Physics heroes, classes and graduate school

I wrote most of this five years ago but didn't publish it because I was still thinking about it. I am sharing it now, including my original opinions, despite my opinions changing. My new opinions are given in the last three paragraphs.

Over the years, I have thought about physics heroes. A lot of people love Feynman, and while I enjoyed his autobiography and had a professor I TAed for compare me to him, I didn't really consider him my hero. The same with many other physicists. I think that Einstein and Newton were my heroes as I started to pursue physics, but over the last 15 years, I have discovered that I consider Freeman Dyson a hero, and I have since read several of his books. While I understand the point of how heroes hurt science, I also think that they can do a lot of good. And not just by providing inspirational role models like Jim Gates.

When I was a freshman, Freeman Dyson visited my college. He taught a class for non-majors and gave a couple of lectures for the physics students. One I attended had several of us, including Dyson, leave the lecture hall to go to the theater and watch the Matrix. One thing he said at the time stuck with me, at least the concept (since the words didn’t). That was that physics was something you do and not what you study, that you needed to get involved in research and not just take classes.

I didn’t truly understand and internalize this idea until I almost dropped out of my third year of graduate school. It has become one of my guiding philosophies as a physicist and physics professor. 

I have observed that online graduate degrees are popular (universities withstood moocs but risk being outwitted by opms). I don’t see the point of them. Even a non-lab undergraduate degree loses out on a lot of value being online only, and graduate degrees lose out on most of their value. I think a good undergraduate degree should be 70-80% coursework, a master's degree should be 30-50% coursework, and a PhD should be around 10% coursework. The non-coursework component can be done with industrial mentors instead of academic mentors, but the good mentors will generally be at the same location as the good academic mentors. Who will do the legwork, and how is that legwork going to be valid for industrial mentors in a location without academic mentors?

I think the real signal with these online graduate degrees is that new things have been learned. But that isn’t the purpose of a graduate degree.

Since I graduated with my PhD, I have continually learned new things and worked in new fields. I have never taken a course, just reading papers (and books sometimes) to understand where the field is or to find a good technique. I think that instead of doing this, many people are taking a Master's degree (and spending money on it). They do get a certificate that others can see, but they don’t get the deep knowledge that traditionally comes from a Master's (or PhD).

This opinion of mine has changed.

In the last 8 months I have searched for a new position in industry. The requirements for finding a software engineering adjacent position have changed since I left academia for industry in 2019. I did not get the interviews I expected and ran into rounds of coding assessments that were well beyond my level (especially 8 months ago when I received my first interview at a top AI startup).

I didn't pursue an online graduate degree, but if I had the funds to do so, I would have done so, and it would have benefitted me. Both as a signal for the recruiters and hiring managers and because, while I have self-studied and learned a lot and have been following free online self-study courses (without reputable certificates) like those found at CodeSignal and NeetCode, it would have been beneficial to have the direction of a professor.

So, my position on this has changed because I think the signal is important and valuable. I may still never do an online Master's. But if I had had the assets to do one in the last year, I would have done one. And it would have been beneficial for me.

Chilean Unrest

Despite the proximity between my resignation and the social unrest in Chile, the social unrest had nothing to do with my departure. I permanently left Chile in 2018 and not in 2019. The connection is that the social unrest is due to the lack of opportunity, which is one of the reasons for my departure (my family left Chile in 2015, partially due to a lack of opportunity).

While the social unrest appears to be extremely costly, I hope that the structural changes needed will come about and Chile will be in a better place in a decade than it otherwise would have been. There is a constitution vote in April, which is an opportunity for improvement and for a more socially cohesive future.

While my place in the development of human and intellectual capital was at the top (I primarily worked with PhD students), my observation is that Chile’s education system needed an overhaul from the ground up. While I was not an expert at this, I was told that the problems were intrinsic and in the Chilean constitution. 

It seems that the problem with education is similar to what has become a problem in places in the US, where the money and wealthy students go to private schools which provide barriers to the majority and bring the overall level of education down by reducing competition between the wealthy and upper middle class and the majority of the population. In this way it is a disservice to both the upper classes and the masses and the country as a whole.

I observed this was a problem, but because I wanted my kids to compete internationally, if we had stayed in Chile my daughters would have gone to expensive private schools. It is hard to cause the required change without mass action, which is done by government, and in education the current Chilean constitution does not allow this.

It is interesting that in the Economist Ranking, Chile recently moved up to Full Democracy and the US recently moved down to Flawed Democracy (Economist: Global Democracy).

