I had a relatively bad experience with graduate school but in retrospect it was better than working. Very little oversight on how I spent my time, got to do interesting work and being a grad student in my field (physics) was relatively high status when it came to dating the people I wanted to date.<p>I walked to work every day and walked home every night. I slept well.<p>In comparison, literally the only good thing about "the real world" is more money.<p>My advisor was an anti-social depressive and I often felt spectacularly dumb. But in retrospect, it was great. If I could afford to go again, I'd do it.
Also worth reading: "Don't Become a Scientist!" by Jonathan Katz [1], "Women in Science" by Philip Greenspun [2], and "What Does Any of This Have To Do with Physics?" by Bob Henderson [3].<p>[1]: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181018063835/http://katz.fastmail.us/scientist.html" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20181018063835/http://katz.fastm...</a><p>[2]: <a href="http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science" rel="nofollow">http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science</a><p>[3]: <a href="https://nautil.us/what-does-any-of-this-have-to-do-with-physics-5626/" rel="nofollow">https://nautil.us/what-does-any-of-this-have-to-do-with-phys...</a>
Similar discussion to the "The dangers of high status, low wage jobs" post from today. I do think the stress is directly correlated with their financial situation.<p>My spouse is in a PhD program. Advantages for her are a) her mother was also a PhD with a tenured job and b) she's married to me, who makes $350k a year (and to be clear, she works a lot harder than I do). I can't imagine people putting up with the same bullshit she does as outlined in the article, _and_ dealing with financial issues. Even if she doesn't get that tenure-track job, her opportunity cost for trying is much lower than someone who doesn't have those privileges.
The article opens with an anecdote about the experience of a philosophy PhD candidate, then moves on to explore statistics.<p>I believe these types of analyses on the value of a graduate degree should be separated based on field. There are vastly different day-to-day schedules and expected career outcomes for a graduate student pursuing a PhD in, say, philosophy; versus economics; a life sciences field; mathematics; an engineering field; and so on.
Hot take - graduate school is frequently treated as a "backup" option when getting a job directly out of undergraduate appears difficult or unrealistic. This is a very damaging mindset, as the post-graduate options are not always much rosier than post-undergraduate, but comes with a likely mountain of debt and years of envy watching peers have multi-year head starts in their careers.
It's quite likely some people will come out of reading this thinking we should stop sending people to grad school. Shouldn't we instead take this as a signal that it needs improvement?<p>Grad students are one of the very few subpopulations of humanity allowed to take on extraordinary epistemological risks; a kind of immune system of our civilization. I'm not even talking about some elusive notion of "progress", just [intellectual] societal health. It would feel to me like a tremendous loss if we let go of such a component of society.
The article seems flawed from its premise, which is that because there's X% (41 I guess) rate of moderate to severe anxiety in students attending grad school, grad school must be the cause.<p>Classic case of correlation =/= causation.<p>Besides, the cited research also says this: "Although this is a convenience sample in which respondents who have had a history of anxiety or depression may have been more apt to respond to the survey..."
> Once, for a conference, we visited a different philosophy department, at a less prestigious university, housed in a structure which had set the record for the largest poured-concrete building in the US.<p>I’m guessing Wean Hall at Carnegie Mellon University?
I am extremely skeptical of the authors claim that only 6% of the general population suffers “moderate to severe” anxiety or depression.<p>How do you even quantify the intensity of a normal human emotion? It’s all relative to an individuals experience.<p>Human beings are fucked in the head. I believe it’s always been that way and always will be.
Its all about choices really. My wife got her Master's in Nursing and works as a Nurse Practitioner. She had a 6 figure salary right out of school. She helps many people with their healthcare. She is still paying off the cost of school but has the means to do so.
I'm trying to paste the link to the "100 reasons not to go to grad school" blog but HN won't let me paste? I'm on Chrome 98 on Android 9. Pushing the paste button does nothing. No URL works. Regular text works though.
The linked study that he consulted is behind a paywall. From context, it sounds like this is specifically referring to negative mental health outcomes due to PhD studies, which is not all grad school. The title seemingly can't possibly be correct as written, given schools of public health and medicine exist and have to produce some net positive benefit. It's not like public health globally hasn't improved since we discovered the germ theory of disease and medical licensing became a thing. Making some small number of people depressed isn't nearly enough to offset all of modern medicine.