IneficientPgons

Re:Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89 on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @08:45AM (#29080386)

> I don't know about the USA specifically

My post was specific to to the USA.

> Many maths PhDs don't go into academia, and those that do earn decent money (definitely more than our equivalent of middle school teachers).

I meant during the PhD. In the USA, it's very common for math folks to teach for most of their PhD. Teaching every semester + summers is not common at all in the rest of STEM. Between the higher salary and pension (!), middle school teachers are making a lot more than PhD students. It would be a weird apples-to-oranges comparison for most phd programs, but, unlike mot phd programs, math phds spend an enormous amount of their time TAing baby math classes.

> but this doesn't match my experience or that of anyone I know.

It matches the experience of almost everyone I know

> Seriously, if you're really interested in maths, look into a PhD in it.

But also consider PhDs in other fields.

Or just take an under-paying/low-time-commitment in industry and study math on the side; in a math phd program in the usa, your College Algebra/Calc I teaching load will be almost a full-time job anyways.

But, even more than that, if you're considering a PhD, choose a mathematically-adjacent field that isn't math and pick up a co-supervisor from the math department. The only parts of math that you can't do in other departments are exactly the areas that don't match the criteria of "area with practical applications or that will teach you useful skills".

Re:Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89 on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @02:00AM (#29077608)

Mathematics is closer to the least in-demand humanities than CS in terms of investment quality... actually, it's probably one of the worse fields in which to do a phd. History or Philosophy might be better... at least there you're free to live a life of the mind. If you sign up for a Math PhD in the USA, you're almost certainly just signing up to be a university College Algebra/Calc I teacher for like 1/2-1/3rd of what middle school teachers are making.

Seriously. Don't get a PhD in Math. It's a miserable field.

Re:Physics Student Earns PhD at Age 89 on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @01:03AM (#29077310)

STEM PhDs in the US pay no tuition and receive a stipend of typically $30K+ as well as health insurance and sometimes housing benefits.

Honestly, "fuck it, do another Ph.D. in an adjacent field like math" is definitely in my "shit ran out of funds for ski trips because I retired too early and need some health insurance ASAP" quiver.

> So... at that age, we can see it as just an aspirational thing. But for younger people, it mostly (not all the time) sends the wrong message.

Like 20-somethings doing startup shit, PhDs can be terrible life choices or wonderful life choices. Outcomes are anything but uniform. If I had gone industry out of undergrad I might be making $150K by now. Instead I'm making close to 10x that doing exactly what I would be doing if I were an unemployed bum following my passion, all thanks to my phd. Lucky, sure. So are startup folks.