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Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 2,007
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Joined: Jul 2011
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You cannot be serious. I would like to put you in a room with my SIL who has her PhD in genetics and is teaching high school science (happily) now. She doesn't consider the years obtaining her PhD wasted because she isn't on tenure track at a major university. Again, he's only expressing the fact that only certain Ph.D. holders are relevant. If you are teaching high school, then, by definition, you are not relevant to the further development of novel research at a relevant institution. It's not a personal question of "waste" or "happiness", but a social, collective, question of relevance.
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Joined: Feb 2010
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We have different outlooks, but I was serious, and JonLaw understands where I am coming from. I never considered becoming a high school science teacher.
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Joined: Jul 2010
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We have different outlooks, but I was serious, and JonLaw understands where I am coming from. I never considered becoming a high school science teacher. I was never under the impression that you would have considered it. High school teachers are not relevant to higher levels of science, clearly.
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Joined: Jul 2012
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f) NO graduate program-- or at most, an MS program. I want the focus of faculty to be on my kid-- not on the people teaching my kid. That's a surprising criteria to me. Considering your daughter's aptitudes... if a school doesn't have MS and PhD programs what happens her junior year when she has largely exhausted the undergraduate curriculum or has moved very deep into a specific topical area and is perhaps breaking into some lifelong research passion?
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Joined: Aug 2010
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In other words, we're actually looking for a college which is LIKE Reed, but not filled with students who feel the need to "out-compete" one another. Are you thinking that Reed is a place where people try to out-compete each other? To be fair, I've never actually been to Reed, but my alma mater is very similar, and there was very little competition, though people were interested in each others' interests. I was specifically looking for this after having gone a cuthroat, status-obsessed public high school where class rank was All. From what you say of your DD, I think someplace Reed-ish sounds pretty promising. I'm obviously biased, though.
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Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 3,297
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We have different outlooks, but I was serious, and JonLaw understands where I am coming from. I never considered becoming a high school science teacher. I was never under the impression that you would have considered it. High school teachers are not relevant to higher levels of science, clearly. Personally, I think it would be a huge benefit to our education system if more high school teachers had subject-specific doctorates or master's degrees (NOT degrees in education). The value students get from people with serious knowledge of a subject is huge. These people understand what's coming in two or four or six years and can put ideas in context. For example, "When you get into x course, you will learn more about today's process and how it applies to this other process." Also, these people typically have a good understanding of what's required to get through a bachelor's degree in their fields, and likely have a much better ability advise students in a meaningful way about career options. Compare to someone who follows what the book says and never or rarely goes past it because s/he lacks meaningful knowledge, not only of the subject itself, but also of its work environment. ETA: IMO, there are serious problems in the American academic research environment, and one of them is the system's rabid focus on output and industrial ways of measuring "quality." But that is a topic for another thread.
Last edited by Val; 05/17/13 01:24 PM. Reason: More detail added
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Joined: Jul 2010
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e) NON-competitive and collaborative environment-- this is critical because of DD's kneejerk reaction to that kind of environment-- she actively recoils and responds VERY negatively to people she perceives to be self-promotional, glory-chasing, insufferably arrogant gits. You know, to use the technical term. I was a science major at Harvard. The environment was collaborative, with students discussing problem sets and not trying to show off in class (which would be pointless, since grades did not depend on class participation). But the element of competition, though latent, was there, and I think it's unavoidable. There aren't many tenure track professorships at research universities and staff positions at national labs. The world does not need many mediocre research scientists. Therefore only academic superstars should try to get PhDs. An advantage of going to a Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford etc. is that you get to compare your abilities to those of the best students in the country. Finding out that you are only mediocre in that crowd is painful but can save you half a dozen years of your life trying to get a PhD unless you have blinders on. Ahem. You cannot be serious. I would like to put you in a room with my SIL who has her PhD in genetics and is teaching high school science (happily) now. She doesn't consider the years obtaining her PhD wasted because she isn't on tenure track at a major university. If her goal was high school science then she wasted years of her life in underpaid servitude getting a PhD. Yes, we need more academic superstars teaching high school, but they are wasting their time getting a PhD to do it.
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Joined: Jul 2010
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In this case she might agree about unpaid servitude. But I think we can all recognize that people's goals change over time. I know many people who are not using their degrees in the way they initially set out to. That doesn't mean they are wasted.
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Joined: Nov 2012
Posts: 2,513
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Wasn't it Malcom Forbes who claimed the whole point of education was to turn an empty mind into an open one? (I paraphrase.)
What is to give light must endure burning.
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Joined: Nov 2012
Posts: 2,513
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e) NON-competitive and collaborative environment-- this is critical because of DD's kneejerk reaction to that kind of environment-- she actively recoils and responds VERY negatively to people she perceives to be self-promotional, glory-chasing, insufferably arrogant gits. You know, to use the technical term. I was a science major at Harvard. The environment was collaborative, with students discussing problem sets and not trying to show off in class (which would be pointless, since grades did not depend on class participation). But the element of competition, though latent, was there, and I think it's unavoidable. There aren't many tenure track professorships at research universities and staff positions at national labs. The world does not need many mediocre research scientists. Therefore only academic superstars should try to get PhDs. An advantage of going to a Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford etc. is that you get to compare your abilities to those of the best students in the country. Finding out that you are only mediocre in that crowd is painful but can save you half a dozen years of your life trying to get a PhD unless you have blinders on. Ahem. Harakiri next?
What is to give light must endure burning.
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