NYTimes: End the University as We Know It

[SDTB]

<p>

@sakky

The other aspect would be the recruiting availability at certain schools, such as the aforementioned consulting and banking firms. Again, as a Harvard student - no matter what program and what discipline - if you want an interview with a consulting firm or, until just recently, a banking firm, you could surely get it. Those firms are always hanging around campus and serve as prime ‘escape hatches’ for Harvard PhD students. Can’t find a job in academia to your liking after you finish your Phd? Oh well, then you can get a lucrative job in consulting. The most selective business jobs are harder to get, but many Harvard PhD students succeed in landing them anyway. For example, every year, some of them will shlepp across the river and sneak into various career functions at the Business School held by hedge funds and VC/PE firms. Granted, because they’re not Business School students, they’re not really supposed to be there, but frankly, nobody really cares. </p>

<p>Nor is Harvard the only example. The above discussion extends to other ‘branded’ schools such as Stanford, MIT, Princeton, Yale, and so forth. But the bottom line is, as the author of the NYTimes article indicated, not everybody is going to obtain an academic placement. Hence, it is legitimate to want a flexible degree that allows you to pursue multiple industries and protects you from risk. Choosing a PhD program is not simply about choosing a research specialty, but also about choosing a bundled package of the university that includes the brand name, the networking, and the recruiting connections.

You post interesting comments. I apologize if I seem like I’m cherry picking you. I agree with your general assessment about the “bundled package”, but I’d like to include the idea of finding the right research project and advisor. As far as I can tell, I do believe that firms look at applicants holistically. It looks like they are aware of the top institutions in the subfields, which makes sense because the top institutions in a subfield are very easy to look up (US News and Report/etc…). Below is the McKinsey Recruiting website.

PhDs, highlight top labs at lower ranked departments. We know what the leading departments in a field are, but we won’t necessarily know of all renowned researchers in all fields. If you’re working in a distinctive lab at a lower ranked department, please let us know.</p>

<p>Include all teamwork and/or leadership experience. If they’re not already on your CV or resume, please add them. These are critical to having a three-dimensional application. We understand that many graduate students must fully focus on their research, so it is ok to go as far back as college.</p>

<p>Highlight distinctive awards, honors, fellowships. For any distinctive honors, we would love to know the number of applicants, the number awarded, the selection criteria, and the amount of the grant (if applicable).</p>

<p>PhDs, highlight distinctive refereed journal publications. Explicitly highlight publications in prestigious journals. We tend to discount publications that are in preparation, but not submitted.

[Application</a> Tips | McKinsey APD Recruiting](<a href=“http://www.apd.mckinsey.com/ApplicationTips/tabid/2916/Default.aspx]Application”>http://www.apd.mckinsey.com/ApplicationTips/tabid/2916/Default.aspx)
Furthermore, they have shown on their website that they hire George Washington University MD’s and UC San Diego PhD’s, which aren’t as name brand as Harvard. I do agree that there are still advantages with going to Harvard over UC San Diego, but it doesn’t look like UC San Diego is going to tremendously limit someone’s career, either.</p>

<p>Since it looks like you are advising for the most practical route (highest % route for either monetary success or academic success), you are probably right in advising that a place like Harvard is hard to beat.</p>

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@jack63

1. Everybody has there horror stories of tenured and tenure-track professors who can’t and won’t teach. I do to. I have a undergrad from a good private liberal arts school and a Masters degree from a public school. At both places I saw solutions that I really thought worked to make Professors teach. At my undergrad, tenure was, in part, based off of evaluations from students that were detailed questionaires sent out to current students, alumni, majors and non-majors. There were literally tenure track professors with significant research sucess going up for tenure with the full support of their department that were turned down and forced to leave over bad student evaluations. At my Masters Degree program, every class was evaluated. Class evaluations are no silver bullet, but really poor teachers were few and far between. These types of solutions really worked. Schools should do this before ever considering abolishing tenure.

I disagree with this solution for a large research university. This solution can encourage professors to dish out easy A’s in an effort to bolster their student evaluations. I’ve actually seen this in person; it’s fairly tragic.</p>

<p>I can see this as a solution for a LAC given the size factor. However, unless a large university is willing to put in the time to sort out the terrible evaluations (students who were clearly bitter about their grade), then there are problems with this scenario.</p>

<p>I can also see this working for Master’s Programs.</p>

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@jack63

3. In terms of Academic freedom, we aren’t just talking about the sticky subjects. If you take away tenure, you give the university administartion total control. It will be very similar to working at a corporation where they can lay you off at the drop of dime for any reason. Getting rid of tenure will cause profs to lose control of everything from who they partner with, who they publish with, and what relatively mundane subject matter they get to study.

There’s a saying that academia progresses when people die.</p>

<p>I think there should be some sort of balance struck. I’d suggest that at a certain point there should be some sort of renewal of contract system every few years or so, but I haven’t considered this situation very deeply. It’s important to get a new influx of ideas instead of clogging up faculty positions with 70-80 year olds.</p>

<p>Furthermore, given the recent increase in life expectancies (increases in general health) in the US, I predict that there’s going to be a bigger problem with tenure due to an increase in 70-80 year olds holding faculty positions.

