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[totoro]

I feel like dvf and mleok have omitted an important piece of context here which is actually fairly special to mathematics.

Mathematical culture is such that having a PhD student (especially a poor one) actually subtracts from ones own research.  An advisor frequently gives a student a problem that the advisor could have solved him/herself and published a few papers on, and finding good problems (i.e. both solvable and interesting) is a significant amount of work.  In addition, through "giving advice" the advisor can (especially with a weaker student) end up actually doing most of the work towards solving the problem.  However, it is generally thought that a student should be sole author on papers relating to his/her thesis problem, even if the advisor had significant input.

This means that having a student fairly directly costs an advisor one or two papers.  At the same time, there is no such thing as lab work, so the student doesn't actually directly contribute to the advisor's research in any way.  (It would have to be very strong student for an advisor to give a problem that was fundamental to his/her research to a student.)

At Harvard (and no other math program), the student does not defend his/her thesis.  Rather, it is the ADVISOR who defends the thesis (in a private meeting) to the rest of the faculty.  This is because it is felt that the advisor understands much more about the context and significance of the work, and in many cases actually understands the actual work better, than the student does!  In the publication record, the advisor gets ZERO credit for this (unless you count acknowledgments).

This is very interesting. Like finding out about how law journals work. It's interesting that there are so many variations in the way things are done across academia. In econ a student does subtract while getting up to speed. Actually, it is the weaker students where joint publication might happen because the student though they've done quite a bit of the work didn't really come up with idea and needs help in getting it into publishable form. What is frustrating is when these students don't continue in academia and refuse to help on revise and resubmits etc.

[daniel_von_flanagan]

Mathematical culture is such that having a PhD student (especially a poor one) actually subtracts from ones own research.  An advisor frequently gives a student a problem that the advisor could have solved him/herself and published a few papers on, and finding good problems (i.e. both solvable and interesting) is a significant amount of work.

To the extent this is true, I don't see how this is different from any other field in science, especially non-lab fields, or the social sciences for that matter.  Moreover, it would be silly for an advisor to give away a problem that he especially wants to work on himself.

This means that having a student fairly directly costs an advisor one or two papers.

I don't think that someone who is so bad at generating interesting questions that giving one away costs a paper belongs at an R1 institution.  Most people I know can't keep up at all with the projects they're interested in working on.

As I see it, the cost in giving away good thesis questions is that another student might have done more with it.  I gave a project to a student once who did decent work with it, but not nearly as much as he was capable of, and then he went off to industry and stopped research.  This was potentially an extremely fruitful area of investigation, but I'm too busy to follow up on it, and all the thesis-level work has been done so it probably would be too hard for another student to pick up where the first left off.

  In addition, through "giving advice" the advisor can (especially with a weaker student) end up actually doing most of the work towards solving the problem.

I do agree on this, though don't think it is specific to mathematics. - DvF

[rroscoe]

Forgive the double post, I want to add some context to what I wrote above.  Several of our PhD students now teach at the local CCs. Not my advisees, but most had one or several classes with me, and a couple could have been my advisee. Had they expressed an interest in working with me, and said that their plan was to have a career at one of the local CCs, I probably could have found a small project for them that would have been within their abilities and might have been enough (barely) for a weak PhD with us, and would not require much work on my part.  I might have been willing to do this because we have a good relationship with these CCs, and sometimes their undergraduates transfer to us, so I might in fact obtain some tangible personal benefit out of making sure they have quality faculty.  However, any idea that that the reason the CC wants to hire our students is because they are planning to set themselves up in competition with us and offer a 4-year degree sharply decreases my sense of collegiality with these schools as well as the potential for personal benefit from the undergraduate transfers..  - DvF

DvF,

Do doctoral students in your department actually express a desire to teach at a CC? Or are they interested in career in academia in general, including CCs? I ask this because I never planned or aspired to work at a CC as a doctoral student. My ideal was a four-year institution, perhaps one with a masters program, that allowed me have a decent mix of teaching and research. However, above all I wanted to stay in academia. I applied to four-year institutions and even R1s nationwide. I only applied to CCs in what are desirable locations for me.

I ended up taking a CC position not because it was my ideal or my plan, but because it was my only offer. And it was definitely better than the alternative. I do enjoy my job and I love the location, which helps. I think that I would be unhappy at a CC in a bad location. Sure, I would like to do more research and teach upper-level classes. But life isn't perfect. Anyway, I wonder if some of the doctoral students in your department ended up at CCs for the same type of reasons that I did. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I suspect that few doctoral students actually start out with a goal of teaching in a CC, although many that end up at one find that it isn't so bad after all.

