Kudos to you for writing such a long ordeal in a humorous manner or at least that’s what I felt while reading it.
On topic, it’s probably another example of why scaling a system is so hard. Especially when it comes to tasks that require deep thinking. I can’t help but notice the government policy of sponsoring mass PhDs in the hope of raising a knowledge based society is itself changing the definition of knowledge here.
molteanu · 2d ago
Yes, fifteen years after the fact, during which time my mind constantly bombards me with, "Why did I happen? Did I do something wrong? It was not fair! I did my best!" and such, I can't help it but write in in a humorous manner, otherwise it's hard to put it behind you and forget about it.
On the second point, yes the total number of PhD graduates for a similar time period was 12.000 (official Government numbers) so this was a doubling of PhD's just like that, out of the blue. No wonder it was chaotic. There was also enormous political pressure regarding "the Government is incompetent as it cannot absorb what is basically free EU money". So, ok, they've absorbed it, sort of.
I think you are right. Reading the online articles and official documentation from that period, which is really scarce (there is no such program available on the EU official website, for example, or I wasn't able to find it), it feels like this was a big experiment, the success of which is not mentioned in the news either.
What I could find is that it was part of the Lisbon Strategy [1], also mentioned in the official documents published by the Government. From the linked wikipedia article: "Its aim was to make the EU the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion, by 2010. It was set out by the European Council in Lisbon in March 2000. By 2010, most of its goals were not achieved. It was succeeded by the Europe 2020 strategy."
Oh, that page is darkly funny itself. ‘[The Lisbon Strategy’s] aim was to make the EU “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion,” by 2010.’ Yeah, that didn’t happen.
‘Spain's prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero pointed out that the non-binding character of the Lisbon Strategy contributed to the failure.’ Typical bureaucratic response: freedom is the problem.
There is definitely a role for government in fostering innovation and productivity, but it is very much a secondary role. Providing a predictable, stable, safe environment, and using government funds for things that the government actually needs to use seems to have worked for the U.S. for a long time, even before the two world wars.
lycopodiopsida · 1d ago
To this day, 9 years later, I don't like to be referred by "Dr. so-and-so", not because I am ashamed of my thesis, but because I did hate every second of it. Screw the academia grinding mill, compared to it big business is almost human.
fuzzfactor · 1d ago
When everything is dominated by a lack-of-knowledge based bureaucracy, and there's only a few short years to make a difference for 1.650.000 people, you are going to have to get started earlier rather than later ;)
That's a lot of people to actually try to get on board as to what a "knowledge-based society" should be, they would have to relate it to something they were already familiar with.
If the only resource you have to work with is a "not-as-much-knowledge-as-you-thought" based institution, then start calling it a beacon of a knowledge-based society. Somebody's going to have to spread the word anyway, and if more functional resources don't come within reach, at least you've done your part.
It's interesting that some people are bound to believe you have achieved a knowledge-based society if it's just repeated over and over.
soco · 2d ago
They just continued the same way of working they had already before. I went through a similar stunt around the end of the 90s (yes also Romania) but I called it quits after half a year. Sometimes I regret it, but sometimes I'm aware that either I or the group would have exploded had I stayed more. I respect your resilience.
molteanu · 2d ago
Had I decided to call it quits, I would have probably asked myself, even to this day, questions like: did I make the right choice, what if things would have improved, what would have happened if I've tried harder, maybe there was just a misunderstanding, maybe it was my fault, maybe working at the University would have been the smart choice, etc.
I actually still have the emails asking for the project coordinator, the one responsible for scholarships for all of us (I've searched them out, out of curiosity while writing this article and their CV is 12 pages long and, naturally, this project is listed there as a success) for ways to abandon the whole thing. I didn't even get a reply. I was already 2 years in so I've would have had to return the whole sum back, money I didn't have. I was penniless, as all PhD candidate seem to be. So I did what I had and could do, which is summarized in the post.
soco · 2d ago
Ah yes I wasn't paid for it, so there was no financial pressure to stay...
intended · 2d ago
For what its, worth, given your situation, and given the circumstances, you did what could be done.
As a fun question, what would you do now, to do what you did, but better?
godelski · 1d ago
> I can’t help but notice the government policy of sponsoring mass PhDs in the hope of raising a knowledge based society is itself changing the definition of knowledge here.
Honestly, I think more PhDs and "deep thinkers" does provide a net benefit to society. I actually wish we would scale it more. But I also think we often step on our own feet while doing this. In an effort to be "efficient" we create perverse incentives and it's clear that how we have things structured that people are more willing to pursue metric maximization than maximize a metric's intent[0].
