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chrisaycock 8 hours ago [-]
> On Nov. 10, Colla wrote to current math graduate students that “status and support” for current students “are not changing” and that the program will see “every currently enrolled student through graduation,” according to an email obtained and reviewed by The Dartmouth.
> “Stipends, insurance and the five-year funding guarantee all remain in place for students making satisfactory academic progress,” Colla wrote. “Advising relationships, qualifying exams, degree requirements and teaching and research appointments will continue as planned.”
xhevahir 7 hours ago [-]
Everybody's attacking this but when have graduate school programs ever been responsive to the job market? They're constantly minting more PhDs, MBAs, and LLBs than the professions can absorb; even MDs have begun to find it hard to get a good return on their investments. Maybe getting out of that business is the responsible thing to do?
jvanderbot 6 hours ago [-]
Yes - that's how the markets are supposed to work.
It is the student's responsibility to plan their own lives - and the job market should be part of that. It is not the institution's responsibility to "correctly" govern the life trajectories of their applicants.
If you, dear xhevahir, wanted to buy a math phd attempt and had the chops, you could self-fund the training, courses, and examinations of a Math PhD, and it'd be up to your own abilities to finish.
But nobody, nowhere, would (should!) stop you because "the jobs" aren't there. You could do it because you can find the money to do it.
Asking universities to set their intake numbers according to the perceived demand 5+ years down the road (let alone the coursework + specialization of those PhDs)? Madness - they'd effectively be planning the whole economy at that point.
Invictus0 5 hours ago [-]
You seem unaware that the PhD students are paid to be there; they are not paying anything.
geonineties 5 hours ago [-]
Sorta. They pay in labor far below the market rate, and working conditions that are abhorrent. Thy also pay a massive opportunity cost depending on the field.
4 hours ago [-]
hn_throwaway_99 4 hours ago [-]
Do you have any data for this? Because it doesn't sound accurate to me.
That there is an overproduction of PhDs I can agree with, and also LLBs at schools not in the top 40 or so. But I haven't heard any evidence that there is waning demand for MBAs at decent schools, and I have never heard that "even MDs have begun to find it hard to get a good return on their investments". Don't get me wrong, as someone with a number of family members who are physicians I've heard lots of stories about how the workplace environment has deteriorated mightily in the past 6-7 years, but they are all making healthy incomes.
pks016 2 hours ago [-]
We don't know if this is a correct decision for future or not. Event like this can start a domino effect in relation to current graduate students, other graduate programs etc.
My issue with this is communication with current graduate and undergraduate students. If admins create uncertain environment, the trust, and quality of work goes down. As graduate students or even faculties have no say in these decisions, not sure how this decision was reached. (My guess) According to the admins, after 5 years there will be no jobs for Math PhDs, so they scrap the program.
> She wrote in a Nov. 10 email to current graduate students that there “will be opportunities for students to participate in the review” and that she would meet with math graduate students and department faculty on Nov. 17.
A little too late I would say. And all the meetings I had been part of for any issues (as a graduate student), the admins or faculties rarely listen to you as graduate students have no power.
gwern 5 hours ago [-]
How large is this cohort or program in the first place? The article seems to be conspicuously lacking in numbers. And how successful is Dartmouth in math to begin with? If it's not in the top 10, maybe this is a quite rational decision post-mathpocalypse...
profsummergig 4 hours ago [-]
A law school insider at a top law school tells me that law schools are expected to start downsizing at some point in the future.
groos 7 hours ago [-]
It's easy to blame Dartmouth for its shortsightedness but they have a point. Education, including graduate school, is more and more resembling vocational training and anyone paying for it, whether an individual or the university via an assistantship program, has to calculate the return on investment. With the recent FUD created by LLMs for math research, it is reasonable to ask what kinds of careers math PhDs can now expect and whether the field can absorb the current level of math PhDs.
