What's a PhD to Do?

I believe you have answered your own question. And have identified yourself more than you know. There are those who can continue to get all the education in the world available and still not impact on the world within their field. They are even less likely to do so because of the current education process. That is as it always has been and probably always will be, especially now..

There are to many character issues and traits that are not even considered now with PC and AA and quotas. Little demonstrable ability lots of race, and race baiting quotas, with the victim rationalizations down pat at all levels. It must be Utopia it is not "Kansas Toto". Necessity is being "wiped out" along with invention. No one should be needy in Amerca today. Haven't you been listening to the BHO's?---You demonstrable idiot.

There are those with almost no formal education but have self educated to follow their ideas to realization. Those technology leaders represent about 1% of the scientific population, a much lower percentage of the general population including the "academics" and always drive the "lab rats" and academics to disagree, then study, then agree and "always have agreed" depending on the "wind" direction. They simply "confirm" and execute the original work done by original thinkers and "dreamers". The PhD become production workers and process control and monitoring--maybe of quality control. They can communicate and know the "words". However even that is becoming even less likely for "PhDs". They are being replaced by sophisticated software driven production equipment. Capital! sucked up by the inventors--- not lazy over educated academics let lose in the world looking for over paid employment for skills they do not have.

Remember Celera who did in months with private capital what was not being done in the Universities for years by tenured professors, and their "groupie interns" with billions of taxpayer dollars on the genome projects. How soon we forget or even understand what happened there.

Under PC and affirmative action the problem has gotten much worse. It will end in current America with the final results and loss of what "an education means" when there will be so many incompetents filling quotas that PC and AA will simply allow the ship of holes to sink, not even the 1% will be able to keep America afloat. Can you say PC, AA, Marxism, socialism and progressives and know what they really mean? If not don't worry about it.

All the above will eventually sink in by simple demonstration and results already are being seen and any one will then be able to see it ---even PhDs.. even you. Have a good day but don't feel bad, if it gets bad enough for the PhDs they can be declared a victim minority and then their employment could be mandated not on race but by category of victim. When that happens it will already be over. Some will not however believe it.

Great read Jack

It is as bad as you say, isn't it? You live in the US and I can tell you its the same here. In the end they all rely on the salt in the soup and we don't want to much of that now, do we?

The song remains the same, Ky.

Whenever a conversation turns to whining about PC or AA I basically tune it out. Perhaps if there had been more complaining about how things were a generation or two ago these programs would not be considered necessary today. In all that high level education you received did nobody teach you thats life is not fair, never was never will be. Get over it.

Hi Jack,

Well defined what is created by schools, diplomas! Knowledge is another thing and knowledgeable people are other people. Most of them don't need PhD or any title, they want to do things!

The disruptive, innovative, and well thinking individuals have no place in our universities and most of businesses because they go against school principles and business owners. They are different and they do things differently. They can teach and they can run well many niche businesses. Some of them succeed and many never appear in the telephone book.

A few centuries ago, we don't have too many. Today, we push youngs to get the diploma and get a high-salary job fast. They are pushed like does Wall Street with businesses. We have the results in both cases.

To all knowledgeable people: Do what you want because you are the best in that area, Gil.

I am a demonstrable idiot. How could I not be--- living within the existing political and business environment in America today. Common sense is a term not used any more, it is embarrassing.

There is no end for learning process. What one learnt throughput his life is little and yet to learn is more. Therefore PhD is not the end of education. Though academically it is an end (Post doctoral works opportunities are available in some leading universities) a person who is interested to improve his professional knowledge keep on learning depending upon his interest. It is not required that all PhD holders work as a scientist. There are many ways a PhD degree holder can reciprocate his skill /expertise with the community and origination he works. It is an individual perspective.

The "new study" link is a thought provoking article. I have long thought that the roles of most engineers working in US industry made much of their training a waste and the easy availability of H1B's has made many of them land on the discard list. Now I see the same thing happens to scientists. Only a minority get to be winners.

To me the bottom line is that our culture needs to look at education as more about training people for their best possible roles in life and less about selecting winners.

In my opinion we should be putting a lot more effort into guiding our young people in selecting and charting their educational and experience path so they don't get caught in traps that prevent them from having a satisfying working career. I don't quite know the answers to that especially given that most of us really don't have a good picture of what life is all about when we are making these early decisions about our career paths.

All I know is that if I had grown up with a person or people to provide the career guidance that I was able to give to my oldest son who chose to be an engineer like myself I'm certain I would have accomplished a lot more. On the other hand my younger son blew off formal education until his late 20's and found success in a sales career and a mentor in a long term older friend with a successful business career.

And maybe this suggests the answer. Asking a teacher or any other academic type to seriously guide a student into any other career than teaching is a mistake. But how does a student know what path to choose? Just because something interests the 18 year old or for that matter the 25 year old doesn't mean he or she can consider that to be the right choice.

Each one of this learns a lot from a lifetime of work. Not many of us can gather the skills and credentials to actually teach and make a living that way. But most if not all ought to be able to offer the benefit of our experience for a few hours a month to guide our youth in their careers. Perhaps all we need is to somehow get organized to make an effective resource......

