Mar-09
11
Reason # 316 Why I Don’t Have a PhD
By
If уου һаνе bееח out here OTBL long enough, уου mіɡһt remember mе οr one οf mу relatives referring tο tһе Gods up іח Canada. Fοr tһе mοѕt раrt, a solid refuge οf rational thinking frοm tһе dumb-ass commentary littered асrοѕѕ tһе Wisconsin blogsphere (including, οח occasion, mу οwח rapid fire fingers).
I seldom refer tο tһе Gods, preferring tο keep tһеm аѕ one οf mу semi-secret refuges wһеrе I саח quietly ɡο аחԁ read, usually crack a smile, аחԁ tһеח pick up Kipling fοr a brief respite frοm tһе irrational аƖƖ аbουt. Tһеח, іt’s οff tο οtһеr matters.
Yеt, tһіѕ particular post bу tһе Gods fοr ѕοmе odd reason һаѕ mе once again referring tһеm tο уου..
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I have a Ph.D. but it’s in a real discipline (engineering) and not a soft science. There’s actual economic value for such a degree: upon graduating and entering the business world I had a starting salary greater than that of a fully tenured professor and it’s risen far above that since.
There’s an actual economic return to society for what I do, rather than the parasitic nature of many of the soft sciences.
What students don’t get now is a sense of the harsh realities of much of what they study. They get the hippie ideal of “self realization” drummed into them from birth through college and into graduate school, only to discover too late that “self realization” won’t pay the bills and that they’ve been suckered into huge debts they have to scramble to find some way to repay. If they’d thought things through rationally rather than engaging only their emotion they’d have made different choices.
I agree rhpzero, there is a chasm of difference between Ph.D.’s, such as yourself, and the legions of social science Doctors of Philosophy running around incapable of producing wealth. Your point is to be taken very seriously because we here in America need bright kids to pursue engineering and science. We simply cannot expect the Chinese to bankroll our consumption mentality forever, we need to rekindle our innovation premise . I have a family full of engineers, several of my good friends are engineers, my daughter has designs on a career in Chemical-E … well, as much of a design as an 11 year-old can have!
Being home-schooled, the youngster loved the whole chemistry introduction I gave her, and has adopted the Carbon atom as her favorite; making a model and then reveling over the fact that a whole branch of chemistry is devoted to her beloved atom! I tried to convince her that she should consider adopting Hydrogen (given that if it gets hot enough she would eventually arrive at carbon), but she wasn’t buying… it was too simple having only one proton and one electron… I implored her that there was much more to the H than meets the eye, so to speak, but she was insistent. So, while we may not have a nuclear physicist on our hands, we may have an advocate of petro-chemicals… She loves all the things we can make from hydrocarbons..
Back to your point – my grandfather, a civil engineer and profound lover of physics ( I am to this day so grateful for his tutelage in math and physics) , who I essentially grew up around, ended up starting a small business based on his experiences working as an engineer for the Allis Chalmers Company (he loved steam engines, built them, and tinkered with them all of his life) . His education and training in engineering and love for mathematics and science, coupled with an entrepreneurial spirit, ended up in him building a non-metalic mining company, still in existence to this day, that has employed thousands over the years.
Point being, scientists and engineers, as you know, see the world as offering unlimited opportunity – a cup half full. They are unique; you are unique in your ability to change the world – to remake it in ways heretofore unknown.
So, all Ph.D. babies certainly ought not be thrown out with the all too often putrid academic bath water, but there are plenty of “doctors” out there that couldn’t repair a flat bike tire, or set their own cycling computer, if their life depended upon it. Worst of all, in my view, are the Doctor of Education – utterly mindless. Of course, that is why several of the characters out here OTBL were granted the title of “Dr” …
Hey, if the nitwits operating within the confines of the Hudson School District can get away with being referred to as “Dr”, it was clearly appropriate that several contributors out here ought to have that monicer as well… In fact, some even had the high honor of being granted double Dr status! That high honor, however, requires copious amounts of beer coupled with being front and center, on camera, taking on the statist status quo…
You’re missing the point with the Dr. of Ed. degree. Back when Jimmy “watch out for the rabbit” Carter rolled over for the teachers’ union one of the “reforms” was to justify more pay in return for continuing education.
Guess what? You subsidize something, you get more of it. In this case, you get more colleges offering a degree so that those that have them can get more out of the government. And the Education departments are in a competition to get students because no one in the college departments views the myriad of Ph.D.s in education as real competition, so they dumb down their programs. A totally rational response.
Contrast that to the hard sciences. There getting a Ph.D. puts you into the game, in direct competition with those granting you the degree. So there’s a lot more winnowing out there. Consider: the attrition in a top-level physics or engineering Ph.D. program is typically 85+%. Compare that to Education, where the actual attrition (being told you’re not good enough vs. just dropping out) is less than 10%.
ps. The joke isn’t that engineers view the world as a cup half full. There are two variants, I believe the one you want is: “To an engineer, the world is a target rich environment filled with systems to be optimized and just waiting to be told how they should be fixed.” (Engineers aren’t exactly renowned for subtlety or grace.)
The one about engineers and cups goes: “To an optimist the glass is half full, to a pessimist it’s half empty, and to an engineer it’s the wrong size.”