistics and persevere, hoping they'll be one of the few to buck the trends? References: [1] http://rescuingbiomedicalresearch.org/blog/bias-distribution-k99-awards-faculty-hires/ [2] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/622886v1.full [3] https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/1/e1400005 [4] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/350/6266/1367 [5] https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3766 [6] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6286/663 [7] https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3766 [8] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733318302312#bib0465
### Response:
My experience is, of course, just anecdotal. But as someone who grew up well below the poverty line, academia was a career I could get into that didn't require expensive professional school (the massive costs of writing standardized tests and interviews for medical school kept me from even bothering). Getting paid to do a graduate degree was mind blowing for me relative to that. It also was the first time I travelled internationally. I really don't think that I would have done better in the private sector being someone who was bright, but didn't really know how professional fields work at all. Then again, I went to a public school in a country with reasonably-priced higher education that didn't require the GRE/SAT/etc. I also had a great mentor. All those things would help anybody in academia I think.
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How can we ethically justify training graduate students? My background is in biomedical research, and I'm currently a research scientist, applying for TT positions. I've been struggling with the idea of training my own graduate students and for years now I've been reluctant to encourage undergraduates to continue on to grad school. Every time an undergraduate research assistant has expressed interest in pursuing a PhD, I've tried to explain to them the enormity of the deck stacked against them. To wit: * Compared to other highly educated people in the general population, PhD students are about 2.5 times more likely to be at risk for depression and other psychiatric disorders. About one in three end up with symptoms of a psychiatric disorder. * For 80% of grad students, an academic career is the goal, but just over 10% actually achieve a faculty position. And those 10% are not equally distributed across institutions, but disproportionately come from elite institutions 1-3], the kinds of which I will most likely not be teaching at. * [Most biomedical PhDs end up having to do a postdoc, but postdoc salaries are lower than that of a new college graduate even though the postdoc is working 50+ hours per week and is 9 years older than the new college grad. * 20% of postdocs report having existential crises related to their careers. * If the postdoc goes into industry, their salary (~$48K/yr ) is still less than the median new college grad (~50K/yr) AND it's unlikely the private sector biology PhD will be able to continue doing research 4-5]. Indeed, if the postdoc sticks with research, they can expect to be paid [less. * Moreover, several studies agree that there isn’t any evidence a postdoc will actually benefit seekers of non-academic jobs 6-8]. When comparing private sector workers 10 years post-PhD, the salary of those who went the postdoc route are [$12,000 lower than those who skipped postdocs altogether. So if I encourage someone to go to grad school, I'm essentially putting them on a path toward some pretty dire consequences for their career, especially if they do a postdoc, which most will. If they're not getting paid well, they're not getting training that can help them thrive outside of academia, and they're miserable, how can I justify telling them to go this route? I think I'm a pretty good mentor. I think my research is important. But I'm realistic about the prospects of my trainees. They're not all going to end up in tenured faculty positions, and the numbers concerning the alternatives are all pretty grim. I can try my best to make sure my students aren't stressed out horribly, but I can't do anything to ensure they'll have meaningful, fulfilling jobs in science that actually pay enough to make grad school worthwhile. So how do you do it? How do we as mentors look our students in the eyes and tell them to ignore the statistics and persevere, hoping they'll be one of the few to buck the trends? References: [1] http://rescuingbiomedicalresearch.org/blog/bias-distribution-k99-awards-faculty-hires/ [2] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/622886v1.full [3] https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/1/e1400005 [4] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/350/6266/1367 [5] https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3766 [6] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6286/663 [7] https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3766 [8] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733318302312#bib0465
### Response:
If you consider only monetary benefits it is hard to justify grad school. But there are other: 1. PhD gives you access to all kinds of research jobs, and if you are into research it might be worth it, because otherwise you won't be considered for those positions. 2. TT has way more freedom than any other high paid job, might be worth the gamble, especially for people who have already thought about point #1. 3. Even if you drop out it does not mean you are not good enough, there is a lot of factors affecting it. Knowing this can make it easier to go through the struggles. I am currently a grad student and I perceive it this way: "I know it's a gamble, but considering the freedom of choosing a problem to work on and the fact that if I don't like it I can become a data scientist any minute I'm okay with spending at least some time on that and see how it goes."
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How can we ethically justify training graduate students? My background is in biomedical research, and I'm currently a research scientist, applying for TT positions. I've been struggling with the idea of training my own graduate students and for years now I've been reluctant to encourage undergraduates to continue on to grad school. Every time an undergraduate research assistant has expressed interest in pursuing a PhD, I've tried to explain to them the enormity of the deck stacked against them. To wit: * Compared to other highly educated people in the general population, PhD students are about 2.5 times more likely to be at risk for depression and other psychiatric disorders. About one in three end up with symptoms of a psychiatric disorder. * For 80% of grad students, an academic career is the goal, but just over 10% actually achieve a faculty position. And those 10% are not equally distributed across institutions, but disproportionately come from elite institutions 1-3], the kinds of which I will most likely not be teaching at. * [Most biomedical PhDs end up having to do a postdoc, but postdoc salaries are lower than that of a new college graduate even though the postdoc is working 50+ hours per week and is 9 years older than the new college grad. * 20% of postdocs report having existential crises related to their careers. * If the postdoc goes into industry, their salary (~$48K/yr ) is still less than the median new college grad (~50K/yr) AND it's unlikely the private sector biology PhD will be able to continue doing research 4-5]. Indeed, if the postdoc sticks with research, they can expect to be paid [less. * Moreover, several studies agree that there isn’t any evidence a postdoc will actually benefit seekers of non-academic jobs 6-8]. When comparing private sector workers 10 years post-PhD, the salary of those who went the postdoc route are [$12,000 lower than those who skipped postdocs altogether. So if I encourage someone to go to grad school, I'm essentially putting them on a path toward some pretty dire consequences for their career, especially if they do a postdoc, which most will. If they're not getting paid well, they're not getting training that can help them thrive outside of academia, and they're miserable, how can I justify telling them to go this route? I think I'm a pretty good mentor. I think my research is important. But I'm realistic about the prospects of my trainees. They're not all going to end up in tenured faculty positions, and the numbers concerning the alternatives are all pretty grim. I can try my best to make sure my students aren't stressed out horribly, but I can't do anything to ensure they'll have meaningful, fulfilling jobs in science that actually pay enough to make grad school worthwhile. So how do you do it? How do we as mentors look our students in the eyes and tell them to ignore the statistics and persevere, hoping they'll be one of the few to buck the trends? References: [1] http://rescuingbiomedicalresearch.org/blog/bias-distribution-k99-awards-faculty-hires/ [2] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/622886v1.full [3] https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/1/e1400005 [4] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/350/6266/1367 [5] https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3766 [6] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6286/663 [7] https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3766 [8] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733318302312#bib0465
### Response:
The data OP cites is certainly a compelling argument for *avoiding graduate school in the first place*. And this information is out there and available to folks as they make the decision to apply and to enroll. But to hit them with all this after the fact, as they're newly arrived and enthusiastic first-year students, actually seems rather cruel to me. "Hey bozo, look what an idiot thing you just did!" No, no bueno, you just do you best to train and support them and you don't shove all this negativity at them.
