Engineering => Business/Med Grad school ??

ariesathena · January 10, 2006, 4:13pm

That is, hands down, the dumbest thing I’ve read on this site.

First of all, most Ph.Ds in engineering are… FREE. You get a stipend which covers your tuition and might cover some of your living expenses. You don’t actually pay anything in terms of tuition. So you lose your 4 years of salary, but you are MORE employable when you graduate.

I’m not sure where you are getting your numbers. You added cost of living twice, added tuition that doesn’t exist, and did something else. You added lost wages to debt. No wonder why you hate engineering - you can’t do basic math.

Law school is three years long. Yes, three years, not the two years you think it is. If you go for two years, you don’t get to sit for the bar. Then you’ve really sunk yourself into a hole.

Three years of $35,000/year (not including living expenses, because you would have to live if you worked), plus lost wages, plus interest on loan = $300,000, roughly.

Ph.D.: No use adding in living expenses (see above - if you worked, you still have to rent a place and eat, so it’s a wash). Tuition = $0. Living expenses (per above) = $0. So it’s only lost wages, but you are more employable when you graduate AND you make more money. Hum. But in your world, lost wages for four years (assuming you are smart and have your company pay your master’s) is $750,000 of DEBT. Lost opportunity is not debt.

I almost want to ask if you are on a controlled substance. Your post is that irrational and out of touch with reality.

sakky · January 10, 2006, 6:14pm

I have to concur with AA on this one. I have never heard of an engineering doctoral student in the United States ever actually paying for their doctorate, . I’m sure there’s gotta be a few who did, but they are strictly in the tiny minority. Practically every engineering doctoral student is supported by the school, either on fellowship, or on TA/RA-ship. such that they don’t pay any tuition, and have all their living costs taken care of. Of the few rare ones that aren’t supported by the school itself, many are supported by a company or by the government to get their doctorates. The point is, it’s pretty rare to actually find somebody who is paying out of pocket for an engineering doctorate.

Now, I HAVE heard of people paying to get their doctorates in the humanities or the social sciences. It’s still rare, because most doctoral programs in those fields will also support their students in some fashion, but some won’t. But in engineering, the natural sciences, business administration, and economics, it’s basically understood that practically no doctoral student will ever have to pay a dime.

But in any case, it gets back to the question I asked before. Does aehmo believe that anybody who gets a PhD in anything being foolish? No I don’t want to here about a comparison betweeen somebody getting a PhD in Engineering vs. somebody getting a PhD in English. I want to hear about somebody getting a PhD in anything vs. the average engineer. The average engineer does not have a PhD. Most have just bachelor’s.

So we have aehmo talking about people who get bachelor’s degrees in engineering being foolish. Yet he chooses to deliberately not talk about people who get PhD’s in other fields. If he believes that all engineers are foolish because they are throwing away their chance of going to med-school, then logic would dictate that aehmo should also believe that all the people who get PhD’s in any discipline are also being foolish because they are also throwing away their chances of going to medical school. And since aehmo probably goes to a university where the faculty consists mostly of profs with PhD’s, that must mean that he thinks his own profs are fools.

aehmo · January 10, 2006, 11:59pm

"First of all, most Ph.Ds in engineering are… FREE. You get a stipend which covers your tuition and might cover some of your living expenses. You don’t actually pay anything in terms of tuition. So you lose your 4 years of salary, but you are MORE employable when you graduate. "

MANY grad students get stipends, but certainly not all!! I know of at least a handful of students that don’t get a stipend or only a partial stipend!!!

Plus, many students in grad programs need 5-6 years to complete…the 4 year rule is just a rough figure. Also, the opportunity cost of 500k is still there…if you just work for that period of time, you’ll be half a mil up already in terms of earnings!!!

OPPOURTUNITY cost in grad programs is huuuuggee!..because time=money. Seems like you need to brush up on some basic math yourself before you cross-examine any argument.