@belevitt

I hope this doesn’t include biomedical as well. We have multiple directly-relevant research avenues available to us that the humanities and social sciences do not. For instance, drug development, medical devices, vaccines, public health and non profit/research institutes. The budgets for the biomedical sciences ala NIH are much higher than the counterparts in the humanities and social sciences. I agree things aren’t great in terms of salary and job security in academia but I don’t think that the biomedical sciences are mired as deeply in it as other disciplines are.

I agree that the health sciences have a better fallback plan than the humanities and social sciences. Health is a big part of the social conscience in the 21st century; 18th century medieval pottery making is less relevant in the public mind.</p>

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@sakky

Major research universities such as HYPSM have vast quantities of resources. They’re not going to be hurt by whatever tiny loss of tuition and donations you might cause, especially when plenty of other wealthy donors are willing to step into the fray. People attend those schools not so much because they support the tenure system, but because they support all of the other activities that the schools have to offer, such as the brand name the career recruiting, and the alumni networks, and the tenure system is bundled into the package.

Actually, some of these institutions are hurting due to the economy, especially in the research sector. I know that MIT has cut down on PhD admissions by 20%+ for some engineering and science departments; they basically tell prospective graduates that visit this. Some of MITs departments (and other schools) have been unusually aggressive as well. Stanford, in particular, is hurting pretty bad right now, and you can see that in their admission patterns this year with engineers – holding out funding information for PhD students. To give them credit, they do offer one of the highest stipends for the physical sciences.</p>

<p>I’ve read that Harvard was down $8 billion at one point. Although they still have $20+ billion in endowments, I’m sure that had to hurt a little bit.</p>

<p>I believe Caltech may be an exception given that they have a different financial structure: no sports, no business program, no medical school, no law school, etc. I’ve heard that they don’t expect to be hurt too much by the economy.</p>

<p>I don’t know if this is true, but I’d argue that these institutions are built to maximize their dollar to the limit even though they have a lot of money. This is because that’s what they have to do in order to stay on top. I’ll use a sports analogy – although Kobe Bryant, Dwayne Wade, and Lebron James have incredible talent (money), they still have to work/train incredibly hard in order to stay competitive on the elite level.</p>

[sakky]

<p>

Actually, some of these institutions are hurting due to the economy, especially in the research sector. I know that MIT has cut down on PhD admissions by 20%+ for some engineering and science departments; they basically tell prospective graduates that visit this. Some of MITs departments (and other schools) have been unusually aggressive as well. Stanford, in particular, is hurting pretty bad right now, and you can see that in their admission patterns this year with engineers – holding out funding information for PhD students. To give them credit, they do offer one of the highest stipends for the physical sciences.</p>

<p>I’ve read that Harvard was down $8 billion at one point. Although they still have $20+ billion in endowments, I’m sure that had to hurt a little bit.

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<p>Nobody is denying that those schools are being hurt…but by the general decline of the economy, coupled with injudicious investment decisions on their own part. What I am saying is that those schools are not going to be influenced by whatever microscopic loss of tuition that any one disgruntled potential student can inflict on Harvard, especially when there are boatloads of other people lining up to get in. Let’s face it: Harvard is not going to change its entire tenure infrastructure just because Joe Schmoe decides not to go to Harvard, especially when Harvard can just replace Joe Schmoe with any of the tens of thousands of other people who want to get into Harvard. </p>

<p>

Furthermore, given the recent increase in life expectancies (increases in general health) in the US, I predict that there’s going to be a bigger problem with tenure due to an increase in 70-80 year olds holding faculty positions.

</p>

<p>Well, to be fair, many universities run forced-retirement programs at a certain age and/or certain length of employment when professors are forced to take emeritus status. Granted, some of those emeritus professors may still have offices and evenly actively engage in research, but they’re no longer officially on the university payroll - their livelihoods now being supported by their (usually cushy) pensions. </p>

<p>

You post interesting comments. I apologize if I seem like I’m cherry picking you. I agree with your general assessment about the “bundled package”, but I’d like to include the idea of finding the right research project and advisor. As far as I can tell, I do believe that firms look at applicants holistically. It looks like they are aware of the top institutions in the subfields, which makes sense because the top institutions in a subfield are very easy to look up (US News and Report/etc…). Below is the McKinsey Recruiting website.

</p>

<p>

Application Tips | McKinsey APD Recruiting
Furthermore, they have shown on their website that they hire George Washington University MD’s and UC San Diego PhD’s, which aren’t as name brand as Harvard. I do agree that there are still advantages with going to Harvard over UC San Diego, but it doesn’t look like UC San Diego is going to tremendously limit someone’s career, either.

