That's interesting, in my second semester (Physics) a professor said to us in his introduction lecture that one of the biggest things you learn during studies is stress resilience. There's definitely a lot of truth to that. Although back at the time I didn't realize it but looking back it was the case. During studies and also 1-2 years afterwards I got incredibly resilient to stress.
No matter how much I had to do or how bad an incoming news was, I was just thinking, oh yeah now I need to do this, this and this or okay, that's just how it is, cannot do something about it. But yeah, the bill comes years after when you realize how you couldn't maintain any relationship that is not super close to you.
I wish people designing university programs but also those giving advise, would remove some of the pressure and also make the programs less intense (or at least longer with the same amount of things). As you mentioned, apart from very specific university career tracks there is little usage for many of those hard earned skills and tricks.
Yet this skill is never taught. So in actual fact what he’s saying is “studies filter out the people who can’t learn stress resilience by themselves”
A close friend was a nueroscientist. I got to watch her PI push her into 70 hour weeks and then guilt trip her for not doing more. I watched her PI extend her PhD for a year so she could contribute more to other projects, and then I watched them selectively drop data (and IMO make up results) so that they could publish on schedule.
Some parts of academia are so ludicrously bureaucratic that folks literally focus on box ticking for years at a time. That’s bound to happen because beaurocracy forces a path of least resistance that is essentially box ticking.
Is this a healthy skill to have, e.g. not stressing about things you can't control, learning not to be perfectionist, and adopting a healthy attitude as to what is or is not realistic?
Or is this emotional repression and chemical coping? Burying feelings of being overloaded, disrespected, having your needs ignored, and turning to alcohol, cannabis, nicotine, etc. to get through it?
Because depending on what it is, I'm not sure it's a "skill" I want to have. I've gone through very stressful periods of my professional life (in all cases caused primarily by mismanagement above me), and while I got through them, they only did harm, not good. There was nothing to "learn" from them. In no way did they make me a better person. They just took unnecessary tolls on my health and happiness, and even relationships.
I'm curious because I did a Master's (CS) at a Dutch university (Eindhoven) and my experience was the total opposite. Lots of students were involved in extracurricular activities, there was time for study and time for fun, people generally seemed mostly relaxed.
I'll concur that the program was a bit of an industry mismatch in that they don't teach software engineering but academic theoretical computer science, which has at most 10% overlap with what programmers in industry do. But I suspect that holds for most Master's programs out there (doesn't make it less ridiculous of course).
The important thing to remember is that the goal of an university is not to prepare you for what you do in industry, but to teach you fundamental knowledge about a topic that helps you adapt to new challenges (also in industry) and even more important university should teach you how to approach and understand new complex concepts by yourself.
If you want job preparation the best thing is an apprenticeship program (i.e. learning on the job) or maybe a specialiced practice focused college/trade school.
Granted, I think most day to day programmers don't need a CS degree.
that's an undergraduate degree. I would imagine a masters or graduate studies to not only teach that, but more (such as actual state of the art stuff).
Like how to prove a huge complex distributed / multithreaded system deadlock free, or how to transform no complete problems into parameterized SAT expressions that SAT solvers can solve (which was pretty state of the art at the time). Those were super fun to learn and do, but I can't say I apply much of it at my company.
In other words, I agree both with you and the commenter you're replying to.
University more or less assumes you’ll be going into academia or research.
Of course this very closely aligns the bachelors and masters level courses, meaning that if you haven't done the bachelors work, it's generally harder to make it in the masters, especially for hard sciences. Universities will take your money anyway of course, at best they'll give you a vague list of 'prerequisite courses' without detailing what level you're supposed to be at. So yeah, I can imagine you didn't have a great time given the circumstances, but that's at least partially to blame on faulty expectations, and it's also not what the OP is about.
This is not to deny there’s an enormous difference between doing research and doing coursework but an M.Phil. student is doing research much as a Ph.D. student is. They’re getting a Master’s as much as someone doing all coursework for an MBA.
In fact, the Spanish system used to be based on 5-year and even 6-year degrees. In the last university reform (triggered by the Bologna process), most universities just split their existing degrees into a 4-year Bachelor's and a 1 or 2-year Master's and called it a day. So the Master's is seen just as a natural continuation of the Bachelor's and those who go to the job market with a Bachelor's as impatient people who are working with an incomplete degree.
Now universities are also offering new Master's which aren't based on the traditional degrees, and those sometimes feel more "graduate", but they're not the majority at the moment.