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How can we ethically justify training graduate students? My background is in biomedical research, and I'm currently a research scientist, applying for TT positions. I've been struggling with the idea of training my own graduate students and for years now I've been reluctant to encourage undergraduates to continue on to grad school. Every time an undergraduate research assistant has expressed interest in pursuing a PhD, I've tried to explain to them the enormity of the deck stacked against them. To wit: * Compared to other highly educated people in the general population, PhD students are about 2.5 times more likely to be at risk for depression and other psychiatric disorders. About one in three end up with symptoms of a psychiatric disorder. * For 80% of grad students, an academic career is the goal, but just over 10% actually achieve a faculty position. And those 10% are not equally distributed across institutions, but disproportionately come from elite institutions 1-3], the kinds of which I will most likely not be teaching at. * [Most biomedical PhDs end up having to do a postdoc, but postdoc salaries are lower than that of a new college graduate even though the postdoc is working 50+ hours per week and is 9 years older than the new college grad. * 20% of postdocs report having existential crises related to their careers. * If the postdoc goes into industry, their salary (~$48K/yr ) is still less than the median new college grad (~50K/yr) AND it's unlikely the private sector biology PhD will be able to continue doing research 4-5]. Indeed, if the postdoc sticks with research, they can expect to be paid [less. * Moreover, several studies agree that there isn’t any evidence a postdoc will actually benefit seekers of non-academic jobs 6-8]. When comparing private sector workers 10 years post-PhD, the salary of those who went the postdoc route are [$12,000 lower than those who skipped postdocs altogether. So if I encourage someone to go to grad school, I'm essentially putting them on a path toward some pretty dire consequences for their career, especially if they do a postdoc, which most will. If they're not getting paid well, they're not getting training that can help them thrive outside of academia, and they're miserable, how can I justify telling them to go this route? I think I'm a pretty good mentor. I think my research is important. But I'm realistic about the prospects of my trainees. They're not all going to end up in tenured faculty positions, and the numbers concerning the alternatives are all pretty grim. I can try my best to make sure my students aren't stressed out horribly, but I can't do anything to ensure they'll have meaningful, fulfilling jobs in science that actually pay enough to make grad school worthwhile. So how do you do it? How do we as mentors look our students in the eyes and tell them to ignore the statistics and persevere, hoping they'll be one of the few to buck the trends? References: [1] http://rescuingbiomedicalresearch.org/blog/bias-distribution-k99-awards-faculty-hires/ [2] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/622886v1.full [3] https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/1/e1400005 [4] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/350/6266/1367 [5] https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3766 [6] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6286/663 [7] https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3766 [8] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733318302312#bib0465
### Response:
I think that academic science is a bit of a passion job. In many senses, it's not all that different from dreaming of being a pro-athlete, working in the arts, or working as a chef. Long hours, low pay, a few people make it big, even more people live modestly but comfortably doing something they love, a lot of hustle, a long period of time where you are sacrificing earning potential to pursue this dream. Only a small number of people "make it" and most people end up moving on and doing something else with their lives. On the upside the unemployment rate for PhDs is something like 1%, so even though you might end up underemployed or not using your degree with a lot of sunk costs, it definitely doesn't mean you will be on the street. You might have all kinds of unusual options open to you. If it were presented as akin to signing a D1 scholarship with the dream of becoming professional athlete or hauling long hours with low pay with the dream of becoming the head chef at a restaurant rather than a route that makes financial sense, perhaps people's view of "failing" to become a professor or seeing a PhD as a totally economically secure route (compared to the loss of earning potential) would be clearer.
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How can we ethically justify training graduate students? My background is in biomedical research, and I'm currently a research scientist, applying for TT positions. I've been struggling with the idea of training my own graduate students and for years now I've been reluctant to encourage undergraduates to continue on to grad school. Every time an undergraduate research assistant has expressed interest in pursuing a PhD, I've tried to explain to them the enormity of the deck stacked against them. To wit: * Compared to other highly educated people in the general population, PhD students are about 2.5 times more likely to be at risk for depression and other psychiatric disorders. About one in three end up with symptoms of a psychiatric disorder. * For 80% of grad students, an academic career is the goal, but just over 10% actually achieve a faculty position. And those 10% are not equally distributed across institutions, but disproportionately come from elite institutions 1-3], the kinds of which I will most likely not be teaching at. * [Most biomedical PhDs end up having to do a postdoc, but postdoc salaries are lower than that of a new college graduate even though the postdoc is working 50+ hours per week and is 9 years older than the new college grad. * 20% of postdocs report having existential crises related to their careers. * If the postdoc goes into industry, their salary (~$48K/yr ) is still less than the median new college grad (~50K/yr) AND it's unlikely the private sector biology PhD will be able to continue doing research 4-5]. Indeed, if the postdoc sticks with research, they can expect to be paid [less. * Moreover, several studies agree that there isn’t any evidence a postdoc will actually benefit seekers of non-academic jobs 6-8]. When comparing private sector workers 10 years post-PhD, the salary of those who went the postdoc route are [$12,000 lower than those who skipped postdocs altogether. So if I encourage someone to go to grad school, I'm essentially putting them on a path toward some pretty dire consequences for their career, especially if they do a postdoc, which most will. If they're not getting paid well, they're not getting training that can help them thrive outside of academia, and they're miserable, how can I justify telling them to go this route? I think I'm a pretty good mentor. I think my research is important. But I'm realistic about the prospects of my trainees. They're not all going to end up in tenured faculty positions, and the numbers concerning the alternatives are all pretty grim. I can try my best to make sure my students aren't stressed out horribly, but I can't do anything to ensure they'll have meaningful, fulfilling jobs in science that actually pay enough to make grad school worthwhile. So how do you do it? How do we as mentors look our students in the eyes and tell them to ignore the statistics and persevere, hoping they'll be one of the few to buck the trends? References: [1] http://rescuingbiomedicalresearch.org/blog/bias-distribution-k99-awards-faculty-hires/ [2] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/622886v1.full [3] https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/1/e1400005 [4] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/350/6266/1367 [5] https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3766 [6] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6286/663 [7] https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3766 [8] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733318302312#bib0465
### Response:
That was an excellently written post. Let us pause, for but a moment, to consider the 70% who are effectively exiled from a career they are trained, and qualified, for. People who have made the sacrifices postgrad work demands, who have met the challenge, and who are cast out because of fashion and fortune. Let us be honest with ourselves; how many of us hold a post simply because we knew the right person at the right time, in the right place? The question of ethics lies not in the teaching of graduates, but in maintaining the current path academia is taking. If we continue to throw away the wonders we create, we will lament the mono-culture our scholarship will become.
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How can we ethically justify training graduate students? My background is in biomedical research, and I'm currently a research scientist, applying for TT positions. I've been struggling with the idea of training my own graduate students and for years now I've been reluctant to encourage undergraduates to continue on to grad school. Every time an undergraduate research assistant has expressed interest in pursuing a PhD, I've tried to explain to them the enormity of the deck stacked against them. To wit: * Compared to other highly educated people in the general population, PhD students are about 2.5 times more likely to be at risk for depression and other psychiatric disorders. About one in three end up with symptoms of a psychiatric disorder. * For 80% of grad students, an academic career is the goal, but just over 10% actually achieve a faculty position. And those 10% are not equally distributed across institutions, but disproportionately come from elite institutions 1-3], the kinds of which I will most likely not be teaching at. * [Most biomedical PhDs end up having to do a postdoc, but postdoc salaries are lower than that of a new college graduate even though the postdoc is working 50+ hours per week and is 9 years older than the new college grad. * 20% of postdocs report having existential crises related to their careers. * If the postdoc goes into industry, their salary (~$48K/yr ) is still less than the median new college grad (~50K/yr) AND it's unlikely the private sector biology PhD will be able to continue doing research 4-5]. Indeed, if the postdoc sticks with research, they can expect to be paid [less. * Moreover, several studies agree that there isn’t any evidence a postdoc will actually benefit seekers of non-academic jobs 6-8]. When comparing private sector workers 10 years post-PhD, the salary of those who went the postdoc route are [$12,000 lower than those who skipped postdocs altogether. So if I encourage someone to go to grad school, I'm essentially putting them on a path toward some pretty dire consequences for their career, especially if they do a postdoc, which most will. If they're not getting paid well, they're not getting training that can help them thrive outside of academia, and they're miserable, how can I justify telling them to go this route? I think I'm a pretty good mentor. I think my research is important. But I'm realistic about the prospects of my trainees. They're not all going to end up in tenured faculty positions, and the numbers concerning the alternatives are all pretty grim. I can try my best to make sure my students aren't stressed out horribly, but I can't do anything to ensure they'll have meaningful, fulfilling jobs in science that actually pay enough to make grad school worthwhile. So how do you do it? How do we as mentors look our students in the eyes and tell them to ignore the statistics and persevere, hoping they'll be one of the few to buck the trends? References: [1] http://rescuingbiomedicalresearch.org/blog/bias-distribution-k99-awards-faculty-hires/ [2] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/622886v1.full [3] https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/1/e1400005 [4] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/350/6266/1367 [5] https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3766 [6] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6286/663 [7] https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3766 [8] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733318302312#bib0465
### Response:
One of the things I grew to really appreciate in grad school was that I was often asked what I want to do. If you start mentorship (or even interviews with potential candidates) by asking what the student wants, whether the student's goals align with your assumptions, you can help the student find what they want. If a student wants to make big bucks, you should tell them to go elsewhere. If a student wants to work and fight and struggle to figure out how things work, without being driven by a paycheck, invite them into your lab. That struggle can be its own reward, and those who enjoy it are probably those most likely to stick to it and end up with grants, faculty positions, etc.