</p>

<p>You mentioned finding the ‘right’ research advisor and project, but sometimes that may mean choosing a relatively low-ranked department/school that just so happens to have an advisor who is working on precisely what you want to research. The problem of course is what if you earn your PhD from that department, and then can’t get an academic placement? Put another way, what if you turn down a PhD program at Harvard for one at Wayne State because the latter has the perfect research for you, run by your perfect advisor…but then when you obtain your Wayne State PhD, you find out that you can’t get placed? You probably would have been better off going to Harvard, as although the collaborative fit might not have been perfect, at least you can leverage the Harvard brand and resources to find a decent job. </p>

<p>McKinsey is by far the largest of all of the management consulting firms. Most other consulting firms, especially the boutiques (obviously) are far smaller, and often times lack the expertise to properly assess your PhD research productivity. Heck, even McKinsey would have great trouble assessing that. Does McKinsey really know what the top academic journals are in any particular subfield? Does it know what the most important publications are, or are likely to be? Heck, even those in academia itself often times don’t really know what the top journals and top publications are in subfields that are only slightly different from their own. McKinsey probably doesn’t know, and a smaller boutique consulting firm certainly doesn’t know. All they will see is your school’s brand. </p>

<p>Furthermore, to get hired by these firms almost always means that those firms need to be actively recruiting at your school. McKinsey is a large firm and therefore has a large recruiting footprint; nevertheless, the vast vast majority of schools are not visited by the company. Smaller firms are even more insular in this regard, only recruiting at a handful of schools. Heck, many of the smallest yet most desirable firms, such as VC/PE or hedge funds, don’t even recruit at all, instead requiring that you obtain a formal introduction to them, usually through alumni networking. Harvard alumni are deeply connected to those industries in a way that few other schools (arguably no other) are. So, what happens if you get your PhD at UCSD and then decide you want to work for a PE firm, but you can’t even get an introduction because nobody from UCSD works at that firm?</p>

<p>Note, I’m not saying that everybody should always choose Harvard. All I’m saying is that people ought to be risk averse by understanding that an academic career may not work out for them, and they should therefore ask themselves what else they can do with a PhD from a particular school. Heck, that sort of mentality should be applied to the whole grad school experience itself, regardless of whether you finish the PhD. Something like half of all incoming PhD students will never actually finish the degree, and it is legitimate to ask what sort of opportunities you will have if you don’t finish. For example, I know PhD student at MIT who is only in the first year yet who is already talking about quitting the program and taking a lucrative consulting job, for MIT is another one of those schools where the presence of consulting firms is pervasive.</p>

[brains]

<p>“Put another way, what if you turn down a PhD program at Harvard for one at Wayne State because the latter has the perfect research for you, run by your perfect advisor…but then when you obtain your Wayne State PhD, you find out that you can’t get placed?”</p>

<p>Speaking as someone who will be attending Wayne state, and chose it over Tulane, I must add my two cents: I chose Wayne state because they have a program that has incredible resources working in a highly specialized area. One student who is in her last year has been sought out because of the fact that the training this niche provides is not available elsewhere, she already has 4 offers, one is even a teaching position! </p>

<p>I chose Wayne State because they don’t aim to train academics there, they train medical researchers, Tulane trains academics, they are looking to mold professors, and with the tenure system they way it is, and teaching positions so desperately hard to come by, I chose a route that would get me a job…not to mention the program is just awesome.</p>

[RacinReaver]

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However, unless a large university is willing to put in the time to sort out the terrible evaluations (students who were clearly bitter about their grade), then there are problems with this scenario.

</p>

<p>I forget about how it’s done here, but at my undergrad school course/professor ratings were due prior to final exams, which led to minimal vindictive grading since you never quite knew where you stood until after the final.</p>

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I believe Caltech may be an exception given that they have a different financial structure: no sports, no business program, no medical school, no law school, etc. I’ve heard that they don’t expect to be hurt too much by the economy.

</p>

<p>We’re doing our fair share of hurting from finances. I know in my department we’re expecting to admit fewer people than previous years. The school’s also downsized a number of non-academic positions; I recall them asking every department to cut expenses by something like 10-20% as well.</p>

<p>

Put another way, what if you turn down a PhD program at Harvard for one at Wayne State because the latter has the perfect research for you, run by your perfect advisor…but then when you obtain your Wayne State PhD, you find out that you can’t get placed? You probably would have been better off going to Harvard, as although the collaborative fit might not have been perfect, at least you can leverage the Harvard brand and resources to find a decent job.

</p>

<p>How about all of the other non-academic jobs that are still within your own field? Most of the people I’ve known that have gotten their PhDs recently haven’t gone on to academic positions, they’ve wound up in national labs or corporate labs. I imagine a well known professor at Wayne State would have much better connections to get you jobs like those after graduation than someone fresh off their post-doc at Harvard.</p>

[UKdude84]

<p>The article can be summed up as “college is expensive…and may not be worth it”. We know this already. Even here, where the state subsidises most courses, there is a move towards US style market determinants of price and many programmes are cut.</p>

<p>I’m in for the long haul, I just want to teach IR in some little liberal arts school in some backwater town.</p>