Aurelius · January 11, 2006, 12:11am

Aehmo pointed out that Engineers have a hard time getting into med school. Not true.

At my school, the Univ of Penn, engineers have a very high acceptance rate into Med School, 79%, compared to 74% for the College of Arts and Sciences.

ariesathena · January 11, 2006, 1:03am

Anyone who gives up a $100,000 year job that they got - with only a bachelor’s degree! - to go through the rigours of a Ph.D., ought to be shot.

The opportunity costs for a 22-year-old engineer are NOT $100,000/year. They are about half that - so are you talking about someone taking 10 years to complete a Ph.D.? Are we positing someone who is completely stupid here? Or are we positing a 40-year-old senior engineer who leaves to get a Ph.D. for some unfathomable reason? Let’s at least posit someone realistic - someone who is not going to earn that salary over five years.

How many ENGINEERS do you know who pay their way through grad school? I know some, but they are the ones who are getting a master’s and who are not doing substantial amounts of research - had they chosen to work, a company would have paid for it. Ph.D.s in the sciences are never paid for by the students.

aehmo · January 11, 2006, 3:30am

" Are we positing someone who is completely stupid here? Or are we positing a 40-year-old senior engineer who leaves to get a Ph.D. for some unfathomable reason? Let’s at least posit someone realistic "

I’m using the same ridiculous figures you used in coming up with your $500/day cost of attending law school…that was ridiculous dollar figure, and I simply extended that by 3x, since grad school takes 3x as long as law school If you want to criticize my math, please revise your ridiculous estimates…whatever you come up with, multiply by 2.5x-3x to get the cost (actual and opportunity cost) of attending grad school.

sakky · January 11, 2006, 2:26pm

I have never heard of a doctoral student at a respected engineering school not get offered a stipend. Master’s degree students, yes, but not doctoral students. I have heard of this happening in the humanities, but not in engineering. I have also heard of some of them turning down the stipend (usually because they don’t want to work as TA’s/RA’s). But to not even get offered one? That’s extremely rare.

So why are we talking about extremely rare cases? There are engineers out there making millions of dollars a year. These are extremely rare too, so we never brought it up. But hey, if you want to bring up rare cases, then so can we.

So I ask you again - are you basically saying that anybody who goes out to get a PhD is being foolish? Does that include your own profs? Your profs are obviously smarter than the average engineer, so they could have probably been medical doctors. So what do you think about that? Maybe you should approach your biochem prof and tell him just how foolish he is for throwing away his chances at becoming a medical doctor.

In any case, we want to know. Do you think that everybody in the world who gets their PhD is being foolish? Just say ‘yes’ or ‘no’. You’ve never been shy before, aehmo, so why start now?

ariesathena · January 11, 2006, 7:20pm

Okay, MATH.

My tuition, books, etc = $110,000 over three years.
My lost salary = $150,000 (Average salary for chem-es right out of college = $54,000 annually. My company pays a bit less. Law school is three years.)
Interest on loan over about 10 years, assume 6% compounded annually = $50,000

Total cost = over $300,000. Are you with me?

THREE years for law school, moron.

3 years times about eight months per year = 24 months. 24 months * 30 days per month = 780 days.

$300,000/780 days = roughly $400/day.

Average starting salary of a lawyer = $60,000/year.

Now, 5 years for a Ph.D.:

*Tuition = nothing

Problem? Issues following the math? Trouble understanding the basic fact that law school is three years? <a href=“http://www.princetonreview.com/law/research/articles/find/accreditation.asp[/url]”>http://www.princetonreview.com/law/research/articles/find/accreditation.asp</a>
If you don’t believe me.

So why does it take NINE years to complete a Ph.D? I know a lot of Ph.D.s, and none of them took nearly that long.

Nine years = 3 times (your factor) three years (basic fact that you’re missing).