If anything, I'm of the belief that you abandon the notion of efficiency as with governments, returns on investments can be long term (much longer than for a company). In general, people pursuing high levels of academia (or adjacent domains like research labs), are naturally interested in things that are pushing the bounds of our knowledge. We have a really bad track record at per-determining what is impactful and not. If anything, we're pretty good at rejecting things that have high impact (paradigm shifts). Frankly I'm aware of little to no fields that do not result in practical utility in the long run. There's plenty of math research that was long thought to be of no practical importance but did end up greatly influencing other domains
Research is expensive, but certainly we have the money for it. And frankly, a huge chunk in that cost is the administration. Which a large portion of that comes down to the measuring and determination. I wouldn't argue to distribute funds without question, but I'd wager that the amount we spend to ensure research funds are spent effectively is greater that the funds we would lost/spend ineffectively were we to perform significantly less administration.
Well what was described is pretty much the standard.
To put a little context, and this is a bit speculation on my part but seems to conform based on conversations I've had from people who have lived at that time.
This kind of policy at institutions started right after Sputnik. There was a sudden surge in demand for mathematics and engineers, and they couldn't find enough people so they threw money at the problem. The unfortunate side effect was that its a problem that money can't solve, and so when you can't find anyone that meets the rigorous standards, you must lower standards. This seems to have happened in math education around that time the effects of which did not become visible until much later, and it eventually snowballed to most of academia.
The effect has been that most math teachers, excluding a few professors that buck the norm which are the exception, started teaching by rote following what is known today as a lying to children paradigm.
This is a pedagogical approach that is the opposite of the paradigm that was taught prior which was a first-principled approach (based in the greeks and rome).
You are given flawed models upfront, which you must learn some things, and unlearn other things you previously learned to unconscious competence with little guidance. This includes all the elements and structure of real torture (from the 1950s), and the process is repeated over and over sieving only the most compliant or blind people forward, and inducing PTSD in the creative, brilliant, and genius. The process destroys minds, steals economic benefit of intelligence, and selects for average.
Torture is known to reduce, often permanently, the capability for rational thought.
It follows the now refuted ideology of gnosticism. Intuitive understanding is eschewed, and you only become useful the closer you progress to gnosis (mastery), and informally, only the masters decide who gets to progress (through clever gimmicks, deceit, and orchestrated structural failure, that takes advantage of the drive to do less work, government funded work trends towards the least common denominator of production which often becomes negative).
You now have more pHd's, but fewer people who actually met the 1960s definition of a pHd.
There are exceptions because this is a spectrum, but this has been the trend for the majority for decades, and the issues described are known issues with any centralized hierarchy. It hasn't been strictly knowledge-based since at least the late 60s. You see a sharp degradation of published material in education across all subjects starting in the 70s.
attila-lendvai · 2d ago
truth (knowledge) and force (government) are the antithesis of each other.
mix the two, and one gets annihilated.
firefoxd · 2d ago
Oh I thoroughly enjoyed this post.
We were the friends and family attending my cousin defending his thesis. He spent half his time title-ing, naming, and thanking Professors, chairs, heads, and what not. When it was all over, I asked him why did you name them all? He answered, "because they like the sound of their name."
ggm · 2d ago
A friend who completed their PhD went from
"he is the best professor, I am so glad he is my supervisor"
to
"he is the worst supervisor, I am wondering how I can get the university to transfer me"
to
"he is the best professor, he helped me get a job after I graduated"
Which I think is a fairly normal rollercoaster ride.
I never got my PhD, my first day as a lowly research assistant in a university in central london (which shall remain nameless) I was given a professorial suite to camp in, and I remained there for 3 months, imposing furniture and a giant oak table and all. Another staffer used to sleep on the floor and park his bicycle there. Eventually I was evicted and sent to the top floor, an ex-statistics research unit teaching room, like army Barracks, where I and a fellow research assistant opened a cupboard to find the 10 Brunsviga calculators left over from a mechanical actuarial risk calculation exercise the department did for money up until the advent of electronic computers. Their entire previous 5 years work was completed in under 1 days run of the machine code on the new University of London computer in the early 60s. Oh, the Joys.
bigomega · 2d ago
This was very painful to read. Thanks for sharing. It hits a nerve to hear someone say, "I start to develop a faint feeling that I sleep better at night when I play along and nod approvingly to things I don't actually agree with instead of being pigheaded."
Look what they've made us do.
20after4 · 2d ago
It seems to me that instilling conformity and obedience to authority are the true purpose higher education.
(Also, tolerance and acceptance when faced with many arbitrary roadblocks.)
walterbell · 2d ago
> conformity and obedience to authority are the true purpose higher education
In times of surplus/peace, perhaps.
In times of competition/conflict, results are needed.
20after4 · 6h ago
Seems to me that obedience is emphasized even more during war/conflict.
attila-lendvai · 2d ago
...of institutionalized schooling in general, from kindergarten to higher ed.
_gmax0 · 2d ago
While traveling by car during one of his many overseas travels, Professor Milton Friedman spotted scores of road builders moving earth with shovels instead of modern machinery. When he asked why powerful equipment wasn’t used instead of so many laborers, his host told him it was to keep employment high in the construction industry. If they used tractors or modern road building equipment, fewer people would have jobs was his host’s logic.
“Then instead of shovels, why don’t you give them spoons and create even more jobs?” Friedman inquired.
yMEyUyNE1 · 2d ago
Albert Einstein: 'Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.'
