If you were a professor, how would you choose your PhD students?

jack63 · October 10, 2014, 6:30pm

juillet… I enjoy reading your many long posts. I agree with everything you say on the benefits of PhD students versus Masters students. I too am a post-doc…I agree life is noticeably better as a post-doc. Don’t get me wrong, but I find your posts deeply idealistic. They are at times frustrating to read…at other times helpful. Maybe it is difference between your biology research (HIV research in different populations…I think) versus engineering research.

The thing is realistically, engineering profs plan their entire hiring strategies around avoiding students walking away after their masters degree. Some of the profs just will not hire Americans without a Masters degree…qualified or not. I would hate to have to do this. There has got to be away to understand if a student is more dedicated to get a PhD than the next. I would not hire a student if I get the impression that they think they should hold all or most of the cards. I think a student should be able to challenge their advisor…that’s great. Also, a student’s work should be meaningful and contribute to their degree. However, if I thought a student wanted me to bend over backwards for them, I would never hire them, or I would fire them. For me to listen to a fully funded student’s struggle to stay in the PhD program would seem like bending over backwards. It would be a different story if I listened to this from a Masters student I wanted to convince to pursue a PhD who I wasn’t paying tuition for.

Any thoughts? Maybe I’m being to harsh.

rhandco · October 10, 2014, 6:37pm

I am a professor, and although I don’t take on PhD students directly, I have done independent studies and research projects with undergraduates and graduate students.

Several things you list are bare minima - good enough undergrad GPA, good enough GRE score, good enough recommendations. But the key for me, even when I will only be working with a student for one semester, that is 3.5 months, is whether I can get along with the student, whether they are interested in the work, and whether they might be a major bother. You can see that is even more important if you are planning to spend 4 or more years directly supervising the student.

My school and several others give teaching assistantships in exchange for tuition remission and a small stipend. Master’s students do not have access to either. I know of cases where a PhD student did not pass their qualifiers, and the university tried to recoup the money paid out, but it was difficult.

The doctoral candidate interview is more important than any of those factors, you have to be able to work with the person for many years.

As for earning tenure, it is beyond tricky at our school. The department has to get permission to hire someone tenure-track, and even then, when it comes time to determine if tenure will be offered, the university can say a flat-out “NO!” as in “we haven’t heard of this guy or gal, and therefore, they aren’t doing their job and should not get tenure” (= fired). Regardless of whether they met the criteria our department sets, and regardless of the fact that the university signed off on hiring a tenure-track employee.

Getting tenure is very difficult, but it does depend on where you are and what your connections are. Connections to the university’s administration are more important than connections within your department save the chair and the tippy top. Waste no time schmoozing colleagues unless you know they have pull.

jack63 · October 10, 2014, 6:43pm

Wow?!

SimpleLife · October 10, 2014, 10:56pm

All very interesting. Thanks to the OP and others for weighing in on my question on the OP’s thread. I understand now why the PhD’s get all the funding. It boils down to a matter of time – time to produce for the prof.

All of the writers here seem to be unanimous – Master’s students don’t get funding. Period.

My son has been working closely with a certain professor, in his lab, for the past year and a half, plus for the current school year through to next spring. The prof has been very encouraging and highly recommended that my son apply to his graduate program. He has been accepted into the program for an MS. Now he’s waiting for funding decisions which will take place once all of the other applicants are reviewed. My son isn’t opposed to getting a PhD, he is just a little intimidated about “signing up” for one before he knows more about what that entails.

To hear everybody talk, there’s just no chance for funding for this son’s master’s. He could qualify for the PhD program. He could likely qualify for a handful of top graduate programs across the country. But he chose this program so that he could stay with his current mentor (the prof) and continue to do the work that he loves so much with a prof that he respects so much. We’re just hoping against hope that funding is in the cards! :)

juillet · October 11, 2014, 2:24am

I don’t think that was the consensus. Master’s funding actually does exist in some STEM fields. We just said it was a lot harder to get than PhD funding, and offered various opinions on reasons why. If the prof likes your son and has a GRA position, he could hire him as a GRA and pay him that way. Or maybe there’s a teaching assistantship in the department that comes with a tuition waiver.

If your son is a social scientist, though, I wouldn’t hold my breath. Funding for MA programs is much rarer in the social sciences.

