People in my program take Spanish. I knew one person who did creative writing. We actually have a class on consulting in a closely related department that you could manage to sell as an elective. I took some only faintly related classes in another department.
It's not easy, and it will add time (that's the true problem with a PhD, balancing 'Things I want To Do' and 'I want to finish') but it's doable. PhDs are also often much less "locked in" to coursework than undergraduates, especially after their first few years.
"The problem here is that the definition of a Ph.D. for you is extremely different from the definition of Ph.D. for most of your students. I think there's next to no one whose primary objective with a Ph.D. is to produce a piece of original research - it is always a means to another end: usually career-oriented."
I can't think of a single person in my program who wasn't fully aware that a PhD is about producing original research. They might struggle with doing that, but it's a known and understood requirement.
Oh, I do believe your students are aware that they must produce original research, but I'm willing to bet that none of them see it as a primary objective, but rather a means to the real objective: a career in academia.
The Ph.D. program, in our times at least, is pitched as a quid pro quo: you produce some original research, something worthwhile and of substance, to add to the sum of human knowledge, and in exchange they gain access to an academic career.
The problem is that there are a lot of people paying the quid, and barely anyone getting the quo. Unless you are a student of independent wealth, you are not producing this research out of the goodness of your heart with no greater, more important objective. To the vast, vast majority of people doing their Ph.D's, a Ph.D. is a career maneuver.
I'm not sure what PhD students you're hanging around, but all the ones I know are painfully aware of the fact that we're making terrible career choices. No one expects to get a job as a professor right out of the program, except maybe a few people who hope to get a job at a teaching college. Even those who are going to do a post doc are doing it with full belief that it is unlikely to lead to a tenure-track position. And all of that is at a top 10 CS PhD program.
PhD students generally just love research. We sign up for this because it's what we enjoy doing. Companies try hard to recruit us away, but we stay in spite of that, because why would we want to do anything other than work on the one problem we've always wanted to solve?
Maybe it's different in the humanities, but every STEM PhD student I've ever met has low expectations, with the exception of one-- and she has a first authorship on a Nature paper and is working on a Science submission, so I still think she's pretty well-grounded.
Exactly. Most of the ones I've known are profoundly aware of the job market - hell, most of us looked at the jobs we could have gotten with MS degrees and chosen to continue.
Honestly, at this point, finding out that the job market is grim takes only a shred of research, and absolutely the kind of research you should do before applying.
I think you should stop assuming you know what the vast majority of PhD think about doing a PhD. I'm a student myself and I've loved every minute of it so far. I use the tools I want. I work on interesting problems. And I pretty much make my own schedule. AND I get to help other students while I'm at it. What's not to like? Frankly, it's bliss.
I don't know exactly what I'm going to do when I'm done.
Granted, not everyone thinks like me. But certainly not everyone thinks as you do.
This is completely wrong. Nobody expects an academic career anymore, and all the PhD students I know are doing it because they really like their subject. It's like aspiring to be an artist.
The Ph.D. program, in our times at least, is pitched as a quid pro quo: you produce some original research, something worthwhile and of substance, to add to the sum of human knowledge, and in exchange they gain access to an academic career.
Anecdotal rebuttal: The first conversation I had with my research advisor concerned the difficulty of getting a tenure track position at a research university straight out of Ph. D. school. In her words, "that sort of thing just doesn't really happen anymore in this field (Computer Science)."
There are no delusions of academic grandeur, at least in my neck of the woods. I agree that the Ph.D. may be pursued as a career maneuver, but if your end game is a teaching position at a research university your approach to the program has to be very different (and extremely more ambitious) than someone pursuing industry or other goals. And if you're pursuing a prestigious academic position, you are quickly educated on the slim possibility of attaining it, even if you're willing to post doc.
The only reason we grad-students give a crap about academia is that it's our only opportunity to spend primary work hours on research. Unfortunately, academia proceeds to load us down in courses (during the early years) and then TA'ing and RA'ing as well (the whole time). You sign up to grad school to do research, and then find that often you're doing anything but research.
The problem is even worse. It is not because they massively increased the number of PhD students that a larger proportion of the population would suddenly be capable of original research. I guess that the net effect has mostly been a massive increase in unoriginal research.
Comments
"Do they have the time?"