AmazingEveryDay 5 hours ago [-]
Worst of the AI fallout is dumbing down of humankind, this being another example - there will be fewer people with math phds.
xvedejas 4 hours ago [-]
I don't think the PhD makes people smart, I think smart people are the ones able to go for PhDs.
fooker 4 hours ago [-]
You seem to have a weird misunderstanding of what a PhD is.
It's 3-6 years of your life spent figuring out everything everyone has ever tried to solve a narrow class of problems that you are passionate about, guided by an expert on that topic. Without the worry of being able to afford food or rent.
Around the end, you make a contribution or two to that topic and become one of the top experts on the world in the field.
People hire PhDs for two reasons, one if they really need an expert in that field, or if they want someone who is proven to be able to spend a long time on a topic while figuring out and understanding what others have been doing there for the last several years.
Smartness does not have anything to do with the second part here. Without this training to do research, you can often train someone to do something technical but all their new ideas will likely be those that have been tried and failed 20 years ago.
Of course you could find exceptional candidates who can do this without a PhD, but employers are not in the business of taking low probability chances.
rayiner 22 minutes ago [-]
> Smartness does not have anything to do with the second part here. Without this training to do research, you can often train someone to do something technical but all their new ideas will likely be those that have been tried and failed 20 years ago.
Telling you what ideas have been tried and didn't work is exactly the thing AI can help with.
qlte 2 hours ago [-]
Smart people still need to apply that intelligence for it to mean anything. Math PhD programs provide a structured environment to develop specialized knowledge, and an outlet/goal for novel contributions to the field.
Even with an 180+ IQ you're not going to have a shower thought and solve the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture without first learning the prerequisite concepts (and how to articulate your solution). Even very intelligent people still struggle to maintain the discipline needed over months/years to self-study with the depth/rigor needed for the equivalent degree.
cadamsdotcom 8 hours ago [-]
"The field is changing; rather than be a force for change or try to help steward folks through the change, we'll be sitting this one out. Good luck out there kids."
Whoever makes these decisions should get admitted to the drama school!
cgio 7 hours ago [-]
Indeed, they also just discounted every PhD currently in progress in their program by demonstrating academic nonchalance and potentially even past ones. Let’s shut it down and cash our tenure’s worth out.
nswizzle31 7 hours ago [-]
As a Dartmouth alum, this is a step in the right direction. I appreciate that the school doesn’t chase growth for growth’s sake. And PhD graduates are being minted at too high of a rate according to many people.. so you’re damned if you do (“why aren’t schools preparing their students for jobs?”) and damned if you don’t (“look at them cutting positions!”).
The reality is that a PhD means just about nothing these days. Speaking as someone with a PhD (very thankful I graduated before LLMs ruined academic publishing completely), I’d like to see a bit more meaning to the degree.
Moreover, basically no one wants to stay in academia anymore because the pay is laughable and the prestige isn’t what it once was thanks to the last political decade. Salaries need to increase.
schmichael 6 hours ago [-]
> I’d like to see a bit more meaning to the degree.
Does scarcity convey meaning?
I’m asking earnestly as I know nothing about PhD programs, holding a worthless bachelor’s degree from a tiny liberal arts college myself (still changed my life for the better and wouldn’t do any differently again but I digress.)
geonineties 5 hours ago [-]
Depending on the reasons for the scarcity, yes.
FrustratedMonky 3 hours ago [-]
Seems pre-mature. We'll still need PHds to verify AI. and to come up with practical applications.
fghorow 8 hours ago [-]
Also FTFA:
"""
Beilock announced at the meeting that the College is “working to reduce Dartmouth’s spending by $50 million,” in order to increase faculty and staff salaries “especially if and when inflation continues to rise,” according to a transcript of her speech published on the Office of the President’s website.
"""
Did inflation stop for the teachers too, or just for you?
AdrianB1 7 hours ago [-]
Maybe try to reduce admin staff to save money? What I read in multiple places is that administrative staff increased a lot over the past 30 years, about double the pace of teaching staff and 4 times more than the number of students. That sounds like terrible efficiency that can be reversed.
jltsiren 6 hours ago [-]
That's the difference between discretionary spending and mandatory spending.