[canuckois]

Do doctoral students in your department actually express a desire to teach at a CC? Or are they interested in career in academia in general, including CCs? I ask this because I never planned or aspired to work at a CC as a doctoral student. My ideal was a four-year institution, perhaps one with a masters program, that allowed me have a decent mix of teaching and research. However, above all I wanted to stay in academia. I applied to four-year institutions and even R1s nationwide. I only applied to CCs in what are desirable locations for me.

I ended up taking a CC position not because it was my ideal or my plan, but because it was my only offer. And it was definitely better than the alternative. I do enjoy my job and I love the location, which helps. I think that I would be unhappy at a CC in a bad location. Sure, I would like to do more research and teach upper-level classes. But life isn't perfect. Anyway, I wonder if some of the doctoral students in your department ended up at CCs for the same type of reasons that I did. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I suspect that few doctoral students actually start out with a goal of teaching in a CC, although many that end up at one find that it isn't so bad after all.

So what?

Most of the undergrads I teach are pre-med. For the most part, they expect to find a position in well-ranked medical schools in desirable locations.  Very few have ever considered the possibility that they might end up at a lower-ranked but fully accredited school.  None - none - of them contemplate seriously the possibility that they will never be admitted anywhere.

Of the students I teach, many will not be accepted to their top-ranked choices.  Some will never be accepted to a medical school at all.  A small minority will find that their expectations match the reality of their situation after they graduate.

In other words, your situation is far from unique.  So you had plans for yourself and they didn't pan out.  I'm sorry to hear that, but really...big deal.

I know what the market is like, and I know how our students will rank in relation to others applying to the same schools.  But I write letters of recommendation for all of them.  Is it that I don't care about their chances?  No.  Is it that "I don't understand the realities of the job market"?  Not at all.  I write those letters because what my students accomplish out there in the Real World is pretty much independent of me.  I've done what I can, but whether or not they find their dream position is up to them.  If they're not strong enough, or if they can't compete for the positions they want...yeah, that sucks.  But I'm not doing them a disservice by supporting their applications and hoping that they land on their feet.

You have a friggin' job.  Congratulations.  You're one of the lucky few.  And those who whine and moan about having to mail -- mail! -- reams of paper to search committees: don't bother.  Do us all a favor and go into the private sector.

[scampster]

Do doctoral students in your department actually express a desire to teach at a CC? Or are they interested in career in academia in general, including CCs? I ask this because I never planned or aspired to work at a CC as a doctoral student. My ideal was a four-year institution, perhaps one with a masters program, that allowed me have a decent mix of teaching and research. However, above all I wanted to stay in academia. I applied to four-year institutions and even R1s nationwide. I only applied to CCs in what are desirable locations for me.

I ended up taking a CC position not because it was my ideal or my plan, but because it was my only offer. And it was definitely better than the alternative. I do enjoy my job and I love the location, which helps. I think that I would be unhappy at a CC in a bad location. Sure, I would like to do more research and teach upper-level classes. But life isn't perfect. Anyway, I wonder if some of the doctoral students in your department ended up at CCs for the same type of reasons that I did. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I suspect that few doctoral students actually start out with a goal of teaching in a CC, although many that end up at one find that it isn't so bad after all.

So what?

Most of the undergrads I teach are pre-med. For the most part, they expect to find a position in well-ranked medical schools in desirable locations.  Very few have ever considered the possibility that they might end up at a lower-ranked but fully accredited school.  None - none - of them contemplate seriously the possibility that they will never be admitted anywhere.

Of the students I teach, many will not be accepted to their top-ranked choices.  Some will never be accepted to a medical school at all.  A small minority will find that their expectations match the reality of their situation after they graduate.

In other words, your situation is far from unique.  So you had plans for yourself and they didn't pan out.  I'm sorry to hear that, but really...big deal.

I know what the market is like, and I know how our students will rank in relation to others applying to the same schools.  But I write letters of recommendation for all of them.  Is it that I don't care about their chances?  No.  Is it that "I don't understand the realities of the job market"?  Not at all.  I write those letters because what my students accomplish out there in the Real World is pretty much independent of me.  I've done what I can, but whether or not they find their dream position is up to them.  If they're not strong enough, or if they can't compete for the positions they want...yeah, that sucks.  But I'm not doing them a disservice by supporting their applications and hoping that they land on their feet.