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How can we ethically justify training graduate students? My background is in biomedical research, and I'm currently a research scientist, applying for TT positions. I've been struggling with the idea of training my own graduate students and for years now I've been reluctant to encourage undergraduates to continue on to grad school. Every time an undergraduate research assistant has expressed interest in pursuing a PhD, I've tried to explain to them the enormity of the deck stacked against them. To wit: * Compared to other highly educated people in the general population, PhD students are about 2.5 times more likely to be at risk for depression and other psychiatric disorders. About one in three end up with symptoms of a psychiatric disorder. * For 80% of grad students, an academic career is the goal, but just over 10% actually achieve a faculty position. And those 10% are not equally distributed across institutions, but disproportionately come from elite institutions 1-3], the kinds of which I will most likely not be teaching at. * [Most biomedical PhDs end up having to do a postdoc, but postdoc salaries are lower than that of a new college graduate even though the postdoc is working 50+ hours per week and is 9 years older than the new college grad. * 20% of postdocs report having existential crises related to their careers. * If the postdoc goes into industry, their salary (~$48K/yr ) is still less than the median new college grad (~50K/yr) AND it's unlikely the private sector biology PhD will be able to continue doing research 4-5]. Indeed, if the postdoc sticks with research, they can expect to be paid [less. * Moreover, several studies agree that there isn’t any evidence a postdoc will actually benefit seekers of non-academic jobs 6-8]. When comparing private sector workers 10 years post-PhD, the salary of those who went the postdoc route are [$12,000 lower than those who skipped postdocs altogether. So if I encourage someone to go to grad school, I'm essentially putting them on a path toward some pretty dire consequences for their career, especially if they do a postdoc, which most will. If they're not getting paid well, they're not getting training that can help them thrive outside of academia, and they're miserable, how can I justify telling them to go this route? I think I'm a pretty good mentor. I think my research is important. But I'm realistic about the prospects of my trainees. They're not all going to end up in tenured faculty positions, and the numbers concerning the alternatives are all pretty grim. I can try my best to make sure my students aren't stressed out horribly, but I can't do anything to ensure they'll have meaningful, fulfilling jobs in science that actually pay enough to make grad school worthwhile. So how do you do it? How do we as mentors look our students in the eyes and tell them to ignore the statistics and persevere, hoping they'll be one of the few to buck the trends? References: [1] http://rescuingbiomedicalresearch.org/blog/bias-distribution-k99-awards-faculty-hires/ [2] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/622886v1.full [3] https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/1/e1400005 [4] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/350/6266/1367 [5] https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3766 [6] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6286/663 [7] https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3766 [8] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733318302312#bib0465
### Response:
You're definitely not the only person to think this way > Monica Harris, a professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky, is a rare exception. She believes that too many PhDs are being produced, and has stopped admitting them. But such unilateral academic birth control is rare. from <https://medium.economist.com/why-doing-a-phd-is-often-a-waste-of-time-349206f9addb> I'm a grad student who is just beginning to realize that my research is completely useless for anything other than a postdoc. What's even the point of my research? To print more papers with my advisor's name so that he can win larger grants and write even more papers? Yes that's about it.
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How can we ethically justify training graduate students? My background is in biomedical research, and I'm currently a research scientist, applying for TT positions. I've been struggling with the idea of training my own graduate students and for years now I've been reluctant to encourage undergraduates to continue on to grad school. Every time an undergraduate research assistant has expressed interest in pursuing a PhD, I've tried to explain to them the enormity of the deck stacked against them. To wit: * Compared to other highly educated people in the general population, PhD students are about 2.5 times more likely to be at risk for depression and other psychiatric disorders. About one in three end up with symptoms of a psychiatric disorder. * For 80% of grad students, an academic career is the goal, but just over 10% actually achieve a faculty position. And those 10% are not equally distributed across institutions, but disproportionately come from elite institutions 1-3], the kinds of which I will most likely not be teaching at. * [Most biomedical PhDs end up having to do a postdoc, but postdoc salaries are lower than that of a new college graduate even though the postdoc is working 50+ hours per week and is 9 years older than the new college grad. * 20% of postdocs report having existential crises related to their careers. * If the postdoc goes into industry, their salary (~$48K/yr ) is still less than the median new college grad (~50K/yr) AND it's unlikely the private sector biology PhD will be able to continue doing research 4-5]. Indeed, if the postdoc sticks with research, they can expect to be paid [less. * Moreover, several studies agree that there isn’t any evidence a postdoc will actually benefit seekers of non-academic jobs 6-8]. When comparing private sector workers 10 years post-PhD, the salary of those who went the postdoc route are [$12,000 lower than those who skipped postdocs altogether. So if I encourage someone to go to grad school, I'm essentially putting them on a path toward some pretty dire consequences for their career, especially if they do a postdoc, which most will. If they're not getting paid well, they're not getting training that can help them thrive outside of academia, and they're miserable, how can I justify telling them to go this route? I think I'm a pretty good mentor. I think my research is important. But I'm realistic about the prospects of my trainees. They're not all going to end up in tenured faculty positions, and the numbers concerning the alternatives are all pretty grim. I can try my best to make sure my students aren't stressed out horribly, but I can't do anything to ensure they'll have meaningful, fulfilling jobs in science that actually pay enough to make grad school worthwhile. So how do you do it? How do we as mentors look our students in the eyes and tell them to ignore the statistics and persevere, hoping they'll be one of the few to buck the trends? References: [1] http://rescuingbiomedicalresearch.org/blog/bias-distribution-k99-awards-faculty-hires/ [2] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/622886v1.full [3] https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/1/e1400005 [4] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/350/6266/1367 [5] https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3766 [6] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6286/663 [7] https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3766 [8] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733318302312#bib0465
### Response:
I think a lot of these points are valid. I think though the straightforward question to ask that isn't really answered in your examples is: how many recent graduates regret doing a PhD? How many people wish that they had taken a different path? While I suspect that measuring regret (without comparing across groups or something) isn't a great raw indicator, I'm also not sure all of these measurements are measuring life satisfaction that well either. ​ I'm convinced that 1) PhD students aren't happy/don't have great finances (and neither are postdocs -- though depending on the definition of existential crisis 20% doesn't sound that bad tbh); 2) many phd's want academic jobs but we don't get them; 3) doing a postdoc then going into industry isn't really better than straight to industry (in terms of the industry job you get); 4) industry jobs don't let you do the "research whatever you want (kinda)" that academia does ​ But I guess you haven't convinced me that industry as a fall back plan is all that grim. like ya your students going into industry won't make bank necessarily but maybe they are fine with that? you compare phd postdoc versus phd, and phd postdoc versus college grad generally, but if someone was going to go into the biomedical industry, how does having a phd (vs no phd; some kind of ba/ma) change things. ​ in fairness, its clear you're in this position of applying to TT jobs, and probably checking out industry alternatives, and all the options other than TT look pretty grim to you -- thats personal experience that I don't have. I guess the question is -- if you don't get your TT job, will you regret doing a phd? (it might be hard to know the answer for sure) ​ And honestly, I totally feel this way all the time. to answer your question about training and encouraging/discouraging students -- coming into a phd program personally I wasn't naive about job opportunities (nor I think are most of my cohort) and that I probably won't be a professor. but I thought the chance to do a phd for "free" was worth it -- an 'opportunity of a lifetime!' -- and I could leave whenever I decided on something better to do (before or after I finish). though I still sometimes feel even if I walked away tomorrow it was still worth it, what I think I was actually naive about was how painful/hard it can feel to leave (or to stay) years later, after it feels like I've given my phd my everything. I'm not sure how I could've explained that to my younger self. but then again, maybe if I actually do leave ill see that the "well let's just try it out" approach had been right all along: I'll be both happy I did it and happy I left. who knows
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How can we ethically justify training graduate students? My background is in biomedical research, and I'm currently a research scientist, applying for TT positions. I've been struggling with the idea of training my own graduate students and for years now I've been reluctant to encourage undergraduates to continue on to grad school. Every time an undergraduate research assistant has expressed interest in pursuing a PhD, I've tried to explain to them the enormity of the deck stacked against them. To wit: * Compared to other highly educated people in the general population, PhD students are about 2.5 times more likely to be at risk for depression and other psychiatric disorders. About one in three end up with symptoms of a psychiatric disorder. * For 80% of grad students, an academic career is the goal, but just over 10% actually achieve a faculty position. And those 10% are not equally distributed across institutions, but disproportionately come from elite institutions 1-3], the kinds of which I will most likely not be teaching at. * [Most biomedical PhDs end up having to do a postdoc, but postdoc salaries are lower than that of a new college graduate even though the postdoc is working 50+ hours per week and is 9 years older than the new college grad. * 20% of postdocs report having existential crises related to their careers. * If the postdoc goes into industry, their salary (~$48K/yr ) is still less than the median new college grad (~50K/yr) AND it's unlikely the private sector biology PhD will be able to continue doing research 4-5]. Indeed, if the postdoc sticks with research, they can expect to be paid [less. * Moreover, several studies agree that there isn’t any evidence a postdoc will actually benefit seekers of non-academic jobs 6-8]. When comparing private sector workers 10 years post-PhD, the salary of those who went the postdoc route are [$12,000 lower than those who skipped postdocs altogether. So if I encourage someone to go to grad school, I'm essentially putting them on a path toward some pretty dire consequences for their career, especially if they do a postdoc, which most will. If they're not getting paid well, they're not getting training that can help them thrive outside of academia, and they're miserable, how can I justify telling them to go this route? I think I'm a pretty good mentor. I think my research is important. But I'm realistic about the prospects of my trainees. They're not all going to end up in tenured faculty positions, and the numbers concerning the alternatives are all pretty grim. I can try my best to make sure my students aren't stressed out horribly, but I can't do anything to ensure they'll have meaningful, fulfilling jobs in science that actually pay enough to make grad school worthwhile. So how do you do it? How do we as mentors look our students in the eyes and tell them to ignore the statistics and persevere, hoping they'll be one of the few to buck the trends? References: [1] http://rescuingbiomedicalresearch.org/blog/bias-distribution-k99-awards-faculty-hires/ [2] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/622886v1.full [3] https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/1/e1400005 [4] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/350/6266/1367 [5] https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3766 [6] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6286/663 [7] https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3766 [8] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733318302312#bib0465
### Response:
Thank you for this. I’m a biomedical graduate student and I’ve been in basically an existential crisis about whether to continue trying to do the academia thing for the last year, and I’ve never felt so stuck in my entire life. Thank you for laying out the numbers for the biomedical field. I knew it probably wasn’t in the cards for me but seeing the numbers (and the stats about lower pay, even years out of a postdoc if you pursue that route) has really made it sink in for me that it’s not worth it. Thank you, seriously. Now I can let go of this and move on. Best of luck to you as you continue on with your journey.