Discretionary spending largely aligns with what the organization is supposed to do. A university can choose how much effort it puts on educating the students, because education is discretionary. Mandatory spending, on the other hand, is what the organization must do, due to external reasons or earlier commitments. Because mandatory spending is beyond the direct control of the organization, it tends to bloat.
The biggest sources of administrative bloat seem to be regulations, student expectations, and running a residential campus. None of which are particularly easy to change.
downrightmike 7 hours ago [-]
school admin seems like the perfect place for automation
AdrianB1 7 hours ago [-]
Being very generous, not even for full automation, but with all the tools and help of technology in the past 30 years they can be more productive, not less. We moved from hand-writing everything to computers, how is that reflected?
analog31 2 hours ago [-]
More written material is expected. Consider as a data point the length of dissertations. In the 1950s (my parents) they were about 50 pages. In my generation (early 90s), 250+ pages. I've heard that they've grown even further.
Today, many systems are automated. The bureaucrats have shifted from manual processing of normal cases, to handling edge cases and failure modes, of which there are still many. Among other things, there has been an explosion of academic fields, convoluted degree requirements, and funding mechanisms.
There are some bright spots. In my state, all of the state colleges now have the same entrance requirements, same degree requirements, and so forth. The community colleges are integrated with the 4-year schools so students can start at one and finish at another without losing credits.
The private schools are founded on being unique, meaning that each one has a bespoke set of rules that have to be navigated and administered.
6 hours ago [-]
MonkeyClub 5 hours ago [-]
> Maybe try to reduce admin staff to save money?
With reducing student cohorts, staff numbers will also necessarily see reductions; it’s the immediate next step, with faculty following afterwards.
lazyasciiart 3 hours ago [-]
Sure, if you assume that staff and students expect that the same amount of admin work per staff/student is done at the same speed as it used to be done.
fghorow 6 hours ago [-]
I said "staff" not "faculty". If you think staff (other than the grad students, which are being not allowed in at Dartmouth) teach, well, just try hanging around at a university for a week or so. See how many of the bureaucrats teach. (Hint: it rounds to zero.)
There is a special case of the poor adjunct faculty people, who are not paid well at all. They, in fact, need more support than the other staff.
(Source: I'm a retired, soft money, academic.)
7 hours ago [-]
augment_me 7 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
cajal 7 hours ago [-]
don’t feed the trolls
augment_me 7 hours ago [-]
You literally have another comment above stating:
> Everybody's attacking this but when have graduate school programs ever been responsive to the job market? They're constantly minting more PhDs, MBAs, and LLBs than the professions can absorb; even MDs have begun to find it hard to get a good return on their investments. Maybe getting out of that business is the responsible thing to do?
> “Stipends, insurance and the five-year funding guarantee all remain in place for students making satisfactory academic progress,” Colla wrote. “Advising relationships, qualifying exams, degree requirements and teaching and research appointments will continue as planned.”
If you, dear xhevahir, wanted to buy a math phd attempt and had the chops, you could self-fund the training, courses, and examinations of a Math PhD, and it'd be up to your own abilities to finish.
But nobody, nowhere, would (should!) stop you because "the jobs" aren't there. You could do it because you can find the money to do it.
Asking universities to set their intake numbers according to the perceived demand 5+ years down the road (let alone the coursework + specialization of those PhDs)? Madness - they'd effectively be planning the whole economy at that point.
That there is an overproduction of PhDs I can agree with, and also LLBs at schools not in the top 40 or so. But I haven't heard any evidence that there is waning demand for MBAs at decent schools, and I have never heard that "even MDs have begun to find it hard to get a good return on their investments". Don't get me wrong, as someone with a number of family members who are physicians I've heard lots of stories about how the workplace environment has deteriorated mightily in the past 6-7 years, but they are all making healthy incomes.
