Anyone else want to be a professor?

Graduate School
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The fact is, if you're so involved in your child's college career that it impedes the child's development, then you are causing harm, and yes (dare I say it? It's blasphemy these days), you're being a bad parent. Researching schools and telling your child where to apply falls into this category. I know that many parents feel that THEY need to be involved, and that THEY know best, but at the end of the day, that's a selfish position that stunts the child's development.</p>

<p>No matter how brilliant your child is, success in graduate school and eventually making it to a tenure-track position depends heavily on interpersonal skills. Coddling your child is one sure way to guarantee that he doesn't make it.

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<p>I've said it before, and I'll say it again: schools should not be admitting these kinds of students. As long as they continue to do so, then they are the ones who are truly causing harm, they are the ones who are truly being selfish, and - yes - they are being bad schools. </p>

<p>Now, I can understand that professors generally have little influence in determining the admissions of undergrads. But they do have significant influence in the admissions of grad students - or at least they should. So if coddled kids continue to be admitted to grad programs, well, ultimately, who's really to blame for that? As long as the 'coddling' works, parents are going to continue to coddle their kids. They have no incentive not to. </p>

<p>So let's assign blame to where it really belongs. Maybe it is true that, as you say, coddled grad students will fail. But that just begs the question of why exactly is the school admitting so many students who are going to fail? If a school is admitting too many coddled grad students, then take it up with the adcom which - in the case of grad programs - consists of the department faculty itself.</p>

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<p>And how exactly do you propose professors successfully pick uncoddled students?</p>

<p>I also think that many "brilliant" students fall under the "coddled" label, especially in the hard sciences. I know several kids who aren't very outgoing, independent, or socially mature, but still have the potential to become Professors at top schools IMO. Just because they are still under the watchful gaze of their parents doesn't distract from the fact that they won the Intel Competition or won Gold Metals at the IMO or IPO.</p>

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In South Korea, more than 80% of a cohort gets to go to college. How can this be? Does the economy of Korea really need that many professionals? I've asked this of various Korean colleagues, and they all say this has to do with the huge social pressure parents put on the students and government to provide tertiary education for EVERYONE. They view it as a right.

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<p>Well, in S Korea's (partial) defense, one big reason is that - unlike here - you can't really get a decent job in Korea without a college degree, preferably from one of the major universities. In the US, you can go to a no-name college, or even no college at all, and still get a very good job provided that you have marketable skills. This is far less true in Korea, or most other Asian countries for that matter. </p>

<p>Secondly, the South Korean educational system, if nothing else, at least fosters a student culture of academic achievement. At least the Korean kids want to do well enough academically to go to college, even if perhaps only because of social pressures. Contrast that with the American K-12 system where lots of kids, frankly, don't really care about college. We've all seen it, especially in high school. Surely we remember all the kids who clearly didn't give a damn about academics, and were far more interested in partying, sports, pop culture, video games, or - in many cases - just getting high, than in actually doing well in school. I remember my high school had to implement a policy that no student who was earning less than a 2.0 GPA (which, frankly, is really not that hard to get in high school) and didn't meet some minimum class attendance standards were ineligible to play on the sports teams, as there were simply too many guys who were far more interested in doing well in school sports than in school itself. {Some of our star players became ineligible to play because of this rule.} I remember guys who had seemingly memorized every single obscure baseball statistic - i.e. who hit how many homeruns in what year - but somehow couldn't learn basic facts of American history such as what year the Declaration of Independence was signed. The girls weren't much better: many were far more interested in spending their time gossiping about the latest celebrity fashion or who asked who out to the prom than in actually studying.</p>

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And how exactly do you propose professors successfully pick uncoddled students?

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<p>Interviews. Deep and probing ones. Preferably multiple-round.</p>

<p>Why not? That's how many of the top employers figure out who to hire. They use a multi-round interview screening process to try to deduce why you really want to work there and whether you'll be a good fit for the company. I see no reason why the top grad programs can't do the same. Surely during these interviews, you can ask probing questions that figure out whether a student really wants to be in the program because of his self-drive, or whether the students are there just to please his parents.</p>

<p>Remember, we're talking about PhD programs here. Professors - who are supposed to control PhD admissions - should be very careful about the people they admit because they should know that they will have to work with them. If they're not careful to screen out the coddled and the immature, they, frankly have only themselves to blame. Like I said, as long as 'coddling' works, parents are going to keep doing it.</p>