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How did universities do hiring, promotion, and tenure before “publish or perish”? When I hear professors who got their PhD before 1980-ish talk about how they got their faculty positions it all sounds so easy. Nothing like the hyper-crowded cutthroat business it is now. So why were things so easy?
### Response:
I've heard one senior faculty at a top school brag he's never had to apply to a single job in his life. Back in his day, he was just recommended to jobs by his seniors, who were extremely respected scientists
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How did universities do hiring, promotion, and tenure before “publish or perish”? When I hear professors who got their PhD before 1980-ish talk about how they got their faculty positions it all sounds so easy. Nothing like the hyper-crowded cutthroat business it is now. So why were things so easy?
### Response:
Supply and demand. The number of people applying for each position is now so much larger, so the competition is tougher. There is also now a lot more employment regulation meaning universities have to prove their hiring practices are fair, so they have to use criteria that have the appearance of objectivity such as citation metrics, rather than personal judgement.
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How did universities do hiring, promotion, and tenure before “publish or perish”? When I hear professors who got their PhD before 1980-ish talk about how they got their faculty positions it all sounds so easy. Nothing like the hyper-crowded cutthroat business it is now. So why were things so easy?
### Response:
"Somebody recommended I take this job", which is similar to the story told today. The only difference is that some people think they are playing the publish or perish game, but in reality they are playing the recommendation and political favor game. This is especially true as having friends and connections get you papers.
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How did universities do hiring, promotion, and tenure before “publish or perish”? When I hear professors who got their PhD before 1980-ish talk about how they got their faculty positions it all sounds so easy. Nothing like the hyper-crowded cutthroat business it is now. So why were things so easy?
### Response:
There was a senior member of the department where I got my PhD who would talk about how when he was in a grad school---not even "on the market" note---a nearby university called him up, offered him a TT job, and then---*when he refused*---flew him out to try and convince him. And it wasn't like he was a hotshot at a prestigious Ivy League university. Senior member of the department where I got my MA: started teaching part-time at the university as a grad student, got hired to TT two years later because the other members of the department liked him still without having either a publication or a finished dissertation. (Note: I consider this guy one of the most original scholars in my field, and he is a legend around that department for his teaching and service, so it's not like they made a bad choice.) Back to the PhD department, more recently though still a long time ago. This guy met the then-chair at a conference as a grad student, the chair just "gave" (?!) him a fellowship and then convinced the rest of the faculty to turn it into a TT line. I'm sure for every story like this there's a dozen people who went through what seem like normal hiring processes to us today, but ... yeah.
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How did universities do hiring, promotion, and tenure before “publish or perish”? When I hear professors who got their PhD before 1980-ish talk about how they got their faculty positions it all sounds so easy. Nothing like the hyper-crowded cutthroat business it is now. So why were things so easy?
### Response:
Don’t assume the people in the old days were bad scholars, though. Two of the best works in my field—book length and with book level research—are dissertations by two women, one from 1908 and one from 1933. I’m a medieval/Renaissance scholar so our field changes less, but those women did as much work as went into my diss AND my first book (different topics) in just the dissertation. More work, actually, because they only has physical archives whereas I could read a lot digitally. I still lean on their work! And one of them did teach in a university and I imagine she was an absolute rockstar.
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How did universities do hiring, promotion, and tenure before “publish or perish”? When I hear professors who got their PhD before 1980-ish talk about how they got their faculty positions it all sounds so easy. Nothing like the hyper-crowded cutthroat business it is now. So why were things so easy?
### Response:
>When I hear professors who got their PhD before 1980-ish talk about how they got their faculty positions it all sounds so easy. One of my former colleagues shared stories about being on the market in US history in 1974. There were apparently something like *five* jobs posted in the entire USA. And of course hundreds of candidates. I've heard similar stories from others about the mid-1970s market as well. Sure, there was some measure of the old boys' network still, but certainly by the mid 70s there were highly competitive searches happening at many schools. I was on my first search committee (as a student) in the 1980s and the process looked exactly like it does today in that case, complete with 200+ applicants for a single TT line in history at an SLAC.
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How did universities do hiring, promotion, and tenure before “publish or perish”? When I hear professors who got their PhD before 1980-ish talk about how they got their faculty positions it all sounds so easy. Nothing like the hyper-crowded cutthroat business it is now. So why were things so easy?
### Response:
A lot of factors, but mainly people hadn't learned to game the system, so expectations could be couched in realistic terms. These days, if you haven't published at least a few times in grad school, you have no chance of working at a research institution at all. But in the 1970s, publishing during grad school at all was relatively rare (more common in STEM, but basically unheard of in humanities). But now everybody knows that publication is the key to jobs, so mentors look for ways to get promising grad students in as 4th authors or whatever. So now every graduate worth their salt has published a lot right out of the PhD. At least on paper. TBH, the quality of publications has gone down considerably and there are a lot of journals whose sole existence is to pad CVs out. Nobody actually reads or cites the research published in them.
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How did universities do hiring, promotion, and tenure before “publish or perish”? When I hear professors who got their PhD before 1980-ish talk about how they got their faculty positions it all sounds so easy. Nothing like the hyper-crowded cutthroat business it is now. So why were things so easy?
### Response:
I had a famous scientist once point out to me that right now there are more scientists looking for tenure track positions than the cumulative total number of scientists (not just people looking for jobs) throughout all of history. That is a crushing thing to hear right before hitting the job market, but it prepared me.