My issue with this is communication with current graduate and undergraduate students. If admins create uncertain environment, the trust, and quality of work goes down. As graduate students or even faculties have no say in these decisions, not sure how this decision was reached. (My guess) According to the admins, after 5 years there will be no jobs for Math PhDs, so they scrap the program.
> She wrote in a Nov. 10 email to current graduate students that there “will be opportunities for students to participate in the review” and that she would meet with math graduate students and department faculty on Nov. 17.
A little too late I would say. And all the meetings I had been part of for any issues (as a graduate student), the admins or faculties rarely listen to you as graduate students have no power.
It's 3-6 years of your life spent figuring out everything everyone has ever tried to solve a narrow class of problems that you are passionate about, guided by an expert on that topic. Without the worry of being able to afford food or rent.
Around the end, you make a contribution or two to that topic and become one of the top experts on the world in the field.
People hire PhDs for two reasons, one if they really need an expert in that field, or if they want someone who is proven to be able to spend a long time on a topic while figuring out and understanding what others have been doing there for the last several years.
Smartness does not have anything to do with the second part here. Without this training to do research, you can often train someone to do something technical but all their new ideas will likely be those that have been tried and failed 20 years ago.
Of course you could find exceptional candidates who can do this without a PhD, but employers are not in the business of taking low probability chances.
Telling you what ideas have been tried and didn't work is exactly the thing AI can help with.
Even with an 180+ IQ you're not going to have a shower thought and solve the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture without first learning the prerequisite concepts (and how to articulate your solution). Even very intelligent people still struggle to maintain the discipline needed over months/years to self-study with the depth/rigor needed for the equivalent degree.
Whoever makes these decisions should get admitted to the drama school!
The reality is that a PhD means just about nothing these days. Speaking as someone with a PhD (very thankful I graduated before LLMs ruined academic publishing completely), I’d like to see a bit more meaning to the degree.
Moreover, basically no one wants to stay in academia anymore because the pay is laughable and the prestige isn’t what it once was thanks to the last political decade. Salaries need to increase.
Does scarcity convey meaning?
I’m asking earnestly as I know nothing about PhD programs, holding a worthless bachelor’s degree from a tiny liberal arts college myself (still changed my life for the better and wouldn’t do any differently again but I digress.)
""" Beilock announced at the meeting that the College is “working to reduce Dartmouth’s spending by $50 million,” in order to increase faculty and staff salaries “especially if and when inflation continues to rise,” according to a transcript of her speech published on the Office of the President’s website. """
Uh huh. Increase staff salaries. That'll fix things.
Discretionary spending largely aligns with what the organization is supposed to do. A university can choose how much effort it puts on educating the students, because education is discretionary. Mandatory spending, on the other hand, is what the organization must do, due to external reasons or earlier commitments. Because mandatory spending is beyond the direct control of the organization, it tends to bloat.
The biggest sources of administrative bloat seem to be regulations, student expectations, and running a residential campus. None of which are particularly easy to change.
Today, many systems are automated. The bureaucrats have shifted from manual processing of normal cases, to handling edge cases and failure modes, of which there are still many. Among other things, there has been an explosion of academic fields, convoluted degree requirements, and funding mechanisms.
There are some bright spots. In my state, all of the state colleges now have the same entrance requirements, same degree requirements, and so forth. The community colleges are integrated with the 4-year schools so students can start at one and finish at another without losing credits.
The private schools are founded on being unique, meaning that each one has a bespoke set of rules that have to be navigated and administered.
With reducing student cohorts, staff numbers will also necessarily see reductions; it’s the immediate next step, with faculty following afterwards.
There is a special case of the poor adjunct faculty people, who are not paid well at all. They, in fact, need more support than the other staff.
(Source: I'm a retired, soft money, academic.)
> Everybody's attacking this but when have graduate school programs ever been responsive to the job market? They're constantly minting more PhDs, MBAs, and LLBs than the professions can absorb; even MDs have begun to find it hard to get a good return on their investments. Maybe getting out of that business is the responsible thing to do?
Not sure how this is an unreasonable take