February 2, 2009 at 13:09The beginning of a scientific career (part 4)
Likely, after this part we will take a small step back and talk about how a good Bologna magistracy looks like, but for now I’ll continue talking about graduate school.
I must say that in graduate school the differences between countries and universities are beginning to slowly fade. If you do not pay attention to important, but generally secondary things, then we can say that Russian graduate school is not very different from foreign. Perhaps the most noticeable external difference is that a Western graduate student has to study much more (in the usual, "student" sense), that is, go to courses and take exams.
A graduate student (however, like a master's degree) always has a “main” and “additional” specialty (major subject / minor subject). The main specialty sets the general direction of activity - physics, mathematics, computer science, biology. An additional specialty can be almost any and indicates what courses a person takes for his overall development. A geek may well take linguistics, history, and biology as a minor subject. You can not deviate from the main topic and take physics or economics.
So, in the framework of graduate school you will have to take an average of seven semester courses in each specialty (that is, a total of about 14 courses; disclaimer: that was where I studied). For comparison: only weekly seminars on philosophy and the English language are held in Russia. They also pass the specialty (but a separate course is usually not provided for it) and some obscure exams like the “TeX Foundation” or the “History of Science”. But the total load, of course, can not be compared.
What does postgraduate study look like in general? It is assumed that a PhD can be obtained in about four years (but five to six years is also not a problem; the problem is not always the duration as such, but the possibility of knocking out a scholarship for an extended period of study). Personally, it was morally easier for me to start by taking courses. That is, the first year I practically did nothing but listen to lectures. He scored all the courses that he could, and tried to earn the missing loans.
By the way, unexpected difficulty may arise here: if you studied for a master's program at a small university, it will not be so easy to find a sufficient number of new courses for obtaining “loans”. I had such a problem: almost all courses of a "high" level I already attended when I was studying for a master's degree. I had to go to summer schools, look for courses in other places. But all this in the end turned out to be easy, I do not want to scare anyone;) In addition, if you already have one higher education (preferably in an adjacent, but a different specialty), you can try to contrive and pass it off as a minor subject. With a certain amount of luck, this may work (in my case, the Russian graduate school “shot”).
Then begins the "research activity". Its ups and downs are a topic for a separate and long conversation, but I will try to limit myself to the main points.
As already mentioned by commentators in the previous topic, graduate students are the "workhorses" of science. It should be understood that the professor takes a graduate student to help him, and formally has quite a lot of power over him. The life of two different graduate students can radically differ from each other depending on the "goodness" of the leader. In principle, the supervisor can keep the graduate student “in a black body”, load him with full-time work and demand results.
I'm not saying that this is bad, but there is a fine line between “use” and “abuse” :) Some leaders tend to go beyond the reasonable. Therefore, I repeat, the choice of a leader is very important, and it would be nice to make inquiries among senior comrades (one more argument in favor of “first-master”: while you study, there is time to assess the situation).
On the other hand, it may be lucky. For example, my supervisor saw his mission primarily in organizing the process. Unfortunately, he did not help me much in my main work (but other colleagues can be found for help), but he did not interfere. His goal was quite pragmatic: the graduate student should defend himself, this improves performance. Indeed, as practice shows, his graduate students defend themselves and feel comfortable. Therefore, his laboratory is one of the most successful at the university (not only in terms of protection, but also in the number / quality of publications), although at first glance it may seem that employees are far from overworked.
Also mentioned above are the “difficulty of reorientation”. Somewhere in the area of graduate school (maybe a little later) there is a line beyond which it becomes difficult to submit yourself in a new quality. I admit, this is also my personal problem, which I am trying to solve - with more or less success. Suppose you were dealing with topic X in Russia. Abroad, you agree to take you to graduate school on a related topic Y. The local manager understands that you are qualified for Y, because the topic is related, but the topic X simply does not interest him, and he does not want to engage in X. The likelihood of finding a graduate school that perfectly matches X is quite difficult, just accept it as a fact.
So, agreeing to Y, after a while you automatically become a specialist in Y, and you are already perceived in that capacity. Going back to X will be quite difficult. You can recommend not to break away from X completely, and somehow touch X in your graduate work (if the topics are related, this is usually possible).
The research activity itself in graduate school is an ambiguous thing. On the one hand, you are kind of starting a scientific career, and it’s good if the start is worthy. On the other hand, everyone understands that the purpose of a PhD dissertation is to prove the ability to conduct research, and not work of the Nobel level. The attitude to the dissertation is generally pragmatic, books are even written about the algorithm of “passing through” the postgraduate’s quest .