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<p>What you say about the job market in Korea is true Sakky, but there are similarly influenced (pampered) by the over-abundance of graduates in the first place, it's a employer's market when you can get a maths major graduate to be your cashier at the supermarket. It's a vicious cycle that feeds off each other. I personally think the Korean government should have limited the number of universities in the first place.</p>

<p>The drive to academically excel is indeed a nice by-product of the Korean system, though I would argue against it as a valid reason to get its citizens to invest so much time and energy in training an engineer to, at the end of the day, change a lightbulb.</p>

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What you say about the job market in Korea is true Sakky, but there are similarly influenced (pampered) by the over-abundance of graduates in the first place, it's a employer's market when you can get a maths major graduate to be your cashier at the supermarket. It's a vicious cycle that feeds off each other. I personally think the Korean government should have limited the number of universities in the first place.

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<p>Then the people would have just gone overseas to get their degrees. Let's face it. The very best Korean students don't really want to go to a Korean university. They want to go to HYPSM. Fewer Korean universities would just mean lots of Korean students going abroad. </p>

<p>I think a far better solution than simply limiting the number of universities is to attack the other side of the problem: namely, reforming the Korean economy to allow for a greater proliferation of entrepreneurship and small business creation to create more opportunities for college graduates. Another solution, if Korea is not forthcoming, is for countries like the US to provide those opportunities. If Korea won't produce appropriate jobs for their graduates, then we should take them (as I believe that immigration of skilled workers is a strong plus for the US). If Korea can't or doesn't want to use their own people to build their economy, then we should use them to build ours.</p>

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<p>I think you're missing my point about having 80% of a population as graduate within a normal functioning society....Everyday lives cannot be operational by high-tech professionals alone. You still need pple to grow your vegetables, built your houses, fix your plumbing, run the manufacturing lines etc etc etc. These workers in any normal functioning society will take up at least half of the population.</p>

<p>Too many graduates? Oh no problem.... create more professional jobs that satisfy 80% of your population.....hmmm....right....who's going to run the machinery then? The other 20% only?</p>

<p>It doesn't work that way.....</p>

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<p>Well, first of all, the 80% was a gross exaggeration, and I took it as such. Actual studies indicate that the US actually has a higher proportion of college-age students who actually attend college, and the US is clearly nowhere near 80%.</p>

<p>*The number of *Korean*students in higher education had risen from 100,000 in 1960 to 1.3 million in 1987, and the proportion of college-age students in higher-education institutions was second only to the United States.</p>

<p>South</a> Korea - EDUCATION</p>

<p>But, directly to your point, a country doesn't really need any of its citizens to do any of those things that you mentioned. That's where outsourcing and immigration (which can be viewed as the outsourcing of labor). For example, you don't need anybody to grow your vegetables: you can just import them. Why not? That's what countries like Singapore do. Singapore doesn't actually grow any of its own food. {How could it? It's just one big city.) It just imports everything. Similarly, the US imports much of its labor-intensive goods. </p>

<p>Similarly, you don't really need to have your own citizens build your houses or fix your plumbing. You just bring in temporary workers from other countries to do that. Why not? That's what the Gulf States (i.e. the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, etc.) do. For example, in the UAE, a bare 20% of the people who live there are actual citizens, and they occupy almost all of the professional class. The other 80% are non-citizens, usually from India or Pakistan, who are there on temporary work visas. They're the ones who perform all of the manual labor. {It's a good deal for those immigrants too, for they are free to leave anytime they want, but they determine that it's better than being back in India or Pakistan.} This is akin to how many rich Americans hire (illegal) Mexican immigrants to clean their houses and cut their lawns. The major difference is that in the UAE, the system is legal. </p>

<p>Furthermore, you don't even need to resort to even these tactics. Technology can be just as powerful - perhaps more so. The United States produces enough food to not only feed itself, but to also be one of the world's top food exporters in the world. But what percentage of Americans actually work as farmers? About 1%, and declining every year. The US has the world's best agricultural technology such that the country can produce ever-greater quantities of food with ever-fewer farmers. Similarly, you don't really need lots of workers to run your manufacturing lines. Better production technology means more manufacturing output with ever-fewer manufacturing workers. The US produces more steel today - and with far fewer workers - than it did during the 'Golden Age' of steel. </p>