Further information on education in Chile (OECD Summary 2018  ODI Chilean Education).

Editorial from the Times on the protests (NY Times Opinion Chilean Protests).

The Chilean constitution (in English) (Chilean 2012 Constitution).

PhD students in physics

I have experience as a graduate and undergraduate student in the United States and as a member of the graduate faculty in Chile. I also have observed as a postdoctoral researcher in Sweden and Belgium.

I read Make science PhDs more than just a training path for academia with interest. First, I think that often advisors and supervisors are more selfish than her committee member was, and the priorities are  the advisors/supervisors publications and the successful graduation of the PhD student. Only the most promising students get guided towards proposal writing. Additionally, the networking required now to be successful with the academic path is a high hurdle and often ignored in favor of the advisor's own needs.

But my core response is that there is just not a lot of time. Most of the time PhD students do really need in additional 2-4 years after the completion of their PhD to develop as a scientist. Cutting short the development would prolong this.

While you can argue that Lecturers, Science Communicators, Applied Scientists and Technicians do not need this development, Research Scientists and Research Professors do. And when I say that an additional 2-4 years are needed, I am only talking about development that the PhD student needs to do good science, the requirements to be successful in a search for an academic position takes additional skills in grant writing and networking which can also be a challenge for some and can take additional time to develop.

While I have been focused more on the Research Scientist and Research Professor trajectories, it is obvious to me that the Lecturer trajectory could use additional development after a traditional PhD as well. I think that this has become understood across physics.

It does not surprise me that the Science Communicator and Applied Scientist trajectories could use additional development. And I am sure that often part of the problem is a lack fo respect of other directions by the research professors that guide and mentor the PhD students. However, it seems to me that rather than bifurcating the PhD that the best approach is a combination of the following:

1. There is a certain amount of work in science that is low value and that PhD students usually end up doing as cheap labor. It might make sense to make time for PhD students by keeping them focused on high value labor and hiring more technicians for the low value labor. The PhD students time is valuable even if their labor is cheap. I think the best approach to make this change is a recognition of the problem in the field and maybe PhD student unions.
2. While in physics incoming PhD students are often well prepared for the physics, they are often lacking some fo the technical skills in communication and scientific computation that they need to finish a PhD and follow a good career trajectory after their graduation. This development takes time. It might be a good idea to follow Engineering and recommend that US Science students do 4 years of academic study and a 1 year internship before starting their PhD.
3. Finally, it is important that these other trajectories become more valued. I have begun to see this with Lecturers with the creation of the Teaching Professor position with equivalent pay (and status?) as Research Professor. As part of this, there should be respectable and respectably paid positions which provide additional training towards a trajectory as a Lecturer, Science Communicator or Applied Scientist just as there are postdoctoral researcher positions which provide additional training towards the Research Professor and Research Scientist trajectories. 

Graduate school

When I was a freshman, Freeman Dyson visited my college. He taught a class for non-majors and gave a couple of lectures for the physics students. One that I attended had a number of us, including Dyson, leave the lecture hall to go to the theater and watch the Matrix. One thing he said at the time stuck with me, at least the concept (since the words didn’t). That was that physics was something you do and not what you study, that you needed to get involved in research and not just take classes.

I didn’t truly understand this idea and internalize it until I almost dropped out of my third year of graduate school. It has become one of my guiding philosophies as a physicist and physics professor. 

I have observed that online graduate degrees are popular (universities withstood moocs but risk being outwitted by opms). I don’t see the point of them. Even a non-lab undergraduate degree loses out on a lot of value being online only and graduate degrees lose out on most of their value. I think that a good undergraduate degree should be 70-80% course work, a masters degree should be 30-50% coursework and a PhD should be around 10% coursework. The non-coursework component can be done with industrial mentors instead of academic mentors, but the good mentors will generally be at the same location as the good academic mentors. Who is going to do the legwork, and how is that legwork going to be valid, for industrial mentors in a location without the academic mentors?

I think the real signal with these online graduate degrees provide is that new things have been learned. But that isn’t the purpose of a graduate degree.

Since I graduated with my PhD, I have continually learned new things and worked in new fields. I have never taken a course, just reading papers (and books sometimes) to understand where the field is or to find a good technique. I think that instead of doing this that many people are taking a Masters (and spending money on it). They do get a certificate that others can see, but they don’t get the deep knowledge that traditionally comes from a Masters (or PhD).