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Losing hope in a successful academic career This is my first post in Reddit. Not sure how to start. Let me start with some context. I always was the top student in my class, after graduation I got a lot of academic awards in my home country (even from the government) for having the best academic records in the country (all them with nice cash prizes attached), I finished my PhD in 3.5 years (working like hell) with about 10 journal publications (most of them top journals) and almost 20 conferences (many of them quite good as well). I got my first and only postdoc job before graduating from my PhD, and two years later I finally got my first academic job in the UK as assistant professor in a Russell group university. So far so good. I have now been between 5-10 years in this department (not saying the exact number for privacy reasons), got a promotion to associate professor a couple of years ago. I have got several grants (some of them from prestigious funders, the other successfull applicants being from Oxford and Cambridge) and have done ok in publications. However I feel like the "good luck" (if I can call it that way) is coming to an end and I don't see good prospects for the future because of the following reasons: \- There is little to no support from the department. We don't get any PhD scholarships to recruit PhD students. The only way I got one (1) PhD studentship from my department all this time was conditioned on a grant application being successful, which thankfully was, and I still had to request additional funding from the grant budget to give a stipend to the PhD student. All my other PhD students have been self-funded (and I got two of them because they were neglected by their supervisors and came to me to take them, which I had to do as I didn't really have many options to choose from). \- I only have two PhD students now and won't have any other next year. I don't have money to recruit any PhD students so I can only accept self-funded students. Good self-funded students will go to USA or other higher ranked universities in UK. I only get odd emails from poor candidates who lack even basic skills from undegraduate level. \- Despite trying to work hard in research, getting grants, papers in top journals, being editor in good journals, organise workshops and other staff, I have been overloaded with teaching and admin duties, way more than any other colleague in my department, some of them who have less than half my teaching load. I have talked to the HoD about this and in the last two years I had to keep going with my heavy teaching load under the promise of being the last year. The next academic year will be again "the last year" (for the third time) before my teaching and admin load decreases. This year there was an opportunity to get a course in my area of research (all my teaching is outside my area of research, to make things worse) and the course I wanted was given to another academic staff in HoD's own research group. I feel unfairly loaded, doing roles in the department that have historically been for staff in teaching and scholarship track (I'm in teaching and research track according to my contract, but effectively working as T&S). Teaching load is extremely unfairly distributed (we can see each other's courses online). All my research has been done in evenings, weekends, and holidays, so effectively unpaid labour, and even in these conditions I have done better in research than other colleague with lower teaching and admin load. I have been unable to explore other research topics I liked because I couldn't find time to read a paper, so I have been working too long in the same research are, now kind of outdated... I have started to think that the HoD doesn't like me for some reason (I can think of a few reasons but I won't say them here because then it would be easy to identify me) and this may be the result of some kind of conspiracy from HoD against me. So here I am, with a huge teaching load, no time to do research under good conditions and with no PhD students and any prospects of having anything that looks like a research group. I wonder whether is there anything I have done wrongly, or simply I have had bad luck, or maybe this is just the norm, or maybe the unfair treatment of a HoD for some reason. I came to academia because I wanted to do research, but I not only didn't get any support for this (despite having promising potentials to succeed) but also got obstacles from the department in the form of an unfair heavy teaching load. I look at colleagues in other places and feel like I'm well behind all them after so many years of suffering this huge teaching load. I have now lost all kind of motivation to even get up from bed every day and read/reply to my emails (mostly from some of my more than 300 students that I teach).
### Response:
This genuinely is hard to read... It is such a shame that such a motivated and dedicated person like you has to go through it. I am sorry to hear that and I sincerely hope you will manage to get better opportunities very soon. May I ask why are you sticking to academia if the conditions are so difficult for you? Probably a stupid question, but have you tried changing department/university? It does sound like most of your problems come from being in an unsupportive department - maybe managing to get elsewhere will help?
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Losing hope in a successful academic career This is my first post in Reddit. Not sure how to start. Let me start with some context. I always was the top student in my class, after graduation I got a lot of academic awards in my home country (even from the government) for having the best academic records in the country (all them with nice cash prizes attached), I finished my PhD in 3.5 years (working like hell) with about 10 journal publications (most of them top journals) and almost 20 conferences (many of them quite good as well). I got my first and only postdoc job before graduating from my PhD, and two years later I finally got my first academic job in the UK as assistant professor in a Russell group university. So far so good. I have now been between 5-10 years in this department (not saying the exact number for privacy reasons), got a promotion to associate professor a couple of years ago. I have got several grants (some of them from prestigious funders, the other successfull applicants being from Oxford and Cambridge) and have done ok in publications. However I feel like the "good luck" (if I can call it that way) is coming to an end and I don't see good prospects for the future because of the following reasons: \- There is little to no support from the department. We don't get any PhD scholarships to recruit PhD students. The only way I got one (1) PhD studentship from my department all this time was conditioned on a grant application being successful, which thankfully was, and I still had to request additional funding from the grant budget to give a stipend to the PhD student. All my other PhD students have been self-funded (and I got two of them because they were neglected by their supervisors and came to me to take them, which I had to do as I didn't really have many options to choose from). \- I only have two PhD students now and won't have any other next year. I don't have money to recruit any PhD students so I can only accept self-funded students. Good self-funded students will go to USA or other higher ranked universities in UK. I only get odd emails from poor candidates who lack even basic skills from undegraduate level. \- Despite trying to work hard in research, getting grants, papers in top journals, being editor in good journals, organise workshops and other staff, I have been overloaded with teaching and admin duties, way more than any other colleague in my department, some of them who have less than half my teaching load. I have talked to the HoD about this and in the last two years I had to keep going with my heavy teaching load under the promise of being the last year. The next academic year will be again "the last year" (for the third time) before my teaching and admin load decreases. This year there was an opportunity to get a course in my area of research (all my teaching is outside my area of research, to make things worse) and the course I wanted was given to another academic staff in HoD's own research group. I feel unfairly loaded, doing roles in the department that have historically been for staff in teaching and scholarship track (I'm in teaching and research track according to my contract, but effectively working as T&S). Teaching load is extremely unfairly distributed (we can see each other's courses online). All my research has been done in evenings, weekends, and holidays, so effectively unpaid labour, and even in these conditions I have done better in research than other colleague with lower teaching and admin load. I have been unable to explore other research topics I liked because I couldn't find time to read a paper, so I have been working too long in the same research are, now kind of outdated... I have started to think that the HoD doesn't like me for some reason (I can think of a few reasons but I won't say them here because then it would be easy to identify me) and this may be the result of some kind of conspiracy from HoD against me. So here I am, with a huge teaching load, no time to do research under good conditions and with no PhD students and any prospects of having anything that looks like a research group. I wonder whether is there anything I have done wrongly, or simply I have had bad luck, or maybe this is just the norm, or maybe the unfair treatment of a HoD for some reason. I came to academia because I wanted to do research, but I not only didn't get any support for this (despite having promising potentials to succeed) but also got obstacles from the department in the form of an unfair heavy teaching load. I look at colleagues in other places and feel like I'm well behind all them after so many years of suffering this huge teaching load. I have now lost all kind of motivation to even get up from bed every day and read/reply to my emails (mostly from some of my more than 300 students that I teach).
### Response:
If you have as many (quality) pubs and as much grant money as you say, and are already at a Russell Group school, it should be a relatively small matter to get an offer at another school. I'm US-based, so maybe the UK is very different, but any US researcher with your profile would have jumped ship to a school with a fraction of the teaching and leagues better funding/research support literally years ago. Even if all you do is get an offer that should signal to your HoD or higher up to start negotiating.