You have a friggin' job.  Congratulations.  You're one of the lucky few.  And those who whine and moan about having to mail -- mail! -- reams of paper to search committees: don't bother.  Do us all a favor and go into the private sector.

I don't think rroscoe was complaining about anything really. But to address his point, I think DvF and others allow for the possibility that someone might not get an R1 job, but that they would at least like their students to have some ambition towards that.

As for the OP and complaining about all the stuff that needs to be sent... well, this time if year is frustrating for people, so I sympathize. I think they were just venting. There are so many postdoc positions in my field, that my worst case scenario is taking a second postdoc, and that =/= unemployment (and my postdoc pays better than some of the starting salaries for assistant profs mentioned here). So I fully admit to not applying to some random school that has extra requirements for the application package above and beyond the standard in my field. But (gasp!) I did deign to finally get a copy of my graduate transcript for one job. I didn't even have an unofficial copy on hand, so I figured it would probably be worthwhile. But I summarily dismiss any job that asks for letters up front, since that isn't standard in my field. Someone more desperate than me can rustle up those letters.

[daniel_von_flanagan]

Do doctoral students in your department actually express a desire to teach at a CC? Or are they interested in career in academia in general, including CCs?

I don't really know, except in a few cases.  My impression is that the students are mainly there, at least at first, as a general stage in their careers: they love the subject, we offer them assistantships and tuition waivers so they can see how far they can go in the field on someone else's nickel.  They do know where other program graduates have gone, so have a reasonable sense that the range is very broad. - DvF

[rroscoe]

Do doctoral students in your department actually express a desire to teach at a CC? Or are they interested in career in academia in general, including CCs? I ask this because I never planned or aspired to work at a CC as a doctoral student. My ideal was a four-year institution, perhaps one with a masters program, that allowed me have a decent mix of teaching and research. However, above all I wanted to stay in academia. I applied to four-year institutions and even R1s nationwide. I only applied to CCs in what are desirable locations for me.

I ended up taking a CC position not because it was my ideal or my plan, but because it was my only offer. And it was definitely better than the alternative. I do enjoy my job and I love the location, which helps. I think that I would be unhappy at a CC in a bad location. Sure, I would like to do more research and teach upper-level classes. But life isn't perfect. Anyway, I wonder if some of the doctoral students in your department ended up at CCs for the same type of reasons that I did. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I suspect that few doctoral students actually start out with a goal of teaching in a CC, although many that end up at one find that it isn't so bad after all.

So what?

Most of the undergrads I teach are pre-med. For the most part, they expect to find a position in well-ranked medical schools in desirable locations.  Very few have ever considered the possibility that they might end up at a lower-ranked but fully accredited school.  None - none - of them contemplate seriously the possibility that they will never be admitted anywhere.

Of the students I teach, many will not be accepted to their top-ranked choices.  Some will never be accepted to a medical school at all.  A small minority will find that their expectations match the reality of their situation after they graduate.

In other words, your situation is far from unique.  So you had plans for yourself and they didn't pan out.  I'm sorry to hear that, but really...big deal.

I know what the market is like, and I know how our students will rank in relation to others applying to the same schools.  But I write letters of recommendation for all of them.  Is it that I don't care about their chances?  No.  Is it that "I don't understand the realities of the job market"?  Not at all.  I write those letters because what my students accomplish out there in the Real World is pretty much independent of me.  I've done what I can, but whether or not they find their dream position is up to them.  If they're not strong enough, or if they can't compete for the positions they want...yeah, that sucks.  But I'm not doing them a disservice by supporting their applications and hoping that they land on their feet.

You have a friggin' job.  Congratulations.  You're one of the lucky few.  And those who whine and moan about having to mail -- mail! -- reams of paper to search committees: don't bother.  Do us all a favor and go into the private sector.

Scampster is correct. I wasn't complaining about my job in my last post. I think you misread me. I fully admit that my job CC isn't my ideal. However, I do enjoy it and realize that I am very fortunate to have it. Just because I didn't land my ideal job doesn't mean that I don't think that I have a good job or that I am unhappy or ungrateful. The good is not the enemy of the perfect here.

[daniel_von_flanagan]

The good is not the enemy of the perfect here.

I thought that here in America if you don't come in first you're a Loser...  - DvF