@jack63 I always wonder whether I am too long-winded, lol. But deeply idealistic? What do you mean? I often think I sound too cynical, lol. And yes, you are right about my research.

I think it might just be very field-dependent. A non-terminal master’s in my field would not be very useful or lucrative, so there’s little reason to try to get into a PhD program and get a free MA. Therefore, the majority of people there really do want the PhD, and when they leave, it’s typically because they have decided that the PhD is no longer for them In engineering, an MA might be so lucrative that it’s more common for students to go to a PhD program in the attempt to get a free/funded MA.

As for the second part…

I wouldn’t expect a PhD to bend over backwards - and I, too, would not want to bend over backwards for a student, which is why I emphasized that independence is really important in graduate students. But I also think human empathy is generally a good quality for advisors to have. I don’t think that advisors should have to listen to a student’s struggle to stay in a program; when I struggled, I went to a therapist at counseling services and worked it out. Students who are struggling emotionally should see a counselor, or lean on friends.

But I did quite matter-of-factly share my concerns with my advisor, and he was sympathetic, very helpful and instrumental in getting me to stay in the program. As a result of the relatively minor level of effort he put in for this (we had one conversation about it), he was able to graduate a PhD student. I also had another professor who served as a mentor for me who I was able to go to and get support from in a professional way. So I think it depends on how much listening and conversation is happening.

Professors should never be their students’ counselors or therapists, and should recommend that they seek that kind of support elsewhere. But trying to understand your student’s motivations and being a generally encouraging mentor could potentially mean the difference between your advisee quitting and them not. First of all, they’re not just your employee - they are your student, and you’re supposed to be developing them professionally. But second of all, even good managers do that to valued employees: they find out why they want to leave and then, if possible, they do things to try to get them to stay.

Even from a purely selfish standpoint…let’s say that you have a superstar who’s helping you get out publications, worked on a grant with you, cleans and manages your data and helps recruit and manage the undergrad RAs your lab needs to run. They’re great and helping your productivity so much. Then they announce, in November, that they’ve been thinking about quitting the program and they’re fed up. Even from a self-serving standpoint, if they leave in December then it’s going to be at least 9 months before you can bring on a new doctoral student - perhaps even later, since the application deadline has passed and maybe you said you weren’t bringing on new students! Who is going to manage your RAs and clean your data and do all that stuff your Superstar PhD was doing? But if you show a bit of empathy and have a professional conversation with them to help them, maybe you save yourself that minor panic.

jack63 · October 11, 2014, 4:43pm

@SimpleLife - These is no such thing as a “Period” in academia. There is always an exception to the rule. Occasionally, Masters students get full funding. I knew a friend of mine who did got full funding for some of the semesters of his masters degree off a prof’s grant. It was a special situation. The guy stayed three years and his work got the prof. two journal papers. This student took longer to graduate because he was the CEO (and only employee) of the prof’s SBIR start-up. They had first round funding which is ~$150,000. The Graduate RA with tuition was used as an incentive by the professor for the student stick around longer and run his start-up company. I think the student did pay tuition some of the semesters, but the student was also being paid a full time engineer’s salary from the SBIR money at the same time he was paying tuition…so it all evened out. They ended up getting second round SBIR funding…worth up to $1,000,000…the prof was thrilled.

Your son should keep working with this prof and he should continue to very nicely discuss opportunities with his professor. It is usually a process with these profs that can be slow. Your son shouldn’t ever “demand” something.

@juillet - I will have to think about your helpful post. It seems like it was a trusting relationship between you and your advisor. That’s great. Sometimes relationships with advisors can be flat out adversarial.

When I say “Idealistic”, I’m coming from a perspective where my entire entire graduate school career has been about succeeding while “making do”. I never get the environment I want. Because of this it always feels like there is a greater “risk” of failure. I pretty much agree with your qualities for the ideal grad student. However, even at a top ten engineering school in the nation, an assistant prof is not going to find students with those properties…on top of this, I’m not going to get a job as an assistant prof at a top 10 engineering university. The question is how do you pick and make do with students who are not the ideal?

SimpleLife · October 11, 2014, 10:57pm

Okay, juillet and jack63. Of course, we’ll keep hoping for the best. The prognosis seemed unanimously bleak to me (that master’s students don’t get funding) because CCer’s have either said it simply doesn’t happen, or they’ve said that good, viable PhD students will be chosen for funding over good, viable master’s students. The reasoning makes sense.