> "You know C++?" I ask enthusiastically, as I am looking to become a software engineer myself at this point. "I don't," she informs me, "but there's enough time until Monday to learn it."
Suddenly, everything about my professor's bizarre lack of development skills in my computer science course makes sense.
donatj · 2d ago
My dad got a job laying out circuit boards for Control Data in the 1980s on a Friday, knowing nothing about it. Spent the weekend in the library and started Monday morning.
firesteelrain · 2d ago
Fake it until you make it
emorning3 · 2d ago
People that belong in the job can do that.
Others, not so much.
pama · 2d ago
People that belong in the job, even the creator of C++ himself, take decades to mature to the point of daring to use the language properly and then teach it. C++ is not meant to be learned in a week.
sidewndr46 · 2d ago
Someone showed me this comic, over a decade ago now. Everytime someone suggests something like this I usually like to share it with them.
I know Basic, Fortran, C, C++, Java, Python, C#, Javascript, Typescript, SQL, and Lisp (wrote my own) and probably a bunch that I have forgot.
I have never spend more than a few days learning a language.
I have spent decades mastering several of these.
Any language that takes longer than a few days to learn the basics should be avoided, it will always be difficult to use.
APL being the most famous of such a language.
pklausler · 13h ago
Haskell is safe from you, with that attitude.
emorning3 · 3h ago
Yes, it's true, I'm not a fan.
You can put Scala on that list as well.
thot_experiment · 2d ago
idk, if you have a decent grasp of the fundamentals you can get up to speed these days in pretty much whatever language/sub discipline with a couple days of hard study with LLMs
i made the transition from embedded C to low level tensor wrangling in about a week, it takes some work but it's definitely doable, of course i'm not an expert but it's enough time to go pretty deep, i went from "yeah i've run ollama" to optimizing inference code to get research papers to run on consumer hardware
if the task is to get up to speed on C++ enough to teach undergrads and you're a reasonably competent academic programmer who gives at least half a shit about the task at hand a weekend is plenty
poincaredisk · 2d ago
C++ is famously hard. I know C++ for at least 15 years, made a reasonably successful side project in is, worked professionally for 2 years, and I still don't think I should teach it to others. I could probably do a decent job, but if they ask me about SFINAE or modern (after C++11 with bits of 14 maybe) features or "is this snippet UB" I would have to concede. Learning C++ in a week good enough to teach it is a cruel joke and laughing students straight in their face.
sdeframond · 2d ago
Well if you are not qualified enough to teach C++ then who is? Students have to learn somehow.
sofixa · 2d ago
If you have very good C knowledge, maybe a weekend is enough to have decent C++. Maybe not to teach it, but decent.
However, assuming no C knowledge, there's no way in hell you'll be a good teacher of C++ in a weekend, even with LLMs.
isaacremuant · 2d ago
Wtf is this take. You are the worst candidate for a teacher if you have no experience with the language and have rushed to teach it.
The article talks about a literal "learn c++ in 48hs".
Give me a break. You'd be absolutely mediocre and those of us who know our shit do notice. Source: I've been that student that worked and studied the topic he worked with and found some of the TAs absolutely wanting.
benrbray · 2d ago
I'm sorry, but your reply suggests an incredible disdain for both technical expertise and for educators. There is value in depth&breadth of knowledge, and it takes great skill to craft a good curriculum.
From a US perspective, students paying $50,000+ per year in tuition deserve better than an overworked PI who has crammed C++ over the weekend.
thot_experiment · 2d ago
Interesting, I feel the opposite, I agree that an excellent teacher who knows the material back to front is invaluable.
My general model for how "being good at programming works" is that it's just mostly a stacking buff based on how much you've touched, I'm choosing to give the person in the anecdote the benefit of the doubt and believe in both their technical expertise and skill as an educator. Most technical things are kind of like other technical things, and if you've been around for a while everything is kind of like something you've done before, it makes it very easy to pick up new tools/domains. I fully believe that someone can open up a VAST gulf of knowledge of C++ between themselves and intro to C++ folks in a weekend if they're already a seasoned practitioner.
prmph · 2d ago
Nope, some superficially similar technical things are founded on very different concepts from other technical things. For example, grokking a functional language requires a whole different mental model than for an imperative language.
Also, remember that you could pick up a new language and start to dabble in it after a few days, but teaching it, ah, that requires much more than using it . Usually teaching something requires a much deeper understanding than just using it.
barry-cotter · 2d ago
As an educator I disagree. In my field of expertise I am so far in advance of my students’ skills that I can be three standard deviations in skill better than the average student in my class in any cognate field in two days and further ahead than that in a week or a month. That’s what “technical expertise” is.
I won’t speak to crafting a good curriculum, God knows I’ve seen plenty of bad ones but it’s just not hard for me to be vastly better at any topic in English or History than any student I’m likely to see in a high school in two days because I’m that much better than them at what I do. I presume the same yawning gulf in capability exists between the average freshly minted PhD and undergraduates, or professors teaching graduate courses and PhD students.