So I think that the new Bologna system must be 3 + 1.5 or something like that. At least that's how I've seen it implemented in some countries.
To me the 4 year Bachelor's was always a complete degree. It's the 3 year that's arguably not.
During my Master's, I can count on one hand the number of times I went to a lecture hall. Instead I spent my time relaxing at home. Every once-in-a-while, I registered for a bunch of exams, which would then force me to go through the lecture slides at home and practice solving some old exams. I graduated the Master's with 4.0 GPA.
Most continental EU countries used to have a different system before the Bologna Bachelor/Master system. In the prior case, many countries simply did not have a Bachelor equivalent. In France, Spain, Netherlands and Germany, you'd by default do a Masters-level degree. As such, a Masters is more continued education - it does not imply a big cut from a "practical degree" toward research. Therefore, your assessment is correct.
But it is only half correct, because the other side is that in Europe, research universities and their degrees are meant to be for academic purposes. Most countries, especially German speaking countries, have entirely different systems (Vocational, applied universities) for students studying for a job.
In contrast to English-speaking countries, a vocational career is very much a proper thing to do and need not imply "failure" in any way. In fact, the strength of the German economy (and why firms moved back there from China), is the extremely high qualification of the median "technician".
It is still the case that many jobs (like nursing) are not taught at a university, simply because there is no path to academic research. On the other hand, the vocational education is not in any way inferior to a college degree in English-speaking countries.
A university was meant to prepare for academic research. That is why despite the first point, degrees in continental Europe were often more focused on research than on succeeding in a job.
An indicator of this can be seen by the lower rate of college graduates. This is often understood as a negative indicator internationally, but it is not really true. Yes, less people do college degrees, but college degrees are not the only possibility of qualification.
From my own experience, and I think many would agree, I think that the very high quality vocational education (and the fact that it is officially recognized) is equal if not sometimes better to prepare for a job. Especially the dual system, where you learn while working in a company for half the time, and go to a school the other half.
There is no doubt that this system is one of the reasons why the engineering sector in continential Europe has been doing much better than in the UK.
So in closing yes, the Master is a continuation degree. But, from the start, university is much more research focused. These things, of course, are changing now.
The fundamental problem here is that research is inherently uncertain, subjective and requires lots of creativity and independent thought (ideally - whether or not that actually happens is a different discussion). It's very different from undergraduate studies, which are usually 'do as you're told and you'll be fine'. Not everybody is suited for so much independence; in fact, often that do best in the rigid undergraduate system are those that are fundamentally wired to not do all that well in a more free form environment.
None (at least, very little) of that exists in continental masters programs. You just take your courses, do well on your exams, and you're good.
So that's what I meant as the fundamental difference between masters in continental vs Anglo-Saxon systems.
You can do research as a nurse. There are nurses with PhDs even.
Ok? So what? I was replying to 'there is no path to academic research', and there is. Saying not everyone follows it is irrelevant to whether or not it exists.
> also nursing is not always unionized, especially in the South..
What on earth does that have to do with whether you can do research or not?
I think some people have insecurities and other mental health concern which make them work more than other Ordinary people.
And just because some people are working lot more than others, they'll discover something new or have success purely due to brute force and not actually due to some latent talent
Couple months into the semester I realized the pressure kicking in my program. The planned 40 hour load required atleast 80 hours of work. I could sense stress and depression all around. None of my classmates seemed to have any weekends to travel around or play a sport. Friends needed smoke breaks every couple hours during group assignments. The fact that the program didn't offer the quality that one would expect made matters worse. I spent 6 months doing things that I did not enjoy. At the same time, my 5 years of work experience taught me enough to understand that what I was spending most of time on did not prepare me intellecually with regards to what to expect once I am back in the industry. The only preparation I was getting was the ability to absorb stress; and I was sucking at it. Dark thoughts started haunting me; I pushed through one semester and came back home to evaluate the ROI of this whole ordeal.
I quit after going back in order change my program to something better; but time to switch and forth coming costs weren't motivating enough.
UPDATE: I would honestly attribute most of the ordeal part to the program I selected. I looked forward to a couple professors to work with; both of them ended up either leaving the university or reducing their focus on my program. I saw students in other programs go along really well. At this point in academia I would consider it critical to visit the university personally (even if you are an international) to evaluate the environment you would be studying in and understand from fellow students how the program is being driven.