No Torsten. If students do not have the ambition for a career in science, then they should not do a PhD. There are plenty of other educational options. Can we please stop watering down academic education? - ThreadSky

erikvannimwegen.bsky.social • 6 days ago

No Torsten. If students do not have the ambition for a career in science, then they should not do a PhD. There are plenty of other educational options.
Can we please stop watering down academic education?

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josch1.bsky.social•5 days ago

Do you consider going into pharma/biotech R&D a "career in science"?

erikvannimwegen.bsky.social•5 days ago

I don't know what to do with questions like this. Obviously some science is done in pharma/biotech. But there are also very strong boundary conditions that will often conflict with 'doing science'. As an academic scientist, we should not adapt our teaching to cater to such boundary conditions.

josch1.bsky.social•5 days ago

I'm just curious about your position. Is it "you should only do a PhD if you want to become a professor" or is wanting to becoming a "scientist" in industry also fine? Your objection to "careers outside universities" implies the former, but I wanted to clarify

erikvannimwegen.bsky.social•5 days ago

No. I don't care if they eventually choose to be a sculptor or a real estate agent. I only expect that if somebody comes to do a PhD with me, that they want to do science and want to learn how to do science, i.e. not demand from me that I should prepare them for how it is going to be in industry.

josch1.bsky.social•5 days ago

That's totally fair. Just a very different point from "if they don't have the ambition for a career in science, they should not do a PhD". Not everyone who wants to learn how to do science also wants to pursue an academic career.

holmrenser.bsky.social•6 days ago

Science != academia

bioinfo.se•6 days ago

In a healthy (non-exponential growing system), each professor should educate one future professor (in their lifetime), so we should not be allowed to have more than two PhD students each (in total over our career) to guarantee a 50% success rate. Can we all agree to do this?

erikvannimwegen.bsky.social•6 days ago

Dont be silly. Does FC Barcelona only take 11 kids in their youth selection? Does music conservatory only take as many piano students as there are new concert pianists per year? I said ambition.

erikvannimwegen.bsky.social•6 days ago

That is not to say that we shouldn't select more stringently. I think there are far too many PhD students. I agree that the balance 'jobs in science'/'PhD students hired' is completely off. But the solution is not redefining a PhD to be something else.

pedrobeltrao.bsky.social•5 days ago

The PhD already is something else with <20% ending up in academia. It would seem like a waste of public funds if we don't also account for the fact that the vast majority of our PhDs go to non-academic jobs. We do not have to lower our expectations about independent thinking and problem solving.

erikvannimwegen.bsky.social•5 days ago

No it isn't. I completely disagree. I'm very happy that the skills acquired during PhD training are also of great value outside academia. Great! But we are in no way shape or form obliged to adapt the PhD to cater to other jobs that students might end up in.

erikvannimwegen.bsky.social•5 days ago

The majority of La Masia students don't become professional soccer players. Is that an argument to change the education at La Masia to focus more on teaching the skills needed as a gym teacher, sports coach, scout, or sport analyst?

bioinfo.se•6 days ago

Compared to fotboll we do quite well "less than 0.5% of the players aged under 9 that are signed by professional teams, go all the way to play for the first team at some point in their life." https://idsoccer.com/how-many-academy-players-make-it-pro/

erikvannimwegen.bsky.social•6 days ago

Yeah, that's why picked that example ;-)

bioinfo.se•6 days ago

But likely La Masia is significantly more successful (hard to find exact numbers). I think I'm around 10% succesrate if you count professors and 25% of you count so other academia as well.

maxfus.bsky.social•6 days ago

I'm sympathetic to your overall argument, but what do you mean with "watering down"? Surely we can train PhDs at the highest academic standards and implement more industry-readiness at the same time?
And did you mean to say "academic science"? Because the OP is about unis

hans2sachs.bsky.social•6 days ago

That's a bit short sighted of you. If you looked at a few job openings you find that many industry positions require a PhD. Before that's changing, people are forced to go that route. Profs should be open in supporting their students, whether you like the direction they choose after or not...

erikvannimwegen.bsky.social•6 days ago

What industry wants to hire is their business. It is not our job to redefine what a PhD is based on demand. This is terrible logic of the kind: There's too many PhDs in molecular biology and too few plumbers, therefore mol biol professors should teach their PhD students plumbing.

hans2sachs.bsky.social•6 days ago

It'll continue as long as people have an incentive to get a PhD for an industrial career. Also many may think academia is their thing but reconsider once they're in that environment and that's ok. Unfortunately, academics tend to think there's only one right path that everyone needs to follow.

erikvannimwegen.bsky.social•6 days ago

No, academics don't think that at all. Academics merely presume that somebody that chooses to do a PhD wants to learn how to become a scientist. And if they change their mind.. fine.. go do something else.. but don't insist that a PhD education must then also cater to this something else.

hans2sachs.bsky.social•6 days ago

Is the science they do in industry different from the science you teach at your University? The level should be held high I agree, but expanding your horizon is a good thing. E.g. in engineering PhD programs, doing industry placements is quite usual. I think that's great and opens doors for people!

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