Expertise exists, which is why I can be teaching a course that’s supposed to take 300 hours of instruction to cover in 15 hours, reasonably comfortably.
imtringued · 4h ago
Way to miss the point. You've missed it so thoroughly it's crazy.
nobodywillobsrv · 2d ago
The writing style is really good. Having gone through a non-terrible PhD that still shared elements of this, it captures the essence so well, even with some technical detail. Even the admin assistant shenanigans brings back memories to similar events in my days long ago in some other institution. So enjoyable.
canucker2016 · 2d ago
I was getting a Terry Pratchett-like-modern-day-Discworld vibe while reading the post (and Office Space film/Douglas Adams-Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference when reading about the office location).
o_nate · 1d ago
Really beautiful writing. Like a prose poem. Definitely going to bookmark this blog.
jongjong · 2d ago
What we have is an ignorance-based society. The more blind-spots you have, the higher you rise.
The higher your rise, the easier it is to maintain your blind-spots because nobody will dare question your worldview. Even those few who do, they're a nobody, so what could they possibly know about anything? Surely, it's only the people on top who have a bird's eye view of the big data, who know what's going on... Everyone else is like an ant following breadcrumbs laid out in front of them. What is there to learn about the real world that you cannot see from above?
praptak · 2d ago
My experience from the academia is that there just isn't enough research topics. It wasn't as bad as in this article but I can't imagine how bad it would be if somebody dumped hundreds of millions of EUR into it to mass produce PhDs.
bitwize · 2d ago
I was bracing for the bit where Professor pokes his head into the tiny office and says "Hey Mihai, what's happening. We're gonna have to move some more of these boxes in here, so if you could just push your desk back there, against that back wall to make some room, that would be terrific. Thanks."
huem0n · 1d ago
> The only constant human presence in the whole building during the warm summer days is the cleaning lady.
Hit a little too close to home with that one. Had to finish reading despite how painful a mirror can be. God does it make me wish something would change.
prmph · 2d ago
Which country is this? I read the whole thing but can't find any context as to which country and university is involved
Freak_NL · 2d ago
Romania, if the author's current location is also where this ordeal took place.
I just looked that up to be sure; the article itself has a very strong eastern Europe vibe to it. I was figuring it would be Bulgaria, Slovakia, or Romania initially.
huem0n · 1d ago
Every country. Swap out some insignificant details and its the story of my friend in the US, swap some more and its the story of a former boss from Germany.
tiniuclx · 2d ago
Likely Romania based on the author's name & location.
spiderfarmer · 2d ago
This was a depressing read. Now I desperately need some examples of Phd candidates who had a great time and managed to do well from a scientific point of view. To restore my faith in humanity.
frizlab · 2d ago
My brother defended a thesis that actually made sense and had the means to do it though he did not write his story. (Caveat: I did not understand his subject. Caveat 2: Professor was his (and thus my) uncle.)
JR1427 · 2d ago
I had a pretty good time! My supervisor was supportive, but fairly hands-off. I learned a lot, published pretty well, and mostly enjoyed it!
jeff-hykin · 1d ago
They exist, I work with some of them. Its just unfortunate that they're the exception.
YuriNiyazov · 2d ago
Ex-iron curtain, amirite?
nice_byte · 2d ago
Romania, judging from the blog URL. But this type of PhD experience feels like the norm in most of eastern-european/ex-soviet countries. In mine, getting a PhD was one of the ways to get out of compulsory military service. Both profs and students knew that, of course. So real research is very scarce. Other small details, like worshipping titles and putting out a spread for the PhD commission also feel familiar.
Ironically, the only one of my university friends who I'd regard as "actual PhD material" ended up _not_ finishing their PhD in 3yrs time (I surmise because they picked a topic they _actually_ thought worthy) and went to serve in the army.
fuzz_junket · 2d ago
Funny, I was just thinking how much this reminded me of Stanisław Lem's "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub". Must have been one hell of a vibe in Iron Curtain bureaucracies.
GrayShade · 2d ago
Yes, Warsaw pact country.
djoldman · 2d ago
On one hand, there is probably much value locked up in things we don't understand whose research is unlikely to be funded.
On the other hand, humans are pretty terrible at organizing and planning projects without pressures like profit.
psadauskas · 2d ago
They're even worse at organizing and planning projects _with_ pressures like profit.
Havoc · 2d ago
That prof sounds like a real asshole
Most of the ones I encountered generally treated students who actually tried reasonably well
rgavuliak · 2d ago
I had a slightly better experience on my PhD in Central-Eastern Europe. My supervisor - a politician with little academic results mostly cared about the formal part of my results.
I used the PhD to get into a new field (statistics) just in time for me to get into Data Science as it started being cool. My papers weren't interesting, but I got to try things out on real data and report on them.
