Recently exposed that PhD programs in US are funded and students don’t pay. This is ridiculous. These people play with books.

Tuition was waived and we received a stipend while in graduate school. It’s not much different from being a highly recruited athlete. Pretty much everyone who was in graduate school with me could have earned more doing something else but we delayed our careers to develop more expertise in our subject area. Most went on to high paying careers providing the technical experts needed to advance into the modern world.

How on earth did the right manage to convince people that research and education and science are somehow the enemies of the people?

Comments like this reflect a deep misunderstanding of what PhD work actually involves. I spent five years in a Bio-Engineering PhD program, regularly working ~80 hours a week on research that contributes to medical technologies that could one day save lives.

During that time, I made $26k/year as a teaching assistant—far below what I could’ve earned in industry with just my bachelor’s degree. I deliberately chose the harder path to help advance science and make a broader impact.
This kind of research doesn’t just benefit “academics”—it gets patented, commercialized, and turned into products that boost the economy and improve public health.

PhD students aren’t “playing the system”—they are the system behind much of America’s research and development engine. If you want a stronger country, disrespecting education and innovation is a strange way to get there.

In this week’s episode of the Revelations of an 85 IQ Individual…

I’m sorry but reading this just makes me think this guy really didn’t have his life in order. He had no plan after PhD. No internships, connections but above all he didn’t do the one thing we all do, pivot well. He pivoted to welding? Why not business analyst? I have a history degree and now I’m in business lol. I couldn’t have guessed I would be doing business but I just ran where the trail followed. He seems to have been so stuck in his box. He could have tried to become a paralegal, realtor, law school student, high school teacher, middle manager. Instead he went to Mexico and partied for a year. I’m sorry but I read this and don’t pity him. He shows he lacks ownership. Everything is someone else’s fault. I wouldn’t read this one man’s experience and then equate it to all PhD’s. Only a simpleton would do that. That would be like comparing anyone’s experience in any field and saying they are exactly the same. They just aren’t. Really depends on the individual.

glad to see this grift is being exposed by some outlets. shut down funded PhD programs and let’s get back to honest American work.

So much for the MAGA world - everyone will be stupid and ignorant in a generation. With AI taking over - honest American work will no longer exist. As it is factory/manufacturing work is going to end, and soon (for people anyway), so service industries (generally low-paying) are taking over. Still much in finance, but that takes education - limited with a narrow focus and no sense of critical thinking skills as evident by MAGA thinkers who are deluded into thinking that they can change America by going back 125 years to the "glory" of 1900. Worse they think that this will benefit the world - economically or otherwise. The world is global as is America - there is no going back, only destroying the present (the current course America is on). But when Business tries to run the country (and the world) based on quarterly reports and not long-term planning, little good will come of it - like Tariff warfare that changes daily, so nobody wins, other than Trump and his grifters.

Tell us you're a M@GA Trump supporter without telling us you're a M@GA Trump supporter.

Many Trumpers have childhood trauma/huge inferiority complexes from doing poorly in school. Calling it all a worthless scam boosts their self-esteem.

A lot of people view a PhD as some sort of next-step on the prestige ladder and they kind of blindly go into one after undergrad.

Definitely not a good idea if simply for the fact that the degrees take 5-6 years on average.

FIND? Where should an employer find a competent employee?

Yes, obviously a responsible university should verify teaching aptitude somehow, before it offers someone a GTF position.

Understandably, many candidates won't have teaching experience, but that's where it's the university's job to MAKE them good teachers.

It's all but impossible to teach in a k-12 environment without a graduate degree in education, i.e. provably knowing how to teach. These standards are very strict to protect the students. But in college, where students pay much more, there are no standards at all. The courses are taught by STUDENTS, not teachers.

And these students are protected by the professors they work for, at the expense of the students who are paying them. They can do as crappy a job as they want - teach badly, grade unfairly, falsely accuse their own students of cheating, even mix their personal crap into the curriculum. Such as a required writing course I had where the GTF assigned all the writing to be about gay topics.

The postgraduate world is incredibly narcissistic - people who think staying in academia somehow proves they were the smartest undergrads and are now special. But as often it proves they were incapable of making it in the real world.

haha, I got under their skin with "narcissistic."

many of these proud academics would still be unqualified to teach in a k-12 school, standards are too high. So what were they doing teaching in a college?

The more cognitively and socially mature you are, the less important “proper” pedagogy is needed.

Think about on the job training for something reasonably cognitively demanding. They didn’t put you in a school with homework but you still learned vast amounts of basic and applied materials.

A competent college student should have the study skills and aptitude to learn under many teaching styles.

Going for a PhD is a high risk proposition. You can specialize in something that makes you highly desirable for very few positions and almost unemployable for the rest. I went through a cynical phase like this during my postdoc stint. And then, one day, a government scientist knocked on my office door unannounced wanting to discuss a problem with me. A professor down the hall had directed him to my office. The problem wasn't right up my alley, but we had a great interaction and I eventually ended up with a permanent job and rewarding career with the government. High risk? I might not have had a career at all had I just stepped out to use the restroom at the wrong time.

Glad you’re hard at work on the important things.

It's easy to convince stupid people that smart people are the enemy.

I like good investments, and at a high level Federal investments in research pay off 5x. Our Research powerhouse is part of what really makes America great, and the infrastructure attracts the best from the world to contribute to America science.