Comment by klhugo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by klhugo | Hacker News Reader

I'm in the middle of a PhD myself, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

I actually agree with the author, certain fields are just very complex to develop a solid understand without proper mentoring and support you would get as a grad student.

That said, maybe the real issue is not the fact we need two PhDs each, but the question I want to raise, do PhDs need to take 4/5/6 years? (I'm not even considering the cases where people, like myself, do a 2 year master program before the PhD...). Honestly, in my humble opinion, it is not necessary.

Maybe universities could develop "industry focused dual PhD programs" to target specifically crazy folks like us :)

This might be something worth to fight for.

5+ Years PhD programs are completely unnecessary. After quals, you should do some research and write that up. The research may take a year, it may take two, it depends. Write it up and publish it. Do that again, maybe, it depends.

One of many hiccups is in the submitting and review process. It takes ages. Sure, some areas are less, some are more, but three year long submit/review periods are not unheard of. Reviewers want another experiment, another control, they don't get back to you until February even though you submitted in mid-November, you can forget August as a working month, etc. Unless your PI is well connected, getting published takes forever.

I have a paper that has been in reviewer hell for the last seven years, for example. It's nutters.

> It's nutters.

Indeed. And the dirty secret of this process is that it has little to do with ensuring research quality (although it does usually succeed in filtering out very bad research as a side effect). Its main purpose is to simply make it difficult to publish, so as to preserve the CV value of a publication in a given journal.

The UK has 3-year PhDs. I was 24 when I submitted my thesis!

At least 3 years. I knew a guy in Manchester who was on his seventh year, the funding ran out so he'd spent the previous three years living in a cupboard in the department.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com