Rzor · 1d ago
Preserved by some unknown savior who probably shares the same value for it and doesn’t want it to vanish, but here’s the link anyway: https://archive.is/gAh4E
dash2 · 2d ago
The broad lesson here:
If you want to do a PhD, DO NOT limit yourself to your home country. Many countries simply are not capable of properly training researchers. The US can. China mostly can by now, I expect. Northern Europe can, to some degree, in some fields. Elsewhere, you are at risk of wasting important years of your life.
Trump might end US dominance, but the general point that academia is international and entire countries can simply not have a functioning pipeline for new researchers.
jeff-hykin · 1d ago
> The US can.
> Elsewhere, you are at risk of wasting important years of your life.
Unfortunately, as a 5th year PhD student in the US at a tier-1 STEM research university I'm disappointed to say: students here are very very very much at risk. I can't compare to universities in Europe, but I can say OP's story is the story of most students I know.
While I personally know a solid handful of exceptions, don't expect the US to meaningfully avoid what the OP describes. Regardless of country or university, your advisor is the ultimate decider of whether or not you will be a doll for them to "play scientist" with or be pushing the boundaries of science.
Of the exceptions I do know, while they are intelligent, it was not their intelligence or work ethic that allowed them to be exceptions.
jajko · 2d ago
> Northern Europe can, to some degree, in some fields.
Europe can etc. FTFY.
And since with such decision one frequently sort of selects where they will reside afterwards (ie by finding partner and settling down), its also about choosing a society one wants to grow older and potentially raise kids in.
We all have our preferences but me personally I would never choose US for such, even when disregarding current admin excesses (which in some form are not going away, its the new norm and don't hold your breath for next election cycle).
dash2 · 2d ago
The OP is from Romania, and from my own experience too, I think you are mistaken. I would think very carefully before starting a PhD in many European countries. I'd also ask searching questions of the faculty, ("how many people do you graduate a year?" and "what % of your graduates go on to an academic job?")
This applies to the UK and Germany, for example, not just Eastern Europe. There are certainly spots of excellence, but even among high quality UK universities, very often PhD training is on the "apprenticeship" model where you're just thrown into research without graduate-level courses. You can judge the result by looking at the proportion of US-trained staff in EU departments.
timeon · 2d ago
I would not recommend US from now on if you are not from US.
firesteelrain · 2d ago
Just focus on school and not protesting.
StefanBatory · 2d ago
Still might be not enough to be safe.
StefanBatory · 2d ago
Easier said than done - having to live in a country in a different language, without family/friend support, having to deal with no money.
fud101 · 2d ago
I don't have much of an interest in the topic but this writing was top notch.
csours · 2d ago
I wonder what the ratio of good:bad professors is.
Someone should write a list of "Power Gradients Considered Harmful", eg Crew/Cockpit Resource Management
adyashakti · 2d ago
this reads like a chapter out a Kafka novel.
NetOpWibby · 2d ago
My goodness, what a colossal waste of time. My condolences OP!
begueradj · 2d ago
What you describe is the traditional power game within universities to which narcissism, absence of empathy and sadism are added.
moktonar · 2d ago
In what country did these facts happen?
benrbray · 2d ago
Eastern Europe it looks like, but this story is remarkably similar to my experience as a graduate student / technical staff at public research institutions in both the United States and Japan.
neilv · 2d ago
I noticed several bizarre things in the story that were familiar.
Maybe Academic Batpoop Insanity disease is spread at international conferences.
molteanu · 2d ago
Please share, if you feel inclined to.
molteanu · 2d ago
I don't wanna name and blame the country, and I didn't do it in the article as I don't think it matters that much, but the other replies are correct in their assumption, is all I can say.
isaacremuant · 2d ago
Good instincts. It's not relevant and anyone who has seen state or academia up close in different countries knows that, no matter if people from some countries may want to pretend it's "these other countries".
moktonar · 2d ago
I think it might be relevant to know so to avoid it for people that might want to study outside their home
country in Europe
isaacremuant · 2d ago
This happens everywhere. In some shape or form. That's the point.
sofixa · 2d ago
Taking into account the 500€/month scholarship ("about the average salary", euros), Eastern EU. Add in the Romanian sounding author's name, it's probably Romania.
titanomachy · 2d ago
The name on the byline is Romanian, which sounds about right given what my Romanian friends have told me about their country.
udev4096 · 2d ago
Yet another example of how academics serve no purpose in real life. Yes, there have been ground breaking innovations and discoveries from academic folks but that's likely 10% of the good ones. Rest is just pure misery, like the one OP describes
trymas · 2d ago
You definition fits a lot of fields.
> Yet another example of how <startups/stock brokers/etc> serve no purpose in real life. Yes, there have been ground breaking innovations and discoveries from <startups/stock brokers/etc> folks but that's likely 10% of the good ones. Rest is just pure misery, like the one OP describes
sebstefan · 2d ago
I have the same take about the atmosphere. 80% of it is stuff I can't breathe... I'm thinking of removing it
CalRobert · 2d ago
Those who can, do…
jmye · 2d ago
Those who can’t make shitty, sneering jokes in a desperate attempt to be vaguely interesting/clever via repeating middle school memes?