<p>Hence, I don't see any theoretical reason why Korea couldn't have up to 80% of population as part of a professional/technical class. Technological productivity, combined with outsourcing and immigration can supply you with all of the 'labor' (or at least labor-equivalents) that you need.</p>

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<p>"Interviews. Deep and probing ones. Preferably multiple-round.</p>

<p>Why not? That's how many of the top employers figure out who to hire. They use a multi-round interview screening process to try to deduce why you really want to work there and whether you'll be a good fit for the company. I see no reason why the top grad programs can't do the same. Surely during these interviews, you can ask probing questions that figure out whether a student really wants to be in the program because of his self-drive, or whether the students are there just to please his parents."</p>

<p>Yeah, this is a great suggestion. I think on the scale of, say math grad programs [I know, I keep going on about that specific example, but it's the one I know most about], there are few enough students applying + accepted that it's feasible to really probe them. But definitely, getting an idea of what the applicant really is like seems to bode well. I am pretty sure, though, that while this would be an improvement, one factor which already attempts to do this is the letter of recommendation process. No big shot math professor I know is going to write a glowing letter of rec for a student who isn't really worth it, I'm pretty darn sure. The bottom line is, even if you're a pretty outspoken, smart student, these guys are MASTERS of their field, and won't even acknowledge you exist [intellectually, as nice as they may be otherwise] unless you prove it. </p>

<p>However, I imagine that in the case of the lesser applicant pools, it's going to be more of an issue, because just having pretty good academic results + a fairly good schedule is more likely to get one accepted...and one doesn't really need to be aggressive. The TOP schools, I think, automatically end up taking only the most aggressive academics around, and no coddled son is going to end up having the guts to impress top faculty enough to have his letters of rec matter in the slightest enough to get him into an absolute top program.</p>

<p>The interview definitely appeals to the vast population, though. Definitely, the professor should find the applicant worthy of working with.</p>

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Interviews. Deep and probing ones. Preferably multiple-round.

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<p>There are incentives for companies to better screen who they hire: it's a strict adverse selection process. The choice of employee affects profit, so you screen.</p>

<p>In college, there's actually a perverse incentive. If a student matriculates to a university, pays for two years of education then drops out, that's actually beneficial to the university. They've received two years of tuition, don't have to deal with the "prestige hit" of graduating a poor student, and raise their average GPA and SAT scores by admitting students with the highest GPA and SAT scores. They get all that for just a hit in retention rate.</p>

<p>But ignoring that, there just isn't the time to have faculty go into an in depth interview process with every applicant. If your tenure depends on publications, you do everything possible to minimize your effort towards non-publication activities. It's an incentive incompatibility problem.</p>

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<p>"If your tenure depends on publications, you do everything possible to minimize your effort towards non-publication activities. It's an incentive incompatibility problem."</p>

<p>Right, but what about those who have tenure, for instance? The reason I think faculty would not be so incredibly averse to such an interview is that I think at least after students are admitted, a lot of the faculty and the school members are really actively enrolled in helping students make their decisions. </p>

<p>I was amazed, for instance, that math Ph.D. admissions come by personal emails. And, when UCLA sent an offer recently to someone I know, it genuinely said that any faculty would be perfectly happy to respond via email [and they do, at say 15 minute intervals at times!!] to the given admitted student. I'm pretty sure, also, that my professors involved in the admissions process for my own school are incredibly careful about how they do the process...they really look for researchers, and pore over the applications. I think the language they used suggests strongly that they'd do quite a few things to make sure the entering class is very strong.</p>

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<p>"No matter how brilliant your child is, success in graduate school and eventually making it to a tenure-track position depends heavily on interpersonal skills. Coddling your child is one sure way to guarantee that he doesn't make it."</p>

<p>GP- I think this is a very accurate statement, however, as I said before you are painting the posters here with a broad brush. Any one doing research online is not interfering with an interpersonal relationship ;) My DD has been admitted to one PhD program and is awaiting feedback from others this next month.</p>

<p>At her request I have done online research for her, why not? I have more free time than she does. She is doing all the meetings, the thesis now, the research, etc. I am surfing the internet, which we can all agree does not really forge interpersonal relationships.</p>

<p>I think you are accurate in much of what you are saying; however, many people posting on this board are really not the parents about whom you are talking. Many of us are posting here to learn more about the process and be able to speak intelligently about education with out kids and using CC as a substitute for the direct involvement with their life.</p>

