There's loads of kids going to graduate school to become servants for mediocre, yet politically-connected scientists. Then, once they have spent the X years and $Y in opportunity costs to get a PhD, they have to figure out a career for themselves. This is a bad, not a good, thing. It reduces early-stage career experimentation and encourages low-quality science.
Good point. The opportunity cost of getting a PhD can generally be pretty soul crushing if measured in terms of dollars, years, and rungs on the career ladder (although a lot of things can be soul crushing if measured by those metrics).
All that effort to do some research that, at the end of the day, probably won't matter to anyone. I don't take that as a huge personal failure, because most research doesn't really change the world. That's the nature of research. It's like the world of startups, where most of the time you fail to make an impact, and occasionally you succeed.
But unlike in the start-up world, success isn't measured in $XM IPOs or buyouts. It means getting your foot in the door as a non-tenured professor, so you can work fiendishly at a below-market salary for the next few years trying to secure tenure. Or taking a job at an industrial research lab, and possibly discovering you don't actually enjoy working at industrial research labs.
Ah, now I'm too old to work as a programmer at your social media company? Sweet.
Good point. The opportunity cost of getting a PhD can generally be pretty soul crushing if measured in terms of dollars, years, and rungs on the career ladder (although a lot of things can be soul crushing if measured by those metrics).
All that effort to do some research that, at the end of the day, probably won't matter to anyone. I don't take that as a huge personal failure, because most research doesn't really change the world. That's the nature of research. It's like the world of startups, where most of the time you fail to make an impact, and occasionally you succeed.
But unlike in the start-up world, success isn't measured in $XM IPOs or buyouts. It means getting your foot in the door as a non-tenured professor, so you can work fiendishly at a below-market salary for the next few years trying to secure tenure. Or taking a job at an industrial research lab, and possibly discovering you don't actually enjoy working at industrial research labs.
Ah, now I'm too old to work as a programmer at your social media company? Sweet.