CalRobert · 2d ago
True, but I also found my professors to be ridiculously incompetent and unprofessional (and perhaps unethical considering that at least one wanted me to work for free) compared to the people I’ve worked with.
bawana · 2d ago
How much of this account is realistic? If this is the writing of an educated young person. Imagine how despondent must the average young person be? And are we to presume this is the material that will help Ukraine?
It seems the pendulum of the world has reached its opposite climax. There was a time when young students fought communism, sacrificed theiir lives for ideals (egged on by unfullfilled promises from the west - remember Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the 50s?). Now the enemy is not ideological but generational. The old guard seeing the base of the pyramid's numbers eroded, realize they dont have enough meat to do the work. So the old prey on the young - even making them dance for entertainment.
But do not despair my Romanian friend, you are not alone. Millions of PhDs in America and the west are also in your shoes. Spending the best years of our lives in the service of our masters, publishing papers and writing grants, we were hoping for a 'career' of even a job. But now we see the world turned inside out. The budgets of the NSF and the NIH are being sacrificed and burned on the altar of a new 'reich'.
There is a saying - 'idle hands are the devil's workshop'. Payback is a bitch.
StefanBatory · 2d ago
> How much of this account is realistic?
Not Romanian, but Polish - that account is eerily similar to the vast majority of technical PhD stories amongst my friends.
jeff-hykin · 1d ago
> that account is eerily similar to the vast majority of technical PhD stories amongst my friends.
As a PhD student in my 5th year at a tier-1 U.S. STEM research university, I know a good handful of exceptions, exceptions who are not "playing scientist".
But, ...they are the exception. Sadly this story is painful, uncanny and downright spooky for how similar some of the details are to students I know too.
On topic, it’s probably another example of why scaling a system is so hard. Especially when it comes to tasks that require deep thinking. I can’t help but notice the government policy of sponsoring mass PhDs in the hope of raising a knowledge based society is itself changing the definition of knowledge here.
On the second point, yes the total number of PhD graduates for a similar time period was 12.000 (official Government numbers) so this was a doubling of PhD's just like that, out of the blue. No wonder it was chaotic. There was also enormous political pressure regarding "the Government is incompetent as it cannot absorb what is basically free EU money". So, ok, they've absorbed it, sort of.
I think you are right. Reading the online articles and official documentation from that period, which is really scarce (there is no such program available on the EU official website, for example, or I wasn't able to find it), it feels like this was a big experiment, the success of which is not mentioned in the news either.
What I could find is that it was part of the Lisbon Strategy [1], also mentioned in the official documents published by the Government. From the linked wikipedia article: "Its aim was to make the EU the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion, by 2010. It was set out by the European Council in Lisbon in March 2000. By 2010, most of its goals were not achieved. It was succeeded by the Europe 2020 strategy."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisbon_Strategy
Oh, that page is darkly funny itself. ‘[The Lisbon Strategy’s] aim was to make the EU “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion,” by 2010.’ Yeah, that didn’t happen.
‘Spain's prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero pointed out that the non-binding character of the Lisbon Strategy contributed to the failure.’ Typical bureaucratic response: freedom is the problem.
There is definitely a role for government in fostering innovation and productivity, but it is very much a secondary role. Providing a predictable, stable, safe environment, and using government funds for things that the government actually needs to use seems to have worked for the U.S. for a long time, even before the two world wars.
That's a lot of people to actually try to get on board as to what a "knowledge-based society" should be, they would have to relate it to something they were already familiar with.
If the only resource you have to work with is a "not-as-much-knowledge-as-you-thought" based institution, then start calling it a beacon of a knowledge-based society. Somebody's going to have to spread the word anyway, and if more functional resources don't come within reach, at least you've done your part.
It's interesting that some people are bound to believe you have achieved a knowledge-based society if it's just repeated over and over.
I actually still have the emails asking for the project coordinator, the one responsible for scholarships for all of us (I've searched them out, out of curiosity while writing this article and their CV is 12 pages long and, naturally, this project is listed there as a success) for ways to abandon the whole thing. I didn't even get a reply. I was already 2 years in so I've would have had to return the whole sum back, money I didn't have. I was penniless, as all PhD candidate seem to be. So I did what I had and could do, which is summarized in the post.
As a fun question, what would you do now, to do what you did, but better?
If anything, I'm of the belief that you abandon the notion of efficiency as with governments, returns on investments can be long term (much longer than for a company). In general, people pursuing high levels of academia (or adjacent domains like research labs), are naturally interested in things that are pushing the bounds of our knowledge. We have a really bad track record at per-determining what is impactful and not. If anything, we're pretty good at rejecting things that have high impact (paradigm shifts). Frankly I'm aware of little to no fields that do not result in practical utility in the long run. There's plenty of math research that was long thought to be of no practical importance but did end up greatly influencing other domains
Research is expensive, but certainly we have the money for it. And frankly, a huge chunk in that cost is the administration. Which a large portion of that comes down to the measuring and determination. I wouldn't argue to distribute funds without question, but I'd wager that the amount we spend to ensure research funds are spent effectively is greater that the funds we would lost/spend ineffectively were we to perform significantly less administration.
