Your university must be a very bad one. The PhD I got and the ones I advised definitely were big educational experiences, where the student received lots of benefit -- formal courses, technical lectures, personal advising, resources, experience, publishing support, etc. As for TA work, one may debate whether the amount was enough, whether there should have been workers benefit, etc, but the university did explicitly pay for the work. >>
>> As for the papers and research, while they benefited the university, the advisor, and hopefully humanity, they were much more valuable for the student -- and they would not have been published without much work and advice from the advisor, and the univ's resources.
In fact, in public and non-profit univs, the main benefit that the university gets from papers by PhD students is the ability to get more grant money to pay the students and buy equipment for them. >>
@JorgeStolfi @Hellawyn You’re making a hell of a lot of assumptions here… and I respectfully disagree with a lot of them. And of course publications help the authors. That applies to most researchers, from PhD students to profs. Same for benefiting from university resources 🤷🏼♀️ Of course PhD students are still learning, but they contribute a lot more than you’re acknowledging
@anne_kreft @JorgeStolfi
@academicchatter
The situation of a PhD candidate is indeed very special and leads to passionate debate.
Ignoring either of the aspects, "student being entitled to some form of tuition" and "employee with production objectives and associated rights" leads to serious problems: if students only, the risk is exploitation and financial struggle, if only employee, the risk is to forget that they are learning to become researchers and should be supervised adequately.
1/n
@jocelyn_etienne @JorgeStolfi @academicchatter Fair point! But I object to someone coming in and saying "your university must be a very bad one." Sweden, Norway and a few other countries have a very successful PhD education system where student are state employees (at 100%). Attrition is extremely low, compared to e.g. the US, publication output very high, and research funding *and supervision* were excellent for me. People need to inform themselves before making such blanket statements
@anne_kreft @jocelyn_etienne @JorgeStolfi @academicchatter
i can only secund that.
Simple fact is, Ph.D.'s work.
And more than 40h a week if they'd like a career. Wether for their own benefits—a later career, which many won't have in professional academia because of the cut-down of fixed positions at universities— or those of their supervisors, and institutions—how to get 20+ papers a year without having 5+ Ph.D.'s working *for* you?
You work, you're employed. No discussion needed.
@grimmiges @anne_kreft @jocelyn_etienne @JorgeStolfi @academicchatter
As you say "if they'd like a career". The PhD students decide to be in the institution to be educated i.e. PhD students work to learn not to be paid
@Xna_NaJu @grimmiges @anne_kreft @jocelyn_etienne @JorgeStolfi @academicchatter this discussion has revealed a lot of ignorance about variations in PhDs between disciplines & countries. For example, a UK humanities or social sciences PhD is unlikely to involve working under a PI on someone else's project &, unless funded, there will only be teaching if the student successfully applies for it (for which they'll be paid). Doing a PhD isn't regarded as a job for those reasons.
@SteveCooke @Xna_NaJu @grimmiges @jocelyn_etienne @JorgeStolfi @academicchatter Why would working under a PI be "a job" and working independently on your project (as I did, as a social scientist in Sweden) not be a job though? Like you say, there are variations, and some countries like Sweden or Norway have successfully instituted a model in which all PhD students (whether parts of projects or not) are state employees. And I personally think that's the way it should be
@anne_kreft @Xna_NaJu @grimmiges @jocelyn_etienne @JorgeStolfi @academicchatter because you're studying primarily for a qualification, not labouring to produce an something for someone whose being paid for it.
@SteveCooke @anne_kreft @Xna_NaJu @jocelyn_etienne @JorgeStolfi @academicchatter
And I have to add: If we only would pay for actual "labour that produces", humanities would not be the first thing that springs to my mind that could be scrapped.
Also: a PhD thesis is literally a "product". Sometimes quite a big one (espec. in humanities). I don't know about the UK but in Germany and Sweden, it must also must be made accessible to anyone, hence, is a public product.
@grimmiges @SteveCooke @Xna_NaJu @jocelyn_etienne @JorgeStolfi @academicchatter All of this! Plus, in our department, PhD students were almost as productive as many more senior scholars and more productive than some, in terms of publications, i.e. in terms of "producing" something and contribution to the advancement of knowledge. I can't wrap my head around people saying that's not a job tbh
@anne_kreft @grimmiges @Xna_NaJu @jocelyn_etienne @JorgeStolfi @academicchatter I assume you don't want to claim that all PhD's must be funded or that everyone who wants to do a PhD should be accepted. So we'd still have competition for limited funded places. So this argument seems to boil down to a disagreement over whether funded PhDs should be described as jobs or not. I'm not sure whether that's a substantive change or mere semantics.
@SteveCooke @grimmiges @Xna_NaJu @jocelyn_etienne @JorgeStolfi @academicchatter Yes, I do indeed very much support full funding of all PhD positions, which (again) is the standard in Scandinavian countries. And the implication of that is that not everyone who wants to do a PhD will be able to do one. Same as not everyone who wants to be a physician or an engineer or whatever else can be one because there are a limited number of positions. And it forces institutions to secure funding for PhDs
@anne_kreft @SteveCooke @grimmiges @Xna_NaJu @jocelyn_etienne @JorgeStolfi @academicchatter In line with that, it's a scam to offer huge numbers of PhD positions to people who heavily overestimate the likelihood there'll be (good) academic jobs for them. Fewer but properly funded PhD positions pushes some of that bottleneck forward, in a much more decent and pro-quality way IMO - the only people who are disadvantaged are those building their career on the backs of naive PhD students.
