<p>Thanks for the post, japanoko. But does this list really mean anything? The CS guy with a bachelors or masters degree writing trading algorithms for Wall Street probably does ten-fold better financially than a top CS phD. Likewise with many candidates who decide to go into industry rather than academia.</p>
<p>There’s that old George Bernard Shaw maxim: Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.</p>
<p>^^I look at the above differently: the country is lucky that a significant proportion of the truly cerebral/intellectual and selfless go into serious scientific pursuit rather than exclusively into careers that produce no goods or services (or entreprenurial breakthroughs), basically taking cuts of huge sums of money changing hands (sometimes in nanoseconds). To paint faculty at top colleges and research universities as those who simply couldn’t hack it in finance/management is perhaps a bit crass. That said, Williams excels at producing both titans of finance and academicians, so its graduates are well positioned in both worlds.</p>
<p>Roster of Physics Departments with Enrollment and Degree Data, 2009</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/reports/physrost.pdf[/url]”>http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/reports/physrost.pdf</a></p>
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<p>OK, you’ve got me there, Dad2! I don’t see my son ever being tempted by the “great vampire squid” of Wall Street, even for premium pay. Working for Google, starting his own business or non-profit and maybe creating the occasional iPod game seems more his style.</p>
<p>While I admire many of the folks who have decided to enter academia, anyone who looks at the trendlines can see that there will only be a very limited future for newly-minted phDs. Not only are tenured professors being widely replaced by contract instructors, much of academia is heavily subsidized by government and our government is beyond broke. Eventually, research funds and college student loans, grants and other subsidies will need to be cut deeply, as the government struggles to cover government pensions, medicare, food stamps, interest payments, the military and other priorities of the well-connected or those needed simply to prevent riots in the streets.</p>
<p>^^My post wasn’t intended to recommend pursuing an academic PhD as a sure-fire career choice (that it ain’t, as you’ve aptly pointed out), but rather to caution against denigrating the abilities of those who do (“those who can’t do, teach”- or as Woody Allen put it: “and those who can’t teach, teach P.E.”).</p>
<p>^ I, in turn, wished to note that the metric of how many phDs a school mints is not a useful indicator of the quality of teaching or the caliber of the students. Earning a phD, rather, is more of a lifestyle choice: if one loves to teach or desires to pursue pure research, then academia is a great path. But those who do not chose this path are not necessarily worse students.</p>
<p>I think that the proportion of students who go on to PhDs is a useful piece of information because it indicates what fraction of the student body is interested in pursuing the life of the mind. You are correct in observing that this is a lifestyle choice, but it does say something about the academic atmosphere you will find at a given college. I also believe that excellent teaching can inspire students to pursue PhDs. Of course many very smart and talented people have other goals and lead happy, productive lives without a PhD. A diverse college will include both kinds of students.</p>
<p>One does need to be careful in interpreting this metric. Technical colleges (e.g. MIT, Caltech, etc.) rank near the top for PhD productivity in part because there are more employment opportunities for PhD scientists and engineers outside of academia than for PhDs in the humanities. When a liberal arts college (e.g. Swarthmore, Reed, Oberlin,…) or a university with a liberal arts curriculum (e.g. Chicago, Harvard, Princeton) has high PhD productivity you can bet that there is a significant fraction of the students who are interested in learning for learning’s sake.</p>
<p>between the two Brown</p>
<p>This is so funny! All the math people debating with numbers! My D applied to both, visited both. She really did not like Williams: too insular, isolated environment, “small” per view, while I loved it: town was beautiful, we were there on a gorgeous warm sunny day with snow pristinely melting, tour guide was superb, one on one and quite a hunk, and spent a long time talking about math dept too, lol, (but admitted that CS was not really up to par) and then we went to Brown in miserable slushy weather. So we saw Williams at it’s best, and Brown at not it’s best. But she went to Brown expecting to not like it (she went to small HS etc.and heaven forbid you should go to same school as parent! ) and loved it. So let him visit schools for sure!
Brown is fortunately still primarily an undergrad school. It has great math and CS depts and undergrads far outnumber the grad students, so they “count” with the profs, and get to know them well and do cool research etc. In fact I think Brown is still known for interaction between math and CS such as multidimensional modeling etc. I would try to see on his visits if he can speak with juniors and seniors in all of interest departments to really get a good feel for things.</p>
<p>Shoot, we all know that phd students are smarter than wall streeters. Come on now.</p>
<p>I have a PhD and it is from a love of learning, but some kids love to learn in the world. One of mine is becoming a lawyer (sadly leaving American Studies scholarship behind) and the other wants to work in a museum as a curator rather than be in academics. My H is a professional photographer. I don’t see how any of them is inferior to me because I have a PhD.</p>
<p>It’s a temperament and style, and with college teachers jobs so hard to come by, it’s not necessarily a brilliant decision right now.</p>
<p>Still, it is a metric. Perhaps it also indicates a bit how introverted or extroverted the student body is. </p>
<p>I have taught at the college level for 30 years, 25 years as tenured faculty. I don’t think I could find another place in the world that suited me as well.</p>
<p>For the record, I think I’m the only English major I graduated with who did this. I did not graduate from a department or school that produced many PhD’s, although of my bff’s two of my best friends from college got PhD’s in psych. Another is a high school art teacher; one works in computers, and another is a rabbi.</p>
<p>As for Brown vs Williams, I would think most kids would know where they’d rather be. I venture to say more would choose Brown – Ivy, urban, bigger.</p>
<p>My kid chose Williams and so did our HS val when given this choice.</p>
<p>It’s personal. But from all these posts, it’s safe to say that a good math education can be had at either.</p>