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Losing hope in a successful academic career This is my first post in Reddit. Not sure how to start. Let me start with some context. I always was the top student in my class, after graduation I got a lot of academic awards in my home country (even from the government) for having the best academic records in the country (all them with nice cash prizes attached), I finished my PhD in 3.5 years (working like hell) with about 10 journal publications (most of them top journals) and almost 20 conferences (many of them quite good as well). I got my first and only postdoc job before graduating from my PhD, and two years later I finally got my first academic job in the UK as assistant professor in a Russell group university. So far so good. I have now been between 5-10 years in this department (not saying the exact number for privacy reasons), got a promotion to associate professor a couple of years ago. I have got several grants (some of them from prestigious funders, the other successfull applicants being from Oxford and Cambridge) and have done ok in publications. However I feel like the "good luck" (if I can call it that way) is coming to an end and I don't see good prospects for the future because of the following reasons: \- There is little to no support from the department. We don't get any PhD scholarships to recruit PhD students. The only way I got one (1) PhD studentship from my department all this time was conditioned on a grant application being successful, which thankfully was, and I still had to request additional funding from the grant budget to give a stipend to the PhD student. All my other PhD students have been self-funded (and I got two of them because they were neglected by their supervisors and came to me to take them, which I had to do as I didn't really have many options to choose from). \- I only have two PhD students now and won't have any other next year. I don't have money to recruit any PhD students so I can only accept self-funded students. Good self-funded students will go to USA or other higher ranked universities in UK. I only get odd emails from poor candidates who lack even basic skills from undegraduate level. \- Despite trying to work hard in research, getting grants, papers in top journals, being editor in good journals, organise workshops and other staff, I have been overloaded with teaching and admin duties, way more than any other colleague in my department, some of them who have less than half my teaching load. I have talked to the HoD about this and in the last two years I had to keep going with my heavy teaching load under the promise of being the last year. The next academic year will be again "the last year" (for the third time) before my teaching and admin load decreases. This year there was an opportunity to get a course in my area of research (all my teaching is outside my area of research, to make things worse) and the course I wanted was given to another academic staff in HoD's own research group. I feel unfairly loaded, doing roles in the department that have historically been for staff in teaching and scholarship track (I'm in teaching and research track according to my contract, but effectively working as T&S). Teaching load is extremely unfairly distributed (we can see each other's courses online). All my research has been done in evenings, weekends, and holidays, so effectively unpaid labour, and even in these conditions I have done better in research than other colleague with lower teaching and admin load. I have been unable to explore other research topics I liked because I couldn't find time to read a paper, so I have been working too long in the same research are, now kind of outdated... I have started to think that the HoD doesn't like me for some reason (I can think of a few reasons but I won't say them here because then it would be easy to identify me) and this may be the result of some kind of conspiracy from HoD against me. So here I am, with a huge teaching load, no time to do research under good conditions and with no PhD students and any prospects of having anything that looks like a research group. I wonder whether is there anything I have done wrongly, or simply I have had bad luck, or maybe this is just the norm, or maybe the unfair treatment of a HoD for some reason. I came to academia because I wanted to do research, but I not only didn't get any support for this (despite having promising potentials to succeed) but also got obstacles from the department in the form of an unfair heavy teaching load. I look at colleagues in other places and feel like I'm well behind all them after so many years of suffering this huge teaching load. I have now lost all kind of motivation to even get up from bed every day and read/reply to my emails (mostly from some of my more than 300 students that I teach).
### Response:
You're tenured and you have funding. What's the worst case scenario if you simply announce to HoD "Yeah I'm not teaching those courses". I'm not saying bad thing won't happen, I'm legitimately asking whether you've considered how a conflict on this would play out for you.
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### Instruction:
Losing hope in a successful academic career This is my first post in Reddit. Not sure how to start. Let me start with some context. I always was the top student in my class, after graduation I got a lot of academic awards in my home country (even from the government) for having the best academic records in the country (all them with nice cash prizes attached), I finished my PhD in 3.5 years (working like hell) with about 10 journal publications (most of them top journals) and almost 20 conferences (many of them quite good as well). I got my first and only postdoc job before graduating from my PhD, and two years later I finally got my first academic job in the UK as assistant professor in a Russell group university. So far so good. I have now been between 5-10 years in this department (not saying the exact number for privacy reasons), got a promotion to associate professor a couple of years ago. I have got several grants (some of them from prestigious funders, the other successfull applicants being from Oxford and Cambridge) and have done ok in publications. However I feel like the "good luck" (if I can call it that way) is coming to an end and I don't see good prospects for the future because of the following reasons: \- There is little to no support from the department. We don't get any PhD scholarships to recruit PhD students. The only way I got one (1) PhD studentship from my department all this time was conditioned on a grant application being successful, which thankfully was, and I still had to request additional funding from the grant budget to give a stipend to the PhD student. All my other PhD students have been self-funded (and I got two of them because they were neglected by their supervisors and came to me to take them, which I had to do as I didn't really have many options to choose from). \- I only have two PhD students now and won't have any other next year. I don't have money to recruit any PhD students so I can only accept self-funded students. Good self-funded students will go to USA or other higher ranked universities in UK. I only get odd emails from poor candidates who lack even basic skills from undegraduate level. \- Despite trying to work hard in research, getting grants, papers in top journals, being editor in good journals, organise workshops and other staff, I have been overloaded with teaching and admin duties, way more than any other colleague in my department, some of them who have less than half my teaching load. I have talked to the HoD about this and in the last two years I had to keep going with my heavy teaching load under the promise of being the last year. The next academic year will be again "the last year" (for the third time) before my teaching and admin load decreases. This year there was an opportunity to get a course in my area of research (all my teaching is outside my area of research, to make things worse) and the course I wanted was given to another academic staff in HoD's own research group. I feel unfairly loaded, doing roles in the department that have historically been for staff in teaching and scholarship track (I'm in teaching and research track according to my contract, but effectively working as T&S). Teaching load is extremely unfairly distributed (we can see each other's courses online). All my research has been done in evenings, weekends, and holidays, so effectively unpaid labour, and even in these conditions I have done better in research than other colleague with lower teaching and admin load. I have been unable to explore other research topics I liked because I couldn't find time to read a paper, so I have been working too long in the same research are, now kind of outdated... I have started to think that the HoD doesn't like me for some reason (I can think of a few reasons but I won't say them here because then it would be easy to identify me) and this may be the result of some kind of conspiracy from HoD against me. So here I am, with a huge teaching load, no time to do research under good conditions and with no PhD students and any prospects of having anything that looks like a research group. I wonder whether is there anything I have done wrongly, or simply I have had bad luck, or maybe this is just the norm, or maybe the unfair treatment of a HoD for some reason. I came to academia because I wanted to do research, but I not only didn't get any support for this (despite having promising potentials to succeed) but also got obstacles from the department in the form of an unfair heavy teaching load. I look at colleagues in other places and feel like I'm well behind all them after so many years of suffering this huge teaching load. I have now lost all kind of motivation to even get up from bed every day and read/reply to my emails (mostly from some of my more than 300 students that I teach).
### Response:
Man fuck me. There are so many people I would be willing to work with for my PhD like yourself but I can't go on unfunded. It's interesting seeing this from the other side. I do know there is some EU funding (ITN projects; Marie-Curie grants) that pays a lot for PhD's (>£30,000) and doesn't seem to go through the department and is still available post-Brexit.
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### Instruction:
Losing hope in a successful academic career This is my first post in Reddit. Not sure how to start. Let me start with some context. I always was the top student in my class, after graduation I got a lot of academic awards in my home country (even from the government) for having the best academic records in the country (all them with nice cash prizes attached), I finished my PhD in 3.5 years (working like hell) with about 10 journal publications (most of them top journals) and almost 20 conferences (many of them quite good as well). I got my first and only postdoc job before graduating from my PhD, and two years later I finally got my first academic job in the UK as assistant professor in a Russell group university. So far so good. I have now been between 5-10 years in this department (not saying the exact number for privacy reasons), got a promotion to associate professor a couple of years ago. I have got several grants (some of them from prestigious funders, the other successfull applicants being from Oxford and Cambridge) and have done ok in publications. However I feel like the "good luck" (if I can call it that way) is coming to an end and I don't see good prospects for the future because of the following reasons: \- There is little to no support from the department. We don't get any PhD scholarships to recruit PhD students. The only way I got one (1) PhD studentship from my department all this time was conditioned on a grant application being successful, which thankfully was, and I still had to request additional funding from the grant budget to give a stipend to the PhD student. All my other PhD students have been self-funded (and I got two of them because they were neglected by their supervisors and came to me to take them, which I had to do as I didn't really have many options to choose from). \- I only have two PhD students now and won't have any other next year. I don't have money to recruit any PhD students so I can only accept self-funded students. Good self-funded students will go to USA or other higher ranked universities in UK. I only get odd emails from poor candidates who lack even basic skills from undegraduate level. \- Despite trying to work hard in research, getting grants, papers in top journals, being editor in good journals, organise workshops and other staff, I have been overloaded with teaching and admin duties, way more than any other colleague in my department, some of them who have less than half my teaching load. I have talked to the HoD about this and in the last two years I had to keep going with my heavy teaching load under the promise of being the last year. The next academic year will be again "the last year" (for the third time) before my teaching and admin load decreases. This year there was an opportunity to get a course in my area of research (all my teaching is outside my area of research, to make things worse) and the course I wanted was given to another academic staff in HoD's own research group. I feel unfairly loaded, doing roles in the department that have historically been for staff in teaching and scholarship track (I'm in teaching and research track according to my contract, but effectively working as T&S). Teaching load is extremely unfairly distributed (we can see each other's courses online). All my research has been done in evenings, weekends, and holidays, so effectively unpaid labour, and even in these conditions I have done better in research than other colleague with lower teaching and admin load. I have been unable to explore other research topics I liked because I couldn't find time to read a paper, so I have been working too long in the same research are, now kind of outdated... I have started to think that the HoD doesn't like me for some reason (I can think of a few reasons but I won't say them here because then it would be easy to identify me) and this may be the result of some kind of conspiracy from HoD against me. So here I am, with a huge teaching load, no time to do research under good conditions and with no PhD students and any prospects of having anything that looks like a research group. I wonder whether is there anything I have done wrongly, or simply I have had bad luck, or maybe this is just the norm, or maybe the unfair treatment of a HoD for some reason. I came to academia because I wanted to do research, but I not only didn't get any support for this (despite having promising potentials to succeed) but also got obstacles from the department in the form of an unfair heavy teaching load. I look at colleagues in other places and feel like I'm well behind all them after so many years of suffering this huge teaching load. I have now lost all kind of motivation to even get up from bed every day and read/reply to my emails (mostly from some of my more than 300 students that I teach).