The school in question is a large, public, research university with a very good reputation for my son’s field. I can’t imagine that there won’t be plenty of great PhD candidates applying for the same year of entry. So, that’s why it seemed to me that people unanimously agreed – the prospect for funding a master’s is slim to none.

Maybe, just maybe his prof or department will take a chance on him. I’ll try to remember to update here when funding decisions are final.

Economo · October 11, 2014, 11:15pm

Time and depth.

The coin of the realm in research is publications. For fields where graduate students commonly work with and collaboratively research with Professors, the Professors will always opt for funding PhD students. There is a steep learning curve for really contributing inputs to peer-reviewed publication quality research outputs. There is a short window once a masters students gets up and trained to generate collaborative research publication. Phd students extend that window 2 or 3 years, get deeper human capital investment (learning as they go), and can make more sustained research contributions. The PhD student is also more directly that signalling that they want to pursue publication quality research.

SimpleLife · October 12, 2014, 12:28am

^ Yup. Got it. That’s the same message I gleaned from the others. PhD students get funded. Master’s students do not.

warblersrule · October 12, 2014, 5:41am

As others have said, there’s no consensus about pretty much anything in academia. I don’t think it’s nearly as uncommon for MA/MS students to get funded as is commonly stated here, though certainly not as common as it is for the PhD. My master’s was fully funded, and most of my fellow master’s students were fully funded as well. (In fact, accounting for the cost of living, my PhD funding is actually worse!) As with so many things, a lot depends on the university and program in question.

Don’t limit the options to departmental funding. He should be applying to outside fellowships like the NSF and investigating other funding options at the university. Here at UCLA, for example, you can get tuition remission and a stipend through working for things like the undergraduate mentoring program.

SimpleLife · October 12, 2014, 9:46am

^ Okay. Thanks for weighing in, warblersrule. That’s good to hear. Congrats to you! :)

He is applying for an outside fellowship, btw. It’s probably too early to investigate other funding options at the university, but if it comes to that, I’m sure he’ll look into it.

jack63 · October 12, 2014, 11:24pm

SL…Your son may get funding, but what I can say for certain (what I can place “Period” after) is that the funding is never “free”…I’m not by the way saying this is what you specifically want…I’m just sharing my general opinion.

-Teaching Assistant’s are a pain in the A$$. They are a real job for 15-20 hours a week. They are not flexible. You must hold office hours, grade papers, prepare recitation sections, and sub for the prof’s class when they need you. You get few rewards other than the stipend and tuition. When I TA’d for my terminal masters, I felt I earned every penny of my stipend and tuition. The TA I had likely extended my Masters degree by a semester. For reference…
<a href=“53. Teaching assistantships. - 100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School”>http://100rsns.blogspot.com/2011/04/53-teaching-assistantships.html</a>

-If you you are an RA, the prof expects years of loyalty…whether it is a 3 year masters or a 5 year PhD. Students who walk away, will never have that professor’s recommendation. Worse yet, Profs will actually blacklist…they will literally call there friends at different universities and say “don’t take this student”.

-Companies or national labs that pay for the degree, expect years of service back.

It is weird to me. Students (and parents) will pay ~$100,000 -$200,000 for and undergrad degree, but think they think they shouldn’t have to pay for grad school. When you pay for grad school on your own dime, you are buying a helluva lot of freedom. You can walk away and find a great job. After a semester or year, you can shop around for a professor to work with for a PhD. Many profs will jump at a student who made the grades for a year and who is already on campus…Maybe this point of view is just for engineers…It is something to think about…I think many here on CC would disagree, but it is good to hear all sides.

SimpleLife · October 13, 2014, 9:58pm

Thank you so much, jack63, for your advice about TA’s. That sounds like it’s really something to consider.

You make a very good point about what students and parents are willing to pay for undergrad – yet are unwilling to pay for grad school, and about the freedom that comes with paying one’s own way. It’s definitely something to think about.