Ed Weldon

Hi Ed,

You are right because governments don't have too many long-term goals. One or two terms is too short! They are short-term subjects with very short-term project without real goals for us but precise for themselves. When we know that we have to go to the Moon, many youngs learned about aeronautics and other engineerings related to rockets and other special fuel for spacecrafts. Parents push their children to obtain a diploma for higher salary, better life, and subsidized schools need to fill the classes with people to show that they are efficient and valuaeble for the next subsidy. The game is over when parents and school have what they wanted. When I was 8 years old I wanted to be what I do at 72. I don't pushed to have a PhD but I did, do and will do what is good or better what supposed to be done in the position. I am not a genious or innovator, I do things only differently than others in the same profession. It made my successes and failures. I passed through 22 different companies in 54 years as employee and partner. It was all the time my choice to accept or refuse the offer to work somewhere and also was my decision to stay or quit. When I was not able to do what I wanted, I stepped out.

Schools give you the basics and you learn what you need to know and do, Gil.

Hey Ed,

Totally agree! "Asking a teacher or any other academic type to seriously guide a student into any other career than teaching is a mistake."

You know the old saying, "Those who can do and those who can't teach." It's a truism. They don't call academia the ivory tower for nothing. Knowledge gained through books and in the classroom, while obviously valuable, pales in comparison to knowledge gained through experience.

Given the choice between hiring a candidate with 10 years of successful on-the-job engineering experience vs. a candidate with 10 years of graduate and post-graduate classroom experience who successfully completed his/her PhD, the choice is a no-brainer wouldn't you say?

Well, sometimes a phD is a good hire. That's when the person arrives with technical experience fundamental to the product that can guide the work over a protracted period of engineering development. I once worked with an experienced phD ceramics engineer and he was a big help in what I was doing and provided much useful information as well as specialized testing support. But he was in a staff position, not a management position.

The problem I think most phD's have and need to eventually shed if they are to succeed in industry is their atitude about human relationships that grows out of the process of obtaining the degree. They are too often treated like "dirt" by their superiors in the university and they think they can bring the same attitude to the commercial work environment. I think a phD who has fallen off the ladder, so to speak, would do well to understand this potential problem he/she might bring to a new job in industry.

In a company I worked for all of the senior technical management were phD's mostly in physics. These were truly brilliant people who reached their positions as a result of developing products that were major technical developments in the industry. All of these men (there were no women in that kind of position) had reputations for treating their immediate technical subordinates like servants and had a general disdain toward anything having to do with operations. They tended to favor hiring and promotion of phD's so that there was an effective glass ceiling for other educational levels in the engineering structure. I always thought that the reason this company finally decided to move manufacturing operations to another geographical area was in part to get it away from this influence.

Ed Weldon

We have a Phd working at our company. He has his doctorate in Optical Engineering. He's a waste of space. In a short time we've sunk $8million in his project and none of it was his development. It was a couple French Engineers that have done all the work and he's taking credit for it. He's taken some heat for it and tried to put blame on the service people but they would have none of it. There was some major drama over it since this guy was trying to take over all responsibilities in the Electronic Department. He was cut down to size and told that his only concern was R&D. This guy cost us our yearly bonus. No one in Electronics likes the guy, they think he's a slimy weasel.

I just want to add that he got his PHd in at a University in Mexico.

Hi Jan,

You got what you chosen! You hire a PhD without knowledge. You bought the project or patent and you bought the individual with it. If you made previously some research on the individual, you don't have all the trouble you got with him.

In real life, we have knowledge and we have knowledgeable individual. There is a big difference between both. It's extremely rare to find both together in the same individual satisfactorily to the specific job.

Eliminate to become productive and have a pleasant working conditions, Gil.

I'm not part of the hiring process but I have inventory mess to clean up because of him and we have some good electronic technicians leaving because of him.

In just a few words, I would like to suggest that a PHD is thought to be a shortcut to a better job by those who pursue them. I would also say that a good engineer in a company who stays with that company for a while has more knowledge about the job than someone with a PHD new with the company. In other words, nothing succeeds better than experience. Just a simple explanation from a simple guy.

BTW, I don't like Jack's "You demonstrable idiot." comment (end of 2nd paragraph). Totally uncalled for. We like to keep this forum friendly. There's no need for name calling.

Yeah, that sentence was a bit impulsive. PhD in anger management anyone? I tend to blow my fuses before any important meeting so things like that don't happen, because they would. She'll be right, Ky.

Just two comments, both from my father who was a self-taught process engineer with a major rubber company during the first half of the 20th Century. He left college as a conscript in WWI, and could not return, as he then had a family to support, so he started as a tire builder and worked his way to a division manager, responsible for small-cavity- molded rubber aircraft products during WWII. He was respected as an engineering problem solver with a can-do attitude. He often had to properly educate the college graduates, many with post-baccalaureate degrees, to understand the realities of the manufacturing world.

"PHD= Piled Higher & Deeper"

"There's a man who is educated beyond his intelligence."

The problem is MUCH bigger than PhD's.

Here's my take... this continent should have been kept purely as a vacation spot by the Europeans, with Native Americans as caretakers.

Of course, having seen the movie, "The Butterfly Effect", one wonders how things would have turned out in that case.