Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Funny again!
You gotta wonder ... how many of these will be made?

Any user created content on the web will be endless...

Hilarious, but painfully true. I sometimes wonder what the modern Ph.D. program would do to a polymath like DaVinci or a scholar like Erasmus, both of whom I admire as archetypal Renaissance men. In her book "I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was," Barbara Sher draws a distinction between skimmers and divers. The former have broad interests and know a little about many things. The latter know almost everything about a very narrow subject. I suspect the latter type would find the doctoral program in his or her field of study to be an almost irresistable tiger trap. Fortunately, I am a skimmer and avoided the deadly punji sticks of academia.

It is "often" said that the current educational system would never produce another Einstein. This may even have been the case in his time since he made his initial breakthrough while working in a patent office (not getting good enough grades and recommendations to get a professorship) and the masterpiece of the general theory of relativity (at least 75 years ahead of its time) while working on little else (today he'd lose funding and be denied tenure.)
This would NEVER happen today.
I'm a skimmer-diver. I dive into projects for 5-10 years at a time. I couldn't reach interesting depths in just a couple of years. On the other hand, I wouldn't feel that I've gone anywhere if I spent 30 years on the same subject.
It's hard to say what the modern PhD program does, because 80% of it depends on your adviser. In my case, we got a general subject and a project. We were completely free to take this project in any direction we found interesting. Very independent minded researchers came out of this approach---all of us could likely have started running our own groups right away. Other supervisors basically use their grad students as trained technicians and use them to further their personal projects. The end result of that is a person with a PhD but no leadership ability: A glorified technician.
It's not even that some supervisors are competent and others aren't. The main reason is how they get funded.
Undergraduate studies are completely set up to punish Renaissance types. There's no time to pursue any of your interests if you also want good grades---and good grades are a large part of the PhD admission criteria. This is quite unfortunate, because the entire undergraduate curriculum is based on in-the-box thinking (all you need to know is in the front of the book/answers in the back of the book).

I would love to get a PhD in the humanities (french lit). I would hate teaching though, I have no patience for people.

"I would love to get a PhD in the humanities (french lit). I would hate teaching though, I have no patience for people."
I thought the primary reason to get a phd in the humanities is for teaching. If you don't want to teach, what purpose does the PhD serve? In engineering & science, it's pretty clear to me what the PhD trains the graduate students to do (advance the field), but what does it mean for literature?

Cynical answer - If you're going to be become an author, the three letters help sway your audience into being gullible for the purchase of your ideas.

"To study the subject further" would be my reason.

I was tempted to pursue a PhD in computer science because I am obsessive. I loved the chance to fiddle with the details of stochastic algorithms and the various methods of comparing them against each other and competing typical AI techniques. I also used to fall prey to pride. I had so many advisors that made me feel like fucking genius.
It's bullshit.

""To study the subject further" would be my reason."
@Alex -- this is what I don't understand. If you want to study a subject further, you can go and read all of the papers and relevant materials without getting a phd. In eng/science a phd is really about producing new findings/methods.
In literature though, my understanding is that the people who generally produce new works don't usually have PhDs, and since there's only a limited number of historical works, how many papers can be written intrepreting them?

@AlexOliver -
If you find the subject 100% inherently motivating, it's better not to study it within the confines of a university.
Universities are not places of study---they are a business (incidentally in the middle of a bubble much like housing was and health care currently is.).
Fun fact: The total amount of student loan debt now exceeds the total amount of credit card debt. You can't declare bankruptcy on the student loans. It's the worst kind of debt.
What you might try is to hook up with a professor and study what you're interested ABD (all but dissertation). You'll essentially have to follow the analects of Confucius and pick up the three other corners. It takes about 2-3 years of 80 hour weeks before you can contribute something useful, that is, you're a net-positive to the prof. After that I think any professor would be delighted to have someone interested in EXACTLY the same subject they're interested in to work with.
(Note, that you very rarely get to pick yourself.)
After a while however, you can branch out and form your own project. It may be hard to get published without the union card (phd stamp) though.

Completely agree that higher education is in a bubble. Even 60 Minutes noted it in a piece they did last Sunday.

@jacob, Wow, student debt is higher than credit card debt?! Does that make the averages around $32k+ and $8k, respectively?
That would make the average college graduate $40k (plus mortgage of course!) in debt. Yikes!

I don't know much about how ph.d programs work in the humanities (but I'm guessing you scientists don't either? but what I like about my undergrad lit classes are class discussions and seminars. I don't just want to read a bunch of books then marvel at my knowledge, I want to discuss and learn from other people.
There's no chance of me going to grad school (or university, for that matter) so this is all hypothetical.

@rePete - http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/08/ ... dit-cards/

But I thought S/L debt was good debt. {Waves arms and mumbles something}

@Kevin - I'm a university student now, and I've slowly been shifting my stance on universities and student debt. Rather, student debt - and the university experience - is only good if you pursue something initially that can prove to be usable for a person. I'm fine with someone pursuing a liberal arts degree such as philosophy, but in the long run, unless he or she is willing to teach at a university, very little can be done with it to support a person. In effect, if it's not used, then all of the student debt and the worthless paper does nothing but to further hinder a person from achieving both happiness and ERE. Degrees such as that should only be pursued after a person has a steady stream of income, or after a more substantial degree has been earned, or is concurrently pursued. Unless a certain undergraduate degree is used as a stepping stone, an otherwise unusable degree would be much better replaced by either a usable degree or even a trade.
No offense meant toward philosophy degree holders; I like the material, but I know I'd not be able to use that degree as something to then be able to find a job. :/

I do, actually, want to get a PhD in the humanities.
But *after* ERE!
PS: I think the ultimate undergrad double major is something technical combined with philosophy.

I call this poem "GARAGE SALE"...
This ad's on Craig's list for all to see:

For Sale, one slightly used college degree

It's a '76 model with honors and such

I've had it for years but it hasn't done much.
The major is English and it works just fine

For driving you to and from the unemployment line.
It runs you to jobs for which you've applied

Then it runs you back home; you're "overqualified."

As for experience, you're practically in tears

As businessmen tell you you've wasted four years.
It didn't cost much, back in the day,

but I'll sell it for less, liberal arts are passe

You can buy it for less, almost nothing, in fact

As a long term investment if literacy comes back.
Now my ad's on Ebay, it's been there a year;

Nobody wants my degree, I fear.

So I'll sell at a discount, the price will be fair

Or trade it for a hot dog stand or that lunch truck over there.
Make me an offer, I'll sell it to you

The college won't take it back, I don't know what to do

They won't take it back, now I'm desperate--and how!

So, if you don't want the infomercial, please buy it now!