I’m really glad you chimed in. When funding decisions come around, if they involve a rigorous TA position, he and I will be prepared to consider paying his way instead of selling his soul to the devil! Ha! :)

juillet · October 13, 2014, 11:54pm

I was a TA myself and while I enjoyed the experience, I agree with @jack63 - I feel like it extended my time to degree. And I actually really like teaching and liked my students, but it takes up so much time! How much work you do depends on the professor themselves. Some professors are very structured and will only need you to grade exams and meet with students, and they do all the lecturing and creating assignments. At some schools, students infrequently attend office hours, so those positions are more about showing up to sit in lecture and office hours and the grading. Other classes you are leading your own lab or recitation session, and you might have to create exams and assignments and grade them. You also have to meet with students. I think quantitative disciplines overall might be more demanding on TAs’ time, because the students seek out more help. Teaching statistics (which I love) is always more time-consuming than teaching other classes for me.

At the same time, I wouldn’t say to completely avoid teaching assistantships, but mostly because of debt. Debt isn’t freedom. If we’re talking about a parent paying the entire bill out of pocket vs. the student TAing, then I guess that could be a big more freeing. But if we’re talking about borrowing all that money vs. taking a TAship, my perspective is that you are trading long-term flexiblity for short-term freedom. If you pay your own way with loans during the program, sure, you can decide better what to do with your time DURING the program. But afterwards, your job options may be more limited because you have financial considerations. This may be less of a concern for engineers who make pretty high salaries to begin with, so of course consider this in terms of your son’s own program and abilities/desires. But someone with $100K in loans from their master’s program can’t decide to take an awesome $40K/year job (that maybe is a stepping stone to a really awesome $70K/year job down the road), not to mention that kind of debt is a specter that hangs over auto financing, home loans, and perhaps his children’s own college educations years down the road.

In my field, at least, blacklisting is very uncommon. You might be unable to get a good recommendation from a professor, but ethics prevents the majority of professors from calling around and telling their colleagues not to take a student - although if the professor is called by a colleague, he may certainly relay negative information about that student. However, I think simply deciding to leave a lab isn’t enough to spur most sane professors to blacklist you. (It has happened, though, so it’s not impossible. I’ve heard stories. I just think that the chances are slim.)

The other thing is that if you want a PhD, future PIs will expect that you have done research in your MS program, if you have an MS. You’ll have to work in someone’s lab, regardless of whether you decide to stay there or not.

SimpleLife · October 14, 2014, 10:24am

@juillet I understand what you’re saying about a lack of debt being a different type of freedom. Good point.

I’m a little confused by your point at the end of your post. Are you saying that if you refuse a TA position for funding, then you’re also declining the opportunity to work for the prof in his lab? Can’t the student simply choose to pay his own way and still work for the same prof in the same lab, without the TA? Or is this just not done?

jack63 · October 16, 2014, 2:18am

I think a prof needs to financially compensate any student in some way that works in their lab. One way is to work with the school and get a TA for the student. Another way is to fund them of off a grant. For masters students working in a prof’s lab, ~75% of the time they are paid hourly without tuition…occasionally they get full funding with a TA or full RA (tuition reimbursed). In my experience it is about 15% TA and 10% full RA for masters students working in labs. I would not work in a prof’s lab without some financial compensation. It is easy enough for a prof to pay hourly that you should not accept work in a lab otherwise. If you were to work without compensation, I think it would set the wrong tone for the relationship with you and that professor.

In Sciences like Bio or Physics you will need to do a research based masters if you ever want to do a PhD, else nobody will accept you into a PhD program. In engineering, it does not matter as much in the sense that the work experience you get in certain industry positions can be very valuable. My masters degree was just classes, but I had solid industry experience before my PhD. I kinda wish I would have done a research Masters in retrospect though. I think it would have helped at the beginning of my research in my PhD program.

jack63 · October 16, 2014, 2:37am

One more thing about the debt. If I had the choice between an engineering Masters degree with a TA vs. an engineering masters where I worked hourly in some prof’s lab and the only debt I took was the government based subsidized and unsubsidized loans that you get from the FAFSA, I would actually avoid the TA.

The government loans are a very good government program. They are totally reasonable. They adjust to your income so they are only like ~10% of your salary, forgive after 25 years, defer for 6 months after graduation, have reasonable interest rates, some of the interest is subsidized when you’re in grad school, and there are other forgiveness programs for those loans. They are the lesser evil in my mind. I’m sure some would disagree.