<p>It is a pulling back process and there are plenty of people who are waaaay to involved, but many of the people here, especially old timers, are involved here expressly instead of with their kids actual lives- a little psychological substitution.</p>

<p>This is one of the risks of online forum posting, each of us posts fro our reality, you are faculty and obviously see many overly involved parents and coddled children. Most, though not all, parents here endeavour to be less involved and pull back in a rational way, yet still enjoy the discourse regarding education. You see your 'bad parents' in what is unwritten in each post, we who are sane are surprised to be slammed by your contentions. Probably we are both right, talking about different situations!</p>

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<p>Taking a year off can be a good thing. If you take a year off and decide that you didn't want to go to graduate school anyway, then it's probably a good thing, because I'm under the impression that if you don't need or want to go to graduate school you shouldn't come here. If you take a year or two off and get some awesome work experience that looks great on your curriculum vita later, that's good too.</p>

<p>A lot of professors may act mortified because that wasn't their path, but it's becoming increasingly common for people to take 2-3+ years off from school, especially as admissions becomes more competitive. Whether it's easier to get in or or not depends on the field. In my field, hardly anyone gets in without work experience.</p>

<p>To answer your question, I wouldn't mind becoming a professor. I went straight from undergrad to a Ph.D program in psychology and public health, and I'm in less than $20K of debt, so I'm not really worried about paying off student loan debt. If I were to become a professor, I'd rather teach at a small liberal arts college. I'm at one of those "powerful brand name" universities mentioned, and my field is one that can be parlayed into academia as well as into government research and some places in industry/private sector. AS sakky said, I'm leaving my options open -- I'd enjoy management consulting at McKinsey, or teaching at Swarthmore, or doing research for the NIH.</p>

<p>I came to get a Ph.D not to get a particular job, but because I love research and I see the skills that I'm learning as useful skills that can be adapted into many fields.</p>

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In college, there's actually a perverse incentive. If a student matriculates to a university, pays for two years of education then drops out, that's actually beneficial to the university. They've received two years of tuition, don't have to deal with the "prestige hit" of graduating a poor student, and raise their average GPA and SAT scores by admitting students with the highest GPA and SAT scores. They get all that for just a hit in retention rate.

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<p>Uh, I was talking specifically about graduate school, specifically PhD programs (which is what the OP was talking about as well). No such perverse incentive of which you speak should exist because PhD programs pay students to come. Hence, a student who comes for the PhD, gets paid, and then doesn't actually complete the PhD, or, even worse (for the department anyway) just leaves with a master's, probably represents a financial loss for the department, especially if the student was on fellowship. Heck, I know of a guy who went to grad school at Harvard, putzed around for a couple of years while on full fellowship, and then just left. He did no research, performed absolutely terribly in coursework, and strong rumor had it that he was just spending all his time playing poker all day long, for when he quit, *he become a professional poker player<a href="and%20a%20fairly%20successful%20one%20at%20that">/i</a>. As far as I can tell, he basically played the system. Get a couple years of free fellowship money, and instead of doing any actual academic work, just use that time to become a better cardsharp. </p>

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But ignoring that, there just isn't the time to have faculty go into an in depth interview process with every applicant. If your tenure depends on publications, you do everything possible to minimize your effort towards non-publication activities. It's an incentive incompatibility problem.

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<p>I am not at all sympathetic to this argument. In fact, I have negative sympathy for it. First of all, you wouldn't need interviews for every*applicant. Obviously you could use simple screens (i.e. LOR's, GPA, GRE, etc.) to weed out many (probably most) applicants, thereby leaving only a highly qualified pool of potential candidates. You would then have to intensively interview only *those candidates. </p>

<p>Secondly, if the problem is a matter of misaligned incentives, then the answer is to then align those incentives. Every department requires that junior faculty not just publish but also contribute meaningfully to the department in handling the administrative load if they want to maximize their chances of tenure. If you consistently endorse grad student admissions candidates who turn out to be terrible (or you never even participate in the admissions process at all), then your chances of earning tenure will be reduced, and rightfully so. I think that's exactly the way it ought to be.</p>

<p>After all - you said it yourself - the real problem is with misaligned incentives. The parents themselves have no reason to change their behavior, because schools refuse to reform, which means that parents will continue to coddle their kids in order to help them gain admission because they have no reason to stop. The schools will have nobody to blame for that but themselves. After all, they're the ones who set up the incentives.</p>