Can you drop this, or are you going to continue making a fool out of yourself?

aehmo · January 12, 2006, 1:07am

Wow, somebody needs to take their meds , as well as some math courses…if you want to count lost salary for law school, you better count 2x that for grad school.

Moving on to another comment…

"So I ask you again - are you basically saying that anybody who goes out to get a PhD is being foolish? Does that include your own profs? Your profs are obviously smarter than the average engineer, so they could have probably been medical doctors. So what do you think about that? Maybe you should approach your biochem prof and tell him just how foolish he is for throwing away his chances at becoming a medical doctor. "

Why would I tell my biochem prof to go to med school?? Professors have the best jobs of all!! They make 150k+, TENURE, RETIREMENT, 3 months VACATION, and all sorts of perks. I’d advocate everyone to become a prof if they could, except I know that most people aren’t smart enuf to become one, so Im not recommending that as a general approach…HOWEVER, I do think everyone can become a doctor, especially engineering majors. The best way to get into med school is to APPLY!!! If you get in, your life is made :)

ariesathena · January 12, 2006, 1:41am

I don’t need to take meds.

You need to stop acting like you know what you’re talking about.

I do not need to calcuate the debt load for grad school - there is none.

You said my law school figure was ridiculous, so I calculated it all out for you. I proved you wrong to stop your ridiculousness and you said that I need to take meds… hello? Did I miss something in your logic?

I’m very sorry - for you. Your responses to my post (re: opportunity and debt costs of law school) was completely smarmy. I responded because a lot of your postings are factually wrong. I’ve spent a while trying to explain that 3 times 3 is more than 5 (your contention) and your response is to believe that I’m psychotic. Helloooo…?

Are you really 22? This is something that I tend to see out of the high schoolers: the complete lack of maturity and knowledge about how professional school works. Generally, it’s the younger kids who think they know more than the adults about the professions that the adults are in. Why are you on the engineering boards anyway?

You have a lot of growing up to do- if you think it’s okay to be this stubborn, asinine, and degrading at age 22, God help your patients or anyone who tries to get close to you. Are you really going to live your life pretending that you are more knowledgeable about everything than the people you know? I’m really lost as to why you think you know more about law school and engineering than a nanotechnologist-turned-law student.

You’ve certainly tangled with other posters before - this isn’t limited to me. Issue is what? Why are you on these boards? It certainly isn’t to provide information to students.

sakky · January 12, 2006, 2:54am

How is that? “Everyone” can become a doctor? Oh really? Just do the math. About 70,000 Americans graduate with bachelor’s degrees in engineering every year. Yet according to AMCAS, med-schools provide only 17,000 admissions slots every year.

So do the math. Even if the med-schools give each and every one of their 17,000 slots to graduating engineers, that still leaves 53,000 engineers, or 75% of them, that won’t get in. And of course it is completely ridiculous to think that the med-schools would give their slots to only engineers, because that would mean that they would not be able to admit anybody else from any other major. Hence, no biology majors would be admitted, no chem majors, no humanities majors, no majors of any other kind.

So tell me again how you think that every engineer can become a doctor? Tell me again how you are going to fit 70,000 people into 17,000 slots. You claim to be good at math, so I’d really like to hear how you are going to do this.

I find it rare indeed to find a prof that makes 150k. Heck, even at MIT, most profs don’t make 150k.

But in any case, so you talk about not recommending being a prof as a general approach. So that just leaves the question of what you think about all those people who are getting their PhD’s. Most of them won’t become tenured profs. So what do you think about them? Come on, why don’t you say it? You think that most of them are dumb, don’t you?

Russell7 · January 12, 2006, 5:19pm

How does one become a professor? I thought that you just needed a PhD, and then apply for a job. You’d be bound to get one if you applied at many, many schools, wouldn’t you?

sakky · January 12, 2006, 8:25pm

Ha! Hardly so. A lot of PhD’s only wish it were that easy. Perhaps you’d like to go to sites like <a href=“http://www.chronicle.com%5B/url%5D”>www.chronicle.com</a> where the problem of PhD’s having to scrape together untenured lectureship positions is discussed over and over again.