The research project of the graduate student is designed to confirm the ability to perform a "competent" study in accordance with all the rules. A certain (not very difficult problem) is taken, analyzed by scientific methods, a solution is proposed, the problem is solved, the results are evaluated, conclusions are drawn. Therefore, the main criterion for choosing a task is its, on the one hand, “scientific”, and on the other, its obvious solvability within two to three years.
I must say that such an attitude persists even among some serious people. For example, I have one algorithm colleague who (by his own admission) is engaged in the following type of activity in science. He reads fresh articles offering algorithms on his topic, finds shortcomings in these algorithms (usually in the form of non-optimal asymptotic complexity), offers methods to eliminate these shortcomings, and publishes solutions in the form of articles.
On the one hand, it doesn’t look very much like rocket science, but on the other hand, quite substantiated scientific problems are being solved, they are being solved well, and a colleague deservedly takes his place at the university.
In the process of research, interim results are periodically published, and these publications form the basis of the dissertation. Magazine publications are considered more solid, conference publications - less solid. We believed that a set of three points for publications was sufficient to reach the defense (1 point is a journal article, 0.5 is a conference article). Moreover, the presence of at least one journal publication is highly welcome.
In some countries (in Finland, in particular) it is allowed not to write a dissertation at all. It is enough to compose the articles in a single book and write a lengthy introduction (in the region of 50-60 pages - although this is a lot, it is clearly less than a full-fledged dissertation). Such a “binder” is generally not so highly valued, but the degree is awarded the same :)
And finally, a few words about protection. Formally, the defense process is more comprehensive than ours. For example, the defense itself can last 3-4 hours, during which the opponent drives the defender on all issues that arose to the text. But in general, a simple rule works: if you are allowed to protect, most likely, everything will be successful.
As one smart person told me, when it comes to accounting, differences between countries are blurred. Failed dissertant - a blow to the faculty. If the dissertation is weak, a politically competent academic adviser will look for such reviewers and an opponent who will not fail. If strong, she will invite serious people to raise the prestige of the faculty. If you overwhelm foreign dissenters, in the end they will begin to overwhelm yours, the world is small ...
I am aware that this whole policy does not look, to put it mildly, very scientific, but this is the world, and you won’t do anything with it. There is a wonderful article detailing the process of promoting a journal publication. Probably, 80% of all the advice that the author gives is somehow related to politics, "cuisine", but not to scientific factors. In short, if you want articles or a dissertation from you, provide. And a job well done is a completely different matter, then answer your conscience and not your academic advice :)
I must say that in graduate school the differences between countries and universities are beginning to slowly fade. If you do not pay attention to important, but generally secondary things, then we can say that Russian graduate school is not very different from foreign. Perhaps the most noticeable external difference is that a Western graduate student has to study much more (in the usual, "student" sense), that is, go to courses and take exams.
A graduate student (however, like a master's degree) always has a “main” and “additional” specialty (major subject / minor subject). The main specialty sets the general direction of activity - physics, mathematics, computer science, biology. An additional specialty can be almost any and indicates what courses a person takes for his overall development. A geek may well take linguistics, history, and biology as a minor subject. You can not deviate from the main topic and take physics or economics.
So, in the framework of graduate school you will have to take an average of seven semester courses in each specialty (that is, a total of about 14 courses; disclaimer: that was where I studied). For comparison: only weekly seminars on philosophy and the English language are held in Russia. They also pass the specialty (but a separate course is usually not provided for it) and some obscure exams like the “TeX Foundation” or the “History of Science”. But the total load, of course, can not be compared.
What does postgraduate study look like in general? It is assumed that a PhD can be obtained in about four years (but five to six years is also not a problem; the problem is not always the duration as such, but the possibility of knocking out a scholarship for an extended period of study). Personally, it was morally easier for me to start by taking courses. That is, the first year I practically did nothing but listen to lectures. He scored all the courses that he could, and tried to earn the missing loans.
By the way, unexpected difficulty may arise here: if you studied for a master's program at a small university, it will not be so easy to find a sufficient number of new courses for obtaining “loans”. I had such a problem: almost all courses of a "high" level I already attended when I was studying for a master's degree. I had to go to summer schools, look for courses in other places. But all this in the end turned out to be easy, I do not want to scare anyone;) In addition, if you already have one higher education (preferably in an adjacent, but a different specialty), you can try to contrive and pass it off as a minor subject. With a certain amount of luck, this may work (in my case, the Russian graduate school “shot”).
Then begins the "research activity". Its ups and downs are a topic for a separate and long conversation, but I will try to limit myself to the main points.