[0] https://talyarkoni.org/blog/2018/10/02/no-its-not-the-incent...
To put a little context, and this is a bit speculation on my part but seems to conform based on conversations I've had from people who have lived at that time.
This kind of policy at institutions started right after Sputnik. There was a sudden surge in demand for mathematics and engineers, and they couldn't find enough people so they threw money at the problem. The unfortunate side effect was that its a problem that money can't solve, and so when you can't find anyone that meets the rigorous standards, you must lower standards. This seems to have happened in math education around that time the effects of which did not become visible until much later, and it eventually snowballed to most of academia.
The effect has been that most math teachers, excluding a few professors that buck the norm which are the exception, started teaching by rote following what is known today as a lying to children paradigm.
This is a pedagogical approach that is the opposite of the paradigm that was taught prior which was a first-principled approach (based in the greeks and rome).
You are given flawed models upfront, which you must learn some things, and unlearn other things you previously learned to unconscious competence with little guidance. This includes all the elements and structure of real torture (from the 1950s), and the process is repeated over and over sieving only the most compliant or blind people forward, and inducing PTSD in the creative, brilliant, and genius. The process destroys minds, steals economic benefit of intelligence, and selects for average.
Torture is known to reduce, often permanently, the capability for rational thought.
It follows the now refuted ideology of gnosticism. Intuitive understanding is eschewed, and you only become useful the closer you progress to gnosis (mastery), and informally, only the masters decide who gets to progress (through clever gimmicks, deceit, and orchestrated structural failure, that takes advantage of the drive to do less work, government funded work trends towards the least common denominator of production which often becomes negative).
You now have more pHd's, but fewer people who actually met the 1960s definition of a pHd.
There are exceptions because this is a spectrum, but this has been the trend for the majority for decades, and the issues described are known issues with any centralized hierarchy. It hasn't been strictly knowledge-based since at least the late 60s. You see a sharp degradation of published material in education across all subjects starting in the 70s.
mix the two, and one gets annihilated.
We were the friends and family attending my cousin defending his thesis. He spent half his time title-ing, naming, and thanking Professors, chairs, heads, and what not. When it was all over, I asked him why did you name them all? He answered, "because they like the sound of their name."
I never got my PhD, my first day as a lowly research assistant in a university in central london (which shall remain nameless) I was given a professorial suite to camp in, and I remained there for 3 months, imposing furniture and a giant oak table and all. Another staffer used to sleep on the floor and park his bicycle there. Eventually I was evicted and sent to the top floor, an ex-statistics research unit teaching room, like army Barracks, where I and a fellow research assistant opened a cupboard to find the 10 Brunsviga calculators left over from a mechanical actuarial risk calculation exercise the department did for money up until the advent of electronic computers. Their entire previous 5 years work was completed in under 1 days run of the machine code on the new University of London computer in the early 60s. Oh, the Joys.
Look what they've made us do.
(Also, tolerance and acceptance when faced with many arbitrary roadblocks.)
In times of surplus/peace, perhaps.
In times of competition/conflict, results are needed.
“Then instead of shovels, why don’t you give them spoons and create even more jobs?” Friedman inquired.
Suddenly, everything about my professor's bizarre lack of development skills in my computer science course makes sense.
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd....
I have never spend more than a few days learning a language.
I have spent decades mastering several of these.
Any language that takes longer than a few days to learn the basics should be avoided, it will always be difficult to use.
APL being the most famous of such a language.
You can put Scala on that list as well.
i made the transition from embedded C to low level tensor wrangling in about a week, it takes some work but it's definitely doable, of course i'm not an expert but it's enough time to go pretty deep, i went from "yeah i've run ollama" to optimizing inference code to get research papers to run on consumer hardware
if the task is to get up to speed on C++ enough to teach undergrads and you're a reasonably competent academic programmer who gives at least half a shit about the task at hand a weekend is plenty
However, assuming no C knowledge, there's no way in hell you'll be a good teacher of C++ in a weekend, even with LLMs.
The article talks about a literal "learn c++ in 48hs".
Give me a break. You'd be absolutely mediocre and those of us who know our shit do notice. Source: I've been that student that worked and studied the topic he worked with and found some of the TAs absolutely wanting.
From a US perspective, students paying $50,000+ per year in tuition deserve better than an overworked PI who has crammed C++ over the weekend.
My general model for how "being good at programming works" is that it's just mostly a stacking buff based on how much you've touched, I'm choosing to give the person in the anecdote the benefit of the doubt and believe in both their technical expertise and skill as an educator. Most technical things are kind of like other technical things, and if you've been around for a while everything is kind of like something you've done before, it makes it very easy to pick up new tools/domains. I fully believe that someone can open up a VAST gulf of knowledge of C++ between themselves and intro to C++ folks in a weekend if they're already a seasoned practitioner.