Keep in mind that the key is not just to become a professor, but to become a TENURED professor. Just being an untenured professor is basically to be just a glorified schoolteacher. Heck, even a person with just a bachelor’s degree can probably become a “professor” at a low-level community college. The real key is whether you can get tenure. Tenure is the true brass ring.

Here are some interesting snippets:

"“There is a crisis of overproduction of PhDs and underconsumption of scholarship. To save money, schools rely increasingly on “gypsy scholars” drawn from the reserve army of unemployed PhDs. They are hired on short-term contracts to teach but are not on the tenure track and are denied health care and other benefits.
Twenty years ago, 25 percent of all faculty members were part time. Today 42 percent are. For example, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that in 1992 the California State University at Hayward had 407 tenured or tenure-track professors and 142 other lecturers, and by 1995 the numbers were 373 and 330 respectively.”

-George F. Will, Labor Turbulence Goes to College

"The number of tenure track assistant professor positions is shrinking. More and more departments are employing mathematicians on one year (or even shorter term) contracts to cover department teaching responsibilities. One of the "top’’ math departments has decided to cover a significant percentage of its undergraduate teaching by faculty who are not research mathematicians and who may not have a Ph.D. … The career of an academic mathematician becomes less and less attractive as "regular’’ university positions disappear. A sequence of postdoctoral positions and low paid temporary teaching positions might sustain a young enthusiastic mathematician for several years, but it is an unappealing prospect for a long term career. The "image’’ of mathematics departments in the eyes of university decision makers (which is rarely as positive as it should be) will deteriorate with the reduced prestige of the teaching faculty, producing an unwelcome negative feedback. "
-Susan Friedlander “The Vanishing Regular Position”

"When I received my PhD some 30 years ago, the situation was very different. We generally could choose among several tenure track positions upon graduation.
There was also little doubt about our job security. If our work was adequate, meaning that both the funding agencies and our students tolerated our presence, our futures fell readily into place. Moreover, the fields were not so crowded. You quickly knew everyone, the literature was manageable, and, at least in my own field, there was no shortage of important, as well as intellectually challenging research topics to choose from. None of this is true today.

We did experience periods of slow growth and no growth in the job market, notably in the late 1960’s after passage of the Mansfield Amendment. But very few of us ever had to play the games of postdoc roulette or get exposed to the disease known as “adjunctivitis” that is epidemic among today’s academic job seekers."

-Neal Lane, Separating Science Policy from Science Fiction, December 4, 1995"

<a href=“http://www.nber.org/~peat/QuotablesFolder/Quotables/AdjunctQuotes.html[/url]”>http://www.nber.org/~peat/QuotablesFolder/Quotables/AdjunctQuotes.html</a>

Now personally, I think that the problems are most acute with PhD’s in the humanities and certain social sciences. Those with PhD’s in engineering and the natural sciences can get relatively high-paying jobs in industry. However, those with PhD’s in English or History or Classics have far fewer options.

Russell7 · January 12, 2006, 8:48pm

Oh, that sucks. I was kind of considering becoming a professor. What would you say is the area that people would have the easiest time becoming a prof in? Out of pure curiosity.

sakky · January 12, 2006, 8:54pm

Easiest time becoming a prof in? Probably business administration/management, especially in overseas schools. That’s because business schools, unlike most university departments, are HUGE cash cows and so they have money to burn. Furthermore, business schools overseas, especially in Asia, but also in Europe, are expanding quickly, so they’re poaching B-school profs from the US. Furthermore, people with PhD’s in business can almost always get jobs with consulting firms or banks if they want those jobs. That stands in direct contrast to somebody who gets a PhD in History for which there really is nothing for him to do except be a prof.

Engineering => Business/Med Grad school ??

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