@TEG @anne_kreft @SteveCooke @academicchatter
On the other hand, PhD holders should have other options than academia. France hasn't been good for that (except in a few fields, like chemistry) for a long time, but there is significant progress to note. Now only at the time of defence only 50% of them are planning to stay in academia. This is not just the result of poor prospects, there's also fair prospect in the private sector or as experts in the public sector.
@jocelyn_etienne @TEG @anne_kreft @SteveCooke @academicchatter
This is a US perspective, but I think it's important to make the point of that the unemployment rate for Ph.D. holder is less than 2% fairly consistently.
I think the problem is that faculty in Ph.D. programs over focus on tenure track positions as the "best" or "worthy" pathway, when less than 10% of graduates of even some of the best programs end there.
In fairness for students there should be more transparency and support for other careers, and I don't mean just the growing world of post-doc researchers trying to get academic jobs.
In my field, education, I have seen graduates work for a very wide range of employers including tech, think thanks, school districts, museums, and many non-TT jobs at universities like me.
@jocelyn_etienne @ZingerLearns @TEG @anne_kreft @SteveCooke @academicchatter
A nice perspective is expressed here: https://thesiswhisperer.com/2020/05/13/stop-letting-the-ghosts-of-old-academia-haunt-you/ (I translated into spanish).
PhD programms should increase the amount of transferible skills. Not just teaching how to be an academic.
If they do so, the overall contributions of PhD programms to society would increase exponentially
@ZingerLearns
10% PhD holders making it eventually to academia is very low, now. In 🇫🇷 that's 23% of the French nationals after 3 years - lower than used to, but still.
Can it partly be due to foreign PhD holders going back to academia in their country of origin?
In 🇫🇷 that's an important part of the data, 40% defences are by foreign students, half of which leave and nearly half those get stable academic job abroad, so again about 20-25%.
@jocelyn_etienne @ZingerLearns @TEG @SteveCooke @academicchatter Wow, those sound like shockingly low slaries
@anne_kreft @jocelyn_etienne @ZingerLearns @TEG @SteveCooke @academicchatter
The point of orientation in France is the SMIC, the state-wide minimum income.
It's low compared to Scandinavia (vice versa, I was shocked what a PhD earns in Sweden when I came from Germany) but not too worse.
When you earn just the SMIC, you don't pay e.g. any taxes.
@anne_kreft @jocelyn_etienne @ZingerLearns @TEG @SteveCooke @academicchatter
Re: Much worse.
In Germany (zeroes), when you were e.g. on a PhD stipendium of the DBU, you got less than the 50% of the university-employed PhDs, about 1400€ a month. Tax-free but also didn't count for any social-benefit (rent, unemployment) and you had to pay your own insurance. If you had a caring boss, they would give you a 10h-job as "geprüfter HiWi", so you were insured.
@grimmiges @jocelyn_etienne @ZingerLearns @TEG @SteveCooke @academicchatter Oh, so these are PhD salaries? That sounds more reasonable, I thought those were post-defense average salaries.
@anne_kreft @jocelyn_etienne @ZingerLearns @TEG @SteveCooke @academicchatter
Postdocs are typically starting with 1.5-times the SMIC but there's some range pending on the organisation. And then we have the odd thing in France about your Alma Mater: for instance, as a German, my partner was ranked like coming from a 2nd grade French university, starting with a yearly salary 3000€ below that of somebody from a Grand école.
@anne_kreft @grimmiges @ZingerLearns @TEG @SteveCooke @academicchatter
No, they are salaries 3 years after defence for those with full time employment, in 2019.
@jocelyn_etienne @grimmiges @ZingerLearns @TEG @SteveCooke @academicchatter I see! I just had to Google France's average salary, and it turns out those post-PhD salaries are not as low as I thought (I was applying German standards 🤦♀️ )
@anne_kreft @jocelyn_etienne @ZingerLearns @TEG @SteveCooke @academicchatter
Worth to keep in mind than in France we (officially) work only 35h/week, not the 39h paid in Germany or 40h paid&worked in Sweden.
And then there's the differences in how one computes, "pre-tax"/"gross" or "net wage" is not exactly the same everywhere either.
@anne_kreft @ZingerLearns @TEG @SteveCooke @academicchatter
Yes, salaries are low even for French standards. That puts this population in the 60-70% deciles in French private sector salaries. These are salaries once social insurance is deducted, so you have a fairly good cover for health/pension/...
But still, they may be less paid than people with the same masters degree having started in the same company when they enrolled for their PhD. Which is not very good!
@jocelyn_etienne @ZingerLearns @TEG @SteveCooke @academicchatter Ah OK, thanks for clarifying!
@anne_kreft @jocelyn_etienne @ZingerLearns @TEG @SteveCooke @academicchatter
And to add another unbelievable for Scandinavians common practise in those days:
If you filled 2 years on the 50% PhD univ. pos., you could go the next 6 month on unemployment (which was "only" 300 or so bucks less).
When money was tight, they woud split the PhD granted for three years on two candidates and alternately placed them on unemployment or used it to fill gaps between projects.
@ZingerLearns @TEG @anne_kreft @SteveCooke @academicchatter
France isn't as good, but 3 years after defence 93% #PhD are in employment, with 66% on a stable job. Median wages are not huge, €2150 (sociology) to 2700 (maths) depending on the field, but 95% are on mid/upper executive jobs. 47% are in academia, 19% in private-sector research-related jobs, 15% are in public sector outside academia (used to be mostly school teaching, but a growing number of experts I believe - no figures on this).