Also, remember that you could pick up a new language and start to dabble in it after a few days, but teaching it, ah, that requires much more than using it . Usually teaching something requires a much deeper understanding than just using it.
I won’t speak to crafting a good curriculum, God knows I’ve seen plenty of bad ones but it’s just not hard for me to be vastly better at any topic in English or History than any student I’m likely to see in a high school in two days because I’m that much better than them at what I do. I presume the same yawning gulf in capability exists between the average freshly minted PhD and undergraduates, or professors teaching graduate courses and PhD students.
Expertise exists, which is why I can be teaching a course that’s supposed to take 300 hours of instruction to cover in 15 hours, reasonably comfortably.
The higher your rise, the easier it is to maintain your blind-spots because nobody will dare question your worldview. Even those few who do, they're a nobody, so what could they possibly know about anything? Surely, it's only the people on top who have a bird's eye view of the big data, who know what's going on... Everyone else is like an ant following breadcrumbs laid out in front of them. What is there to learn about the real world that you cannot see from above?
Hit a little too close to home with that one. Had to finish reading despite how painful a mirror can be. God does it make me wish something would change.
I just looked that up to be sure; the article itself has a very strong eastern Europe vibe to it. I was figuring it would be Bulgaria, Slovakia, or Romania initially.
Ironically, the only one of my university friends who I'd regard as "actual PhD material" ended up _not_ finishing their PhD in 3yrs time (I surmise because they picked a topic they _actually_ thought worthy) and went to serve in the army.
On the other hand, humans are pretty terrible at organizing and planning projects without pressures like profit.
Most of the ones I encountered generally treated students who actually tried reasonably well
I used the PhD to get into a new field (statistics) just in time for me to get into Data Science as it started being cool. My papers weren't interesting, but I got to try things out on real data and report on them.
If you want to do a PhD, DO NOT limit yourself to your home country. Many countries simply are not capable of properly training researchers. The US can. China mostly can by now, I expect. Northern Europe can, to some degree, in some fields. Elsewhere, you are at risk of wasting important years of your life.
Trump might end US dominance, but the general point that academia is international and entire countries can simply not have a functioning pipeline for new researchers.
> Elsewhere, you are at risk of wasting important years of your life.
Unfortunately, as a 5th year PhD student in the US at a tier-1 STEM research university I'm disappointed to say: students here are very very very much at risk. I can't compare to universities in Europe, but I can say OP's story is the story of most students I know.
While I personally know a solid handful of exceptions, don't expect the US to meaningfully avoid what the OP describes. Regardless of country or university, your advisor is the ultimate decider of whether or not you will be a doll for them to "play scientist" with or be pushing the boundaries of science.
Of the exceptions I do know, while they are intelligent, it was not their intelligence or work ethic that allowed them to be exceptions.
Europe can etc. FTFY.
And since with such decision one frequently sort of selects where they will reside afterwards (ie by finding partner and settling down), its also about choosing a society one wants to grow older and potentially raise kids in.
We all have our preferences but me personally I would never choose US for such, even when disregarding current admin excesses (which in some form are not going away, its the new norm and don't hold your breath for next election cycle).
This applies to the UK and Germany, for example, not just Eastern Europe. There are certainly spots of excellence, but even among high quality UK universities, very often PhD training is on the "apprenticeship" model where you're just thrown into research without graduate-level courses. You can judge the result by looking at the proportion of US-trained staff in EU departments.
Someone should write a list of "Power Gradients Considered Harmful", eg Crew/Cockpit Resource Management
Maybe Academic Batpoop Insanity disease is spread at international conferences.
> Yet another example of how <startups/stock brokers/etc> serve no purpose in real life. Yes, there have been ground breaking innovations and discoveries from <startups/stock brokers/etc> folks but that's likely 10% of the good ones. Rest is just pure misery, like the one OP describes
It seems the pendulum of the world has reached its opposite climax. There was a time when young students fought communism, sacrificed theiir lives for ideals (egged on by unfullfilled promises from the west - remember Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the 50s?). Now the enemy is not ideological but generational. The old guard seeing the base of the pyramid's numbers eroded, realize they dont have enough meat to do the work. So the old prey on the young - even making them dance for entertainment.
But do not despair my Romanian friend, you are not alone. Millions of PhDs in America and the west are also in your shoes. Spending the best years of our lives in the service of our masters, publishing papers and writing grants, we were hoping for a 'career' of even a job. But now we see the world turned inside out. The budgets of the NSF and the NIH are being sacrificed and burned on the altar of a new 'reich'.
There is a saying - 'idle hands are the devil's workshop'. Payback is a bitch.
Not Romanian, but Polish - that account is eerily similar to the vast majority of technical PhD stories amongst my friends.
As a PhD student in my 5th year at a tier-1 U.S. STEM research university, I know a good handful of exceptions, exceptions who are not "playing scientist".
But, ...they are the exception. Sadly this story is painful, uncanny and downright spooky for how similar some of the details are to students I know too.