People in my program take Spanish. I knew one person who did creative writing. We actually have a class on consulting in a closely related department that you could manage to sell as an elective. I took some only faintly related classes in another department.
It's not easy, and it will add time (that's the true problem with a PhD, balancing 'Things I want To Do' and 'I want to finish') but it's doable. PhDs are also often much less "locked in" to coursework than undergraduates, especially after their first few years.
"The problem here is that the definition of a Ph.D. for you is extremely different from the definition of Ph.D. for most of your students. I think there's next to no one whose primary objective with a Ph.D. is to produce a piece of original research - it is always a means to another end: usually career-oriented."
I can't think of a single person in my program who wasn't fully aware that a PhD is about producing original research. They might struggle with doing that, but it's a known and understood requirement.
There's a career-oriented degree. It's a Masters.
Oh, I do believe your students are aware that they must produce original research, but I'm willing to bet that none of them see it as a primary objective, but rather a means to the real objective: a career in academia.
The Ph.D. program, in our times at least, is pitched as a quid pro quo: you produce some original research, something worthwhile and of substance, to add to the sum of human knowledge, and in exchange they gain access to an academic career.
The problem is that there are a lot of people paying the quid, and barely anyone getting the quo. Unless you are a student of independent wealth, you are not producing this research out of the goodness of your heart with no greater, more important objective. To the vast, vast majority of people doing their Ph.D's, a Ph.D. is a career maneuver.
I'm not sure what PhD students you're hanging around, but all the ones I know are painfully aware of the fact that we're making terrible career choices. No one expects to get a job as a professor right out of the program, except maybe a few people who hope to get a job at a teaching college. Even those who are going to do a post doc are doing it with full belief that it is unlikely to lead to a tenure-track position. And all of that is at a top 10 CS PhD program.
PhD students generally just love research. We sign up for this because it's what we enjoy doing. Companies try hard to recruit us away, but we stay in spite of that, because why would we want to do anything other than work on the one problem we've always wanted to solve?
Maybe it's different in the humanities, but every STEM PhD student I've ever met has low expectations, with the exception of one-- and she has a first authorship on a Nature paper and is working on a Science submission, so I still think she's pretty well-grounded.
Exactly. Most of the ones I've known are profoundly aware of the job market - hell, most of us looked at the jobs we could have gotten with MS degrees and chosen to continue.
Honestly, at this point, finding out that the job market is grim takes only a shred of research, and absolutely the kind of research you should do before applying.
I think you should stop assuming you know what the vast majority of PhD think about doing a PhD. I'm a student myself and I've loved every minute of it so far. I use the tools I want. I work on interesting problems. And I pretty much make my own schedule. AND I get to help other students while I'm at it. What's not to like? Frankly, it's bliss.
I don't know exactly what I'm going to do when I'm done.
Granted, not everyone thinks like me. But certainly not everyone thinks as you do.
This is completely wrong. Nobody expects an academic career anymore, and all the PhD students I know are doing it because they really like their subject. It's like aspiring to be an artist.
Anecdotal rebuttal: The first conversation I had with my research advisor concerned the difficulty of getting a tenure track position at a research university straight out of Ph. D. school. In her words, "that sort of thing just doesn't really happen anymore in this field (Computer Science)."
There are no delusions of academic grandeur, at least in my neck of the woods. I agree that the Ph.D. may be pursued as a career maneuver, but if your end game is a teaching position at a research university your approach to the program has to be very different (and extremely more ambitious) than someone pursuing industry or other goals. And if you're pursuing a prestigious academic position, you are quickly educated on the slim possibility of attaining it, even if you're willing to post doc.
The only reason we grad-students give a crap about academia is that it's our only opportunity to spend primary work hours on research. Unfortunately, academia proceeds to load us down in courses (during the early years) and then TA'ing and RA'ing as well (the whole time). You sign up to grad school to do research, and then find that often you're doing anything but research.
</bitter>
The problem is even worse. It is not because they massively increased the number of PhD students that a larger proportion of the population would suddenly be capable of original research. I guess that the net effect has mostly been a massive increase in unoriginal research.
"There's a career-oriented degree. It's a Masters."
I work in academia here in Spain. The Masters is usually a prerequisite for doing a PhD here.