An engineer without a TA with can get through a Masters program in 1 1/2 years and get at $70,000 job, or they can work with a prof for a year or semester and make sure they are comfortable with that prof before committing to a PhD.

juillet · October 16, 2014, 2:52pm

@SimpleLife‌ - No, I was making a point that was completely separate from the TAship. It was in response to ‘professors expect loyalty’ from you. It’s true that they will expect a certain level of commitment, but if a given student wanted to get into a PhD program he’d need to be prepared to give that commitment so that he could get the research experience.

@jack63 - that someone would be me. First of all, the government no longer subsidizes loans for graduate students, so there’s that. So graduate students do not get the interest paid.

Second of all, you have to be eligible for Pay as You Earn, and there are certain caveats to it. Let’s say that you borrow $100,000 to get an MS at a top program ($41,000 Direct loans with 6.8% interest and $59,000 PLUS loans at 7.5% interest), and let’s assume that you have average levels of undergraduate debt ($27,000 at 5.6% interest). Let’s also say that after your MS you get offered a job with a $80,000 income. Under standard repayment, your monthly payments would be $1466/month, which is a ton of money. Over the course of the loan, you have paid a total of $175,931, including nearly $50K in interest.

Now, let’s say that you go do the Pay as You Earn plan, where you pay your loans for 20 years at 10% of your income. At $80,000, you’re only paying $521/month to start out, but of course as your income rises so does the monthly payment. But because PAYE is not a subsidized program, you’re not even paying off all of your interest each month, and you’re accruing more interest over time. Although you pay less every month, even with a projected 5% annual income increase the total amount you pay under this plan - $216,029 - is much more than you would under standard repayment. Furthermore, at the end of your 20 years, you’ll still have to have $75,154 of your loan forgiven…and you have to pay taxes on that amount. So let’s say that you are 26 when you get your MS - at age 46, the year you pay off your loans, you’ll be hit with a huge tax liability because that $75,154 is counted as income. You’ll have to find a way to repay $25,000, basically. And if you don’t have a lump sum of $25,000 sitting in the bank waiting for this, you’ll have to make a payment plan with the IRS…which means you’ll be back to monthly payments.

Plus, if you miss even one payment - fall on hard times, or simply forget - you’re ineligible for the plan and you automatically go back to standard repayment, so your payment shoots up to the $1466/month.

The income-based repayment plans were never intended so that people could borrow more than they could afford to repay; they were intended for students who were burdened with student debt to be able to cut their monthly payments to affordable levels so that they could feed their families.

Where maybe it makes more sense is if you borrow less money. Let’s say that instead of borrowing $100,000, you only borrowed $60,000 - either because you went to a less expensive public university or you are paying your own living expenses because you have some kind of RAship or TAship (or other job). Keeping everything else constant, I just reduced the amount of the PLUS loan to $19,000. Now under PAYE, you still pay more overall than you would’ve paid under standard repayment ($150,846 vs. $118,972), but you don’t even have to pay for the full 20 years. Your loans will be paid off in a little over 16 years, and you will have nothing forgiven which means you don’t have to pay taxes on an unexpected windfall. You’ve still shelled out over $30K more than you would’ve under standard repayment though.

And if you could completely avoid debt through a TAship because it comes with a tuition waiver and enough money to live on - I would take that in a heartbeat over the loans. Even $521 is a lot of money every month. Sure, you can technically afford it because you make $80,000. But that $521 could be going into a retirement account. At $80,000 a year, if you put that 10% of your income towards a retirement account instead of loans, you’ll have over $2 million by the time you’re 67 (assuming you are 26 when you finish). By age 75, it’ll be nearly $5 million. You could also invest it, save up for the down payment on a house, or just travel and enjoy it. If you want to have kids, you could use it for their college savings, private school, lessons, summer camps, and all of the other kids’ things that cost a lot of money. If I could choose to have an extra $521-996/month in my pocket (that’s my car payment and then some!) for the next 20 years in exchange for a little extra stress and elbow grease for 1.5-2 years, I definitely, definitely would. And have.

To me, working 20 hours a week for a professor is definitely the lesser evil. You get to earn money instead of spending it; on top of that, you are getting experience that both PhD programs and employers value, particularly if you have an RAship.

If you were a professor, how would you choose your PhD students?

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