### Response:
You have already succeeded and had tremendous amounts of luck. It is time to MAKE yourself some more luck. Be open about your goals, talk to your HoD, ask for feedback, let them know you want different things. They may think you are satisfied if you never complain! Or it can be something discriminatory like an accent, being out or personality clash. Those are unacceptable and procedures must exist for you to follow. In all fairness, it is hardly going to be better anywhere else in the UK.
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### Instruction:
Losing hope in a successful academic career This is my first post in Reddit. Not sure how to start. Let me start with some context. I always was the top student in my class, after graduation I got a lot of academic awards in my home country (even from the government) for having the best academic records in the country (all them with nice cash prizes attached), I finished my PhD in 3.5 years (working like hell) with about 10 journal publications (most of them top journals) and almost 20 conferences (many of them quite good as well). I got my first and only postdoc job before graduating from my PhD, and two years later I finally got my first academic job in the UK as assistant professor in a Russell group university. So far so good. I have now been between 5-10 years in this department (not saying the exact number for privacy reasons), got a promotion to associate professor a couple of years ago. I have got several grants (some of them from prestigious funders, the other successfull applicants being from Oxford and Cambridge) and have done ok in publications. However I feel like the "good luck" (if I can call it that way) is coming to an end and I don't see good prospects for the future because of the following reasons: \- There is little to no support from the department. We don't get any PhD scholarships to recruit PhD students. The only way I got one (1) PhD studentship from my department all this time was conditioned on a grant application being successful, which thankfully was, and I still had to request additional funding from the grant budget to give a stipend to the PhD student. All my other PhD students have been self-funded (and I got two of them because they were neglected by their supervisors and came to me to take them, which I had to do as I didn't really have many options to choose from). \- I only have two PhD students now and won't have any other next year. I don't have money to recruit any PhD students so I can only accept self-funded students. Good self-funded students will go to USA or other higher ranked universities in UK. I only get odd emails from poor candidates who lack even basic skills from undegraduate level. \- Despite trying to work hard in research, getting grants, papers in top journals, being editor in good journals, organise workshops and other staff, I have been overloaded with teaching and admin duties, way more than any other colleague in my department, some of them who have less than half my teaching load. I have talked to the HoD about this and in the last two years I had to keep going with my heavy teaching load under the promise of being the last year. The next academic year will be again "the last year" (for the third time) before my teaching and admin load decreases. This year there was an opportunity to get a course in my area of research (all my teaching is outside my area of research, to make things worse) and the course I wanted was given to another academic staff in HoD's own research group. I feel unfairly loaded, doing roles in the department that have historically been for staff in teaching and scholarship track (I'm in teaching and research track according to my contract, but effectively working as T&S). Teaching load is extremely unfairly distributed (we can see each other's courses online). All my research has been done in evenings, weekends, and holidays, so effectively unpaid labour, and even in these conditions I have done better in research than other colleague with lower teaching and admin load. I have been unable to explore other research topics I liked because I couldn't find time to read a paper, so I have been working too long in the same research are, now kind of outdated... I have started to think that the HoD doesn't like me for some reason (I can think of a few reasons but I won't say them here because then it would be easy to identify me) and this may be the result of some kind of conspiracy from HoD against me. So here I am, with a huge teaching load, no time to do research under good conditions and with no PhD students and any prospects of having anything that looks like a research group. I wonder whether is there anything I have done wrongly, or simply I have had bad luck, or maybe this is just the norm, or maybe the unfair treatment of a HoD for some reason. I came to academia because I wanted to do research, but I not only didn't get any support for this (despite having promising potentials to succeed) but also got obstacles from the department in the form of an unfair heavy teaching load. I look at colleagues in other places and feel like I'm well behind all them after so many years of suffering this huge teaching load. I have now lost all kind of motivation to even get up from bed every day and read/reply to my emails (mostly from some of my more than 300 students that I teach).
### Response:
>**I came to academia because I wanted to do research**, but I not only didn't get any support for this (despite having promising potentials to succeed) but also got obstacles from the department in the form of an unfair heavy teaching load. I look at colleagues in other places and feel like I'm well behind all them after so many years of suffering this huge teaching load. **I have now lost all kind of motivation to even get up from bed every day and read/reply to my emails (mostly from some of my more than 300 students that I teach).** I think this is the crux of the issue. I'm going to be direct, so I apologize if it comes off as rude. Your dissatisfaction seems to becoming from the following: 1. You aren't getting to do as much research. 1. Implication: teaching and administrative work aren't fulfilling or are aggravating. 2. You're comparing yourself to other colleagues in your department (who have less teaching or admin shitwork). 3. You're comparing yourself to colleagues outside your university. 4. You feel you're being treated unfairly. Some of this is external. And for that, you're gonna have to play a tough game against the admin. You should start seeing if any of your friends at other places would be open to hiring someone like you. Even getting an offer can sometimes be leverage for your present department to pay you more or to lessen your responsibilities. Additionally, you're going to have to come up with actual demands (e.g., I want my teaching load to be such-and-such, and I only want the following administrative duties). And you're going to have to threaten to walk away. Basically, you need to be incredibly savvy here. But a lot of this looks internal too. This isn't medical advice, but you look depressed to me, and probably burnt out. This job is eating you alive. So, if you want to survive, it's either you get out of this situation (or change it), or you change something internally. Sometimes, it can be as easy as working with a therapist to find your reason for why you do what you do. Sometimes, it can be working with a therapist to let go of expectations (e.g., the comparisons you make with others). Sometimes, it can be finding ways to cut corners on the admin and teaching stuff to pursue research that is accomplishable only by you. This profession is fucking terrible. And it's not your fault it's come to this. Academia is built on exploitation of the competent and non-wealthy. And if it's simply not your fight any more, it's not your fight. You have to ask: can I keep living under these conditions? I've had friends who left academia, and they end up loving the decision--less stress, more time for family and friends, more financial security, more autonomy for where they live and what they do. But they also have a couple years of mourning where they left all their work behind and grieved the loss of that part of their lives. But they came out whole and better for it. I'm sorry things are shit, OP. I wish you the courage to introspect on the hard questions, the tenacity for negotiations, and the luck to find better working conditions.
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### Instruction:
Losing hope in a successful academic career This is my first post in Reddit. Not sure how to start. Let me start with some context. I always was the top student in my class, after graduation I got a lot of academic awards in my home country (even from the government) for having the best academic records in the country (all them with nice cash prizes attached), I finished my PhD in 3.5 years (working like hell) with about 10 journal publications (most of them top journals) and almost 20 conferences (many of them quite good as well). I got my first and only postdoc job before graduating from my PhD, and two years later I finally got my first academic job in the UK as assistant professor in a Russell group university. So far so good. I have now been between 5-10 years in this department (not saying the exact number for privacy reasons), got a promotion to associate professor a couple of years ago. I have got several grants (some of them from prestigious funders, the other successfull applicants being from Oxford and Cambridge) and have done ok in publications. However I feel like the "good luck" (if I can call it that way) is coming to an end and I don't see good prospects for the future because of the following reasons: \- There is little to no support from the department. We don't get any PhD scholarships to recruit PhD students. The only way I got one (1) PhD studentship from my department all this time was conditioned on a grant application being successful, which thankfully was, and I still had to request additional funding from the grant budget to give a stipend to the PhD student. All my other PhD students have been self-funded (and I got two of them because they were neglected by their supervisors and came to me to take them, which I had to do as I didn't really have many options to choose from). \- I only have two PhD students now and won't have any other next year. I don't have money to recruit any PhD students so I can only accept self-funded students. Good self-funded students will go to USA or other higher ranked universities in UK. I only get odd emails from poor candidates who lack even basic skills from undegraduate level. \- Despite trying to work hard in research, getting grants, papers in top journals, being editor in good journals, organise workshops and other staff, I have been overloaded with teaching and admin duties, way more than any other colleague in my department, some of them who have less than half my teaching load. I have talked to the HoD about this and in the last two years I had to keep going with my heavy teaching load under the promise of being the last year. The next academic year will be again "the last year" (for the third time) before my teaching and admin load decreases. This year there was an opportunity to get a course in my area of research (all my teaching is outside my area of research, to make things worse) and the course I wanted was given to another academic staff in HoD's own research group. I feel unfairly loaded, doing roles in the department that have historically been for staff in teaching and scholarship track (I'm in teaching and research track according to my contract, but effectively working as T&S). Teaching load is extremely unfairly distributed (we can see each other's courses online). All my research has been done in evenings, weekends, and holidays, so effectively unpaid labour, and even in these conditions I have done better in research than other colleague with lower teaching and admin load. I have been unable to explore other research topics I liked because I couldn't find time to read a paper, so I have been working too long in the same research are, now kind of outdated... I have started to think that the HoD doesn't like me for some reason (I can think of a few reasons but I won't say them here because then it would be easy to identify me) and this may be the result of some kind of conspiracy from HoD against me. So here I am, with a huge teaching load, no time to do research under good conditions and with no PhD students and any prospects of having anything that looks like a research group. I wonder whether is there anything I have done wrongly, or simply I have had bad luck, or maybe this is just the norm, or maybe the unfair treatment of a HoD for some reason. I came to academia because I wanted to do research, but I not only didn't get any support for this (despite having promising potentials to succeed) but also got obstacles from the department in the form of an unfair heavy teaching load. I look at colleagues in other places and feel like I'm well behind all them after so many years of suffering this huge teaching load. I have now lost all kind of motivation to even get up from bed every day and read/reply to my emails (mostly from some of my more than 300 students that I teach).