As already mentioned by commentators in the previous topic, graduate students are the "workhorses" of science. It should be understood that the professor takes a graduate student to help him, and formally has quite a lot of power over him. The life of two different graduate students can radically differ from each other depending on the "goodness" of the leader. In principle, the supervisor can keep the graduate student “in a black body”, load him with full-time work and demand results.
I'm not saying that this is bad, but there is a fine line between “use” and “abuse” :) Some leaders tend to go beyond the reasonable. Therefore, I repeat, the choice of a leader is very important, and it would be nice to make inquiries among senior comrades (one more argument in favor of “first-master”: while you study, there is time to assess the situation).
On the other hand, it may be lucky. For example, my supervisor saw his mission primarily in organizing the process. Unfortunately, he did not help me much in my main work (but other colleagues can be found for help), but he did not interfere. His goal was quite pragmatic: the graduate student should defend himself, this improves performance. Indeed, as practice shows, his graduate students defend themselves and feel comfortable. Therefore, his laboratory is one of the most successful at the university (not only in terms of protection, but also in the number / quality of publications), although at first glance it may seem that employees are far from overworked.
Also mentioned above are the “difficulty of reorientation”. Somewhere in the area of graduate school (maybe a little later) there is a line beyond which it becomes difficult to submit yourself in a new quality. I admit, this is also my personal problem, which I am trying to solve - with more or less success. Suppose you were dealing with topic X in Russia. Abroad, you agree to take you to graduate school on a related topic Y. The local manager understands that you are qualified for Y, because the topic is related, but the topic X simply does not interest him, and he does not want to engage in X. The likelihood of finding a graduate school that perfectly matches X is quite difficult, just accept it as a fact.
So, agreeing to Y, after a while you automatically become a specialist in Y, and you are already perceived in that capacity. Going back to X will be quite difficult. You can recommend not to break away from X completely, and somehow touch X in your graduate work (if the topics are related, this is usually possible).
The research activity itself in graduate school is an ambiguous thing. On the one hand, you are kind of starting a scientific career, and it’s good if the start is worthy. On the other hand, everyone understands that the purpose of a PhD dissertation is to prove the ability to conduct research, and not work of the Nobel level. The attitude to the dissertation is generally pragmatic, books are even written about the algorithm of “passing through” the postgraduate’s quest .
The research project of the graduate student is designed to confirm the ability to perform a "competent" study in accordance with all the rules. A certain (not very difficult problem) is taken, analyzed by scientific methods, a solution is proposed, the problem is solved, the results are evaluated, conclusions are drawn. Therefore, the main criterion for choosing a task is its, on the one hand, “scientific”, and on the other, its obvious solvability within two to three years.
I must say that such an attitude persists even among some serious people. For example, I have one algorithm colleague who (by his own admission) is engaged in the following type of activity in science. He reads fresh articles offering algorithms on his topic, finds shortcomings in these algorithms (usually in the form of non-optimal asymptotic complexity), offers methods to eliminate these shortcomings, and publishes solutions in the form of articles.
On the one hand, it doesn’t look very much like rocket science, but on the other hand, quite substantiated scientific problems are being solved, they are being solved well, and a colleague deservedly takes his place at the university.
In the process of research, interim results are periodically published, and these publications form the basis of the dissertation. Magazine publications are considered more solid, conference publications - less solid. We believed that a set of three points for publications was sufficient to reach the defense (1 point is a journal article, 0.5 is a conference article). Moreover, the presence of at least one journal publication is highly welcome.
In some countries (in Finland, in particular) it is allowed not to write a dissertation at all. It is enough to compose the articles in a single book and write a lengthy introduction (in the region of 50-60 pages - although this is a lot, it is clearly less than a full-fledged dissertation). Such a “binder” is generally not so highly valued, but the degree is awarded the same :)
And finally, a few words about protection. Formally, the defense process is more comprehensive than ours. For example, the defense itself can last 3-4 hours, during which the opponent drives the defender on all issues that arose to the text. But in general, a simple rule works: if you are allowed to protect, most likely, everything will be successful.
As one smart person told me, when it comes to accounting, differences between countries are blurred. Failed dissertant - a blow to the faculty. If the dissertation is weak, a politically competent academic adviser will look for such reviewers and an opponent who will not fail. If strong, she will invite serious people to raise the prestige of the faculty. If you overwhelm foreign dissenters, in the end they will begin to overwhelm yours, the world is small ...
I am aware that this whole policy does not look, to put it mildly, very scientific, but this is the world, and you won’t do anything with it. There is a wonderful article detailing the process of promoting a journal publication. Probably, 80% of all the advice that the author gives is somehow related to politics, "cuisine", but not to scientific factors. In short, if you want articles or a dissertation from you, provide. And a job well done is a completely different matter, then answer your conscience and not your academic advice :)