### Response:
I was having a similar problem working at a mid-tier Russell Group uni. Completely burdened by admin duties and teaching even when I was bringing in MRC grants. They put me (as a junior faculty) in a director of programme role, which was completely ridiculous. I was only a few years in as an assistant prof, and this was around the time of Brexit, so I left for a position in North America. If you have the mobility, keep your eyes open for positions in Canada. They pay A LOT more than the UK. I went from a Russell Group school to a lower tier school, but my salary (in terms of spending power) easily doubled (from £42k to $120k CAD). Feel free to DM me.
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### Instruction:
What's something that you wish the grad students (that you teach or advise) wouldn't do? Are they arrogant, do they lack confidence, do they try to be your friend, do they not take their program very seriously, do they take it *too* seriously, are they not independent enough? I'm particularly interested in the humanities/social sciences perspective because this sub gets a lot of posters in STEM, but STEM perspectives are welcome of course. I'm curious because I hear lots of complaints about undergrads from my faculty members, and there are occasional inside jokes about how so many grad students are mentally ill, but I don't know much about things that bother academics about grad students.
### Response:
This is only my second year as an assistant prof so I don't have extensive experience advising PhD students yet, but here is what has irritated me most. I am in econ, so some of this is probably field-specific: 1. Not taking feedback seriously. Ultimately, it's the grad student's own research and I cannot make decisions for them. But, if I tell you to think about something more carefully, there is a good reason for it. 2. Using research as an excuse to shirk other responsibilities. I saw this a lot from my classmates when I was a PhD student and among some of my advisees now. Too many grad students interpret the freedom they have to structure their own time as permission to disappear. Meeting with seminar speakers, presenting in reading groups, giving talks in internal brown bags -- these activities are all super important for professional development (especially learning how to talk about research in a clear and effective manner!), and faculty will notice if you don't show up. 3. Overstepping personal boundaries. This one is tricky. As someone who was very recently on the job market, I recognize that my value added as a dissertation committee member is being more "relatable." To me, that means being transparent about the day-to-day challenges -- code not working, models not solving, results that don't make sense -- that arise in the course of doing research and helping PhD students troubleshoot those. And I try my best to normalize the fact that research is just really, really hard. What irks me is when an advisee uses me as a substitute therapist. (No judgment there, btw -- I am of the firm belief that every single PhD acceptance letter should automatically be accompanied by a referral to a local psychologist.) I want to be as supportive as possible of advisees, but addressing someone's underlying mental health difficulties is not my primary responsibility.
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### Instruction:
What's something that you wish the grad students (that you teach or advise) wouldn't do? Are they arrogant, do they lack confidence, do they try to be your friend, do they not take their program very seriously, do they take it *too* seriously, are they not independent enough? I'm particularly interested in the humanities/social sciences perspective because this sub gets a lot of posters in STEM, but STEM perspectives are welcome of course. I'm curious because I hear lots of complaints about undergrads from my faculty members, and there are occasional inside jokes about how so many grad students are mentally ill, but I don't know much about things that bother academics about grad students.
### Response:
Not work for free. Seriously. Our GTAs here are hired for 17 hours per week. They’re told to keep careful track of their hours. Few do, and the ones that do often report working 20 or more hours. Much of this is trickle-down from demanding faculty supervisors, and so of course it’s understandable - if you’re handed a stack of 300 papers to grade, you probably don’t feel permission to stop until the stack is graded. But what I scream (figuratively) at grad students is twofold: not only are they laborers in an exploitative system who *must* be their own advocates, but them doing extra work shows upper levels of administration that our needs as a School can be met with our current numbers of GTAs, or perhaps less. Last year in the budget reductions, we lost 8 GTAs, in part because of the perception that we could fill the needs of the school with fewer people. Why? Because GTAs didn’t report their hours and/or consented to unpaid overtime. I guess to bring this more in line with the spirit of your question, I’d like to see every GTA view themselves as a working, professional member of academia, and all that entails. Ideally, it would lead to accountability alongside self-advocacy, two things that I think academia in general could use a bit more of.
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### Instruction:
What's something that you wish the grad students (that you teach or advise) wouldn't do? Are they arrogant, do they lack confidence, do they try to be your friend, do they not take their program very seriously, do they take it *too* seriously, are they not independent enough? I'm particularly interested in the humanities/social sciences perspective because this sub gets a lot of posters in STEM, but STEM perspectives are welcome of course. I'm curious because I hear lots of complaints about undergrads from my faculty members, and there are occasional inside jokes about how so many grad students are mentally ill, but I don't know much about things that bother academics about grad students.
### Response:
I have a few general thoughts reflecting on my time as a grad student and now advising a few: *they don't give each other critical enough feedback when hearing each others presentations and reading their drafts *they spend too much time venting with other grad students such that it makes the misery seem much worse than it probably is *they rely too much on advice from other grad students and not enough time getting and understanding a variety of faculty/advisor viewpoints who do know what they're talking about (the academic equivalent of catching yourself sounding just like your parents). too much grad student advice is the blind leading the blind. *they don't read enough. seriously you have to read as much as you can as relevant to your particular areas of study
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### Instruction:
What's something that you wish the grad students (that you teach or advise) wouldn't do? Are they arrogant, do they lack confidence, do they try to be your friend, do they not take their program very seriously, do they take it *too* seriously, are they not independent enough? I'm particularly interested in the humanities/social sciences perspective because this sub gets a lot of posters in STEM, but STEM perspectives are welcome of course. I'm curious because I hear lots of complaints about undergrads from my faculty members, and there are occasional inside jokes about how so many grad students are mentally ill, but I don't know much about things that bother academics about grad students.
### Response:
Wth, faculty are joking about their grad students having mental health issues..??
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### Instruction:
What's something that you wish the grad students (that you teach or advise) wouldn't do? Are they arrogant, do they lack confidence, do they try to be your friend, do they not take their program very seriously, do they take it *too* seriously, are they not independent enough? I'm particularly interested in the humanities/social sciences perspective because this sub gets a lot of posters in STEM, but STEM perspectives are welcome of course. I'm curious because I hear lots of complaints about undergrads from my faculty members, and there are occasional inside jokes about how so many grad students are mentally ill, but I don't know much about things that bother academics about grad students.
### Response:
I just want to say I'm a mod over at /r/AskLiteraryStudies studies and I feel like 90% of the time my response to posts is "Have you talked to your advisor?" It's like...somehow that relationship is...too scary? Too sacred? I don't even know. But if you can't lean on your advisor, either you picked the wrong person or you picked the wrong school. Harsh advice, no doubt, but if you cannot even ask a question without feeling embarrassed/hating yourself/imposter syndrome galore, maybe this isn't for you? It's a collaborative thing at times and at times, it is YOUR project, your thing you are doing. No one is there to grade you, they are there to help you get it done.
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